Ethnic Identity and our obsession with it
In the days following Kamala Harris’ nomination for Vice President of the United States, the media seemed overtly concerned about her identity - “Is she African American?” “Is she a black Senator or a brown Senator?” “She has Indian origins!” “She’s South Asian American!” “Her father is from Jamaica, so she’s Jamaican!”
Many Indians within the country and across the world began expressing a sense of pride in her ‘Indian’ origins, nevertheless. Some others were agitated and disappointed as they believed she was using her ‘Indian’ origins only to increase her voter base, but forgot about them when it truly mattered.
Should she be elected as the Vice President in the upcoming elections, Indians outside of the United States have very little to gain directly from her win. However, that does not stop us from speculating about her roots of origin and picking a side. Why?
In this post, we break down the different aspects to this ‘obsession’ over a person’s ethnic identity and analyse how it matters in the present context.
What is someone’s ethnic identity? Is it permanent?
‘Ethnicity’ is a topic in social sciences that is generally approached with extra care and caution given its complexity. For that reason mainly, there is no firmly agreed upon definition of ‘ethnicity’. A fairly comprehensive meaning of ‘ethnic and racial identity’ explains it as a multifaceted identity formed through dynamic processes, situating its development within specific socio-historical contexts. [1] In other words, it is a social construct used to categorize individuals - who they are and how they fit into the world. [2]
Someone’s ethnic identity is not fixed as such and is considered to be fluid and dynamic in nature. [3] It is subject to change even in the short term. [4]
Ethnic identities can change even in the short term as individuals combine and recombine elements from their fixed set of attributes differently.
Psychologically speaking, why did people fuss over her origins?
Effect of native language
Indians across the world went on a social media frenzy when Kamala Harris used the word ‘chitthi’ (‘younger aunt’ in Tamil) in her speech and lot of them even expressed tears of joy as they heard that word being mentioned in a vice presidential speech.[5] Her own aunt expressed pride in the fact that Senator Harris still calls her ‘chitthi’ indicating that she has ‘not forgotten her roots.’ [6] The VP candidate no doubt appealed to the emotions of Indians (more specifically, to Tamil speaking population) across the world by using that word. But how can one word have such an effect on people? The answer to this lies in psycholinguistics.
Based on a psychology study carried out to understand the effect of emotional words in a listener’s native language, it was found that words with affective connotations activates the limbic system. [7] The limbic system situated in our brain deals with emotions and memory. (We’ve also covered this aspect in one of our Instagram posts.)
Therefore, when we hear a familiar word in a native accent or native language, the limbic system allows us to access our past memories and emotions associated with that word. This is what happened when Kamala Harris strategically addressed ‘chitthis’ and associated the word with ‘family’ in her speech.
Power of Origin Stories
In her election campaigns and her autobiography, Kamala Harris often makes references to the influence of her grandfather (who was of Indian origin) and her mother’s efforts in imbibing ‘Indian’ culture and values while raising her children in America. When narrated this way, Kamala Harris’ origin story strikes a chord with thousands of Indian-Americans who chose to move to America. It validates their family’s difficult decision to move to America when they see a person with a similar origin hold a position that no Asian-American has held. [8]
Origin stories have the power of giving meaning to existence and strengthening the bonds within communities. [9] Some anthropologists have even concluded that stories of origin are inseparable from their locations (India, in this case). [10] Therefore, by giving a place to her origin story, she naturally attracts the people of similar origins and such people feel validated and represented as a result. However, the question that many critics raised was if there is a bigger purpose of Kamala Harris revealing her ‘Indian’ roots besides increasing her vote-bank support.
Politicizing one’s ethnicity
Besides supporters, Kamala Harris also attracted several critics from India and of Indian origin, who expressed their angst against her for using her ‘Indian’ and ‘South Asian’ identity only for vote bank politics. They were not wrong in raising this issue. However, this is not a new phenomenon.
In South Asia especially, a significant portion of the power in the politicising ethnic identity lies in the “psychologically and the emotionally charged aspects” of ethnicity. [11] Politicising of ethnicity means appealing to the ethnic identities and ethnic solidarity among certain groups of people. [12] Such tactics also tend to have similar emotional effects on individuals as explained earlier with native accents and the limbic system. Therefore, these acts of politicisation and their resultant effects on individuals, must make us pause and question the motives and actions of the person(s) engaging in such politicisation.
Unlearn: Going beyond one’s ethnicity
Is ethnicity the only criteria to determine whether you vote for/support someone? Of course, in case of the U.S elections, a lot of you might counter argue that the alternative to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is definitely not your preference for the upcoming term. So you’d rather go with Biden-Harris. However, let us step back and look beyond the U.S. elections:
Based on what you’ve read, can you identify the strategies that national and state political parties employ to appeal to certain communities?
Within India, have you observed instances of how ethnicity has been politicised to pit one community against another?
Recall the political party(ies) that you support. How strongly does ‘ethnicity’ of the leaders of this party affect your support?
We have spelt out the psychology behind why we obsess over someone’s ethnicity as much as we do using Kamala Harris’ VP nomination as an example. In a lot of such cases, the use of ethnicity invokes a sense of solidarity and belongingness in us. All of these emotions stem from our limbic system.
Our yearning to feel belonged is hard wired in us over centuries.[13] However, the difference between our ancestors from centuries earlier and us is that we now know why we feel that sense of belonging. Which means we can let this knowledge and information guide our actions rather than let our actions be steered by our emotions and blind beliefs.
Therefore, to quote Octavia Butler, “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought…”
Source: Excerpt from Octavia Butler’s second Earthseed book as covered by Brain Pickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/08/23/octavia-butler-parable-leaders/
KEY TERMS
Ethnic Identity :
a social construct generally used to categorize individuals based on their background, descent, culture and a number of other factors in an attempt to understand how they fit in the world
Psycho-linguistics :
the study of the relationships between linguistic behaviour and psychological processes
Origin Stories :
established background narratives, that informs the identity of the person in question
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References:
[1] Umana-Taylor et al., “Ethnic and Racial Identity in the 21st Century Study Group” (2014).
[2] Cornell, S.E., & Hartmann, D., “Ethnicity and race: Making identities in a changing world”, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press (2007).
[3] Kiang L, “Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity in Context”, Human Development (2014). https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/363399#
[4] Kanchan Chandra, “What is Ethnic Identity and does it matter?”, Annual Review of Political Science (2006). https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.062404.170715
[5] “Kamala Harris addresses her ‘chithis’ in her speech, sends Twitter into a frenzy”, Scroll.in, (August 20, 2020).
[6] ETB Sivapriyan, “Kamala Harris never forgot her roots, even today calls me 'chithi': Aunt recounts Biden VP pick's childhood”, Deccan Herald (August 12, 2020). https://www.deccanherald.com/national/kamala-harris-never-forgot-her-roots-even-today-calls-me-chithi-aunt-recounts-biden-vp-picks-childhood-872331.html
[7] Anna Hatzidaki, Cristina Baus, Albert Costa, “The way you say it, the way I feel it: emotional word processing in accented speech”, Frontiers in Psychology (2015).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376116/
[8] Matt Stevens, Rebecca Ruiz, “‘Feeling Seen for the First Time,’ Indian-Americans Cheer Kamala Harris’s Selection”, The New York Times (August 13, 2020). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/politics/kamala-harris-south-asians-indian.html
[9] J. F. Bierlein, “Parallel Myths”, New York: Ballantine Books (1994).
[10] Richard V. Francaviglia, “Believing in Place: Spiritual Geography of the Great Basin”, University of Nevada Press (2003).
[11]Ordonez, Matt & Juliano, Hansley, “Dealing with diversity: State strategies on ethnic minority management in Southeast Asia”, (2019).
[12] Tarimo A, “Politicization of Ethnic Identities: The Case of Contemporary Africa”, Journal of Asian and African Studies (2010).
[13] India Bohana, “The Neuroscience of Belonging”, Brain Blogger (September 17, 2012). http://www.brainblogger.com/2012/09/17/the-neuroscience-of-belonging/
Roshni Ranganathan
Passionate about teaching. Can be found doodling while humming an old tune she just listened to. Pours her heart into her work.
