People spend the majority of their young lives developing a complex personal identity.At a young age we are indoctrinated with concepts such as gender and family. Later, as teenagers and adolescents, we further develop these existing identities, often adding sexual, professional and other identities to that list.  These developments add layers as we age, creating a new and more complex identity based upon our collected experiences. Unfortunately, as adults we are rarely called upon to identify with the full range of our being and are instead forced to present one facet of our identity at a time.These unilateral identities are inaccurate measures of who we are as people and may keep us from ever truly understanding our shared existence.We are the end product of a series of experiences — though we rarely think about what defines us as people in our daily lives.At any given point, we are able to identify with our gender, ethnicity or even our jobs. That’s a problem — we only seem to be able to identify with one of those particular aspect of our identities at a given time.  This recent presidential election is a fantastic example of our unilateral identity crisis.During the months leading up to this year’s presidential election, media attention frequently focused on race as a central issue — something most people knew was an inevitability. The hitch is that for many people race became the exclusive issue. People were frequently asked to focus in on just that one aspect of the election and to disregard the other pressing issues.Americans were repeatedly polled to find out if they would vote for a black president or if race was the most important issue.Other issues were discussed during the election coverage — the current financial crisis being the most obvious — but in the end those issues took a back seat to the issue of race.  The media, political campaigns and activists all made appeals that pushed people to identify with candidates based solely upon one aspect of their identity. Race wasn’t the only example in this election, and this isn’t the only election that has seen these techniques used. But this election’s result makes it one of the most striking examples.When all was said and done, we celebrated the election of our first African-American president.That is a tremendous step for our country and for the moral of our people, but for some it was a bitter-sweet experience.Think about a working class African-American family.Members of that family must live their lives through multiple identities. At one time the mother of that family identifies as a woman, a mother, a minority and someone who is working class.The father and children have equally complex identities.While that family may celebrate our new president, in the end they must still deal with the realities of their other identities.The celebration is not bad. We should all celebrate this milestone, but the manipulation of our emotions by media outlets and political campaigns is troubling.Our national culture pushes us towards these unilateral identities. And It has done so for a long time.The strong sense of pride and nationalism felt after World War II asked us to subsume our individual identities within national identities. Repeated attempts to re-spark that kind of unity and togetherness have led us to our current path.Perhaps the truth is it’s just easier for people to deal with their identities one at a time or to stack them by their immediate relevance. I personally find it very difficult to know when I am exclusively white, male or a student.Though that doesn’t seem like that big of a problem.In truth, I was a bit misleading in my earlier depiction of this issue.Reliance on unilateral identities isn’t the most pressing issue in the world right now and it’s not going to make the wheels fall off the bus tomorrow.I imagine we could keep this up for a pretty long time.Politicians and television media outlets seem to take little issue with preying on public insecurities and ignorance so they can milk us for one more drop of genuine emotional reaction.In the end, these unilateral identities are important, though — they keep us from realizing true empathy with each other.Focusing on one single aspect of our identities amounts to low-rent demagogy and makes us miss out on the other portions of our identities that can be unifying.—-Contact Skylar Gremillion at [email protected]