The Pressure to Cover
By Kenji Yoshino
“The Pressure to Cover” by Kenji Yoshino has similar ideas to the video he made. The main idea they are both highlighting is the idea that people “cover” their true identity to assimilate to society. Assimilate means to blend into or become similar to someone or something. Yoshino uses diction in the article such as “covering” and “passing” to describe how people try to blend into society. Yoshino describes the word “passing” as an accepted visible characteristic while “covering” is a visible characteristic that is unwelcome too society. He then gives the example of covering and passing when President Roosevelt “used a wheelchair. He was covering, playing down his disability so people would focus on his more conventionally presidential qualities.” The passing part was the fact that everyone knew he was disabled but the covering part being that he would try to hide this difference because society would possibly think of him differently because of it. This was very similar to the video because Yoshino described how straight white men “cover” up who they are because they are afraid they do not live up to the stereotype of what a “real” man should be in the eyes of society.
