Yoshino’s Essay Summary In The Pressure to Cover, Kenji Yoshino’s essay that was published in the New York Times magazine on January 15, 2006, he informs his audience about the term “covering”. This term was taken from Erving Goffman’s book “Stigma” which is about how people handle their differences and disabilities (34). Yoshino writes educated claims from his experiences as a Japanese homosexual. He introduces his audience to two different terms, passing and covering. Passing applies to an individual who hides the visibility of a characteristic, while covering is toning down the intensity of the characteristic (34). Yoshino approaches these concepts relating to his own identity. In the first paragraph of the essay he says the world is saying “Be gay… Be openly gay, if you want. But don’t flaunt.” This is where covering played into his life. He, and other homosexuals, are expected to tone down their homosexuality in order to fit into the mainstream. This concept applied to many others with “outsider identities” (32). People held themselves back from truly opening up about their personal lives in order to fit in. Being a scholar at Yale University, Yoshino decided to spend his time doing research pertaining one’s identity, called “mesearch,” and focus on the overwhelming pressure to conform that was being felt by many (34). He says that when he first came out he felt the need to follow straight norms, but didn’t know what word to use to describe this demand. That was when he came across Goffman’s piece. Goffman used F.D.R. as an example for covering because he would position himself behind a desk during meetings even though everyone knew he was in a wheelchair. He stated that F.D.R. was covering and not passing because everybody knew about his disability he was just playing it down (34). Once Yoshino was exposed to the concept of covering, he noticed he began to see it all over, especially in politics and media. Whether it was something as small as a name change, or as large as an eye replacement, everyone was covering something (34). Continuing with his research, Yoshino discovered that covering was “the civil rights issue of our time” (34). Tons of people were punished for being open about their differences. In the past, discrimination was fought against by different civil rights laws. Now that the less extreme form of discrimination was beginning to create issues for smaller groups of individuals, the question became whether to fight it legally or socially. Yoshino provided many different cases in his piece to express the different types of this discrimination and how most of them were handled. In all of the court cases presented, the individual supposedly being discriminated against lost. The reasoning behind the judgments were that you can’t be discriminated against something that is mutable. If you are able to change that part of yourself in order to cooperate with the rules, you must do so. If the trait is immutable, then it is considered discrimination and would be handled differently. An example used in the text was that African Americans cannot be fired for their skin color, but they may be released for their hairstyle (35). The line was drawn between being and doing, and that’s how the situations were handled. The courts refused to defend something about someone that can be changed in order to fit into the mainstream. It was expected of those to assimilate and resemble the ways of everyone else. This assimilation was used to promote the “melting pot” that is America (35). Now that there are more people openly associating themselves with clusters of others who share a common “disability”, many fear that America is losing its common culture (35). In order to continue to encourage assimilation to keep up with the common culture, the courts were forced to stick to their principle of only protecting immutable traits, whether that meant they had to go against certain religions or not. Assimilation became the way to escape discrimination by falling into the mainstream. John T. Molloy published a self-help manual advising certain minorities to avoid some of their common cultural characteristics in order to escape the issues of discrimination (36). Molloy openly stated that the image of success is indeed a white, protestant male and that all others give off a negative look. In order for these minorities to even compare to a typical white, protestant male, they needed to try even harder and over-do themselves to make up for their other traits. Molloy was able to extend this advice because his points were backed up by many trials of social-science research. Two economists conducted a study where they sent out resumes with the same information and experience on them, the only difference were the names. The results showed that the resumes with white-sounding names got 50 percent more callback than those with African-American sounding names (36). It was concluded that as much as Americans have changed in order to not be racist, we still are quick to associate names, clothes, or hairstyles with commonly disfavored races (36). It was admitted that the dominant groups were asking the groups that were being discriminated against to make themselves smaller. Many felt that the promise of civil rights was not being met in these situations. In one of Yoshino’s lectures on covering, a white male from the audience questioned why Yoshino felt everyone should be protected in all circumstances even if it is something they can help considering this particular white male has to cover too in order to protect himself. He claims he is forced to cover his depression, obesity, and alcoholism and feels like if he doesn’t have a right to self-expression neither should others. Yoshino agreed with this man’s argument under the circumstances that it is assumed that white men do not cover and just prevent others from openly expressing themselves when that is not the case (36). These white males have been denied of full self-expression themselves. The “mainstream” that everyone is being pushed into does not really exist because of how much it shifts making it impossible for anyone to entirely be a part of it. There was a strong feeling that the demand for equality for particular groups needed to be dropped in hoping to create liberty for all groups and acceptance of a diverse society. Since these changes in the attitudes of many have been made, there has been changes in the way the Supreme Court is handling certain cases based on liberties we all possess (37). The courts began to give all people, disabled or not, the right of access to the courts. They acknowledged the similarities between everyone rather than the differences. Yoshino believes that if in the future courts begin the policy of protecting individuals against covering demands, they will handle it as protecting a liberty everyone should possess. An example he used stated that if courts protect the right of gays to marry they will be on the side of protecting the right to marry the person we love rather than defending “gay marriage” (37). This new type of civil rights is liberty-based. The focus wouldn’t be on the differences anymore. Also, the attitude of people will change and they will become more accepting of others rather than fighting the differences that were fought in the past. This acceptance will lower the number of instances that are extreme enough to have to be handled using the law as well. The fear of judgment and demand to cover will not exist in such a strong form and assimilation will be more about the acceptance of others rather than changing to fit the norm. The main desire is that everyone would obtain the freedom to be themselves.