Top Four Social Influences Of Self-Understanding

The books and article, Between the World and Me, The Communist Manifesto, Three Guineas show aspects of how social forces shape identities. Between the World and Me showed how society did not appreciate the black body. The Communist Manifesto explained how class affects people’s identities and how capitalism is not good for society and should be dismantled. Three Guineas elaborated on how male-designed institutions do not provide perspectives for women and questions the system of how women’s values are less important compared to men. These texts all show how race, class, gender, and environment shape individuals’ identities. Therefore, self-understanding comes in four social influences which are systematic racism, economic status, being an outsider, and environment.

1. Systemic Racism

Systematic racism plays a huge role on how it affects race. People make snap judgements based on stereotypes, and these stereotypes shape how people see others and themselves. Some people can start to believe and accept the stereotype of others or fight against them. Since “racism is a visceral experience" (Coates 10), every race goes through it and do not have ways to change it because racism is a lived experience and systematically implemented. When people see someone's skin color, ideas about that individual are already imbedded in them implicitly. The Black Lives Matter movement was a protest about how many African Americans were being killed in the United States because of police brutality, systematic racism, and racial profiling. Because of the way society perceived African Americans, they were always treated differently, and seeing their own ethnicity being killed on TV or hearing what stigmas society has taught them further instigated their own feelings. Coates said, “The nakedness is not an error, nor pathology. The nakedness is the correct and intended result of policy, the predictable upshot of people forced for centuries to live under fear” (Coates 17). Knowing that these stigmas of certain races are already perpetuated, it can bring fear into many individuals and further marginalize groups. The Black Lives Matter movement is one of the ways in which people are speaking up about these issues and sparking new changes in how people implicitly think about skin color, and race.

2. Class Division

Class hierarchies put some people in power and leave others without any power. These divisions make it difficult for those in lower economic situation to overcome and rise above these circumstances. Social class, either rich or poor, can shape a person’s self-understanding. Class consciousness is when one realizes that he or she cannot change the system because it is corrupted and has no progression in helping the individual. Both classes are stuck with having one way of thinking because “the intellectual creations of individual nation become common property [where] [n]ational one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible” (Marx 12-13). Gentrification is an ongoing process that is happening throughout United States. This represents how the rich holds the opportunity and will always seize the moment to change what they are able to. The rich have dominion over the poor which means “the bourgeoisie (rich) itself supplies the proletariat (poor) with its own elements of political and general education” (Marx 19). The poor will be at the bottom because everything that is given to them is from the rich, and their own self-understanding is dominated by people who have more power. Depending on their economic status, both the rich and poor have their own way of thinking how the world works.

3. Different Perspectives

Different perspectives provide news ideas and opinions, and this helps people to question things they assume to be true. In order to have a better self-understanding, an outsider, a person who is able to give a different perspective, is needed to help bring new ideas. Throughout time, women’s values were considered less important compared to men. Women are just as important as men, and although they are very different physically, difference is a good way to bring new perspective. These new perspectives are outsiders who have no knowledge of what the system is and can bring some good to help society.

Woolf said, “The questions that we have to ask and to answer about that procession during this moment of transition are so important that they may well change the lives of all men and women forever. For we have to ask ourselves, here and now, do we wish to join that procession, or don’t we? On what terms shall we join that procession? Above all, where is it leading us, the procession of educated men? The moment is short; it may last five years; ten years; or perhaps only a matter of few months longer. But the questions must be answer[ed]” (Woolf 62).

Looking at different perspectives furthers self-understanding because people are approaching ways in which new ideas can spark. Women, who are going into the work force dominated by men, are able to shed light on new ideas. Exchanges of thought and communications allow for different ways of thinking. Women are perfect outsiders because they are able to generate more value, diversity, and creativity to a system that only produces the same kind of people.

4. Your Roots

In spite of globalization forces, one’s roots shapes one’s own self-perception. Every individual has their own pathway or route where his or her roots come from. The environment plays a huge role in shaping its way of self-understanding. What they learn and retain can influence how they see the world. From their environment, people's brains will adapt to these ideas and continue to believe these ideas. Geography varies for each individual because everyone has their own story to tell and have different barriers in expressing their self-understanding. These different lanes allow for different individuals to experience different vulnerabilities and struggles. Coates said, "Comparing these dispatches with the facts of my native world, I came to understand that my country was a galaxy" (Coates 20). The world is so big that there are endless pathways to have a different experience, and one's own experience can either be a very big or small struggle. Many overlaps of economic status, skin color, and gender are different depending where one lives. From these environments, different levels of identities shape how one thinks about the world, whether good or bad. Self-awareness can also form where one individual can separate themselves from their environment and interrogate how much knowledge he or she knows. There is no right way of self-understanding, but one's own environment plays a huge role in shaping his or her identity.