My "identity" is "human being". While I can acknowledge and understand the need to assert the validity and worth of our various splinters of description as human beings, it definitely can go far too far, becoming just another form of victimization-- this one originating in ourselves, as too-precious, too important, individuals. Our identity is very simple whatever our description. Our identity is this: we are either committed to innocence and generosity and helpfulness, or we are not. Our common identity is exclusively in answering the question: am I helpful, or not? In other words, if our concerns about identity make us selfish all over again, then that's no identity at all. Human identity and uniqueness lie in just one fact about humans: the ability to choose to submerge our needs and desires for another. Generosity is the only real identity.

As any kind of XYZ person, there is lived experience, expertise, and background knowledge, that should be respected. Certainly these things are far more valuable than someone's split second stock assumptions. The root of many of these problems mentioned here is a basic lack of respect and unwillingness to listen or hear people who have a different opinion. In that way, a house divided against itself cannot stand; listening is a skill that can be learned.

You are what you eat, a country is what its people are. The US has imported the whole world since 1965, as such, we will have the problems that the whole world often has between peoples. That means, instead of plurality resulting in harmony and diversity of idea and experience in a stressed by functional harmony, it means the Yugoslav Wars are right around the corner, a Rwandan Democide is right around the corner, South-African-tier race riots are right around the corner (have we forgotten about Watts, Rodney King, and recently the Floyd riots?). We have growing populations of Central Americans who still identify more closely with their countries of origin than being a US citizen since the US is only associated with safety (fleeing what generations of the immigrants' forebears and their countrymen have built up for themselves, or rather not built up for themselves in their homeland), welfare programs, jobs under the table to provide remittances back home, essentially the equivalent of what oil industry folk think of in regards to a stint on a sea rig - the US is a pay slip, it's dodging taxes and government oversight, it's a burden and liability, it is less a country now and more an economic zone / supermarket and workplace.

This episode really pissed me off! It was full of false dichotomies and assumptions, showing a clear ignorance of why identity matters beyond just being American, and an underlying hostility and misunderstanding of what “woke” means. It’s utterly shameful. Identifying as a person of color doesn’t devalue the experiences of white people; it provides context the person’s perspectives within American society. Identifying as black, brown, or any other identity doesn’t negate the value of another’s history or position. Instead, it should foster discussions aimed at understanding different viewpoints and experiences and how they differ as a result in a society. And let’s be clear here whiteness is the issue not anything else because it is whiteness that has set itself apart as the default I know which Americanism is understood and that is the problem so removing myself as a black American to just American don’t do nothing for me except to negate the effects of a white centered society based on white dominance, and how it affects me and penalizes the non -White person