Came across another very do-able and understand-able take on identity.
This is from the Brain Pickings Weekly newsletter. It features Margaret Mead and James Baldwin on Identity, Race, the Immigrant Experience, and Why the "Melting Pot" Is a Problematic Metaphor.
Identity is something we claim for ourselves, then must assert willfully to the world:
You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.
You see, I think we have to get rid of people being proud of their ancestors, because after all they didn't do a thing about it. What right have I to be proud of my grandfather?
I can be proud of my child if I didn't ruin her, but nobody has any right to be proud of his ancestors.
And so draw their sense of identity from them (our ancestors)...
Creating our identity is something we have to do ourselves, for ourselves.