Abstract
Identity often comes across as a double-edged sword, at once deeply meaningful and severely stigmatizing. In southern Ethiopia some of the unequal identities have been the subject of extended political and ideological struggles since the 1940s, yet these identities and inequalities stubbornly persist. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front regime, which grew out of a splinter of Marxist-Leninist-oriented student movements of the 1960s–1970s, began its tenure by foregrounding ethnic identity as the basis of inequality in Ethiopia. While the state polices came and went, the hierarchical local identities have persisted. Some limitations notwithstanding, clans remain in many ways essential sub-cultural aspects of identity that serve as reliable social support networks. Implied in the preceding analysis is that rather than dismissively labeling identity-based political struggles as ‘identity politics,’ it is time to fully and consistently embrace identity as a legitimate tool in the struggle for equal rights.