If only identity was as simple as choosing a packet of crisps (From Times Series)

Identity Crisis and Crisps

5:40pm Thursday 15th April 2010

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Bright sunshine acted as a welcome support barrier as I headed towards my local newsagent. I choose my preferable choice in junk food that is lacking at home, specifically looking at options for some good crisps. Having witnessing Gary Lineker and JLS on television for a Walkers Crisps advert, I go for Ready Salted. The shopkeeper looks slightly confused as my choice of crisps did take me a while. As weird as it may seem, my crisps choice and privileged middle class background put me in a pigeon hole that means I have to represent these choices. If I was the minority in a society of a working class cheese & Onion majority, would I be required to define what being a middle class Ready Salted eater ate? As a crisp eater, I should be able to talk about issues affecting crisp eaters of all class backgrounds whilst having the issues of my middle class Ready salted crisps eater at heart.

If this colourful analogy does not work you then hopefully this should make sense. Identifying ones identity. This can be difficult with someone with such a wide spectrum of cultural origins and religious beliefs. What then, truly defines us? Coming from a religious Muslim family with a belief in Islam or growing up in Asian environment with a Pakistani/Ugandan/Indian background. Is that it? For me, Islam is not a religion but a way of life. For a Christian, a Jew or a Hindu that could be the same scenario. Thus do I have to stay within my given criteria coming from where I do and believing in what I do, like a caste or creed fulfilling some assumptions?

That is not to say, however that the core issues that trouble my community are not of concern to me. Humanities concerns are my concerns. My own religion advocates this view, standing firm for justice wherever the conjunction ‘in’ pollutes the beginning of the word justice. So if it is Palestine or Tibet, Barnet or Barking, my views do not represent a singular community or identity. But they are views committed to a religion that teaches me the notion of a humanity of brothers and sisters.

Being an adolescent should make me no different from a Caucasian British young man. Of course with my cultural and religious differences I fulfil a curiosity around me which raises further questions. What happens when every issue, every view, every religious misconception is addressed and all the stereotypes of my identity are fulfilled simply because I am Muslim? Then what? Then, my ‘box’ of specific tokenism is filled up to the brink of ethnic saturation and all the stereotypes this raises for many. For myself I simply typify young man exploring all the adventures of my youth along the streets of Hendon and therein, lays my British identity.