My work is the politics of intersectionality and global justice. Identity is a discussion people engage in when they have given up on justice, equality, and equity. Conflicts over identity are often predicated on notions of scarcity, actual or perceived, which trigger the need to draw lines of inclusion and exclusion. The agenda behind conversations on identity is always about access. Access to tangibles—power, spoils of office, physical resources, necessities of survival, a place at the table, material rewards for belonging. Or access to intangibles—to civil rights, to being heard, to telling the story, to ownership of the story, to speaking from a certain platform. A discourse of identity is necessarily exclusive. It tends toward ever-narrowing definitions of who belongs, who is “in.” A discourse of justice and equality is inclusive. It tends towards ever-expanding definitions and applications. Its value is directly proportional to its universality. I’m with June Jordan, who wrote: “I will call you my sister, I will call you my brother, based on what you do for freedom, what you do for justice, what you do for equality, not on who you are.” And with Eduardo Galeano: “Our identity lies in action and struggle.”
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 17:18:04 +0000
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