Communal Identity: A Form of Discrimination

Marfisa Maria Queiroz

Bahareh Lampert

Academic Writing Workshop

Paper 2

March 31, 2009

Communal Identity: a form of discrimination

Is identity more communal or more individual? Each person has a distinct idea about identity and depending on his or her personal experiences; the individual can argue that identity is more communal or individual. Serena Nanda and Judith Cofer claim identity is more communal. I agree with these authors and also believe identity is more communal, although I would like it to be more individual, since people usually use the communal way of identity as a form of discrimination. When people do not know a person they most of the time try to obtain some information about the individual using him or her national origins, neighborhood, gender, race, religion, etc, which often ends in prejudice and discrimination.

As an illustration of the communal idea of identity that creates discriminatory actions we could use the fact that some people still believe that the black people are less intelligent than white ones. Geneticist and Noble Prize winner James Watson said that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really" (Cahal). While saying that, what he is doing - besides a great discrimination act - is given a general idea or a communal idea about black people. Such a remark makes me believe that the prejudice will never end. If a scientist such as Watson keeps believing in this kind of difference between races, what can we expect from people with much less knowledge? It really disturbs me, because a person as Dr. Watson should use his knowledge and his influential power to show that the world has NOT such differences.

Along the same lines, because of this kind of communal idea about identity, a variety of distinct groups suffer from prejudice and discrimination on their jobs and in society as whole. Historically, prejudice has always existed, whether it was against women, against blacks, against Jews, etc. Nowadays, all the old discriminations still exist but new ones are also appearing. The 'new' prejudice now is against fat people. Obese people have been suffering with an increasing discrimination against them in our society, especially in the job market. As an example we have the case of Annette McConnell who used to work in sales for a company in Arizona and weighs 300 pounds. "Although she was successful in her job, she was told by her manager that they would lay her off because people do not like buying from fat people" (Eve). It seems to me not only a very disrespectful action, but also a lack of sensitivity and consideration with the individual, not only for part of the person who spoke to McConnell in this manner, but especially on the part of the government which has done nothing to establish a law against this kind of action and to protect obese individuals from going through this kind of situation. In the United States, only one out of 50 states has a law to protect obese people from discrimination, which indicates that not enough people care about the suffering that has been imposed to the fat people.

In the same way as discrimination against blacks and obese, we also have discrimination against innumerable groups including Latinos as described by Judith Cofer in her text "The Myth of Latin Woman". As a Brazilian woman and therefore Latina I can talk about the stereotype created about women from my country. Brazil is known for its soccer team, carnival, and beautiful women. These seem like nice characteristics to be identified with. However, these characteristics make people believe that in Brazil, the women are always or at least often naked. Brazilian girls are believed to be easy, because they kiss in the mouth on the first date. In some European countries people also believe that the Brazilian women that move to Europe are all prostitutes. These and many more related kinds of stereotypes