Chances are you don’t go through life questioning your self-identity. Our culture, a melding of family and community values, religious convictions and where we grow up—determines who we are. Always has, always will.

Yet to some, this is simply not so. They divvy our identity into hyphens and asterisks; using gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity to carve a crevice into our essential character. Lizzie from Peoria is redefined as a hyphenated Indian-American, asterisked single parent. In one rhetorical stroke, Lizzie is fragmented into pieces detaching her from the greater population; a rank tactic long used by demagogues to foment suspicion and hatred.  read more »