Labels

[SeeKer]

Ever notice that we as humans are hung up on labels. Yea, not nutritional labels even though those are becoming increasingly fascinating, but labels like white, black, short, tall etc. Is there a basis to this? Cooley, Mead all had fingers in the pie at the beginning but they lost me after a while. So, any thoughts on this and also if we happen to conform to the labels attached to us and its impact on society as a large.

[Nephissa]

Actually we all collect labels as we grow up, from family, school and peers. Many of us have had descriptions put on us because our appearance or ability fall just outside of normal. We even have cliches in our language to describe, and make a joke of these slightly embarrassing characteristics: ' jiisoow ', ' ileey ', 'caasha gaabo'etc. Some labels can stick to you forever. Mine didn't (thanks to technology) I was called fanaxleey through out my teen years.

 

Unfortunately, the labels we acquire in childhood influence our ideas about ourselves, even into adulthood.

[OG_Girl]

^^ Mine was giraffe! I hated that like it's crime to be .... :mad: But now they wish to be giraffe

 

Salam

[Animal Farm]

Labels can be a bad thing or a good thing, but we Somalis have changed that and have used it to kill each other, remember the civil war, and labels have followed us in the west -

 

Labels make us human - identity is based on labels and the grouping of individuals - we have to be something, we have to be known and remembered - so labels can give us a sense of belonging, labels can ensure us that we exist - we are something, without labels we are nothing, to be something is to be labeled. Again, tribes were supposed to be used for identity purposes, not for murder so in a way labels can be used to descriminate and alienate people.