The politics of difference rests on two basic persuasions. First, the identity of a person is inescapably marked by the particularities of the social setting in which he or she is born and develops. In identifying with parental figures, peer groups, teachers, religious authorities, and community leaders, one does not identify with them simply as human beings, but also with their investment in a particular language, religion, customs, their construction of gender and racial difference, etc.
