This week’s readings revolved around identity and identity politics. In The Power of Identity Politics by Alicia Garza, she begins by setting the scene at a bar. Garza explains there is a woman complaining about how a man she was talking to said that representation is important. The woman was annoyed by his statement saying that we shouldn’t focus so much on race and rather just accept one another as human. This blindness to race is a harmful approach that usually only leads to the furtherance of racism and microaggressions. Garza goes on to explain why this is a dangerous perspective and talks about power. Garza defines power as “the ability to make decisions that affect your own life and the life of others”. Garza also clarifies that there’s a difference between being empowered and power. Not all those who are empowered actually have power. 

  Garza then continues to explain identity politics. She says it is a way to describe the lives of those not in the “norm” of America. The norm being described as a control group in the United States. Then Garza mentions the reading from last week, The Combahee River Collective Statement.  She goes on to say that black feminists examined the women’s movement and eventually led to them defining identity politics. They observed that black women were not considered when white women were participating in said activism. 

  Garza continues with the story of the white woman at the bar and says that white people have brought this need to better represent and even have this conversation unto themselves. This is due to the categories created by white people that they have divided each skin color, class and sex into. Garza brings up another argument that people tend to make which is that we must move forward and away from the past. The author argues that this just leads to maintaining the harmful effects of racism. Garza refers to this as “amnesia” and declares it as harmful to those subject to oppression. 

  Then Garza begins speaking on the position of the right and says they are about principles based around “perseverance, rugged individualism, faith, and hard work”. The people that do not fit this notion of the norm threaten these ideals. Garza ends by saying power is to be distributed more equally.

  The second reading, Too Latina to Be Black, Too Black to Be Latina by Aleichia Williams speaks about her race crisis after moving to North Carolina from New York City. She did not realize how she was perceived would change so much when she moved. Her peers would say offensive things to her and she did not know where she fit in. Throughout the piece she writes that she was too Latina for her black peers and too black for her Latino peers. Ultimately though, she learns to embrace both aspects and does not let her identity be defined by just one thing. 

  I’d like to highlight Emily D’s post. I feel like it really connected to the piece by Alechia Williams. The image depicts what I interpret to be an identity crisis. Each of the fragments of each face makes up one shared identity.