In the reading from The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, Garza says about the views of those in power, “unable to acknowledge why there are those who can not separate their lived experience from the identities they have adopted or have been given to them, without choice or agency.” This really helps me understand Identity Politics because it reframes the problem by calling out wrong thinking. Pointing out that an identity, whether chosen or not, is political and effects a person’s life in political matters that are bigger than them. Denying that this is real, denying that there are Politics of identity is the exact reason there is Identity Politics.
A perfect example of this is in the article Too Latina to be Black, to Black to be Latina by Aleichia Williams. Aleichia fits into too many categories than have been made for her to fit into. She is black, she is Latina, and she has moved to a place in the US where their range of identities is much narrower than where she came from in NYC. In NYC there is more room for people to be more diverse than the tiny boxes they’re forced to fit into. But when you see her go to a place that’s even smaller and she experiences what her identity means in real time. The new kids at her school are pretty much telling her she doesn’t make sense because she is too diverse, too mixed, she is making them question what they thought they knew so well about their own identities.
This is a perfect example of being forced into an identity, even when she didn’t want to. She had to become completely aware of the fact that she was both Latina and black, and that identity had to become a part of her life because it was effecting her life. To deny that Identity Politics exists is to deny this very real experience. People are living by identities they have taken on without even knowing it, they are limiting themselves by an identity they didn’t create and don’t question. Until someone comes along who is both of those identities and blows their mind. Then she has to have the experiences of becoming aware that she has an identity that never existed for her before.
Identities are constructs of place and mind. That, in turn, is someones reality. I do think that Identity Politics is confusing, but I understand that there are Identities in Politics.
