Heinrich Himmler's 'The Face Behind The Mask'

The Face Behind the Mask What does identity tell us about someone? In my opinion, our identity is not only our race, gender or sexuality. When we identify someone, we should identify people by their thoughts and actions. Susan Griffin, a feminist writer who focuses around the interconnectedness between human beings and how they are connected whether they are strangers or friends of friends, wrote an essay that focuses on Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi Secret Police. “He does not exist without his father.” (243). Himmler does not exist without his father because his identity is the same as his father’s identity. Knowing that Himmler does everything his father tells him to do; he is living just like his father. When I was young, I …show more content…
No matter their characteristics, we can not treat them any different than how we treat ourselves. On the other hand, society labels people according to their skin color. For example, if they were dark skin, they would be known as Negroes, but there’s more to that person than just their skin color. We cannot identify people by their appearances because people may look the same, yet everyone’s values are different. Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher who talks about how society identifies people by categories-race, gender, skin color, and even culture, states in his essay, “Racial Identities” There are many people who are of the same race, gender, skin color and culture, but that does not define who they are. Also, Appiah stated in a video, “There is no morally correct answer, no ethically pre-given answer to the question, ‘What’s more important? Christian or philosopher?’ These things you have to figure out yourself.” I agree with this statement, because it is up to the people themselves to identify who they truly are because everyone knows themselves better than anyone else. Everyone has their own credentials, but we can not automatically make assumptions of each other when we don’t even know who they