This thesis is a study based in the lived experience of those defined both black and gay. Through analyses of performance work, I explore the interplay which creates white/black, straight/gay identity. I offer fragments of a historical account of that interplay and a critique of academic theories which, like my participants' performance material, work to understand the politics and processes of identification. I look at a piece of work which draws on principles of feminist standpoint epistemology to engage us in political action - Patience Agbabi's performed poem The Black The White and The Blue, at the shift in feminism to queer theory and at drag, butch and femme experience and performance. In Valerie Mason- John aka Queenie's performance piece Brown Girl in the Ring, I see how race, class and gender politics are modulated together. I see the queer perspective as transcending standpoint epistemology in an analysis of work by the photographer Ajamu. Judith Butler's Foucauldian theory of gender and sexuality is fundamental to my research. I build on it with thinking about raced identity and Pierre Bourdieu's theories of class. I also explore work on ritual and performance. Theorising identification as a complex and contingent intersection of processes, I bring ideas that work with the body and emotions to postmodern thought.