Race and Social Identity in On the Road and The ReiversWhether around a group of friends or among complete strangers, many people feel obligated to act in certain ways to please who surrounds them; this part of our identity is appropriately labeled as social identity. A social identity can sometimes be very close to one's personal identity, but the differences between the two are caused by social pressures and obligations, and the extent to which it differs is based on many factors such as race, cultural heritage, age, etc. Specifically. , pressures on minorities in a predominantly white society can cause them to behave in certain ways. Additionally, examining these pressures can help us further see the reasons for this behavior. Both The Reivers and On The Road are commentaries on how this social identity develops, and both novels state their position quite clearly on what role race should play in determining social identity. In On The Road, Jack Kerouac tries to sidestep the issue of racial interaction. entirely ignoring any conflicts contained therein. In doing so, Kerouac implies that race has little or nothing to do with social identity. The only substantial interactions Dean or Sal have with members of another race are when Sal goes to the Denver ghetto to look for his friends and when Dean and Sal go to the jazz bars of San Francisco. When Kerouac talks about the black people Sal sees or interacts with, skin color is only used descriptively and is never a social issue for Sal. When Sal and Dean are in the jazz bars of San Francisco, the issue of race comes up a lot. superficially; that is, race is used only as a method of description throughout the night. When they first enter jazz bars, Sal sees "a bunch of colorful... in the middle of a sheet of paper... an identity that can't be defined strictly in social terms. So instead of simply replacing the negative stereotypes with positive, Faulkner carefully examines the reasons for the existence of such stereotypes and, in his exploration, we find that such stereotypes may seem valid on the surface, but are, in truth, completely wrong conclusion, the use of nuance and details on Faulkner's part in the development of social interactions between Ned and a white society serve the ideas of racial equality far better than Kerouac's simplistic substitution of stereotypes Works Cited Faulkner, William The Reivers: A Reminiscence New York: Vintage,. 1962. Kerouac, Jack On The Road. New York: Penguin, 1955. Taylor, Walter. “Faulkner’s Reivers: How to Change the Joke Without Slipping the Yoke"., 1986.