How Akin became Yankee

Ticking the funny boxes

When it comes to the context of identity, I find that I can be quite pedantic and regimented in my thinking. I recognise the many influences that form the expression of who I am, by heritage, birth, association, involvement, recognition, and soon also by marriage.

The way I have for all intents and purposes become something of a world citizen, though I am yet to travel the world enough to lay that claim, I wield a passport that at least provides a welcome to most countries for a sojourn, but not a residency.

When I am asked to tick ethnicity boxes, the one I want to tick is Black English rather than Black British, sometimes, I would write in the box for Other, Black English, then we have orders of granularity, Black Caribbean, Black African, Black Other even as there are large populations of in the Americas, both north and south. These boxes do not fit anymore.

The quagmire of identity

Then with the recent penchant for claiming whatever identity or pronoun you desire, you wonder if you can detract from the obvious to impart the almost superfluously ridiculous; yet, conviction, is one you cannot dismiss easily if I have convinced myself I am Caucasian or Asian, who is to question me when they have assumed by default and accepted norms that I am what they see rather than what I seem?

There is no keeping up with identity politics, and we old fogies have a lot of catching up to do. Who I am is so different from what you see, and to make assumptions without enquiry to ascertain and verify what I have become because of what and who I think I am, without having to explain why it is that way is slowly becoming a hate crime.

Now, you need to be aware of deadnaming (2013), misgendering, pronouns, and much else. I am surprised the first two words are not neologisms, they are in our English dictionaries.

An English American

However, I have a nickname at home, that everyone can subscribe to and by that, we reduce the power-distance index to the point where we can communicate easily as peers. I like that kind of conversation with my siblings and it works well for me.

It was only a fortnight ago in a conversation with my mother that I learnt the real provenance of my nickname. It would appear strange that for someone who is quite proudly English, their nickname would be so distinctly American, also too American for my liking, yet it stuck and I have not quibbled about it.

Attending an office where my mother had to have my name registered, for the many times she said it to the hearing of the official, he just could not get it. He twisted and mangled my name into the spectacle of him giving the rendition of a patriotic nursery rhyme. That is how Akin became Yankee. [Yankee Doodle – Wikipedia]

I purposely did not use Anglo-American in the last section title.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - LXIX

One could not tell

He, I might have said as I wondered why he was walking in the middle of the lane of a busy road, then as it became clear, she was wearing heels you would expect to see on those modelling womenswear, but her top was hardly masculine, probably feminine and never really coming to terms of whether it should be classed as androgynous left me more confused that you might be left with the pronoun they.

Yes, they were drawing attention to themselves in clothes that could not be ignored once seen and a head shorn of hair quite redolent of male pattern baldness, that drivers in cars contributed to a needless cacophony of car horns get more people to look in the direction of the commotion.

When I thought I would see them for much longer, they disappeared into a whiskey bar and the chatter at the al fresco tables would have been given to a surmise or two before we all returned to what we were doing.

It is there to see

Whatever we were doing before a new distraction came along, body adornment in the form of tattoos that usually were discreet, but now they are all over the body down on the fingers with all the skin surfaces covered including on the face, and this is now on the ladies. I catch myself before I begin to question why, I guess they love and they do it, the appreciation of beauty by strangers is beside the point.

People do not moderate themselves into conformity if they can help it, and much as a lot is being accepted at face value and supported by laws to give protections against discrimination, being an outlier can still expose you to unwelcome ostracism. It would seem our prejudices are constantly challenged by changing norms and expressions we cannot avoid.

Our streets of education

We observe and document those observations in memory that what was at first chimeral, with more encounters of such rarities, we are eased to accepting these things are becoming commonplace.

Usually, we would not indulge and be inclined to have these situations are self-expression even as an example might provide guidance, we school ourselves into the knowledge that in all that diversity of expression with its extremes that we have difficulty understanding, there is a belonging we all have to share in learning of each other and becoming better people.

As it seems one pandemic is winding down, though not going away yet, we are presented with monkeypox and a threat that it is spreading fast that those of us in a cohort once stigmatised for infectious diseases are once again appearing more susceptible to it. A public announcement to drop-in by invitation totally failed the plain English test. We just have to be careful. [MEN: Monkeypox fears build as number of cases in Greater Manchester rise]