Choose an identity, then perform it

My writing this is in no way meant to humiliate, endanger or discount those Arabs who live in the sovereign State of Israel or who live in any other Middle Eastern state or in the West. Many identify as Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis. The issue of national sovereignty, pandemic Jew-hatred, Arab-on-Arab discrimination and refusal to absorb Arabs in exile, and Islamist terrorism are other burning issues.

What is one to make of New York Rep. George Santos, who has lied, lied, lied to get himself elected, and who has claimed to have done things he’s never done? Is this identity fraud? Is it the familiar work of a con artist/sociopath who says whatever will impress others to help him get whatever it is he wants?

It’s shades of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who said she was black and who represented the NAACP in the state of Washington. We also have one Martina Big, a white German blonde model, who has tanned her face black, says she is black, plans to live in Africa and give birth to black children. Big is planning plastic surgery to enlarge her too-narrow white nose as well as her buttocks. She has already enhanced her breasts to an unbelievable, unsightly size “S.”

And now for a really major sigh of my own. What in God’s name has Raquel Evita Saraswati, a charismatic woman, done? She has just gone up in flames. And why? Apparently, allegedly, she’s been bronzing her white skin, wearing heavy makeup, a super fashionable hijab, lots of bling—and finding work based not on her excellent verbal or intellectual skills, but rather, based on the fact that she presents as a lesbian/queer, religious, Muslim woman? That ticks at least four boxes for those concerned with diversity.

I am not sure I fully understand such identity transformations or, if you will, such identity impersonations.

Identities are being performed right before our eyes—the world is quite a stage—and we, who cherish the past, are nobodies. Those with inner lives need no longer apply for the jobs. For our part, “the rest is silence.”

First published in JNS.