The Human Condition: Reflecting on culture and ethnicity

By Daniel Schnee on February 23, 2022.

As we celebrate Black History Month we have the opportunity to reflect on culture and ethnicity: both historically and into the future.

All humans have the DNA to look black, or Asian, or some other set of traits common to people in a region. There is no race other than homo sapiens, so when we speak of other “races” we speak of culture. But some have begun to celebrate diversity in rather controversial ways, raising some pretty significant questions about ethnicity and identity.

A few years ago an African-American woman named Nkechi Diallo was discovered to be hiding her birth status as a white woman of Czech descent named Rachel Dolezal. She adopted black fashion and culture, and was lambasted for her appropriation, i.e. racial fraud. Some though supported her decision, due to her mostly benign, supportive attitude.

Now, a white British Internet personality named Oli London has taken such appropriation further, getting multiple surgeries to resemble singer Jimin from the Korean band BTS. Most notable though is his claim to being “trans-racial”: consciously transitioning into a Korean person in appearance and identity. He is also considering penile reduction surgery in order to to be – as he claims – more like an average Asian male.

Thus, the core debate is one of alteration: changes that go against some sense of what we might feel is natural, what and how things are “supposed to” be.

But if something as vital as gender can be surgically altered to fit what a person feels on the inside, can we judge Oli London’s surgery to physically conform with how he feels about his ethnicity? Korean women routinely get cosmetic surgery to make their eyes look more Caucasian. And if our biology does not reflect our gender reality (which some claim to be socially constructed), then London’s logic on ethno-reality (which actually is socially constructed) stands. He can claim to be as inwardly Korean as Kaitlyn Jenner is inwardly female.

But that doesn’t seem to feel right. This is because London’s choices are based on stereotyping, on superficials. Having Caucasian-looking eyes is fashionable among Korean women, but they don’t actually consider themselves American after the fact. London changing his face and genitalia will not express any actual depth of Korean-ness. “Identifying with” is not “being”: it goes beyond food and music. Misogyny for example is a problem in South Korea. The $250,000 dollars London has spent on cosmetic surgery could have gone to women’s rights groups in Seoul; could have helped his “fellow” Koreans.

There do exist extremes of tradition and progress: views that are so ultra-conservative or liberal that they move into the realm of mental illness. We shouldn’t ignore the mentally ill when they disappear into socio-cultural crises. Considering genital reduction surgery to appear more “Korean” is the by-product of disorder, and Oli London needs kind, nonjudgmental psychiatric advice.

While we must recognize the reality of a great breadth of human identity, we must also not allow illness to masquerade as diversity. Because the day we come to blindly accept the social by-products of disordered thought is the day Pandora not only opens up that legendary box, but lights it on fire and throws it into a lake.

Dr. Daniel Schnee is a cultural anthropologist and suffers from Bipolar disorder

11
-10