What To Do When Your Tribe Tells You Who You're Supposed to Be
This episode began with a question brought to me by an investment manager of Indian origin: what do you actually owe the racial, cultural, religious, or social group you happened to be born into? The immediate spark was the phrase “race traitor.” But the problem is much broader. Families, cultures, religions, political movements and communities can sometimes move from: “This is who we are” to: “Therefore, this is who you are allowed to be.” So what do you do when that happens? I use a practical six-step test: 1. Identify the exact claim. What are you supposedly required to do? 2. Ask where the authority comes from. Is there a law, promise, contract, reciprocal duty or voluntary commitment, or merely an expectation? 3. Separate preference from obligation. Someone can strongly hope you make a particular choice without having the right to make it for you. 4. Run the Rawls test. Would you still accept the rule if you did not know which race, religion, class or family you would be born into? 5. Decide what you actually owe. Separate what you inherited from what you value and from the obligations you genuinely possess. 6. Set the boundary. You can respect your family, culture and community without surrendering a decision that properly belongs to you. I draw on my own life, from being born in India and growing up in Britain to becoming an American citizen, marrying a white American woman, and more recently experiencing federal prosecution, conviction and imprisonment. That last experience taught me something unusually concrete about authority: real authority normally has an identifiable source. Law, promises, contracts, parenthood, marriage, citizenship and voluntary commitments can create genuine obligations. Ancestry alone does not automatically acquire jurisdiction over your conscience. So who gets to decide who you are allowed to become? You do. Inheritance is not ownership. I'm Sonny Saggar, MD, Professional Problem Solver. Bring me the difficult problem. Written companion: Traitor to Whom? on Medium.
Episode notes
This episode began with a question brought to me by an investment manager of Indian origin: what do you actually owe the racial, cultural, religious, or social group you happened to be born into? The immediate spark was the phrase “race traitor.” But the problem is much broader. Families, cultures, religions, political movements and communities can sometimes move from: “This is who we are” to: “Therefore, this is who you are allowed to be.” So what do you do when that happens? I use a practical six-step test: 1. Identify the exact claim. What are you supposedly required to do? 2. Ask where the authority comes from. Is there a law, promise, contract, reciprocal duty or voluntary commitment, or merely an expectation? 3. Separate preference from obligation. Someone can strongly hope you make a particular choice without having the right to make it for you. 4. Run the Rawls test. Would you still accept the rule if you did not know which race, religion, class or family you would be born into? 5. Decide what you actually owe. Separate what you inherited from what you value and from the obligations you genuinely possess. 6. Set the boundary. You can respect your family, culture and community without surrendering a decision that properly belongs to you. I draw on my own life, from being born in India and growing up in Britain to becoming an American citizen, marrying a white American woman, and more recently experiencing federal prosecution, conviction and imprisonment. That last experience taught me something unusually concrete about authority: real authority normally has an identifiable source. Law, promises, contracts, parenthood, marriage, citizenship and voluntary commitments can create genuine obligations. Ancestry alone does not automatically acquire jurisdiction over your conscience. So who gets to decide who you are allowed to become? You do. Inheritance is not ownership. I'm Sonny Saggar, MD, Professional Problem Solver. Bring me the difficult problem. Written companion: Traitor to Whom? on Medium.