Identity Politics

      Identity Politics             Essay 3: “The Invention of HeterosexualitY’ by Jonathan Ned Katz Essay 5: “Racial Formations” by Michael Omi and Howard Winant Essay 9: “Bringing Classism Into the Race and Gender Picture” by Chuck Barone Essay 12: “What White Supremacists Taught a Jewish Scholar About IdentitY’ by Abby L- Ferber Explore the meaning of identity politics, drawing on the readings in the resources- Consider, for example, the following questions: 1- How did people become identified, historically, as heterosexual or homosexual (note that these specific distinctions were unknown until the latter part of the nineteenth century)? 2-How have people become pegged, as it were, to their ethnic group? (Note that St- Augustine in the fourth century CE may have been “black,” that is, Afro- Roman; it would not have occurred to the Romans to mention his “ethnicity-") 3- Speculate as to why these distinctions are so important to Americans- What do they say about American culture?