Identity Negotiation Quotes

The further away you get from being a straight white man, the less freedoms you have to figure out who you are and negotiate what you mean to society.

As women, we're always in negotiation with how we're being perceived versus how we feel.

Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it…Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting 'O.K.' has deposed the more affirmative 'Yes,' so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of 'like' are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

Every black American is bilingual. All of them. We speak street vernacular and we speak 'job interview.'

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?

I learned at an early age how to traverse the white world, the white-dominant world. I learned, and I was successful at it. I learned the nuances - I learned how to act, how to be - but I always was conscious and aware of my blackness.

Our identities really are a constant negotiation between the story we tell about ourselves and the narrative our societies like to recite.

I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the time. It's like women taking note of sexism. It's a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating.

It's the African-American experience. You've got to wear different masks. When you're in the hood, if you stand out, you get picked on for being weak. Sometimes you have to hide your intelligence. In front of your boys, you might put on a bit of bravado, be a little bit tougher.

I couldn't really experience being an author when I was still working in publishing - I was trying to negotiate being both. Sometimes the knowledge doesn't translate between the two roles.

When you're biracial, you can feel like you're fully neither, not fully both. But I won't strip away my heritage for anyone's comfort.

In sociology, they call it 'code switching.' I can feel just as comfortable in a room full of people who don't look like me because I understand the social cues of class and race.

A bargainer is a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities.

One of the things that I am learning is that each generation will have its own negotiations with identity. And one generation can not necessarily help the other generation with it.

What is astonishing is that globalised technology, like Whatsapp and Viber, really gives a lot of leeway to negotiating spaces and to keeping one's identity. So people are able to be more receptive as a gay community to be part of an environment that is going to challenge the law.

It's always the case that the minority has to navigate two different worlds. Women have to know how to live in a man's world. Gay people have to know how to live in a straight world. Black people gotta know how to live in a predominantly white world.

When you are a member of an out-group, and you challenge others with whom you share this outsider position to examine some aspect of their lives that distorts differences between you, then there can be a great deal of pain.

Some people say to me, 'You don't sound very Irish.' It's because I have this tendency to iron out my accent: not because I'm ashamed of it but because it makes my life easier if I don't keep having to repeat myself.

As an individual, and I have to say as a person of color, the thing about being an 'other' in America is I really feel like you're bilingual. I'm from a small town in Wisconsin, but even when I'm in New York and I'm working for MSNBC or CNN, you're used to being the only black person in the room.