This week’s reading hit home for me. Especially Aleichia Williams’s article. The title alone, “Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina,” struck me because that exact statement has been an internal struggle of mine, or a “race crisis” as she puts it, for a long time. This is an issue that I don’t think many people are aware of because it is not openly discussed often. Like the reoccurring concept we discuss in this class, most people aren’t aware of or care about an issue unless it effects themselves. I enjoyed reading this article, I could relate to Williams’s struggle with identity. Feeling excluded form communities, you should be embraced by and being put into a box by society. This reading reminded me of identity representation in the media, movies like West Side Story and In The Heights being celebrated for representation but only represent Hispanic people stereotypically. I didn’t look like not one of the characters shown in either of those movies and it was discouraging. And this kind of representation feeds into the boxed/restricted idea many people have of Latin people. While a movie like Disney’s Encanto showed Hispanic people of all colors with different hair types, even the family members each looking different from one another. Seeing this kind of representation in a move made me emotional, finally having a depiction of a Hispanic family that resembles my own. Seeing Encanto made me hopeful that people seeing this kind of representation will eliminate “race crisis” because of unacceptance or being denied from communities because you ware “too Black or Too Latin.”

This week’s readings, both “Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina” and Alicia Garza’s “The Power of Identity Politics” call attention to the way race and identity intertwine. Oftentimes, people try to separate race and identity and ethnicity without realizing how much identity truly impacts race. One cannot be discussed without the other. The separation of race, identity and ethnicity is what causes “race crisis” because it categorizes race with guidelines (“if you’re Hispanic you look and act like this, if you’re Black your supposed to look and act like that”). It is not a simple, white and black topic and these readings highlight that.