• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

But, as we’ve seen, identities can have a dark side, too. Identities can also “go imperial” (to borrow a turn of phrase from Warnke). Ways of being interpreted can come to dominate everything about us. Some ways of understanding ourselves seem to be outright forced on us. The most imperial identities—ones that force themselves on us, and are virtually impossible to escape—are race, sex, and gender.4 No matter how hard we try, and no matter how much we want to get beyond them, race, sex, and gender are forced on us again and again, even when they don’t need to be. Take the case of race. As Warnke notes, “We cannot become ex-white in the same way that we can become an ex-patriot.”5 This isn’t because race is physical and nationality is not. As it turns out, race isn’t physical (there’s no way of determining race by looking at genetic make-up). Race forces itself on us because we think of it as more essential than nationality. So, while we accept that we can run off to live in the O.C. and become an ex-patriot of New York, we think of race as something we just can’t leave behind. We are our race. This is the very definition of an imperial identity: no matter where we go, our race follows us.

Just to illustrate this, we might as well talk for a second about Michael Jackson. Does it matter if Michael Jackson was really black? Most biologists today deny that race is biologically real (there are no genetic markers for membership in a race, and there is more intraracial genetic variation than there is interracial genetic variation). This makes it seem like insisting that Michael Jackson was really black is just dumb, if it means anything at all. If there’s no such thing as black, ole MJ couldn’t really have been black any more than Franklin could have become “all puckered and white” (c’mon!).

And yet, we often view people as essentially being members of a particular race or ethnic group (the jury is still out on science, after all). The Bluths manage to do this more than your average family in the O.C. (I know . . . but I like calling it that). Let’s think back on how the Bluths understand Mexican identity (enter eerie flashback music or Ron Howard narration) . . .

Despite his studies in cartography, when Buster tries to flee to Mexico, he winds up in Santa Anna, California (about six minutes inland from his house). He’s totally oblivious to the fact, having no sense of what Mexico might actually be like. He crawls under a picnic table, worried about the unbearable heat of the “Mexican” sun. Buster is unaffected by reality, and entirely affected by his preconceived notions of what Mexico must be like—as well as preconceived notions about what it means to be Hispanic. He is so bound up in his preconceived notions that he doesn’t even recognize Lupe as the woman who cleans his former residence! In talking to Lupe’s family, Buster speaks slowly and deliberately, enunciating his sounds, and laying on the fake Mexican accent. “I’m one of you now, si?” (“Amigos”). The next day, on the way to work with his newfound family, Buster remarks, “This is great. We’re like slave buddies.”

Apparently, Buster thinks that being Mexican is like being a slave. But he’s not entirely to blame. He grew up believing that Rosa, the old Bluth housekeeper, lived in the kitchen. When Lupe eventually leaves the Bluth’s employ for having had sex with Buster, she is replaced with a robot—and no one much notices—Buster even has sex with it too (what do you expect, at that point he’s half-machine!).

Lindsay isn’t any better, and she might even be worse. She’s got the hots for Ice, the African-American bounty hunter and caterer (how’s that for playing with stereotypes?), but this doesn’t really prove anything. Sexual attraction and racism aren’t mutually exclusive. Still, we’d be better off focusing on how Lindsay treats others generally, and since we’ve been talking about Mexican identity, we’d do well to remember some things about sister Bluth. I know a busload of Mexicans just trying