What is the connection between multiculturalism and identity politics?

Answer 1

Many who have studied identity have explained that who a person is encompasses the breadth and depth of the life they live, have lived and will experience in the future. Conventional multicultural categorizations of are only pieces of the identity whole. The more expanded categorizations of gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, military affiliation, religion, education level, immigrant status, primary language, and physical/mental ability,http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_connection_between_multiculturalism_and_identity_politics&action=edit§ion=new#_ftn1 still only get us part of the way there. Several experiences inform a person's identity and identity politics scholars have challenged the limitedness of identity categorizations solely based on culture. Society's "official" identity categories can be a way to know who someone is but those are not the only markers. There are ways in which perceptions of who we are develop regardless of those. For one thing, who someone believe she is can be very different from who others believe her to be. Sometimes the reason for this disconnect is because they have been forced to hide certain things about themselves because they learned to fear negative treatment for showing their true selves. In addition, identity can also be contextual; what is alive for someone at the moment that they're asked who they are. If asked who you are on the morning that you've had an argument with your son, for example, you may be very aware of your parent self. Identity is also contextual in the historical sense, i.e., how I describe myself today is not necessarily who I was five years ago or will be in ten years. .
---- http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_connection_between_multiculturalism_and_identity_politics&action=edit§ion=new#_ftnref1 See, Valerie Batts, Is Reconciliation Possible? Lessons from Combatting "Modern Racism"