Cultural artifacts shape social identity

In today's society its hard to avoid getting judged based on one's culture, class, gender and sexual orientation. This is where the idea of social identity comes in. Some might incorrectly assume that the word "social identity" means one's identity of themselves and how they would like to be recognized by society. However, one's social identity is an identity given to an individual by the society based on a certain group (ethnicity, religion etc) that individual might belong to. A person himself does not have control over their social identity.
So this leads us to a broad question, what groups people? Answers to this question might include religion, language, geographical location, cultural practices, sexual preferences and even accents. These are just some superficial factors. When you look deeper; art, music, food and clothing are some of the factors or "cultural artifacts" that differentiates or even stigmatize different groups of people in today's society. However, it should be said that its not these artifacts or items themselves that stigmatize people, but its the way they are perceived and spread (ex: the media) is what creates social myths and stereotypes.
Lopez in his memoir gave great importance to clothing by describing them in detail several times. Wearing "baggy" clothing and dressing like a surfer seemed to get him attention. He also wanted to own the expensive Lenny Muelich surfboard.  He felt that inorder to be a surfer it was very important to look the part. Lopez says that he gave higher importance to surfing than race and therefore it can be said that he was trying to have an identity of a surfer before a Mexican. He felt a need to fit into the group of surfers. But when confronted by a fellow mexican stranger on the street inorder to prevent a hostile situation he says "I'm Mexican". This time he identified himself as a Mexican and by doing so he was protecting himself from getting fought and formed somewhat of a cordial common bond between himself and the stranger.

Being of Mexican decent in East LA and desiring to be a surfer was a far reach for Lopez but non the less by understanding his social identity and embracing it, Lopez did get the "best of both worlds".