The Truth of Understanding

​Having an authentic self is being the person that one was born to become, without the limitations given from society, being the person that one believes to be themselves without the doubt of identity. Authentic is defined as genuine and original as opposed to being fake or a reproduction. No one can truly be happy if they are not themselves, but because many want to be viewed as equal in their own society they’d rather “cover up” the identity that is seen as unfavorable in order to have better opportunities than those who show who they really are. In today’s society there are views of culture that are suited as normal, what everyone is accustomed to, and if a person doesn’t not meet that requirement of normality they are usually shunned and seen as bizarre. No one wants that feeling of being bullied that is why many result to change themselves, to cover who they really are. In Kenji Yoshino’s essay “Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights” he discusses how he had to use a covering of himself so that he may live in a normal society where no one can see him a strange being that it is not yet time to tell everyone that he is different, that he is gay. In “Speaking in Tongues” Zadie Smith argues that people should be honest, and unique, instead of what the general public wants them to be. Once people accept society, they lose their own unique voice. Rather than becoming unique as Smith describes, many if not all people would rather become assimilated into the identity of society in order to avoid becoming eliminated out of society.

​In the start of the transitioning into society one must understand what the social norms in that environment are. One must tone down the uniqueness of their behavior so that they may go along in life. Being different would be seen as negative, making trying to fit in difficult. Yoshino identifies “the value of assimilation, which is often necessary to fluid social interaction, to peaceful coexistence, and even to dialogue through which difference is valued (294)” although some are positive there are those can have a greater damaging effect, which could be identified as losing one’s voice, trying to become someone they are not to a point in which they’d lost who they previously were. One’s voice changes when altering the natural environment that they use to inhabit, to assimilate to the voice that had to accustom to in order to continue living peacefully. “Voices are meant to be unchanging and singular … voices are who we are, and that to have more than just one, represents…. the loss of our very soul (Smith 248)”, voices represent our authentic self; the voices that we have identified with, because after a certain age our voice becomes permanent and trying to have another only layers the voice upon one another “but at a significant personal cost”. Assimilation is wanting to fit in, changing who we are is an attempt to unpack ourselves and rebuilt to try and