On Socially Constructed Vulnerabilities
An Introduction: What is a Socially Constructed Vulnerability?
I was born to Japanese American parents as a fourth generation (in the U.S.) on my father’s side and third generation on my mother’s. In the very early years I thought of myself as American, with a strong sense of a Japanese cultural tradition running through my family customs and ancestry. This was especially so because I began learning classical Japanese dance at age 1½, as soon as I could walk with enough balance to hold my body steady and upright (sort of).
Despite this beginning consolidation in an emerging self-perception, I soon discovered in grade school I was “oriental” (from parents of school friends who, I assume, viewed my ancestral heritage as being from “the Orient”) and interestingly, in middle school I became “Asian.” By high school, I had groups of others who viewed me as American, Japanese, Japanese American, a Japanese dancer, Oriental and Asian. In college, my status transitioned into being a “minority.” When venturing further into academia, I was trained to become a community clinician, a researcher and a teacher. As time has progressed, added to this basket of perceptions has been a person of color, an organizational development consultant, reality navigator and my very favorite, “Auntie.”
The way we acclimate to the alternative social definitions formed by groups of “others” can profoundly shape how we think about ourselves for we come to understand ourselves not only through our own perceptions, but as shaped from the viewpoint of others. For others to relate to us and for us to relate to them, we must to some degree, acknowledge the existence of familiar and more generic categorizations. However, this can also render our own sense of personal identity-integration as a private awareness, not publicly shared, unless our “others” are sensitive to the difference between how we see ourselves, how they see us, and whether these perceptions allow for a meaningful place of intersection (or not).
Oftentimes, when a specific perception whether positive, neutral or negative (such as being smart, non-binary, funny, female, Asian, overweight, loud or whatever) is shared across a group of people, this can come to dominate how we are viewed by others. When a singularly shared categorization is embraced independently by different individuals such as being “younger” or “older” might be, others perceive us not just as being part of this younger or older group, but may also infer assumptions about our competence, the acuity of our hearing or cognitive capacities for example, even though these presumptions may or may not be accurate. The existence of this widely shared perception can leave us vulnerable, because others, often unknowingly and independent of each other, treat us as if we are too different from them. This phenomenon is what I have come refer to as a socially constructed vulnerability.
For example in grade school, I played mostly with a set of kids who would often go to each other’s homes to play after school. Almost universally, when visiting the home of a non-Asian friend, the mother would share: “I used to know an oriental gal…” or “I have a friend who knows an oriental girl.” Or even, “I met an oriental once and she was very sweet.” The comments were always kind in nature, but I wondered why this was even mentioned. While understood at that time they were trying to relate to me, I couldn’t understand why being “oriental” was a constant focus. I was left feeling uncomfortable and perplexed, not knowing how to relate, and especially since I wasn’t sure what being “oriental” meant.
This was a new and foreign perception. I felt embarrassed and a little humiliated at the thought that if being oriental was somehow ‘different’, my Japanese dancing must be way out there on the spectrum beyond oriental-different. This left me more uncertain of being socially acceptable, as a human being.
Experiences such as these introduced me to a socially constructed vulnerability, where others perceived me as being somehow different because of an oriental-ness even though I had not known myself in this way before. Being perceived as oriental-different with the intent to kindly acknowledge my own vulnerability of being oriental was awkward because I had not until then, known I was oriental-vulnerable. After becoming familiar with many of my friends’ (non-oriental) parents relating to me from this perspective, I became vulnerable to a collectively shared social force, one I did not know how to relate or respond to, except to accept.
Alternatively, a young boy living in public housing was sent to the grocery store for some milk and bread by his disabled grandmother. When entering a small corner store in the adjoining neighborhood he was carefully tracked by the store owner, who incorrectly expected boy to steal something. Since this store was out of bread but did have milk, the boy purchased the milk and walked to a different store a little further away. In this store he was also treated as if he was going to steal something. The boy had never stolen anything before and didn’t intend to.
When traversing through our day-to-day lives, we often experience not only how one person views us in a specific way, but how a many others – from different settings and unaware of each other – can share the same (and often inaccurate) perspective. Positive, neutral or negative, this is the unfolding of a socially constructed vulnerability where we become vulnerable to a shared perspective of being perceived differently from who we are and how we think about ourselves. Imagine, how might this boy as a young adult think of himself (and others) if, for most of his life, workers in stores continued to view him as someone entering their establishment with the intent to steal?
If you think about this for a moment, we have all been exposed or subjected to socially constructed vulnerabilities (different from how we experience ourselves) which can render our own sense of personal identity-integration incongruous with much of our external social world. Our own internal sense of who we are can become relegated into the realm of being a private (publicly unexpressed) experience of who we are. Our self-interpretations become inexpressible to others unless we are willing to risk upsetting most of those in our social world by attempting to bring more perceptive harmony with our internal, self-world-view.
The inability to feel safe enough to share one’s own self perspective with others can compound the effect of a socially constructed vulnerability because actualizing how we see ourselves through our own self-expression becomes socially unthinkable. However, not sharing one’s own self-perceptions in a meaningful way often results in internally identifying with those socially constructed vulnerabilities least supporting an integrated sense of well-being. Over time, the shared perspective of the many in our external social environment comes to speak more loudly than our own, singular and internally-quieted voice.
In our attempt to relate with others, we narrow our own self-expression to fit with the socially constructed vulnerability we are assumed to be, and with time, we come to see ourselves more definitively from the perspective of others. In striving to be an authentic person with others, we can find ourselves embracing a socially constructed vulnerability as if, this were our own. We begin to see ourselves as the socially constructive vulnerability we once could not relate to.
Of importance is recognizing and identifying each of our own socially constructed vulnerabilities, both perpetrated towards us and portrayed by us upon others. By doing so, we can strengthen the quality of our social relationships and our ability to navigate the realities we find ourselves in. How can we most positively, constructively and empathetically navigate through our socially constructed vulnerabilities while supporting others to do the same?