It’s All About Looks, Isn’t It?

The new movie Crazy Rich Asians is lauded, in part, because its all-Asian cast provides characters with whom Asians can identify.  It also provides actors with whom young aspiring Asian actors can identify.  In my majority Hispanic area of the country, Hispanics want schools to dump White authors for those of Hispanic origin so the students will be able to relate.  In other places the same argument is presented to replace Anglo male authors with female or Black or other authors belonging to a specific identity group.  We are told we need to have women in a variety of untraditional careers so that other women will know they can also seek those roles as well.  When Barack Obama was elected we heard Blacks saying that now their children could aspire to be president.

Can we only identify with those who share our appearance?  Is our world really that superficial?

For some reason when I was young, without ever seeing a female president or doctor I nonetheless believed I could grow up to become someone who filled one of those two professions.  When I changed my mind and decided to become a trial attorney, it never crossed my mind that the fact that I had never seen a female trial attorney would in some way prevent me from becoming one.  When I read novels by or about white males, I was somehow still able to identify with the human emotions and challenges experienced by their characters.  I could relate to something more than simply a surface and superficial identity.

Indeed, that is what makes truly great literature great:  its ability to be timeless and in a sense identity-less so that any reader in any time period will be able to identify and learn from the author’s words.  The same is true for plays, music, art forms, and movies.  Sure, it’s nice to see someone who looks like you, but isn’t it far nicer to find someone who feels like you?  And that someone, because it is deeper inner qualities that are being identified, can come in any size, shape, or color. 

Isn’t it better if our heroes hold deep and meaningful qualities to which we can aspire rather than just hold our skin color or our sex?  Have we all lost the strength of our own identities, our inner and individual selves, so that the only identity we know is that with which we have a superficial resemblance?

Sadly, when the superficiality of much of today’s culture is mixed with the epidemic of identity politics we seem only able to provide superficial heroes that only further reinforce our focus on appearance.  This leaves behind the noble qualities of humanity that we would do better to aspire to.   As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once suggested, let us try to focus on the character of one’s soul, not the color of one’s skin.  In doing so we will find our truest and most lasting heroes:  significant, robust, and truly human role models to which we could all genuinely aspire.