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California Western School of Law 
CWSL Scholarly Commons 
Faculty Scholarship 
1997 
Coalescing Communities, Discourses and Practices: Synergies in 
the Anti-Subordination Project 
Barbara Cox 
California Western School of Law, bjc@cwsl.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs 
 Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Cox, Coalescing Communities, Discourses and Practices: Synergies in the Anti-Subordination Project, in 
Symposium Issue from the “First Annual Lat/Crit Conference,” 2 Harv. Lat. L. Rev. 473 (1997). 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by CWSL Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for 
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Coalescing Communities, Discourses and Practices:
Synergies in the Anti-subordination Project
Barbara J. Cox*
As a law professor, I feel that I have to make my requisite three
remarks. First, I want to trade roles from the one that I had
yesterday as the official welcomer from California Western School
of Law and thank you for welcoming me to share this conversation
with you. As a non-latino white, I appreciate the opportunity to
listen and join in this discussion and your graciousness in not
holding my Anglo-Saxon ancestry against me, by not excluding me
from this conference, nor my mono-linguism against me, by mainly
speaking in English. On the geneological note, I will just say that
my ancestors are heavily Anglo-Saxon, English or Scottish. I am
also a first-generation lesbian born of heterosexual parents.
To briefly answer Sumi Cho's question about what my
community gets from perpetuation of the black/white paradigm
would be impossible, although I am not sure from which of the
many communities to which I belong that I should speak. As a
white person, it seems clear to me that maintaining the black/white
paradigm keeps me in a position of privilege and proves the
unimportance of all people of colors because "we" tend to say that
all of "you" are interchangeable and that we seek to maintain
distance from you. As a lesbian, my community includes people of
all races and ethnicities, and focusing on the black/white paradigm,
I think, helps to promote the invisibility of heterosexism.
Second, I want to compare some of the themes of this
conference with conversations that Frank Valdes and I have had
* Professor of Law, California Western School of Law. I want to thank Frank
Valdes, Gloria Sandrino, and Laura Padilla for inviting me to speak at the First
Annual LatCrit Conference.
Harvard Latino Law Review / LatCrit Symposium
about his presentations at various lesbian legal theory panels on his
claim that he is a lesbian. Professor Valdes makes this claim of
being a lesbian for two reasons. First, he wants to encourage
lesbians to talk about intersections and coalescing of communities.
Second, he wants us not to separate too far from helping to develop
queer, as opposed to only lesbian, legal theory. This conference
convinces me once again that Frank really does believe in
intersectionality, including recognizing both the need for particular
communities to speak among themselves without "outsiders" present
which must be balanced with the need for diverse communities to
speak to and build coalitions with one another. I argued with Frank
about this after a conference we attended in Portland in which he
was the only man on a panel during a discussion about lesbian legal
theory.2 While what he had to say and to offer was provocative and
did push us to discuss how lesbian legal theory and queer legal
theory need to connect and help each other to develop, there
remains enough lesbian separatist in me to tell him that I was not
particularly thrilled he was there. I wanted to enjoy the small time
that "we" had (only four hours in a three-day conference) to discuss
lesbian legal theory with lesbians - not with men who claim to be
lesbian. That conversation continued at the first "Lesbian Issues and
the Law" symposium at USC3 where we both spoke again, and I
again questioned whether there was room for him to be there. In
this same way, I think you should question whether there is room
1 As colleagues at California Western, Frank and I have had numerous
conversations about identity, intersectionality, and maintaining "women-only
space" and upeople of color-only spaces in conferences. These discussions have
been informative, provocative, and close to my heart.
2 That was at the Lavender Law Conference in October, 1994. The Lavender
Law Conference is held every two years as a place for gay, lesbian, bi, and
transgendered attorneys, law professors, law students, and legal workers to meet
together.
3 The proceedings of that conference, sponsored by the Southern California
Review of Law and Women's Studies, were published in Symposium: Lesbians
in the Law, 5 S.CAL.Rv.L.& WoMEN's STuD. 7 (1995).
Volume 2, Fall 1997
for me to be here.
It seems interesting to me, however, that Frank has now helped
organize this first annual LatCrit conference, separate and different
from the race conferences. Perhaps it is that he listens to me. More
likely, he and the rest of you are claiming the space that I spoke of
wanting on those two previous occasions. From the conversations
I have listened to already in the last two days, it sounds clear that
most of the people here also want that space. But he, and again it
sounds like most of you, also see the need for coalescing of
communities by asking me to speak - not as a non-Latino white, but
if possible as a Latina. So I too have changed places from the
position I held earlier when having these discussions with Frank.
My conversations with Frank have led me to understand why his
question is so important. For while it is important for you to
question whether I can be Latina, just as I questioned whether Frank
can be lesbian, it is also important for me to consider what it would
mean for me to be Latina and to give up my Anglo-Saxon privilege.
Similarly, it is important for Frank and other gay men to consider
what it would mean for them to be lesbian and to give up their male
privilege. As it is important for the lesbian community to include
in our conversations those who are wanting to build coalition with
us, it is important for the Latino/Latina community to include, as
you have done with this conference, those of us who want to learn
from and build coalition with you. Perhaps my conversations with
Frank and the conversations at this conference make clear the need
both for a LatCrit conference and the need for LatCrits to continue
their work at RaceCrit and other Crit conferences.
Third, I want to ask all of us to coalesce our communities on an
even broader scale. Not only is it important that I do RaceCrit and
LatCrit and FemCrit and QueerCrit and LesbianCrit work, but I
also ask that all of you do those too. For example, as a hope for
continuing change in the legal academy and its hopefully increasing
space for more Latina scholars and support for their scholarship,
perhaps at the second LatCrit conference a woman will be one of the
keynote speakers.
Harvard Latino Law Review /LatCrit Symposium
Perhaps before that next conference, I can also get more
involved in opposing the English-only movement and the California
Civil Rights Initiative ("CCRr') that is trying to abolish affirmative
action. It seems clear to me, since moving to San Diego from the
midwest, that the English-only movement is not just a regressive,
organized, conservative political movement. My partner, Peg
Habetler, who is a non-Latino white, works at Home Depot in
Imperial Beach, which is the first beach town this side of the
border. She is in the vast minority among both the employees and
the customers as a non-Latina white. She struggles daily with the
result of the English-only movement from her educational years in
the 1950s and 1960s in Wisconsin. There was no organized
movement against the Spanish language, as far as I know; I saw no
references to it in Juan Perea's article anyway. The result of the
English-only movement can be seen from the absence of anyone
explaining the importance to learn a language that is the second
most widely spoken language in this country and the absence of
much opportunity to do so. The result, however, is the same that
the English-only movement wants. Customers and other employees
who want to communicate with her must do so in English, for that
is all her monolinguism permits. As for the CCRI, I could argue
that the reason I have not gotten involved results from the anger I
feel that gay men and lesbians are such "others" that we are not even
included in the affirmative action debates. Virtually everyone seems
to believe that sexual orientation affirmative action has no right to
even be discussed. But while that anger is quite justified, it should
not keep me from working against an initiative that would gut
existing civil rights laws, since I know of their importance to our
community fight against racism, sexism, and ethnic discrimination.
Perhaps before the next conference I can also ask you to get
more involved in opposing the anti-gay initiatives and the bills
cropping up in legislatures around the country opposing marriages
by same-sex couples. I asked Lambda Legal Defense and Education
Fund, with whom I am writing a book on recognition of same-sex
marriages on a state-by-state basis, to let me know which people of
Volume 2, Fall 1997
color organizations had signed Lambda's "marriage resolution."
The marriage resolution states that because marriage is a basic
human right and an individual personal choice, it is resolved the
state should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to
marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities and
commitment of civil marriage. Of the 110 people of color
organizations contacted, only 12 have signed the resolution. All 12
of those organizations are lesbian or gay people of color
organizations. This is suprising because inter-racial and inter-ethnic
couples were the victims of the latest and most insidious
discrimination seen in marriage discrimination, but those
communities on the whole have not entered the fight on the right of
helping to obtain the right to marry for same-sex couples. Asking
why and working to push those communities to organize around this
issue, as well as the many other pressing issues facing them, is
needed.
In closing, it is important that we do work within our
communities, such as the conversation that is going on at this
conference, to make us strong, conversant, and aware of the issues
particular to those communities alone. It is also important that, as
our communities grow in strength and understanding, we coalesce
with the other communities around us to fight the forces that
threaten our very existence. Thanks again for making space for me
at this conference.



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