Identity and Violence

During the recent heat of rational and irrational patriotism among Chinese around the world, I think of this book, Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny.

Basically, it stresses the different faces of a person, and the danger it creates when we start to group, label and stereotype people.

For example, I am a Chinese woman born in HK. However, my seven years of schooling in Canada also has a great influence of my values and how I see things. While I may support the Beijing Olympic so that China can has a taste of the international society, I am also deeply concerned about the human rights situation in the Mainland. I can have many different, or even conflicting, characteristics but it's still me.

Unfortunately, very often, we focus only one side of a person, and by simple deduction, we believe that s/he must believe in or do certain things. You may not see the impact when that's only me, one person. However, when we single out a big group of people and start to antagonize them, conflict arises. This happens when the book was first written after 9/11, when persons with Islam background or look like an Islam or simple carry some Middle East features are easily labeled as terrorists. The same happens in our everyday lives too.

Not only people have many characteristics, issues can be discussed from many perspectives too. Lately, however, we can only be one way or another.

Identity and Violence is part of the "Issues of Our Time" series. At the end of the preface, the editor Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote,

These are books, accordingly, that invite the reader to reexamine hand-me-down assumptions and to grapple with powerful trends. Whether you are moved to reason together with these authors, or to argue with them, they are sure to leave your views tested, if not changed. The perspectives of the authors in this series are diverse, the voices are distinctive, the issues are vital.

When the world is becoming more complicated, only one voice is allowed.