UR #3: Recognizing the Other and Defining the Self

These past few weeks, we have been exploring the concept of the self and the other, and using US race relations as an arena for the application of these ideas. While looking at historical race relations, power structures, and their translation to contemporary racial projects in the United States, I found myself drawing upon Hegel’s work the most. It is very difficult for me to conceptualize the self without having an “other” to compare myself to, and I find this need replicated in racial identity as well. In order to build upon this point, I will focus primarily on Winant’s ideas surrounding white identity as a social construct (read: “invented whiteness”), and relate it back to Charles H. Cooley’s theory called the Looking-Glass Self.

In Winant’s essays on contemporary racial politics, he asserts that white identity is based on “negating other races” and identifying what is “not white” about others in order to determine what is “white” about white people’s concept of self. Winant claims that whiteness is an invention that ironically depends on non-whites in order to exist. This fascinating assertion ties in with Hegel’s concept of using “the other” to define “the self”, as Winant describes white people using external representations of other groups to determine how they want to understand and present themselves. At this point, I would find it useful to determine how much of this perception of the other is rooted within the self, as our own experiences and interactions undeniably define how we view others. Is this process a cycle, and can we really say that the other defines the self in that case?

I relate this idea of using the other to define the self to a symbolic interactionist theory called “The Looking-Glass Self”, a concept proposed by a sociologist named Charles H. Cooley. According to Cooley, the self develops as it perceives and interprets itself through others and the interactions it has with others. In other words, people serve as a “looking glass” for us to see ourselves, and this defines our sense of self and identity. Due to its social psychological nature, the theory is largely focused on the way that the mind develops meanings that it then associates with social symbols. I connect this to the manner in which we, as people with different cultural and racial experiences, develop meanings for certain symbols and how this defines our identity.

For instance, when it comes to police presence, white people attach very different meanings to it than do minority groups, and this defines how we interact with the police, the role that we think state-sanctioned violence should play, and the kinds of policies that we support. When it comes to tokens of culture and identity, such as food or clothing, again we have different meanings and values, and we establish where we stand in relation to these tokens. This social location depends greatly on a) the interactions we have with others, b) the meanings we are taught and/or learn over time and c) our perception of self, in no particular order. This winds back to Hegel’s idea that we rely greatly on the other to define ourselves, an idea that I definitely agree with. When it comes to white identity especially, it makes sense that they define themselves in relation to the other ethnic groups that they are surrounded by, as it appears to be a natural process to me. Unfortunately, when these definitions seek to homogenize a diverse other, proceed to separate the other, and then disadvantage them in order to maintain a sense of identity, that is when I must disagree with this identity formation and reproduction process.

This also leads me to wonder how people that do not have a clear-cut racial “other” define themselves. For example, if I were to ask my cousin (a young Pakistani woman who was born and raised in Pakistan, and still resides there) about identity, how would she define herself? Would it instead be in relation to gender or religious sect, or would race and culture still be a major factor in defining who she is as a person or a social actor? Do we use the other in a way to develop the parts that we are most unsure about? Do we draw upon the most obvious or visible differences to establish ourselves? Although I understand that the application of the self vs. other is not exclusive to race, I find that in the Western context, culture and climate, it plays an extremely important role. In fact, with reference to the Trump administration’s constant practices of racial othering in order to promote white American identity (i.e. “bad hombres”, the Muslim Ban, etc.), I cannot help but feel that unfortunately, even in a supposedly “post-racial climate”, race in America will be eternally relevant.