A Wellspring of Identity Culture and Politics

In a recent post that can be found here, I wrote about challenges to our traditional, northern-European-centric culture -- a culture critics argue enshrines what has become known as white privilege.

Americans of other racial and cultural backgrounds have found it hard to break through the barriers such a culture presents, but there have definitely been success stories, and they may be increasing in number. As that happens, will the country drift further and further into culture wars and identity politics?





My earlier post used the Broadway play "M. Butterfly" as an example of what is at stake. While extremely popular when it first appeared about 30 years ago, the current revival, in modified form, has just opened to rather negative reviews.

But that's not what I want to discuss here.  Rather, in conjunction with a recent profile of "M. Butterfly" playwright David Henry Hwang, The New York Times ran a set of sidebars on people who said their lives were influenced by the play and Hwang's initial success.  One is Jason Kim, who was born in Korea, but raised in Missouri, and has recently been a writer for Lena Dunham's TV series  "Girls."

Kim told The Times that before encountering a text of M. Butterfly and understanding where it had come from, "I was an American guy.  The fact that I was Asian and an immigrant, and that English was not my first language, seemed like facts that were beside the point."

But not anymore.

"In fact, those are fundamentally the point. Those are absolutely the markers in my life that I should be investigating, drawing from," Kim said.

Before coming to this epiphany -- that he was fundamentally Korean as opposed to "American," Kim said he felt he had to be silent, invisible and polite. But not anymore.

There is obviously no great significance to this one anecdote taken by itself. But I offer it as part of a trend that helps to explain what is going on culturally and politically in the U.S. today.

I also wrote about this phenomenon in an earlier post, which can be found here. (Click on the word "here" to read it).