As much as it has been ridiculed and listed as a tragedy by the right, I believe exploration of identity politics is very important, and it’s very nice to see that it has been explored so much by younger people today through social media, as well as having reached more people that had yet to explore. The more people identify personally with these different aspects of themselves, such as their race, sexuality, or gender or ethnicity the better they can see how different oppressive systems personally affect not only them but the people they know. Something that I have seen for a long time and that I noted in the article by Aleichia Williams was how “latino” culture is essentially raceless, but operates as if it did include race. Not only that, but I feel personally that different races of people that call themselves “latino/latina” see being latino differently. By and large “latino” by statistic and population count, technically refers to what has been called “mestizo” by colonizer/settlers, and which means a person of mixed indigenous and white descent. However, because of systems of oppressors and intended miseducation, latino often refers to anyone from the colonized lands of central and south america. It is these people that were sitting at the table when Aleichia Williams sat down that assume that she is not also latina, or that she spoke the same colonizer language that they do. The warping of the meaning of latino into a racial identity is a very great shame, and I have seen it stand firmly in the way of many a colonized victim from their own liberation. To attempt to follow the logic, an indigenous/mixed person in latin america can refer to themselves not as indigenous, but with a different racial label that also refers to people that arrived to the same land by boat, overtook it through strategic genocide, directly impacting their own indigenous ancestors and placing them low on their new power hierarchy, allow those white descendants to call themselves latino and in fact maybe personally refer to them with it, but at the same time turn around and scoff and attack a black person whose ancestors were also affected by the white person’s ancestors, arrived in the same boats with them against their will, and placed just below them in this new social ladder. The mental gymnastics is learned over the course of centuries, but it is especially ridiculous to believe when it is laid out.