Finding Ourselves Covering—trying to fit into the mainstream—is an argument for a new direction of civil rights advocacy. Kenji Yoshino believes that we should protect people within our society from facing discrimination and other hate acts because of the reasoning behind their covering. We should not require people to “cover” the characteristics and traits they would usually associate with their covering. In an example that had related closely to me and to other teenagers was that we tend to change how we dress and act based on the social groups we want to fit into. This is especially prevalent, in the high school setting, when young teenagers are trying to find exactly where they fit in compared to their peers. I definitely had a little trouble finding the right group in high school. I started out thinking I could fit into the mainstream by being someone I was not. Our society needs to condition the youth that being you is what the mainstream believes in and uniqueness. When in reality those people who are …show more content…
Relating specifically to myself, I noticed everyone in the mainstream was very popular so being the needy teenager that I was; I tried my best to fit in. I would go to parties and get pressured into to doing things I probably shouldn’t have done, because I was letting my false self-take over. Yoshino describes the true self as “the self that gives an individual the feeling of being real” (554). So the true self would be when teenagers have found their right spot in society and are not afraid to express who they really are to society and have come to terms with who they are. In my case it would be when I finally found my right group of friends and am not afraid to conceal who I really was to society. There are hardly any civil rights at harm in my example because I believe that for civil rights to be at stake, it requires a much serious and more impacting example such as