"no one is only one thing"

The solution is not to try to get everyone to speak te same language, or to impose coercive official identities, or silence voices of dissent, but to try to rectify imbalances in power. Modernization does not have to entail loss of one's language and culture, and local identity. We need to explore other forms of governance as alternatives to the nation-state, which, as we have seen, arose in particular Western historical circumstances and was predicated on the achievement of linguistic unification as part and parcel of political unification. 

Many are still trapped in the mistaken idea that all people have only a single identity - that the Irish are only Irish, Nigerians only Nigerians, and so on. Labels such as these are only the beginning and not end points. In today's global village, no one is only one thing. We all have overlapping and intersecting identities. Being Irish, French, or Breton is not incompatible with being a European, just as being Passamaquoddy or Hawaiian need not be in conflict with being American (or a member of the Republican party, a woman, a Catholic, etc.). We need to divest ourselves of the traditional equation between language, nation, and state because with a few notable exceptions, it never actually corresponded to reality anyway, in Europe or anywhere else. 

From Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages, by Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine

(Please, please go find this book! It's so worth the time. And if anyone felt like getting me a bloggy-friend Christmas present, this wouldn't be a bad choice, ha!)

One of the most fascinating aspects of humanity is the concept of identity. I'm learning that many of the ways I identify myself are not necessarily true or correct for me. It's interesting, at the very least. Sometimes very, very frustrating.