Think of a baby when it's born as a simple stick figure. Pretend identity is like the first set of clothes given to them by others who expect them to wear that style throughout their life. Now consider their personal style. Might be color or hairstyle. As clothes that they would pick to best match their personality. Likewise, gender identity is shaped at birth when a doctor assigns gender. Grandparents then begin to describe boys as having strong cries or gift girls pink headbands with bows. For some gender assignment and all that is associated with it is without conflict. As we mature we carry this assigned identity as we engage with social structures like schools. Since gender kids go into their assigned boys or girls' bathroom without hesitation. Walking into a different bathroom is met with redirection. For transgender and gender queer people however, the assignment of gender at birth is painful. Their identities create tensions and are in opposition to assigned gender roles, behaviors and expectations from friends, family and society. They worry which bathroom is safe for me. This tension also happens around language. In the US English is considered a primary or sole language and this affects everyone's identity. Unless you are in a foreign language class or a bilingual school there can be stigma about speaking languages other than English in the classroom or in the playground. You may receive messages that English is the only acceptable language in school. The social messaging is that speaking another language is shameful and problematic. While speaking English ideally without an accent is rewarded as good behavior. In this way Spanish-speaking family members are stigmatized as others and speaking Spanish becomes undesirable. This process explains why regardless of country of origin children of non-English speakers lose their language by the third generation. These are just a couple examples that demonstrate how social structures construct, limit and place value on identities. This becomes highly problematic when school completion, racial profiling, poverty and health disparities are associated with specific identities. Social messages from schools, peers and the media are conflicting. They tell us that all men are created equal despite what is actually reinforced by everyday interactions. Like the classic example of a white woman who guards her person the elevator when a black man enters. A clash begins when the social messaging and the actual experiences do not match. We cannot be equal if we define one group as better or even superior to another based on gender or racial identification. Whiteness is the preferred norm, the identity that all other identities are compared to or contrasted against. The norm of whiteness is so strong that it is invisible. For instance, when describing a person if their race is not described the assumption is that they are white. Inequality touches all parts of our lives. Even when we're thinking of starting a healthy family, we assume that education, income and healthy lifestyles should produce the same healthy birth outcomes regardless of race in the US. Yet research indicates that regardless of age, education, income and health and behaviors and unrelated to genetics, black women in the US have poorer birth outcomes in their white counterparts. Black women experience increased infant deaths, maternal deaths and low birth weights. Many scientists associate the resulting poorer birth outcomes to increase stress related to experiences of racism. But how do we have social change in equity when those who are most affected can be demoralized and frustrated by their everyday attempts to achieve the same outcomes as their white counterparts? Our relationship to identity groups can be the key to creating change. Since social inequities occur predominantly to communities of color, social transformation requires among other things, a mobilization of identity. Social movements based in identities such as the black liberation movement, the Chicano movement and the woman's rights movement, harness identity by educating people about social structural inequality and its impact on them. In this way, social movements can create an educated counter narrative. Stories like that of Benjamin Bannaker, a black architect who was hired by Thomas Jefferson to build the White House after the French architect Pierre Charles Laugh Fonds, stormed off the job. This exemplifies Bannaker's invisibility in US history and the prominence of Laugh Fonds, who has a metro stop named after him in Washington, D.C. Knowing that invisible history and cultural icons of communities can be used to coalesce people of a shared identity and can call forth other successful historical struggles. For instance, the United Farm Workers Union and their leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Cuerta carried banners of our Lady of Water Lupi as a March from Delano to Sacramento, California to demand justice for farm workers. The same icon was used by Father Miguel Idalgo in Mexico's fight for independence from Spain and again in the Mexican Revolution by Emiliano Zapata. The way that these icons were used are also evidence that global and national struggles for transformational change can be organized at local levels. As people committed to social change, the questions for us are, how much do we really understand about the history and legacies of the communities in which we work? And, as both insiders and outsiders of these communities, how do we use the power of narrative informed by cultural histories of contribution, resistance and justice to activate change in grassroots community organizing? you