{"id":43263,"date":"2015-10-15T01:40:05","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T01:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43263"},"modified":"2017-04-18T01:17:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T01:17:57","slug":"the-year-we-obsessed-over-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43263","title":{"rendered":"The Year We Obsessed Over Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Year We Obsessed Over Identity<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2015-10-06<\/p>\n

Wesley Morris<\/a><\/strong>, Critic at Large<\/p>\n

2015’s headlines and cultural events have confronted us with the malleability of racial, gender, sexual and reputational lines. Who do we think we are?<\/em><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I sat in a movie theater and grinned. Anne Hathaway<\/a> was in \u2018\u2018The Intern<\/a>,\u2019\u2019 perched on a hotel bed in a hotel robe, eating from a can of overpriced nuts, having tea and freaking out. What would happen if she divorced her sweet, selfless stay-at-home dad of a husband? Would she ever meet anybody else? And if she didn\u2019t, she would have no one to be buried next to \u2014 she\u2019d be single for all eternity. And weren\u2019t the problems in her marriage a direct result of her being a successful businesswoman \u2014 she was there but never quite present? \u2018\u2018The Intern\u2019\u2019 is a Nancy Meyers <\/a>movie, and these sorts of cute career-woman meltdowns are the Eddie Van Halen<\/a> guitar solos of her romantic comedies.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s funny about that scene \u2014 what had me grinning \u2014 is the response of the person across the bed from Hathaway. After listening to her tearful rant, this person has had enough: Don\u2019t you dare blame yourself or your career! Actually, the interruption begins, \u2018\u2018I hate to be the feminist, of the two of us. \u2026 \u2019\u2019 Hate to be<\/em> because the person on the other side of the bed isn\u2019t Judy Greer<\/a> or Brie Larson<\/a>. It\u2019s not Meryl Streep<\/a> or Susan Sarandon<\/a>. It\u2019s someone not far from the last person who comes to mind when you think \u2018\u2018soul-baring bestie.\u2019\u2019 It\u2019s Robert freaking De Niro<\/a>, portrayer of psychos, savages and grouches no more.<\/p>\n

On that bed with Hathaway, as her 70-year-old intern, he\u2019s not Travis Bickle<\/a> or the human wall of intolerance from those Focker movies. He\u2019s Lena Dunham<\/a>. The attentiveness and stern feminism coming out of his mouth are where the comedy is. And while it\u2019s perfectly obvious what Meyers is doing to De Niro \u2014 girlfriending him \u2014 that doesn\u2019t make the overhaul any less effective. The whole movie is about the subtle and obvious ways in which men have been overly sensitized and women made self-estranged through breadwinning. It\u2019s both a plaint against the present and a pining for the past, but also an acceptance that we are where we are…<\/p>\n

…In June<\/strong>, the story of a woman named Rachel Dolezal<\/a> began its viral spread through the news. She had recently been appointed president of the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.<\/a> in Spokane, Wash<\/a>. She had been married to a black man, had two black sons and was, by most accounts, a black woman. Her white biological parents begged to differ. The ensuing scandal resurrected questions about the nature of identity \u2014 what compelled Dolezal to darken her skin, perm her hair and pass in reverse? She might not have been biologically black, but she seemed well past feeling spiritually white.<\/p>\n

Some people called her \u2018\u2018transracial.\u2019\u2019 Others found insult in her masquerade, particularly when the country\u2019s attention was being drawn, day after day, to how dangerous it can be to have black skin. The identities of the black men and women killed by white police officers and civilians, under an assortment of violent circumstances, remain fixed.<\/p>\n

But there was something oddly compelling about Dolezal, too. She represented \u2014 dementedly but also earnestly \u2014 a longing to transcend our historical past and racialized present. This is a country founded on independence and yet comfortable with racial domination, a country that has forever been trying to legislate the lines between whiteness and nonwhiteness, between borrowing and genocidal theft. We\u2019ve wanted to think we\u2019re better than a history we can\u2019t seem to stop repeating. Dolezal\u2019s unwavering certainty that she was black was a measure of how seriously she believed in integration: It was as if she had arrived in a future that hadn\u2019t yet caught up to her…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2015’s headlines and cultural events have confronted us with the malleability of racial, gender, sexual and reputational lines. Who do we think we are?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,6462,20],"tags":[2640,20257,20241,2327,21430],"class_list":["post-43263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-new-york-times","tag-rachel-a-dolezal","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-wesley-morris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53551,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43263\/revisions\/53551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}