Judging a book by its cover

Diversity by Nick Anderson

Michael Jackson once sang that to be his baby it didn’t matter if you were black or white. While this may have been true for him, in American culture the color of your skin, the perception of your gender, and the other judgments people make with a glance do matter. They impact how that person will relate to you and what assumptions they make about you. Being dissected into parts also impacts how we see ourselves. It is a conscious decision to accept or reject the connections that people make about us based on outward appearance. Our identity is created from who we are inside and how we identify, this is sometimes betrayed with how people identify us from our appearance on the outside. To live among other people we must constantly navigate the ways they see us. When our inner selves do not match our outer selves this can create a conflict. While every person must deal with this those who are mixed race or those identify with an ethnic, religious, or sexual orientation that differs from what can be easily seen on first glance face a greater challenge. These individuals must run against the wind of assumption. They are constantly faced with accepting the bias and stereotypes that are assigned to them or rejecting them and proclaiming their true identity. It is difficult to know which is the better path. Are you being untrue to yourself if you do not correct those who make false judgments? Are you contributing to future stereotypes if you allow people to continue to assume they can identify you and believe they are correct if you do not point out their ignorance? These questions and many others can be seen behind the words of many authors who explore the intersections of their outward appearance and their inner lives as they navigate living among the rest of humanity.
One such author is Lauren Martin, when speaking about the dichotomy of an identity that is betrayed by outward appearance she states:

For those who may appear racially-. Sexually-, and/or gender-ambiguous, there is often a juncture, a split between how we are treated before someone knows who we “really” are versus how we are treated after.

Although the treatment after our real identities are known may be worse, this does reveal that for those whose insides defy the outer stereotypes and assumptions made about them there is a point where they become known for who they really are and not just how they appear. For most people that can be freeing, for some that means opening themselves up to harassment, marginalization, and criticism. The irony is that to be loved for who we really are we must take that leap and allow the assumptions and stereotypes to be transcended so that our inner selves and our identities are known. Further, the truth is that our unique blend of identity creates our outer look the juncture between DNA, race, inner identification play out to an identity that we portray to the world. People who judge based on assumptions and ignorance may not identify us correctly, but the unique blend of how we look on the outside is the culmination of our insides spilling over into a unique painting that is us. With this understanding we as a people may someday be able to reach for Evelyn Alsultany’s goal:

…[of] creat[ing] a space to articulate multiple identifications and unlimited interpretations...