Divided by Identity
i worked at a dairy queen
on the border of rural and suburban
pennsylvania
and there most of us were high school
and college students we
you know bonded pretty well we were
mostly friends um and we bonded over our
shifts and you know making ice cream
together
through those hot summer months and one
day one of my co-workers asked me
uh if i ever had dog before and i
thought that was a weird way to phrase
the question but i responded
enthusiastically
i have my pet dogs daisy and oliver um
they’re my favorite daisy loves to play
tug of war and oliver loves to fetch
um i know there’s a weird way he phrased
it but you know when i answer this
question
you know and i’m a dog person too so i
get super excited to talk about him
um and you know when i answered this
question he seemed confused
and took a step back and rephrased his
question
and he asked no have you ever eaten dog
before
and when he asked the question again
i was taken back all these feelings of
anger and rush to me and frustration why
would you ask such a dumb question like
that
i just told you how much i love my pet
dogs you know daisy and oliver
why why would you ask me that and so
i realized in the tone that he asked me
before i started to respond and he was
serious
he was actually curious and it wasn’t to
you know make me mad or you know anger
me in any way
he was legitimately curious and so i
composed myself
and i listened and so when i started to
listen we
shared ideas and you know he shared with
me what he thought
of asian americans and different
stereotypes that he had
and one of those being about me and
i had to dispel some of his theories
that no the chinese restaurant inside of
our little strip mall
did not serve dog and so you know this
was a hard conversation for me and it
bothered me a lot
um but as i thought and reflected i
couldn’t blame him
and at the same time it really did
it really did bother me
we kept talking and talking and
when i started to reflect i realized
that
his perspective on me was as someone who
is a foreigner
someone who could not be american and it
simply i was misunderstood because of my
race
and so he was using the perpetual
foreigner stereotype and so
the perpetual foreign stereotype is this
idea that asian americans
and other immigrants from other
communities
can’t be ever considered fully american
and so
it’s best summarized in this one
question and phrase
where are you really from and so if
you’re from an immigrant community or
from the asian american pacific islander
community
you may have heard this question you may
have been asked and it’s often
in efforts to figure out why you’re not
white and so when people ask me
where are you really from i typically
answer and
try to play a little game and challenge
their expectations
and i do so by telling the truth and so
when people ask me where you really from
i’ll tell them pennsylvania born and
raised
and then you know unsatisfied they’ll
ask where my parents are from
and i’ll tell them queens new york and
so we’ll keep going down this line to my
grandparents and efforts to figure out
why i’m not white or what kind of asian
i am and then
then in there i get they get their
answer
but it reinforces this idea that
my family me none of us are considered
full americans because
we will always be considered perpetually
foreign um
and it it still stuck with me
and this is something that many other
communities face and focus on and
when i began to think
and realize why was i misunderstood and
i realized that
my co-worker misunderstood me because of
my race because i was asian and this
identity group that i belonged to
and as the 2016 election unfolded i
began to keep on reflecting
on why people misunderstand each other
and and why is it because of these you
know different
identity groups we belong to uh and i
came to this conclusion that
um that during this election
this was more than just whether or not i
was being misunderstood because i was
asian but also
it could apply to political sides too
and so i’m from chester county
pennsylvania
it’s a beautiful philadelphia suburb
it’s very politically diverse
we have acres and acres of farmland
especially for mushrooms in the
pennsylvania amish
urban areas with a big state school and
sprawling suburbs and cookie-cutter
neighborhoods and so all these
all this diversity maybe not racially
but this diversity
created a political contested political
climate and during the 2016 election
the tension you could feel it in the air
all of our conversations
were dominated by the political tension
between conservatives and liberals
it seeped through our dinner tables
everything
and it was just
astonishing to see the effect that
political polarization had had on our
town
ripping it apart and i began to think
how have we gotten here and
why if we’re all americans why are we so
divided and this political
division really continued to bother me
and so i asked myself why do we
feel so much distance and frustration
towards each other from different
parties
and what does this you know what does
race have to do with political
polarization
you know especially the division between
our own families and
our own neighbors and surely we all just
want the what’s best for our country
and we i came to the answer
that it is our intolerance um
and our frustration with each other and
what happens is that we tend to divide
ourselves into tribes and groups and we
can separate
yourselves from other people separate us
from them
and put them into different tribes then
it’s so much easier to have hate and
antipathy for those people outside of
your own tribe
and so someone who well summarized this
political division his name is david
wasserman
a political journalist and he described
it as the battle between whole food
shoppers
and cracker barrel patrons and so what i
thought was so interesting
about his description of the 2012
election between mitt romney
and then president obama was
how accurate it was and so he collected
his data and
through the data you can see that people
who live by whole foods urban outfitters
lululemon and apple stores they tended
to elect democrats
where as people who lived by cracker
barrel tractor supply company
hobby lobby and bass pro shops they
typically elected republicans
and i kept thinking
about how powerful david washington’s
words were
and how much they resonated with me
because it shows how our non-political
identities and affiliations
are aligning with our political ones and
author ezra klein who is the co-founder
and former editor-in-chief of vox in his
book why we’re polarized
he talks about whole foods and explains
how whole foods is this place where
it’s very vegan a vegetarian friendly
there are many different options and
different ethnic cuisines and it really
pushes you out of your comfort zone to
try new things
whereas cracker barrel is this place
where it’s steeped in tradition and the
same comfort foods that are always be
there for you and it’s reliable
and so he talks about and explains how
our psychologies
influence our brand preferences so if
your psychology is more open
and fluid you may prefer whole foods
versus if your psychology is more
seeks change or seeks fear no excuse me
if fears change and seek stability then
you may prefer cracker barrel
and so as our psychologies and our
identities
and our preferences and different
lifestyles as they align
and sort themselves into different polls
this is what our new political
polarization is becoming
and these polls are our mega identities
which was crowned by
lillian mason an author and professor at
the university of maryland
and so what was so interesting about
the whole foods and cracker barrel
example is that i saw these two types of
people
now if i describe someone um who shops
at whole foods maybe drives a prius eats
avocado toast every day in the morning
and
does yoga classes and recycles you may
assume that they’re a liberal and if i
describe someone who maybe
drives a pickup truck goes to cracker
barrel and likes to hunt you might
think of them as conservative and so i
lived with both of these types of people
and to some extent it might be both and
you know they all met together in
chester county when
and they clashed when we weren’t living
our separate lives
and so you know back to chester county
you can see that cracker barrel and
whole foods
they’re just three miles apart on the
same road showing how
weird my town is and you can divide
define political polarization
as the clustering of these identities
opinions and affiliations
among two different polls and
polarization itself
isn’t necessarily bad but what is
dangerous is the type of division we
have today
it is you know driven and sorted
so clearly like never before in the
history of the american electorate
and you have these mega identities that
makes it so threatening
and so in other ways we can see this
division
is how we’ve stigmatized the other party
and so in 1994 21 of republicans
had unfavorable views of democrats and
17 of democrats
held unfavorable views of republicans
and fast forward to 2016
that’s increased to 58 percent and 55
percent respectively
and another metric we can look at is in
1960 five percent of republicans and
four percent of democrats
said they would be displeased if their
child married someone outside of their
political party
and 50 years later that has increased
to 49 of republicans and 33 percent of
democrats
you know this change is so drastic and
how
much we stigmatize we fear the other
party
and how our identities are diverging and
so if we look at our mega identities we
can see that
we have both a liberal and a
conservative a lean republican
lean democrat and all these different
demographics
and demographic groups are aligning
among them and so we can use polling
data to see
how they’ve separated and it’s important
to note that
none of these demographics are
monolithic and the story is always more
complicated and nuanced than that
but it’s important to see that you may
identify with many of these identities i
certainly do
and they may be across the line or all
on one side
and it’s so interesting how stark that
these
identities are sorting themselves among
different political parties
um and that is quite frankly concerning
um
and if we go to the next slide we’ll see
that 77 percent of republicans and
democrats say that not only do they
disagree
over plans and policies but they also
disagree on basic facts
and if we disagree on basic facts it is
concerning because as a democratic
society we do need a mutual
understanding
of the same basic facts and reality in
order to function
and solve the issues at hand and there
are so many issues at hand
uh and i think a place we can start
to move forward and it’s not a silver
bolt by any means and
you know we will need policy and reform
to move forward um
but what we can all do as individuals is
focus on the way we perceive others
and that is really important and so what
gets in the way of the way we perceive
others
is our stereotypes and stigmas that we
hold
for other people and the contempt we
hold for groups outside of our own
now these stereotypes and stigmas they
harm us on an individual level entire
demographics
and everyone as a whole on an individual
level we can go back
to my days at dairy queen where my
co-workers stereotyped me
and when you stereotype someone or you
stigmatize them
and reduce them to that single narrative
or story you’re essentially removing
who they actually are and the reality
from your perception
and that creates this distance and with
that distance you can cast them as other
or a part of a different tribe and then
you can use you know hate and antipathy
so much eat more and entire demographics
if we look at asian americans and the
perpetual foreigner stereotype
you know in the past year and since the
beginning of the pandemic
asian americans have taken the blame of
the chronovirus pandemic
so much of our frustration from the way
the virus has disrupted
our way of life is being misdirected
towards them and stigmatizing them
as the cause and carriers of covid
and since then there have been about 3
800
anti-asian incidents recorded in just
the united states alone
and some of these instant instances
include
you know being called the chronovirus or
being attacked and harassed and you know
saying that these people
can take covet back to china being
attacked
being assaulted stabbed lit on fire
shot and killed
and this is all because of our
stigmatization of asian americans and
how we’ve casted them
as the cause of the coronavirus
through our rhetoric and through our
history and so it’s easy
to attack asian americans because
they’re already authorized
they’re already seen as perpetual
foreigners or the el peril
but not one of us and so the way
that stereotypes and stigmas
and our intolerance of other groups
affect all of us as a whole
as they complicate our ability to
connect with each other it allows
identity
to become not a strength but a barrier
between ourselves
and that is incredibly dangerous you
know life is not a zero-sum game
where you win at the detriment of your
opponents especially if
your opponents are simply your neighbors
and your fellow americans
you know in order to move forward we
really must come together and we cannot
continue
uh to let our different identity groups
divide us in such a pluralistic
and democratic society and i do have
some steps to move forward
and these are steps that every
individual can take to work on the way
we perceive each other
and the first way is to start consuming
stories
where the main characters don’t look
like you and
a great way to do this is through books
and poetry but if you’re bad at reading
sometimes like me
a great way is through streaming
services as well
and another thing we have to do is mix
up the type of media
informative media that you consume and
so this is a great opportunity to
support local journalism and publicly
funded programs
for instance you know social media is
where a lot of us get our news
and algorithms are designed to show you
what you want to see
so break free from that challenge your
perspectives
another way to do that is by when
permissible travel
with the intent to learn about the local
people and culture
and don’t forget to reflect and by doing
so consciously commit yourself to
becoming better
and not allowing these stereotypes and
stigmas to act as barriers between us
and in doing so you can establish the
growth mindset and
because it’s okay not to be perfect as
long as we’re better than yesterday
and if we seek friendships with people
from those who are from different groups
than us who hold different identities
that can be a great bridge builder
that’s incredibly powerful
and i’m not saying be friends with
people because of an identity group they
belong to
but having a diverse group of friends
and having those tough conversations
with them
and when having those conversations it’s
important to make sure to listen
not to respond but to understand
and so i hope that i can bring to your
attention how our
identities are being divided amongst us
and how
we must be able to use diversity as our
strength and moving forward
in our very polarized and divided
society
thank you