Social Identity Snapshot

By: Diop Russell
November 4, 2025

Introducing the Social Identity Snapshot

For years, the Social Identity Wheel has been the most widely used tool on the Equitable Teaching website. Adapted for use by the Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR), this tool helps students identify their social identities, examine privilege, and understand how identity shapes their experiences in the world. The Wheel was designed for both individual and group reflection by inviting students to consider how they are perceived by others and how social structures impact their lives. Through this process, students learn to approach peers with empathy and respect, recognize systemic inequities, and connect personal experiences to broader social, political, and historical contexts. However, IGR has retired the Social Identity Wheel and introduced an updated version called the Social Identity Snapshot. The Snapshot was designed to reflect evolving understandings of identity and language. The Snapshot and its accompanying facilitation guide serve as valuable resources for instructors seeking to cultivate more inclusive and reflective classrooms. In this article, I outline the key differences between the Social Identity Wheel and the Snapshot, highlight the improvements made, and provide recommendations from IGR for implementing the new tool. Ultimately, I urge instructors to adopt the Snapshot as part of their ongoing commitment to equitable teaching.

Social identity connects individuals to groups with shared histories, cultures, and lived experiences. According to IGR, “social identities reflect how we see ourselves and how others see us with respect to major social categories…They are sometimes obvious and clear, sometimes not obvious and unclear, often self claimed and frequently ascribed by others.” For example, racial identity is often both self-claimed and externally ascribed, while sexual orientation is personally defined and fluid. Discussing social identity in the classroom allows instructors to better understand their students’ unique perspectives. It also helps students recognize how identity influences participation, belonging, and learning. In this way, social identity work is foundational to equitable teaching. It allows instructors to facilitate classroom environments that acknowledge difference, interrogate bias, and foster inclusion as a daily practice.

The Social Identity Wheel

The original Social Identity Wheel was designed to help students:

1. Reflect critically on their identities and how these identities are privileged or marginalized in different social contexts.
   
2. Recognize how privilege operates to normalize some identities over others.
   
3. Build empathy and community by identifying shared and diverse experiences within the classroom.

This exercise became foundational for facilitating classroom discussion, helping instructors and students examine inclusion and exclusion as active, relational processes rather than static categories.

From the Wheel to the Snapshot

IGR’s transition from the Social Identity Wheel to the Social Identity Snapshot reflects its ongoing commitment to adapting tools to meet the evolution of language and identity. For instance, the Social Identity Wheel erroneously categorizes Latino, Latina, Latinidad as a race instead of an ethnicity. It also uses outdated language to describe people with disabilities. In developing the Snapshot, IGR sought to correct these inaccuracies. The redesign was led by Patrick Kazyak-Albaladejo Muñiz (they/them), Associate Director for Strategic Partnerships and Dissemination at IGR, who leads the redesign and restructuring of all of the program’s educational materials. In the spirit of self-reflection, Muñiz updated the Snapshot with numerous colleagues. They collaborated with experts at the University of Michigan’s Spectrum Center, Disability Navigators, and 20 diverse staff members at IGR. Adopting the Snapshot honors the intentional and collaborative work of these experts, whose goal was to create a tool that facilitates more inclusive and mindful discussions of identity.

Improvements to the Social Identity Snapshot

The Social Identity Snapshot improves upon the Wheel by:

1. Providing updated definitions of social categories and key concepts like privilege and marginalization.
2. Explicitly integrating intersectionality, helping students understand how multiple identities such as race, gender, class, and ability interact to shape lived experience.
3. Offering a more user-friendly layout that allows students to chart and visualize their experiences with greater ease.

Note: The Social Identity Snapshot uses social categories that are contextualized to the United States. Although it presents a comprehensive list of categories, they are not the final and only social categories one can use to identify themselves. Identity is always expanding and changing. Feel free to add additional social identity categories as needed. 

Recommendations from Patrick Kazyak-Albaladejo Muñiz

Another key takeaway from my conversation with Kazyak-Albaladejo Muñiz was their reminder that instructors must first complete the Snapshot themselves. Engaging in self-reflection enables instructors to critically examine their own positionality in the classroom and prepares them for the complex, and sometimes uncomfortable, conversations that may arise. Kazyak-Albaladejo Muñiz says, “any instructor who wants to lead this exercise with their students, at whatever age group they find appropriate, must take time to do this themselves.” They further emphasized that it is vital for the entire classroom “to feel responsible for the group—to hold everybody, including themselves, accountable.” It is the instructor’s duty to model self-reflection to create a brave and intentional space.

Furthermore, Kazyak-Albaladejo Muñiz noted that students sometimes express disagreement, vulnerability, or flawed ideas during discussion. To navigate these moments, IGR uses several strategies. The first is using two co-facilitators from diverse backgrounds to guide discussions and provide mutual support. This structure allows facilitators to check in with one another, address knowledge gaps, and model collaborative learning. Although IGR uses co-facilitation, it’s not a requirement of the Snapshot. Another one is teaching students how to lead with curiosity by asking questions that can challenge assumptions and expand the discussion. IGR’s Useful Questions for Dialogue Facilitation Handout is a great tool to support students with utilizing this approach. The final recommendation is developing classroom norms or guidelines to ensure everyone shares the same values. This is helpful because instructors and students can refer back to the guidelines throughout the Snapshot activity and expand them throughout the semester.  

Conclusion

The Social Identity Snapshot builds on the legacy of the Social Identity Wheel while advancing a more nuanced, inclusive, and mindful approach to dialoguing about identity. With updated language and a more expansive framework of identity, it is a better alternative to the Social Identity Wheel. Incorporating tools like the Snapshot into your classroom practice is a step toward cultivating learning environments where students have a stronger understanding of themselves and their impact on others.

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