I submit that both race (a biological fact) and ethnicity (a cultural fact) are mostly issue-neutral until one adds in the agreements that surround their interpretation of what it means to be a certain racer or ethnicity. A person of a certain shade of skin can be anywhere on the political spectrum, for example, depending on where s/he was exposed to what ideas. An Iranian native can become a conservative US citizen managing a bank, or a liberal shop-owner, or a radical professor, or a terrorist, or anywhere in between. Without changing his race or his ethnicity.

Once you decide that your identity is "X" and that "X" means certain values, attitudes and certainties are right and true, then you begin carrying the freight of those beliefs about what is and what should be.

If that freight carries you into destructive paths, you can take the opportunity to review and change them, if you are big enough in spirit and have the courage to do so.


A