Who am I this probably sounds like the
kind of question that you might ask
while lying on your psychiatrist’s couch
actually though it’s a timeless question
when I ask Who am I I’m really asking
what is my circle and the very next
question that follows from this is are
you inside my circle or outside it now
your answer says a lot about whether you
may have a lot of enemies or whether
you’re likely to live peaceably with
friends putting the question another way
who is us and who is them now I happen
to come from a wasp background in the
United States so as I grew up I was
perhaps initially a little less attune
to perhaps questions of minority
people’s cultures and languages but when
I became a teenager I became fascinated
with other cultures I wanted to travel
live overseas learn languages and my job
later on I was an intelligence officer
took me and my family to live overseas
in many different places over a
considerable period of time and then
multiculturalism entered our own family
apart from our two biological daughters
my wife and I adopted a one-year-old
Korean orphan now we watched as he dealt
with this question of identity and
belonging over the years
living with us all the while in very
different places all around the world
Luke sadly died of a drug overdose at
age 21 these things
sadly happened to many people I ended up
writing a memoir about this but our time
with him
made us even more personally sensitive
to questions of identity in daily life
where we belong
although I certainly wouldn’t want to
suggest that identity issues have to
lead to despair or to drugs but the
question is still there for most of us
we all have friends family who might be
from minority backgrounds or different
than we are but let’s go back to the
beginning did cavemen cavemen sit around
their fireplace and worry about this
question of identity well yes in the
sense they did they didn’t talk to
psychiatrists about it
no but they certainly knew who belonged
and who didn’t was the next cave for
example friendly and did it belong or
what about the next five or ten caves
away how far did you have to go to find
unfriendly caves and why were they
unfriendly yeah back then we might have
fought over who got what portion of a
mastodon that we had just haunted but
even then there were those who were we
were willing to work with peaceably and
others we viewed flat-out as enemies who
we couldn’t get along with so the
question of who do we belong to
becomes very fundamental you know it’s
interesting that among many Aboriginal
peoples with very ancient cultures like
Navajo in the American Southwest or
Kwakiutl in in North Western Canada and
for these people the word for their own
peoples is simply the people now if you
weren’t one of the people you were
obviously something else and possibly
something even threatening that makes
again who am i a very important question
so who do we include then and who do we
exclude from our group I’m not just
talking
about our own communities this is
actually a global issue and so let me
get a little more specific for clarity’s
sake let’s take the case of Iraq by now
sadly familiar to all of us to watching
events over the years on this on the TV
screen
the country is suffered terribly in the
last two decades and is still undergoing
serious identity crises and struggles
but you know when we use the word
identity this isn’t just one thing it’s
a it’s a complicated thing in reality we
all have multiple identities gender for
example is one of the most basic ones in
our everyday lives and then there’s
ethnic difference what ethnic group do
we belong to many of us are increasingly
ethnically mixed and then there’s
linguistic you might belong to one
language or ethnic group but end up
speaking another language and then
there’s regional what region do you come
from and how much do people from that
region have a strong sense of belonging
against others on the outside think
Texas think of northern versus southern
China or even northern versus southern
Italy and then there’s religion in the
Middle East for several thousands of
years people organize their communities
on religious basis rather than on ethnic
or linguistic basis now in principle one
system can work just as well as the
other it’s all about how tolerant you
are within that particular system and
then there’s political identity in
America are you a Democrat or a
Republican where these days red or blue
in the UK are you a Tory or a socialist
or something else do you identify
personally as a liberal or conservative
globally and then we even have
professional identity
at our class are you from more from a
blue-collar class to use a old-fashioned
term or are you white-collar are you two
University educated for Karl Marx class
was the ultimate mean meaningful
identity issue and even music and
culture what cultural tribe do you
belong to if you’re my age did you get
off on Grateful Dead or today
do you go to Radiohead concerts and what
sports tribe do you belong to
in some countries that question can lead
to street riots now some of these
identity elements we can easily change
we can change what team we root for we
can change our musical tastes we can
seek higher education we can change our
profession we can move from one part of
the country to another even emigrate to
another country but it’s harder to
change our ethnicity and skin colour and
facial appearance are with us forever
and then comes the harshest aspect of
this identity question of all because
our identity it isn’t just what we think
we are we can decide who we are we can
cling to that identity but unfortunately
it’s a two-way street I I may think I
know who I am but you may think I’m a
different person you may see me in a
different light and that those two views
may not agree for example sadly some
Americans argue now about who is a real
American and that causes real trouble
and sometimes questions like this can
cause even life or death consequences
for example a terrible genocide took
place in Rwanda in 1994 between Hutu and
Tutsi people yes the differences between
the two – and the who Tutsi were in F
or linguistic or even religious terms
were really rather slight so who was us
and who was them at that time and 1
million people ended up being
slaughtered as a result or take a rock I
may say I’m Iraqi but another Iraqi may
say no your occurred even if I’m an
Iraqi citizen yet another Iraqi may
focus on whether I’m Shiite or Sunni for
them that is the most important
designation not what my passport says or
take the tragic case of Nazi Germany
look how quickly here situations can
change in 1922 if we had asked the
German Jew on the street who are you
and remember in 1992 we’re talking about
the German Weimar Republic democratic
liberal if we were to ask that you on
the street in 1922 who are you he or she
might have answered well I’m a German I
am A Berliner I teach it to fry
University Tate I’m a Jew I’m a
professor of psychology I grew up in
Heidelberg I’m a socialist
I’m a serious tennis player and I play
oboe and our local symphony now let’s
take that same person fifteen years
later when Hitler’s Nazi Party had come
to full power if you ask that person
then who are you there was only one
answer that meant anything to the
authorities the Jewish identity was all
that mattered and that usually had fatal
consequences same country same people
different circumstances I wrote a book
some years back on Arab Shiites along
with an Iraqi American woman whose
father happened to be Shiite and her
mother was some me this was commonplace
in the Iraq and the nineteen
fifties but after the chaos following
the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 the
place fell apart a mixed marriage like
that then really became unthinkable
indeed mixed neighborhoods became
unthinkable so your sectarian identity
often for you came to mean life or death
and others impose that on you for many
black people the question of color may
be at the top of their identity concerns
but it’s not because they want it to be
among themselves that isn’t the key
criterion but for some other people
color is a key issue and this isn’t only
about prejudice we’re also talking about
power so there it is we can’t always
control what we claim our identity is if
others don’t see it that way but what’s
striking are all in all of this is how
fast these identity issues can get right
down to the ugly gut level and times of
crisis are what throws this all right
out on the table out on the floor in
front of us when things go bad political
or social on evil upheaval revolution
war riots anything that destroys the
formerly established order then identity
becomes deeply fundamental when things
go bad like this you find who what your
gut identity is have you ever wondered
why we hear so much about tribalism or
clans or sectarian groups right down in
Iraq it’s because the government and the
infrastructure and the social order were
destroyed society then turns into a
jungle of survival and at that point
your identity becomes totally focused on
your own personal security and the
security of your family why wouldn’t it
weird where’d you go and tie
of deep trouble like this whoo-hoo we’ll
take you in who will acknowledge you as
one of their own who will protect you
feed you give you a gun fight for your
cause it can get pretty raw and fundamental and at that point you