Regardless of the identity or identities
on display, all are influenced to various
degrees by culture. In this section we
will examine a few of your many identi-
ties and illustrate how each is influenced
by culture.Racial Identity
Perhaps the most important single aspect to remember about race is that it is a social
construct arising from historical attempts to categorize people into different groups.
The concept grew out of efforts by eighteenth-century European anthropologists to
place people into hierarchically ranked categories based largely on their outward
appearance. In retrospect, it is easy to see how those early endeavors were influenced
by feelings of prejudice and ethnocentrism grounded in a strong sense of Western
superiority. This concept of classifying groups of peoples as superior or inferior has,
unfortunately,“been used as justification for brutalities ranging from repression to
slavery to mass murder and genocide.”^16 Today, racial classifications and identity are
usually associated with a person’s external physical traits—principally skin color but
also physiognomy and hair texture. Modern science, however, has discovered very lit-
tle genetic variation among human beings, which erodes the belief that race can be
used to categorize people. The concept is further discredited by centuries of genetic
intermixing.^17
However, as in many other countries, social categorization employing racial
identity persists in the United States, nodoubt abetted by the historical legacy
of slavery, early persecution of American Indians, and issues of civil rights. The
vestiges of early racial differentiationcan be seen in question 9 of the 2010 census
form, which offered respondents a choice of fifteen different racial categories,
and clearly confused race (e.g., White, Black) with nationality and ethnicity
(e.g., Chinese, Guamanian).^18 More recently, issues of racial differentiation have
become prominent in discussions on immigration and the relationship between
police forces and minority community members.
Although“race”remains a commonly used term in the United States, it is usually
ill defined and often used interchangeably with the term“ethnic group.”This lack of
a clear definition and resulting confusion leads us to agree with Kottak and Kozaitis’s
recommendation that“it is better to use the termethnic groupinstead ofrace to
describeanysuch social group, for example, African Americans, Asian Americans,
Irish Americans, Anglo Americans, or Hispanics.”^19Gender Identity
Gender identity is quite different from biological sex or sexual identity, which is
derived from an individual’s anatomy at birth. Gender is a socially constructed con-
cept that refers to how a particular culture differentiates masculine and feminine
social roles. Ting-Toomey considers gender identity as“the meanings and interpreta-
tions we hold concerning our self-images and expected other-images of‘femaleness’
and‘maleness.’”^20REMEMBER THIS
Identities such as race and biological sex are always present,
albeit usually in a secondary role. However, regardless of the
identity or identities being exhibited, all are influenced to vari-
ous degrees by culture.248 CHAPTER 7•Culture and Identity: Situating the Individual
Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).