Beyond The Plot

Currently I’m reading Sway’s peace by Talia Rhea and the MMC, Sway, has brought an interesting topic to mind.

He has to come to terms with the separation of his identity with the identity of his ethnicity. 

He was raised within Farasie culture until the age of ten as a pacifist. Unfortunately, a band of pirates separated him from his family on a trip. He was kidnapped and sold slavery, landing him on Rik-Vane. Which is a cesspool of the worst of the worst criminals, quite literally in the whole universe. This is a place bad guys go to escape the law, because not even the enforcers are willing to FOFO. 

His people are extremely pacifistic, however, in order to survive he decided to do whatever was necessary. (Which fair, my guy.)

So, he had a choice to continue to live by the cultural principles he grew up with and die or adapt to the culture of Rik-Vane. He chose to adapt, because he had to. He wanted to live but to live on Rik-Vane you most certainly cannot be a pacifist.

After escaping that life, he wants to reclaim his culture’s ideology. The journey he is on now is showing him that he is still Farasie, and he can reimplement parts of his ancestral culture, where he’d like, but he is also of Rik-Vane. Growing up there has definitely changed who he is, because the ideologies are vastly different from those you’d find within Farasie culture.

His inner debate had me thinking about culture versus ethnicity & race and how we have such a hard time understanding these layers, in America at least. 

Similar to Sway’s journey we see 

Americans, who are 1st or 2nd gen, trying to find a balance between being born and raised within American culture, while still paying homage to their ancestral culture. 

They are trying to balance out where they came from with who they are.

Which from a sociological perspective is so interesting to me. The layers that make up their daily lives, that most people probably don’t consciously think about. 

In the States, a common topic of discussion is how American someone is. How black someone is. How white someone is. How Mexican someone is. And so on and so forth. 

Because of this phenomenon, it is common to revoke or hand out ‘blackness.’ I am biracial and grew up in Black American culture. Though I appear white to some, many Black Americans might say I’m not ‘black enough,’ while others would be offended if I didn’t identify as Black.

Which that in mind, if a phenotypical Black American was raised in a predominately white neighborhood and took on those cultural characteristics their “blackness” would be called into question as well. 

Which I’ve always found odd.

Why would the kind of movies I watch dictate my racial background? Whether I grew up eating certain foods or not doesn’t change that I was raised by my mother. A Black American woman. I am of her, therefore I, too, am black. As I am of my father, who is a white American, therefore I, too, am white. 

It is equally as weird when people are shocked that people of other races, who’ve grown up in Black American culture, take on those cultural attributes. 

Of course they would. It’s how they were raised. That’s how culture works. And it’s also okay for them to hold space for the cultural aspects of their ethnicity. 

Now to be clear, it is very obvious when someone is putting on an act. When they are leaning into stereotypes. It’s obvious because they don’t know the meaning behind what they are doing. They are just doing it. Which you see with the usage of AAE (African American English) by people that aren’t within the culture, nor associate with people within black American culture. The terms are used incorrectly, the meanings are skewed. (But I digress)

All that to say, while someone can be of a specific race or ethnicity that doesn’t automatically dictate the culture they adhere to. Nor does the cultural traits detract from their ethnicity or race. (The absurdity of race is a discussion in and of itself. )

I often wonder what the world would look like if people leaned into their layers. What America would look like if we weren’t constantly trying to prove our racial identity or hide from it. 

It’s interesting to think about, though I feel like I haven’t really tapped into the depth of it here. This is more of a starter piece. Something I’ll be coming back to continuously.