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Ryan DeLuca
Feb 2nd, 2019
Eng 123
Dr. Drown
I was introduced to a new concept and a new idea to think about the new concept is called “covering”. What does “covering” mean? Covering is when you hide your true self in order to blend in or please the people around you or to blend in. Who introduced me into this new concept? His name is Kenji Yoshino, he is “…the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of connotational Law at New York University.” Yoshino is a gay Asian American who has been studying constructional law for a long time and is involved in civil rights, in his reading he talks about Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation Civil rights. Yoshino brings in a person to help him with his topic of talking about identities. This other person is called D. W Winnicott, he talks about the difference between your “True self” and your “False self” as well as the consequences a person may experience hiding their “True self” for too long.
The term “Covering”, in Yoshinos words means “to tone down a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream.” Someone would essentially be covering their “True self” and replacing it with their “False self”. Winnicott explores the ideas about “True self” and “False self” and what they do for a person. Winnicott says, “The true self is the self that gives an individual the feeling of being real, which is more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself, and to relate to object as oneself, and to have self into which to retreat for relaxation.” The “True self” gives a person a sense of being and allows the person to be who they really are without restrictions. Winnicott explains, “The False Self, in contrast, gives an individual a sense of being unreal, a sense of futility. It mediates the relationship between the True Self and the world.” What this means if the “False self” protects the “True self” from possible rejection or emotional pain.
The reason a person would want to cover their “True self” fluctuates for certain circumstances, I have two examples. The first example will say you are going to a job interview and you would like what might possibly be your new boss to see the best you, so you would feel the need or the want to cover your bad traits whatever they might be and only show your best self, the person you want to be seen as. The second example will involve sexual orientation, let’s say you live in a very religious society or community and people in that society or community are very deep into their belief that same sex intimacy is wrong, and you have developed a liking towards the same sex in your very religious society or community so to avoid being ousted or in an extreme case beaten, you would want to or need to “Cover” the idea that you have a liking toward someone of the same sex.
Hiding your “True self” for too long might cause the person to lose the self that they were hiding or might cause the person to blow up and have an episode. The guy that was covering for his job interview, who was showing who he isn’t may lose the part of him or her was covering making there “False self” their “True self”. The boy or girl in the very religious community may have some very bad effects on their mental health by covering their gay or lesbian identity, the boy or girl may fall into sever depression and without any support from the community the boy or girl may sacrum to mental pain they are experiencing from covering their “True self”.
I think I already elaborated in this a little but what a society might gain from someone hiding their true self is a very hard list to make because I don’t think a society would gain much from a person hiding their “True self” and showing everyone their “false self”. But one thing a society might gain from covering is kindness, if someone is covering their selfishness and showing their kindness then other people might want to do the same thing. What a society might lose from covering your true self, is a much larger and easier list to make, a society might lose its sense of community, if a bunch of the community members started showing there “false self” and everyone kept doing that there wouldn’t be a sense of community, no one would have the pleasure of yelling at their neighbor for blowing grass on there lawn or throwing their dog crap over the fence. A society might also lose lives from covering, let go back to the religious community the boy or girl who have fell into sever deportation might start to develop suicidal thoughts and without the help of their community they might decide to kill themselves.
Covering is a problem in America and that is why Yoshino a Law professor decided to spark the conversation by writing a book that is called “Covering”. Covering is a civil rights issue because some people in the community are expected to cover in simply to make other people in the community happy, some people may be asked to cover because they make the people around them uncomfortable for maybe the clothes they are wearing or their sexual orientation, when it is a person civil right to be able to wear the clothes they want and to love the person they want.
Work Cited
Yoshino, Kenji. “The New Civil Rights .” The New Civil RIghts , pp. 479–490.
