The Looking Glass Self

In Beverly Daniel Tatum's essay, The Complexity of Identity: Who Am I, she discusses who people become defined, how she herself becomes defined and ultimately how to define yourself. In order to do this she uses the Looking Glass Self which helps her to explain the art of finding yourself.

Tatum begins her essay by first briefly explaining the concept of identity. According to this concept I am defined by my own talents and personality, how my family works, my past and my status both socially and politically. So according to this concept I am a creative yet studious young woman who was brought up in a religious household with a secretive past. I am also middle class. On the same note, Tatum describes her identity to be "precocious" and "gifted" but according to others she was an outcast simply because she was a minority, black and a female.

When I read how she defined the concept of Identity I felt as though it was too basic. There was so much physical involved but the physical does not make the person or their identity. In my opinion your identity is who you allow people to see. What you make of yourself. I feel as if there is a difference between who you are identified as and how you see yourself.

The Looking Glass self is an in depth search of you and your experiences so that you can see who you actually are based on those experiences. This includes what race you see yourself as, your sex and sexual orientation, your religion and etc. The facts and details that make up who you are is what the Looking Glass Self is. You look at the different aspects of you and find out who you are and begin to actually see yourself.

Social context is similar to what we've already been talking about but it's different only because instead of focusing on the physical details of what makes up your personality you're looking at the physicality of your surroundings. Those surroundings include where you lived and the people you lived with. This also includes what languages you learned growing up in your own home and what other people think or see when they see you.

Basically, Tatum explains who to find your identity and gives examples of people who were able to do just that. Tatum makes it both simple and scary to identify yourself because she gives us steps on how to go about doing it.