Now we get to the
meat of the matter:
“Because
of the transmission of identity from one generation to the next, most
children share at least some traits with their parents. These are
vertical identities.
Attributes and values are passed down from parent to child across the
generations not only through strands of DNA but also through shared
cultural norms. Ethnicity, for example, is a vertical identity.
Children of color are in general born to parents of color; [now
stop right there and grasp that the reverse is actually true:
children of no color are born to parents of no color but children of
color are routinely born to people of no color when the parents are
from different races. The transmission of whiteness has been really
fought over for centuries and definitionally a lot of children of
color come from one white parent.]
the genetic fact of skin pigmentation is transmitted across
generations along with a self-image as a person of color, even though
that self-image may be subject to generational flux. Language is
usually vertical, since most people who speak Greek raise their
children to speak Greek, too, even if they inflect it differently or
speak another language much of the time. Religion is moderately
vertical: Catholic parents will tend to bring up Catholic children,
though the children may turn irreligious or convert to another faith.
Nationality is vertical, except for immigrants. Blondness and
myopia are often transmitted from parent to child , but in most cases
do not form a significant basis for identity—blondness because it
is fairly insignificant, and myopia because it is easily corrected.”
[Now who is being
naïve, Kay? Blondness is not at all insignificant and is, in fact, a
major marker of whiteness and good ethnic identity in a plural
society.]
“Often
however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to
his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer
group. This is a horizontal
identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes,
random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that
a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a
horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and
while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn
gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside
the family. Physical disability tends to be horizontal, as does
genius. Psychopathy, too, is often horizontal; most criminals are
not raised by mobsters and must invent their own treachery. So are
conditions such as autism and intellectual disability. A child
conceived in rape is born into emotional challenges that his own
mother cannot know, even though they spring from her trauma.” (2)
(4)”As
my parents had misapprehended who I was, so other parents must be
constantly misapprehending their own children. Many parents
experienced their child's horizontal identity as an affront. A
Child's marked difference from the rest of the family demands
knowledge, competence, and actions that a typical mother and father
are unqualified to supply, at least initially. The child is
expressly different from most of his or her peers as well, and
therefore broadly less understood or accepted. Abusive fathers visit
less abuse on children who resemble them physically; if you are born
to a bully, pray that you bear his features. Whereas families tend
to reinforce vertical identities from earliest childhood, many will
oppose horizontal ones. Vertical identities are usually respected as
identities; horizontal ones are often treated as flaws.” [Is
there no difference, in the authors mind, between challenges which
prevent the child from achieving adult status and liberty in a
parentless world and mere differences in identity? Between changes
in social identity associated, for example, with the immigrant
experience and the breakdown of the patriarchal/clan based system of
control and other forms of narcissistic control?]
OK, now we get
to the kooky part where you think this guy has never been let out of
his white male privilege:
“One
could argue that black people face many disadvantages in the United
States today, but there is little research into how gene expression
could be altered to make the next generation of children born to
black parents come out with straight, flaxen hair and creamy
complexions. In modern America , it is sometimes hard to be Asian or
Jewish or female, yet no one suggests that Asians, Jews, or women
would be foolish not to become white Christian men if they could.
Many vertical identities make people uncomfortable, and yet we do not
attempt to homogenize them. The disadvantages of being gay are
arguably no greater than those of such vertical identities, but most
parents have long sought to turn their gay children straight.
Anomalous bodies are usually more frightening to people who witness
them than to people who have them, yet parents rush to moralize
physical exceptionable, often at great psychic cost to themselves and
their children. Labeling a child's mind as diseased—whether with
autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism—may reflect
the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it
causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been
left alone.” (4)
This is rather obviously patently false. People have struggled against their "vertical identities" since the get go changing their names, religions, practices, foods, life histories, etc... And this change has of course extended to the body: Asians have had their eyes rounded, Jews have had their noses lopped, African Americans have had their skin whitened and their hair straightened and have, of course, "passed" into the white community--for better or worse individuals and whole communities, like the Melungeon, have responded to oppressive categorizations by trying to opt out.
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