I prefer to think of identity as what you do and how you live, rather than what you think. But the point about team identification is well taken and, indeed, the subject of my piece later today.
Of course, your good friend Mike believes (knows) that you're enthusiastically participating in the worst moral atrocity that has ever existed. I wonder how he feels about living up to your above standards, and also whether you yourself would discount guilt by association in similar circumstances where the behavior and views you regarded as very morally wrong were also the cultural norm?
This is a fascinating observation, but it makes me wonder about the inverse case. Someone who doesn't particularly identify as Jewish, but definitely identifies as an open borders libertarian might be unaware that in this country those two things correlate in the minds of observers. Many of the ideas that I would claim to hold intellectually correlate suspiciously well with being a straight white male.
We don't often get to choose how we are perceived. And while we may choose how we present ourselves verbally, I doubt that we can choose who we are.
What is my “identity”? In part, it consists in being a white male American; it would be ridiculous to deny this, however *precisely* you define ‘identity’. So I had better be able to resist Myside Bias, because I have sides in all these respects (race, sex, nationality, and, of course, many more besides).
I prefer to think of identity as what you do and how you live, rather than what you think. But the point about team identification is well taken and, indeed, the subject of my piece later today.
Of course, your good friend Mike believes (knows) that you're enthusiastically participating in the worst moral atrocity that has ever existed. I wonder how he feels about living up to your above standards, and also whether you yourself would discount guilt by association in similar circumstances where the behavior and views you regarded as very morally wrong were also the cultural norm?
This is a fascinating observation, but it makes me wonder about the inverse case. Someone who doesn't particularly identify as Jewish, but definitely identifies as an open borders libertarian might be unaware that in this country those two things correlate in the minds of observers. Many of the ideas that I would claim to hold intellectually correlate suspiciously well with being a straight white male.
We don't often get to choose how we are perceived. And while we may choose how we present ourselves verbally, I doubt that we can choose who we are.
What is my “identity”? In part, it consists in being a white male American; it would be ridiculous to deny this, however *precisely* you define ‘identity’. So I had better be able to resist Myside Bias, because I have sides in all these respects (race, sex, nationality, and, of course, many more besides).