In her essay, “The Power of Identity Politics”, Alicia Garza discusses a conversation she overheard taking place at one of her favorite bars in California. A white woman essentially expresses that people need to get over the whole race thing, because she’s sick of it and feels like it’s dividing society rather than helping us grow closer. This seems like such a lazy and half-baked thought. It’s as if the woman in the essay decided to think about race for all of five minutes and decide that it’s no longer an issue because she doesn’t see herself as a racist.

         The reality is that, as the Garza discusses, “Power prefers to operate in obscurity”. By failing to acknowledge the issue at hand, the white woman doesn’t have to acknowledge her own privilege. This way she never has to reflect on the ways in which she is complicit in a system of oppression. Most people have a hard time admitting when they are wrong, and admitting wrongness involves taking responsibility for your own actions. Many white people think that just because they aren’t members of the KKK that their work in the fight against racism is done. 

         Thanksgiving is coming up, which is often a time when white people from major cities unite with their more sheltered and conservative relatives and have awkward conversations at the dinner table. Oftentimes no one at the table thinks of themselves as racist, but the difference is that those who tend to be younger and more politically progressive have hopefully contemplated and acknowledged their white privilege, while the older and more conservative family members often have not. It’s easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist. As Garza has written, for white people to admit that we are the oppressor race involves the negation of what lies at the core of conservative American values. 

         In their snapshot, Samantha Martinez posted a quote by Audre Lorde which states, “The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower”. Identity politics are most important for those whose identities the patriarchy has attempted to whitewash. In the article “Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina”, Aleichia Williams shares her experience of moving from New York to North Carolina as an Afro-Latina woman. When she sits with the Hispanic girls at lunch, they immediately shun her for her dark skin. Her article speaks to the fact that people love binaries, and it’s much easier for people to digest their surroundings in black and white than to take in all of the nuances. 

         I have experienced a similar, but different thing as a queer bisexual person. I’m too gay for the straights and too straight for the gays. Rather than treating sexuality as a spectrum, people want to place you in a box so that it’s something they can relate to. There is something about being bisexual that seems to threaten the sanctity of people’s own ideas about what it means to be gay or straight. Instead of having your identity respected you live your whole life with people not taking you seriously, sending you the message that you either need to come all the way out of the closet or go back inside and hide.