Cultural Particularity vs. Universal Humanity Essay

Cultural Particularity vs. Universal Humanity - Essay Example Collective and individual identities are antithetical to each other according to neoconservative ideas. The main point of both of them is that â€Å"racial group membership robs a person of an important aspect of humanity† (Maya 79). This theory insists that individuality is a property of people, who a not included to the crowd or collective. So these persons are seen as individuated ones and they lack human agency. The neoconservative theory describes the fact of being human, configuring racial and cultural particularity against universal humanity.The idea of â€Å"being human† contains the ethnic, gender and racial trappings. In some varieties the racial identity is represented as the dangerous and harmful event to human possibility -â€Å"though it espouses black pride, it is actually a repressive identity that generates a victimized self-image, curbs individualism and initiative, diminishes our sense of possibility, and contributes to our demoralization and inertia † (Maya 81). The idea of the phrase is that the ideal human should appear as unsexed and deracinated creature, which is having only rationality. All of the mentioned figures, such as Steele, Rodriguez, Carter, and Chavez, understand the word "racial" as non-"white" identity and the conclusion they make is that "white" identity is not seen as an identity by race. They paradoxically agree with the existence of "white" people, despite the racialization â€Å"white† process and refer to "male" not meaning gendered identity.