I liked how Garza in “The Power of Identity Politics” discussed “interlocking oppressions” in her explanation of identity politics. Her explaining the power imbalance between White Americans and everyone else expanded my understanding. Garza gave and analogy of white people being the control/standard in America that everyone else is judged based on. Because of this and white superiority, people of color, specifically women, face  “interlocking oppressions” like racism, sexism, capitalism, and heterosexism combined. This is where identity politics come into play, when fighting for freedom for women, the movement was only for the freedom of white women, not all women. There is the social/political issue of inequality and opression for women but white women are the only ones who are sympathized for and recive the benefits of the movement. Identity politics has to do with opressed groups like women of color being excluded from gaining the rights and freedoms they were fighting for along side white people. Being considered less-than in America causes their role in a movement to be overlooked or bashed as if they are undeserving of gaining rights and freedoms nonmatter the effort. In order to understand identity politics, you need to understand “interlocking oppressions” and the social/political hierarchy of white America and Garza’s article provided a great explanation of that.

In the remaining weeks I would love to further explore the impacts race has associated with gender. My aunt is a social worker and she just recently went back to school, one of her classes are discussing race’s impact on poverty. She was reading a study that compared the rate of poverty based on age, race, and gender. It was interesting to hear that there is a higher poverty rate for people of color, especially women. It’s sad that this information isn’t very surprising. I would want to explore this more and what could be, or is being done to address these statistics.