Perhaps it's useful to think of identity based on some sort of immutable characteristic (whether that be a set of phenotypes or the fact of a shared history - anything which those who have it, have it because they were born into it) as a set of training wheels. The goal of any particular population, which for whatever reason (usually persecution by other groups) are not flourishing as a group, is to change that state of affairs. While the level of situational obstructions they face is high (such as living in a country with institutionalized slavery and a large population of others who treat them as less than human), this group has no tools other than this shared identity of victim; and so they must use that to pull together to achieve that which none can accomplish alone. However, once the practical obstructions are sufficiently reduced (and there's where the scientific method, the reliance on evidence and dispassionate reason, and the maturity to dispassionately face up to the realities of this unfair material world) these training wheels of group identity - particularly when based on physical markers that used to serve as reliable evidence of most any given individual's situation but are no longer as reliable - must be abandoned . . . all they do is impede the individual's ability to reach the higher speeds that his or her other qualities in the presence of the right opportunities make possible.
Perhaps it's useful to think of identity based on some sort of immutable characteristic (whether that be a set of phenotypes or the fact of a shared history - anything which those who have it, have it because they were born into it) as a set of training wheels. The goal of any particular population, which for whatever reason (usually persecution by other groups) are not flourishing as a group, is to change that state of affairs. While the level of situational obstructions they face is high (such as living in a country with institutionalized slavery and a large population of others who treat them as less than human), this group has no tools other than this shared identity of victim; and so they must use that to pull together to achieve that which none can accomplish alone. However, once the practical obstructions are sufficiently reduced (and there's where the scientific method, the reliance on evidence and dispassionate reason, and the maturity to dispassionately face up to the realities of this unfair material world) these training wheels of group identity - particularly when based on physical markers that used to serve as reliable evidence of most any given individual's situation but are no longer as reliable - must be abandoned . . . all they do is impede the individual's ability to reach the higher speeds that his or her other qualities in the presence of the right opportunities make possible.