This video and the comments that follow address a. Umber of issues from ascribed vs. avowed identity (Martin and Nakayama) and issues of historical context. First, this gentleman started shouting at a group of people protesting illegal immigration by asserting that they are in fact the illegal immigrants who pushed native Americans off their land. So, while the protestors have an avowed identity as legal Americans who possess certain entitlements over "illegal immigrants" the Native American man ascribes to them the illegal identity. One woman among the protestors can be heard shouting that there are (I think I heard correctly) Cherokee, or part Cherokee among them as though that excuses the protestors or as tough that one person can represent all Native Americans. The man also points out that the U.S. flag stands for death and the bloodshed of Native Americans. He aptly points out that the Native Americans should have held up similar signs that read "Illegals go home" when the white men arrived. T me this is such a clear example of identity conflict where identity management is perhaps irrelevant. There are times when managing identity for "peace and harmony" is clearly inappropriate. Or perhaps I've been taking identity management to mean that one is managing identity to avoid conflict as Urban and Orbe assert (2008). Maybe be identity management means making waves and allowing conflict under certain circumstances.
The second point(s) of interest are the comments that were on the original LiveLeak.com post...wowza! People have some distorted sense of history, entitlement and privilege. One commenter actually suggested that Native Americans and all other "conquered people" in Africa, Asia, etc, should have fought harder. Comments like this make me realize the importance of this class and of creating awareness across our nation about cultural injustice and plain old history. Basically, those comments pulled me out of the bubble of grad school and reminded me that lots of people are okay with sugar coating genocide and embracing white privilege or any other privileges they may have. People of other nationalities weighed in a and compared the self-victimization of Native Americans to the victim mentality of Arabs, Palestinians, Pakistanis and Iranians..and I think he identified as Pakistani. Interestingly,a number of non-Americans were critical of Americans' tendency to deny the genocide we conducted and the way we downplay slavery.
What I gained from this is that what we expect is to what we always get or see; identity conflicts of avowed vs. ascribed identity can happen in person or through comment threads and they, too, are informed by stereotypes or at least expectations that every individual possesses when approaching a subject and trying to create meaning and gain understanding. Finally, it seems that while historical context is imperative (at least for me) for understanding any interaction or event, the mind and, in particular, denial are so powerful as to allow abound create radically different interpretations of the same content, such as American History.
Liveleak.com post: http://www.liveleak.com/
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