An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

Baldwin’s line treats identity not as a fixed essence or a label bestowed by society, but as something forged through an active stance toward life. “Experience” includes both what happens to a person and what a person inherits—history, race, family, desire, injury, and opportunity. The decisive factor is the way one “faces and uses” these materials: whether one confronts reality honestly, converts suffering into insight, and refuses the evasions that keep one trapped in others’ definitions. The phrasing also implies agency under constraint: circumstances may be imposed, but meaning and selfhood are shaped through response, interpretation, and moral choice.