I agree completely that it's a matter of identity, but I think a distinction should be drawn between legal discrimination (minorities can't hold certain jobs, vote, buy houses in a certain neighborhood) and clique behavior (people are only friends with people who act, dress, and talk the way they do).

Even when it comes to employment, a company wants to hire people that will represent them the way they want to be represented. Discrimination is a specialty boutique hiring a white person who acts ghetto over a black person who acts middle-class. It's not racist discrimination to refuse to hire a minority who isn't part of the culture that your shop caters to, that's just good business sense.

Everyone should have the right to choose their own cultural identity, but that doesn't mean everyone will like it. When I was a teenager, I was a total gypsy goth chick. I wore torn ball gowns to class my first year of college. And I didn't mind people saying I was weird, or a freak, because to quote a song a friend of mine made, they're "the kind of people I don't want liking me anyway." When I got older, I didn't like the attention as much, and started to 'fit in' with jeans and pink tops, and there are repercussions for that too - when I go to goth or industrial clubs I'm looked at like an outsider.

I think it's arrogant to act or dress a certain way and then get angry when people judge you based on those behaviors. And I don't think it's racism. Racism, to me, is two people acting exactly the same way, but one gets preferential treatment because of their skin tone.