You're Not Welcome Here, Ep 11: “You’re Not a Real Fan”
We often think of individual and groups identities as separate, or as incompatible in some way. But in this episode, we consider the ways in which our group identities determine and shape our individual identities, and argue that an understanding of this is crucial for understanding both identity and identity politics.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Produced by Brad Onishi and Dan Miller
Edited by Shannon Sassone
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Before we jump in today, I wanted to say thank you to all of you for your support.
All of our patrons and people who reach out to us, we are immensely grateful, and you definitely make this show go.
In the new year, we're looking forward to continuing the show and doing it three times a week, but we're basically in a place where we need to continue to raise revenue and raise money in order to do that.
For Dan and I, this is a passion project.
It's something that takes up a lot of time, especially for me.
I'm the writer, the producer, the interviewer, the editor, and all of those things.
And so, with a newborn, and with job responsibilities, and all kinds of other things, both Dan and I are basically staring down a A scenario where we need to kind of figure out how we can balance all of those obligations with the time it takes to do this show.
Not just once, not just twice, but three times a week.
And so, if you have not thought about becoming a patron yet, please think about that today.
Or, if you would like just an ad-free experience without having to sign up for Patreon and all that stuff, you can find that in our show notes as well.
It would really help us and allow me to focus on content, and to interviewing great scholars and journalists, and to formulating further series and documentaries.
And if none of that's possible, we totally understand.
We would hope that you would perhaps stop by Apple Podcasts and give us a review.
It helps us out immensely, and share all of our stuff on social media.
That helps too.
You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Hello and welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College and Trauma Resolution Practitioner at the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
You are listening not only to Straight White American Jesus, but to the series that is ongoing on identity and identity politics entitled You're Not Welcome Here, and we are hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
As always, I look forward to hearing from folks.
If you want to reach me, I can be found at DanielMillerSWAJ, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
I value any insights, questions, comments that folks have for me.
I will do my utmost to respond in a timely fashion, but thank you all for your patience and kindness when it takes me a while to get back to you.
So today we're continuing talking about identity and identity politics and different things like this.
And I want to start with kind of an anecdote, anecdotal sort of story and build from there to talk about the theme for today.
So the story is, it's not much of a story, it's a true story, is that I am an NFL fan.
I'm a fan of the Denver Broncos.
And last week, at least at the time of this recording, there was big news in the NFL as Denver signed a new quarterback.
They got Russell Wilson in a trade from the Seattle Seahawks.
I should say they arranged the trade.
They didn't sign for him.
I get emails about the technicalities of this.
The Denver Broncos have been without a quarterback for a long time, finally land a big quarterback, and part of the trade that brought him to Broncos country, as we would refer to it, is that they also sent some players to Seattle, including one of their quarterbacks, a guy named Drew Locke.
And those in the know about the NFL will know that Locke is a player who showed some promise but never really panned out.
He was at Denver for a few years, got beat out for the starting job, and so forth.
Now, the anecdote, the story to imagine is that I'm sitting in a sports bar somewhere, let's imagine it's a sports bar full of Broncos fans, and we start talking about this trade.
And I, everybody in there is raving about this, everybody in there is excited that Denver got an 8-time Pro Bowler, a player that on any account is an upgrade over the player that they had, that on most accounts is still probably a top 10 quarterback in the league.
So imagine we're all discussing this, we're maybe drinking some beers, we're having a good time, and I say, going against the conventional wisdom in the room, I say that it was a mistake to swap QBs.
It was a mistake to take Denver's quarterback and trade him to Seattle and get Seattle's star quarterback, leaving out the rest of the trade.
There were a lot of other pieces of the trade.
So let's just imagine that I say that.
I say, you know, Drew Locke, I know that it hasn't looked great, but he's the future of the Broncos.
It was a mistake to trade him away.
I know that everybody's into this, but boy, you know, Denver should have stuck it out with Drew Locke.
It was a mistake to go for Russell Wilson.
Those of you who know anything about the NFL will know, and others can guess, what would be the response to this?
How would the other people in this hypothetical sports bar respond?
First, they would say I'm nuts.
And they're right.
That would be nuts.
That's a terrible take on the trade.
Maybe they'll throw stats and information in my face to make their point.
And there are plenty of stats to support that.
They might say I don't really know anything about football.
They might say if you knew anything about football, there's no way that you could look at just these two quarterbacks that are swapped and say that Denver came out on the losing end of this trade.
Again, leaving out the other aspects of the trade.
And it would be an extremely ignorant argument to make.
But let's imagine that I make the argument anyway, and that I persist in it, and what's going to happen eventually is that they're going to say, you know, maybe you're not a real Denver fan.
How could you possibly call yourself a fan of the Denver Broncos and argue against how great it is to have Russell Wilson playing for Denver?
And the way that this works is basically that if I were to say, nope, they made a mistake, they should have kept Drew Locke, they should have kept their mediocre quarterback, he's actually better than this all-star quarterback, my argument would be so far outside the real Denver fan mainstream.
That my belonging in that group would become suspect.
That is, that those who identify themselves as real fans of the Denver Broncos would no longer recognize me as a real, legitimate fan because my argument, my position about something the team did is so far out of the mainstream.
I would run the risk of no longer being recognized as a real fan of the Denver Broncos.
And if that happened, it would have an effect on me, right?
I'm likely, if I'm sitting in a sports bar full of bonafide Denver Broncos fans and they tell me that I'm not really one, it's likely I begin to re-examine my position.
It's likely that I fall in line.
That I start to take up the real Denver fan party position.
The party line.
I start to say, you know what?
I guess, you know, I think you're right.
The more you talk to me, and the more beers I drink, the more I think you're right.
They did the right thing.
You've got me convinced Russell Wilson is the way to go.
I fall into line.
Why?
It's not because of the force of their arguments.
It's not because of the stats or info.
I had all that information before.
The reason is because being a real Denver fan matters to me.
It matters to me that those who are in the group of real Denver fans, that they recognize me as one of them.
Because let's imagine in this scenario that a significant part of my identity is wrapped up with sharing that group identity with other real Denver fans.
That being recognized as a real, legitimate, bonafide fan of the Denver Broncos is an identity that matters to me.
I begin to bring myself in line with other people who are part of that group.
So here I am.
I have brought myself into line with The body of Denver fans because I want to be one of them.
What does all this have to do with identity and identity politics?
Well, in the last episode I talked about how it can be true both that we act freely, right, or that we believe the things we do for reasons we think are good reasons, that we undertake the actions we do because they're our actions, that we act freely.
But it can be true that we both do that and that we act or feel or think in accord with groups With which we share an identity that our individual identity and what we do as a reflection of our individual identity can be a part of who and what we are at the same time that group identity could be something that explains our actions.
And I said it was because we actively identify with certain groups that we want to be recognized as a member of that group.
We want to be like the other members so we freely choose or think or feel in conformity with others in the group.
And I invite people, if maybe this is your first episode, go back and take a listen and then come back in here if none of that makes sense.
Because all of that opens up a further consideration of how group identities continue to shape and mold our individual identities as well.
And that's where we're headed this week, is the way that group identity impacts Individual identity, the way that the identities of groups with which I identify, condition, and determine the way that I view myself, the way that I understand my own individual identity.
Now there's a common way of thinking about group identity that I would want to challenge, and it's this, it's that, you know, I as an individual identify in a certain way, I have certain views, I have certain perspectives, I feel certain things, I think the world works in certain ways, And then I sort of scan around the world and I see other groups and individuals that think and feel and practice the same things and so I'm naturally drawn to them.
My individual identity leads me to identify with the individuals in that group and I'm drawn to that group.
Right?
It's basically the notion that we join these groups because they're full of people we recognize as being like us.
But what I want to suggest is that it also works in the other way, right?
We don't just join groups or identify with groups because they're composed of people like us.
Rather, we become the individuals we are because of the group identities that we have.
There's a two-way influence here.
And the idea that I want to get with is that social groups, group identity, provides a kind of pattern or template that we use in forming our own identity.
So let's think a little bit about how that works, right?
When being recognized as part of a particular group is really important to us, right?
When it's what we could say a very salient part of our identity.
We all occupy lots of identity positions.
Some are really, really, really central to our sense of self.
Some are not.
But when membership within some social group is a really important part of our social identity, we develop a sense of what we might call the prototypical member that group is like.
If it matters to me a lot to be a part, to be a quote-unquote real Denver Broncos fan, I might have an idea in my head of what a real Denver Broncos fan is.
What does that person do?
How do they dress?
What do they think about the team?
How do they act?
What players are they into?
I have that image of a prototypical member.
Because it's important to me, it is important to me, excuse me, to be recognized as a real Denver fan.
I have this idealized image of what that should mean, of what that would look like.
And so this idealized prototype becomes the model or template for my conception of myself as a wannabe member of that group.
I actively work to mold myself in such a way that I begin to approximate that idealized stereotype.
So if I, to return to our Denver Broncos theme, if I have a sense of who or what a real Denver Broncos fan is, this idealized image, and it matters to me that I be recognized as a real Denver Broncos fan, I think of myself and want to think of myself as a real fan, I begin to bring myself into alignment with that idealized conception of the prototypical Denver fan.
Which means that I act according to a process of what a sociologist named Steph Lawler, this is her concept, a process of what she calls self-impersonation.
And I just think that's a great phrase, right?
Because it sounds so contradictory.
How can you impersonate yourself?
But the idea is that the group with which I identify provides me with an idealized image of who I want to be that I then impersonate.
In seeking to become what I experience as most fully myself, I become most fully myself by bringing myself into alignment with What I perceive to be others within that group, this idealized image of a member of that group.
So that idealized image I have of the prototypical group member becomes my own idealized self image.
I become the individual that I am to the degree that I effectively impersonate this idealized image of the prototypical group member.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire SWADGE archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.