Shaking off the labels

Any effort at classifying the diversity of life is going to end with various degrees of success. In the end it aim at splitting a huge variety into a few groups based on certain criteria, but that will indubitably disregard other aspects that are not the subject of that classification, so there will be individuals which belong in one class beyond any doubt while others might be candidates for more than one or even none at all. I wanted to discuss this matter in yesterday's post alongside the Pinker affair and the task of the gatekeepers, but it ended up running long and I decide to leave it for another day,

The discussion yesterday was centered on people who claimed to be members of a certain group but faced the opposition of the gatekeepers, who judged them unworthy of or unprepared for the label. But there is also the opposite phenomenon, where individuals reject the labels that the gatekeepers assign to them or refuse to comply with the expectations associated with those labels. And then there is the intermediate case where a label is subscribed but not all the baggage that the label carries behind it. Just yesterday I saw an advertisement for a company that sells really small plots of land (just one square foot) in Scotland which according to Scottish laws earns you the right to call yourself a Lord or a Lady. The advertisement depicted Will Smith saying that the fact that he was a Scottish lord did not mean that he drunk tea with his pinky up. And in the next image he clarified that he did, but not because he was a Scottish lord.

Photo: Tambako the Jaguar

One important reason to reject labels is pure and simple classification errors: someone might seem to fit the definition of a certain group but, upon closer inspection, that does not happen to be the case. A few weeks ago I heard the story of Doreen Nalyazi, who emigrated to the U.S. from Uganda when she was 7 years old. Being black as she is, it was "only natural" that she sought the company of the African Americans in her class, but after some time it was clear that the friendship was not catching up. Among other things she was asked all the time why she "spoke white" (as opposed to the African American Vernacular English), but the fact is that she was not acting in any way, just speaking English the way she learnt in Uganda (where it is co-official with Swahili). In fact, her parents advised her to distance herself from them based on the racist assumption that African American did bad things, did not work, etc. And the difference between her and the other blacks in her class was strong enough that she ended up siding with the whites (which, luckily enough, did not seem to have a problem accepting her).

The second reason to reject a label is that it often feels too reductive, failing to capture many nuances that might be very important to us. In my case, I consider myself a very passionate movie goer, but I always feel the inclination to add the caveat that I am not at all into horror or zombie films. Does that make me less of a devoted viewer? Possibly, at least for some people. Does it matter? No for me, unless someone suggest doing a Walking Dead marathon, where I would politely excuse myself.

However the most powerful reason (at least in my view) to reject a label is the connotation aspect. Like any other significant, whether it is a word or a sign, there are always additional meanings behind the obvious one, and some of them might even contradict the nominal one. Taking over from the case of Ms. Nalyazi, when we dub someone as "white" we do not only mean the color of their skin, which indeed is light-colored (lighter than blacks) but certainly not white as would be the case for many albinos. But beyond the "incorrect" color description, the term also carries a certain cultural assumptions (European descent, Christian or Jewish religion, etc.). So it is to be expected to some extent that anyone not fully identifying with the whole label will feel inclined to reject it.

This rejection of labels often takes a divisive tinge, when we feel compelled to embrace some ideas just because "the others" hate them. It is a bit like the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but that frequently makes for very surprising partnerships, like the coalitions between the conservatives and the greens in some European countries to oust the progressives. However, we are currently dealing with two cases that I personally find daunting with my general progressive political views. The first one is the attitude towards gender "self identification". It has been clear for decades that conservatives have traditionally opposed the acceptance of new social standards, in particular gay and lesbian marriage, so it is not surprising that the left has supported those ideas and in fact many countries around the world have started (rather suddenly) to recognize the right of homosexual couples to marry, and I am very happy that the situation has evolved in this way. However, I think that the new gender laws that are passing in some countries are excessive and based purely on the rejection they would inspire among the conservatives. As I pointed out in this post, I believe that administrative categories shall be reasonably stable and, most important, traceable because otherwise the category loses all practical use. Why does the left keep supporting this nonsense for the benefit of possibly a 1% of the population while women (50% or more) still face very serious social issues?

The other worrisome situation are the vaccine mandates. Conservatives in the US have traditionally had a libertarian or small government mindset, where individual liberties should be respected to the maximum possible extent without inducing social chaos and in fact many conservative governors have been countermanding mask mandates in recent months. In response to that position, the democrats are not only encouraging widespread vaccination but accepting and even encouraging vaccination mandates for huge segments of the society. Is this really what we need or are they just so scared of be labeled as conservatives that they will do anything (even trample our liberties) to dispel that notion?

I think that embracing some ideas because they belong to a certain label is putting the cart before the horse. It is admittedly much easier to subscribe to a pre-assembled set of beliefs, but the chances are that we will end up following rules that we do not subscribe, just trying not to break the image that we have made ourselves. Instead, it is much more rewarding to sift out our own ideas and then, if necessary, find an ideology that agglutinates them to a greater or lesser extent. And it never harms to have an annotation or two as to where our opinion does not fully align with a label that we have accepted to carry. Have a nice weekend.