What makes a characteristic become an identity?

    Kanchan Chandra in “What is Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?” argues that ethnic groups are sets of identity

categories where membership is determined by descent based attributes. Chandra is able to prove that characteristics

like common culture, history or language do not define an individual’s identity or ethnic group. While Teri Caraway’s

“Gendering Comparative Politics” looks at the consequences of choosing gender rather than women as self identification.

This work proves how gender is still an unsettling topic in terms of democratization. 

    Ethnicity is a broad idea that can be segmented into many different categories and groups. Yet, Chandra argues that

many of these numerous characteristics are not defining enough to identify an individual. I agree with her point that

genetically passed down attributes have to be part of your identity. It gives every person the chance to have similar qualities

in a group that shares common ancestry, culture, or language. Even if those more in depth characteristics do not always

define an ethnic group, like Chandra argues, I believe it still helps people find an ethnicity where they share this history.

These descent based attributes also follow her properties of constrained change and visibility. However, even those

characteristics given to you at birth are easy to change. She mentions that even the visible attributes are not permanent,

some may be harder to change than others with her “Degree of Stickiness” figure, but nonetheless still modifiable. With

the only defining attributes being changeable, as well as Chandra questioning the importance of ethnicity at the end of

her work. It made me wonder, do any characteristics involving ethnicity influence our identities? 

    I also appreciated how she mentioned the lack of differentiation when talking about ethnicity. Especially when talking

about “common ancestry”. Where we often go too far back on the family tree and create a larger ethnic group with

individuals who have little to no similarities besides the color of our skin. If there was one area where I disagreed with

Chandra it would be about how cultural markers may be more defining for our identities than she wrote. If there is

one thing that distinguishes ethnic groups from each other besides physical features. It is the way they communicate

with each other through those symbols, codes, and values that she mentioned. She argues that these markers are

“a product of ethnic group mobilization rather than a defining characteristic”. I would argue that this mobilization is

defining a part of their ethnic identity and could be a crucial characteristic for an individual’s identity.

    I had similar takeaways from Chandra and Teri Caraway’s work. Caraway mentions that categories like man and

woman relate to us and help form our identities. However, gender is a descriptive category and does not specifically

relate to human objects. An argument could be made that a descriptive category like gender is not and should not

be a defining characteristic for an individual’s identity. This is similar to cultural characteristics meaning less than

most think when thinking about identification. 

    Both of these readings made me reevaluate the way I related ethnicity and gender towards identity. Before reading

these, descriptive qualities like gender and a commonality of history with ethnic groups was a large part of identity for

me. If neither could adequately define identity maybe a large portion of the population, including myself, think of

identity in a simple but wrong way. Politicians have really strengthened categories like ethnicity and gender for their

beneficial gain, and maybe shaped our perspective on what characteristics matter for our identity.