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LatCrit Praxis to Heal Fractured Communities
Get PDFThis Essay explores LatCrit praxis as a healing tool. Before turning to LatCrit practice, let me offer a preliminary observation that many Latinos are troubled by leading divided lives in fractured communities. This is exacerbated by social conditioning which encourages Latinos, as well as other outsiders, to fragment their identities. One of the benefits of LatCrit theory is that it encourages the process of working toward wholeness. At a recent conference which looked at the courage of those who have decided to live lives divided no more, Parker Palmer, the plenary speaker, suggested that the spark which causes people to decide to live divided no more is the understanding that [n]o punishment can possibly be more severe than the punishment that comes from conspiring in the denial of one\u27s own integrity. That is a very powerful realization. Many of us have experienced situations where we are asked to choose to conspire in our own diminishment - for instance, by recognizing only one of our many identities, while disregarding others. One of the tasks of LatCrit practice is to work towards rebuilding the wholeness of the Latino community. To say no when people ask us to live divided, fractured lives by insisting, for example, that we not speak Spanish, even if we do not know any other language. We must fight persistent efforts to silence us. If Spanish is part of our identity, we should not be asked to mask that identity or to fragment it by deleting that part. We cannot and should not leave our race or ethnicity behind. Thus, we need to work toward rebuilding wholeness and leading lives of dignity, con respeto (with respect)
Intersectionality and Positionality: Situating Women of Color in the Affirmative Action Dialogue
Get PDFThis article explores the position of women of color in the affirmative action dialogue. Affirmative action has come under attack locally, statewide, and federally. During this same period, critical race feminists have brought into sharp relief how women of color are marginalized or erased in discourses over sex and gender, as well as over race and ethnicity. Despite these protests and warnings, the current debate over affirmative action continues this history of invisibility, perpetuating America\u27s spoken and unspoken conceptions about where women of color belong. For example, most discussion of affirmative action focuses on race, more specifically on African-Americans. Some discussion looks at gender. To date, however, the affirmative action dialogue has not focused on women of color, resulting in a continuation of the nobodying the other phenomenon described by Professor Anthony Farley.\u27 This article attempts to rectify this omission by demonstrating that women of color constitute a category of identity uniquely implicated in the affirmative action debate. The story of women of color told in this article shows that without affirmative action the odds are greater that they will remain in the economic underclass, their acquisition of power will be hampered, and their subordinated status will be perpetuated. In telling their story, this article strives to change the status of women of color in two ways. First, by ensuring that the ongoing discourse over affirmative action includes women of color as vocal participants, storytellers, and agents of active change. Second, by arguing that various forms of affirmative action should remain in place specifically for women of color
