Are you being yourself?
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
About a year ago, I attended a marketing seminar. The woman who ran the seminar couldn’t have been more different from me. She was a real “girly-girl,” all pink, sparkles, big blonde hair.
I was apprehensive at first, but by the end of the event she had completely won me over. Why? Because I could tell she was totally comfortable in her skin. This was really who she was, and she was unabashed about it.
The ability to just be yourself is a lot harder to come by than we might think. And one of the biggest obstacles can be race. Specifically, racial stereotypes.
I’m not particularly meek, yet at almost every job I’ve held, people have thought of me as a shy and quiet Asian girl. Because of that, I’ve always had to project an exaggerated version of my personality, just to be perceived as normal.
What kinds of racial stereotypes do you find yourself battling on a daily basis? What elements of your authentic self are you suppressing? How is race getting in the way of your self-expression without you even knowing it?
I’m going to share that and much more on a FREE CALL happening on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 1:00 pm Eastern time.
‘Just Be Yourself!’
How Race Gets in the Way of Expressing Our Authentic Identities
Sign up to reserve your line for this FREE call today!
On this lively, information-packed 60-minute call, you’ll learn:
- How the quest for racial or cultural authenticity can thwart your true identity.
- What “covering” is, and what it has to do with your civil rights.
- Why it actually benefits you to know what racial stereotypes exist about your ethnic or racial group.
This call is a content-rich preview to the newest session of my program, The Racialicious Experience. If you’re a fan of our blog, you won’t want to miss it!
Limited lines are available for this call, so you’ll want to make sure you reserve your spot right away.
Just click the link above, enter your information in the boxes on the page, and you’ll receive the complete call details via email.
We will record the call, but only people who have registered will receive instructions on how to download the audio recording. So even if you’re not sure if you can make the call live, register now!
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
yolanda wrote:
I think I am perceived as someone who is intimidating and unfriendly simple because I am black. I hate saying that this is the reason or the conclusion I’ve come to, but since I started college in August it’s become glaringly obvious. In my dorm everyone has formed friendships and cliques, yet when people see me they either look away quickly or pretend I am invisible; it as if my being ‘other’ they think of what I must be like based on stereotypes alone and don’t even bother to get to know me as an individual person.
I know that I have a “mean” restface–where I look stony or unfriendly, but it’s just a defense mechanism so I know I’m not smiling when I’m still made to feel different. It can get frustrating at times–feeling judged unfairly. but I guess that’s apart of life and at least I am aware of it.
Posted 24 Sep 2009 at 9:16 am ¶
fromthetropics wrote:
>people have thought of me as a shy and quiet Asian girl
Ugh! That is exactly the stereotype that I struggle with big time! For me it’s like having a straight jacket imposed on you and I can’t shake it off. So I fulfill their stereotype and become someone else – a shy and quiet Asian girl. The stereotype becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This happens no matter how long I’ve known the people. But when I’m with people who don’t hold these stereotypes, I turn into a pretty talkative, opinionated girl. (Obviously, I can be shy and quiet for a brief period of time if I’m in unfamiliar territory, as does most people, but this isn’t my day-to-day personality.)
I’m trying to learn how to shake off that straightjacket, but it’s like swimming against the tide. Not impossible, but you have to make extra effort. ugh. ugh. ugh. I just didn’t realize what that ‘extra effort’ would look like until I read this post: “I’ve always had to project an exaggerated version of my personality, just to be perceived as normal.”
Posted 24 Sep 2009 at 9:47 am ¶
Felicia Hinton wrote:
I think that it is about personalty, if your warm and inviting and smile most often people reply the same. Sometimes its just people may have a lot on their minds. If your really pretty it’s hard sometimes for people to really look at you eye to eye.
Some people are just really warm an inviting by nature some are just not. It’s like just everything is wrong no matter what. Overall I am very authentic
about myself and will tell you truthfully .
Posted 24 Sep 2009 at 12:47 pm ¶
submom wrote:
Because I am tall for an Asian woman (there, yet another stereotype…), I don’t think people expect me to be shy and meek. However, I suspect that they expect me to be somewhat quiet and reserved and serious and nice. So when I am my normal self, which is talkative, open, humorous and sarcastic (does that sound like I am writing my own profile on match.com?), people are often taken aback and find me obnoxious, even though if I were white, I would have been “just like everybody else”, perfectly average.
Posted 24 Sep 2009 at 3:12 pm ¶
mute wrote:
Yolanda, I wonder sometimes if there is a racial component to being told you have a “mean restface”. I’ve been told that as well. I HATE it. It makes me feel awful. The only other women that I’ve met that have been told the same thing are black women. I mean, this is just my experience. To know for sure I’d have to do some sort of social psychological survey on visual perceptions or something. But honestly my experience makes me wonder if the ABW stereotype or something like that makes people read what are really neutral facial expressions as “mean” ones when they are on us.
Posted 24 Sep 2009 at 7:50 pm ¶
ashlynn wrote:
Hm. I always get the “i know you’re black, but not really…?” kind of thing from people. I am a big reader, and so I speak well. I love rock music and I’m an internet dork. But I grew up on R&B and soul, and a whole bunch of other black “qualifiers” so people don’t know what to make of me. So I end up being an Oreo a lot.
I was having an interesting conversation with my coworkers the other day about my crush, who is white. We were in the middle of a review session and he parroted off of something our instructor said (which can be ANNOYING as hell!), so I jokingly said to him, “Oh be quiet, nobody asked you!” Everyone laughed, mind you, b/c it was just a joke. But later on, talking with some of the girls, they were like “Oh no, why did you yell at him? He’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, damnit, forgot she was black!’ and run like hell!” At first, I was like, “Why would he forget that I was black?” and then I realized, here we go again with the Oreo mess. Smh.
Posted 25 Sep 2009 at 1:20 am ¶
dan wrote:
i’d like to hear this call, but i know i won’t be able to listen in at that time and i’m also a little wary of entering all my contact info on that website. is there a way i could still listen to the audio afterwards?
Posted 25 Sep 2009 at 3:00 am ¶
TierListE wrote:
Mute, Yolanda
You know, I’ve also been told I’ve looked angry when walking when I wasn’t. And I think everyone that said so was white. I’ve actually been stopped on my way to class to question my apparent anger. *frowns* Ugh please let that be some kind of coincidence, but I can easily imagine people seeing a neutral face on a black woman being seen as aggravated/angry based on preconceptions.
Posted 25 Sep 2009 at 9:53 am ¶
Medusa wrote:
Mute, Yolanda, TierListE
Another black woman who’s been told that here.
Also, I am with all of you on the self-fulfilling stereotype thing. For me, being black I’m not stereotyped as shy and meek like carmen or fromthetropics, but angry. And then people do shit to make me angry (grab my hair without asking, ask me if I wash it, ask me why black people have such big lips, deny that racism still affects people, etc.) then when I do, they go “there goes that angry black woman.” Sheesh.
Posted 25 Sep 2009 at 2:11 pm ¶
mute wrote:
It’s funny that we’re talking about shyness and meekness here. I am actually pretty nervous and quiet (hence the moniker), but instead of being read as shy, I get read as looking like I want to hurt some one. (A South Asian dude actually said that to me once, thinking he was being funny. And like you Medusa, it was only after he said that shit that I actually felt that way.)
I don’t get told about my “evil” face so much any more because I’ve trained myself to smile more often. So now instead of looking mean all the time, i spend about 60% of my time looking mean and the other 40% looking like an insincere flake.
Posted 25 Sep 2009 at 3:45 pm ¶
Mnemosyne wrote:
I’m a fairly attractive Chinese female with large breasts and larger personality, so I get assumed with the stereotype of “Asian slut”, how lovely. I seem to be more of a character rather than an actual person. And similar to submom, I am quite assertive, which tends to put people off as nobody expects it from a little 4′11″ Asian girl.
Posted 27 Sep 2009 at 5:53 am ¶
LBell wrote:
Wow…currently there are 10 comments and five of them concern the very stereotype I was coming in here to address: Being perceived as yet another angry, scary black woman. I’m in my 40s (I look much younger) and have gotten this ever since I was in my 20s.
It doesn’t help that 1) I live in a college town in Iowa where most whites have very little “real” contact with black people AND 2) after spending most of my life having to take extra steps to prove that I’m a “safe” black person to be around, I’m currently on strike due to acute racial battle fatigue.
Ironically there are a lot of things I like about this town (you have to be here to understand) but I’m trying to decide if I can afford the race tax I’d have to pay in order to settle here permanently.
Posted 27 Sep 2009 at 10:12 am ¶
Mike wrote:
I’m a black male and I have been told that I look mean. I don’t think that I do. I’m not projecting that.
But it’s something I deal with every day. Sometimes it has its perks like when I am on a crowded bus: the seat next to me is usually the last one to get taken.
What I perceive is that white people are usually wary and reserved when first meeting me. I excel at making them feel comfortable, but I hate myself for doing it. I feel like a phony.
The stereotype of the angry black male is thing I’m trying to avoid. It’s a voluntary limit on my self-expression. I spend a lot of energy trying to be someone that non-blacks aren’t frightened by.
For me, it’s the cost of doing business in a white-collar profession.
Posted 28 Sep 2009 at 8:56 am ¶