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Ryan DeLuca
Feb 2nd, 2019
Eng 123
Dr. Drown
I was in the search for a new concept and a new idea to help me think about Identity. The concept is called “covering”. What does “covering” mean? Covering in my own words is when you hide your true self in order please the people around you or to blend in. Who introduced me to 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 and how Civil rights movements in America have scientifically slowed. Yoshino brings in a psychoanalyst to help him with his topic of talking about identities his name is 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 covering 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, a sense of purpose, 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 is the “False self” protects the “True self” from possible rejection or emotional pain, the act of covering is a way to avoid those two factors.
When someone covers their true self, the reason fluctuates with certain circumstances, one of two certain circumstances is a job interview, you want your future boss to see the best you, in this circumstance you would feel the need or want to cover your bad traits or your true self and only show your best self. Essentially covering is, be the person you want to be seen as not the person you are. The second circumstance for covering we will 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’ve developed a liking towards the same sex in your very religious society or community. 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. Yoshino uses a famous example of real-world covering to emphasize that people in the spotlight cover too because they as well were afraid of the backlash it might have caused, “Long after they came out as Lesbians, Rosie O’ Donnell and Mary Cheney still covered, keeping their same-sex partners out of the public eye.” Even though Rosie O’ Donnell and Mary Cheney came out as Lesbians they still covered the fact that they had same-sex lovers simply because it was outside of what was the societal norm.
However, hiding your “True self” for too long can have negative consequences. Specifically, hiding the true self for too long may cause the person to lose the self that they were hiding, or cause the person to blow up and have an episode. Yoshino explains, “At the negative extreme, the false self completely obscures the True Self, perhaps even from the individual herself.” The guy or girl that was covering for his/her job interview, who was showing who he/her isn’t may lose the part of him/her was covering making there “False self” their “True self”. The boy or girl in the very religious community may have some very negative consequences on their mental health, by covering their gay or lesbian identity the boy or girl may fall into severe depression, and without any support from the community the boy or girl may concede to mental pain they might be experiencing from covering their “True self” from their community.
What a society might gain from someone covering their true self is a very hard list to make because I don’t think 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 fallen into severe 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’s a person civil right to be able to wear the clothes they want and to love the person they want.
Work Cited
BARRIOS, BARCLAY. EMERGING: Contemporary Readings for Writers. BEDFORD BKS ST MARTINS, 2010.
Yoshino, Kenji. “The New Civil Rights .” The New Civil RIghts , pp. 479–490.
