Gloria Anzaldua Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana lesbian author and activist, contributed to the queer of color critique by documenting and theorizing how queerness and sexuality interact with culture and language. In her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldua challenges readers to understand "borders," not merely as physical barriers that divide nation-states, but as an articulation of identity- invisible boundaries that exist inside the body. Anzaldua writes of her Chicana lesbian experience: "We're afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza, for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows [...] We try to make ourselves conscious of the Shadow-Beast, stare at the sexual lust and lust for power and destruction we see on its face, discern among its features the under-shadow that the reigning order of heterosexual males project on our Beast. Yet still others of us take it another step: we try to waken the Shadow-Beast inside us." Anzaldua articulates herself always stuck at a border, attacked and rejected by both native culture and white culture for holding the truth of her lesbian identity: "Woman does not feel safe when her own culture, and white culture, are critical of her; when the males of all races hunt her as prey. Alienated from her mother culture, "alien" in the dominant culture, the woman of color does not feel safe within the inner life of her Self. Petrified, she can't respond, her face caught between, los intersticios, the spaces between the different worlds she inhabits." This account of queer experience illuminates how different forms of oppression manifest in the body. Anzaldua provides a narrative that explains "dual consciousness" of having to understand both dominant and non-dominant cultures to live in two worlds, both rejecting certain aspects of identity. Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Revised tenth anniversary edition., Routledge, 2000. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true db=cat00456a%DIFDELCMD < &%%% AN=ua.1040129 site=eds-live%DIFDELCMD < &%%% scope=site. Gloria Anzaldua draws on this narrative in an anthology titled This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which she coedited with Cherrie MoragaMoraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa . This Bridge Called My Back : Writings by Radical Women of Color. Fourth edition., SUNY Press, 2015. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true db=cat00456a%DIFDELCMD < &%%% AN=ua.4100129 site=eds-live%DIFDELCMD < &%%% scope=site. This Bridge Called My Back challenges the whiteness of mainstream queer discourse and uplifts and centers the political voices of marginalized women in an attempt to build international solidarity across difference: "We each are our sisters' and brothers' keepers; no one is an island or has ever been. Every person, animal, plant, stone is interconnected in a life and death symbiosis. We are each responsible for what is happening down the street, south of the border or across the sea." This provides a global perspective to queer theory and shows how individual liberation is bound to the international collective. Limits of Queer Politics Building on this scholarship, author and activist Cathy Cohen illuminates the misgivings, contradictions and limitations of queer politics as they are currently constructed, while highlighting how queer theory and practice have radical potential for transformative change (1997). As is, queer politics "is understood as "in your face" politics of a younger generation...a willingness to confront normalizing power." Yet, as Barbara Smith points out, queer activists too often "seem to operate in a historical and ideological vacuum"  Here lies one of the contradictions in queer theory: it unapologetically fights against normative hegemonic structures, but fails to see the nuances of white normativity and class oppression within and outside the queer community. Queer identifying people participate and benefit from dominant institutions based on class status, while heterosexual people on welfare get policed for their sexual behavior or promiscuity. What defines queerness? Cohen argues the term "queer" is associated with assumptions of race (whiteness) and class privilege, preventing queers of color from wanting to participate fully in the community: "Because of my multiple identities, which located me and other queer people of color at the margins in this country, my material advancement, my physical protection and my emotional wellbeing are constantly threatened." An expanded understanding of queer, beyond sexual orientation, as a resistance to all oppressive systems of power, would be to broaden the scope of queer politics. Brittney Cooper articulates that "one can't truly be a feminist if you don't really love women. And loving women deeply and unapologetically is queer as fuck." Cooper extends the label of queer to mean resistance to and rejection of dominant culture's norms. The queer of color critique might incorporate this understanding of queer and argue, alongside Cohen, that in order to become more radical and liberatory, queer politics must center "the marginal positions of punks, bull daggers, and welfare queens, for example, [as] the basis for progressive transformative coalition building." Queer of Color Critique Today: In Theory and Practice Queer of color critique exists to challenge and push queer theory toward greater inclusivity and intersectionality. By centering the lived experiences of trans and gender non-conforming people of color, and operating in an anti-Black framework, transformative solutions and collective liberation become possible. In Unapologetic: A Black Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, Charlene Carruthers- an organizer from Chicago- articulates a Black queer feminist lens as "a political praxis (practice and theory) based in Black feminist and LGBTQ traditions and knowledge, through which people and groups see to bring their full selves into the process of dismantling all systems of oppression. By using this lens, we are aided in creating alternatives of self-governance and self-determination, and by using it we can more effectively prioritize problems and methods that center historically marginalized people in our communities." Carruthers, Charlene. Unapologetic: A Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements. Beacon Press, 2018. In practice, organizations across the globe are doing work to dismantle systems of political oppression, create tangible change for people and seek joy in the process of the work. Among those practicing the queer of color critique include but are not limited to: The House of Tulip, Southern Fried Queer Pride, The Transgender Law Center and Spirit House. For example, the House of Tulip is a land justice organization that fights gentrification in New Orleans and provides affordable housing through community land trusts to trans and gender nonconforming people who are historically marginalized from accessing safe and stable housing. This work has long term political goals of disrupting racist and homophobic discrimination while providing tangible change to the experiences of trans and gender nonconforming young people, demonstrating how the queer of color critique can manifest in political practice.
Gloria Anzaldua Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana lesbian author and activist, contributed to the queer of color critique by documenting and theorizing how queerness and sexuality interact with culture and language. In her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldua challenges readers to understand "borders," not merely as physical barriers that divide nation-states, but as an articulation of identity- invisible boundaries that exist inside the body. Anzaldua writes of her Chicana lesbian experience: "We're afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza, for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows [...] We try to make ourselves conscious of the Shadow-Beast, stare at the sexual lust and lust for power and destruction we see on its face, discern among its features the under-shadow that the reigning order of heterosexual males project on our Beast. Yet still others of us take it another step: we try to waken the Shadow-Beast inside us." Anzaldua articulates herself always stuck at a border, attacked and rejected by both native culture and white culture for holding the truth of her lesbian identity: "Woman does not feel safe when her own culture, and white culture, are critical of her; when the males of all races hunt her as prey. Alienated from her mother culture, "alien" in the dominant culture, the woman of color does not feel safe within the inner life of her Self. Petrified, she can't respond, her face caught between, los intersticios, the spaces between the different worlds she inhabits." This account of queer experience illuminates how different forms of oppression manifest in the body. Anzaldua provides a narrative that explains "dual consciousness" of having to understand both dominant and non-dominant cultures to live in two worlds, both rejecting certain aspects of identity. %DIFDELCMD < &%%% %DIFDELCMD < &%%% Gloria Anzaldua draws on this narrative in an anthology titled This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which she coedited with Cherrie Moraga . This Bridge Called My Back %DIFDELCMD < &%%% %DIFDELCMD < &%%% challenges the whiteness of mainstream queer discourse and uplifts and centers the political voices of marginalized women in an attempt to build international solidarity across difference: "We each are our sisters' and brothers' keepers; no one is an island or has ever been. Every person, animal, plant, stone is interconnected in a life and death symbiosis. We are each responsible for what is happening down the street, south of the border or across the sea." This provides a global perspective to queer theory and shows how individual liberation is bound to the international collective. Limits of Queer Politics Building on this scholarship, author and activist Cathy Cohen illuminates the misgivings, contradictions and limitations of queer politics as they are currently constructed, while highlighting how queer theory and practice have radical potential for transformative change (1997). As is, queer politics "is understood as "in your face" politics of a younger generation...a willingness to confront normalizing power." Yet, as Barbara Smith points out, queer activists too often "seem to operate in a historical and ideological vacuum" . Here lies one of the contradictions in queer theory: it unapologetically fights against normative hegemonic structures, but fails to see the nuances of white normativity and class oppression within and outside the queer community. Queer identifying people participate and benefit from dominant institutions based on class status, while heterosexual people on welfare get policed for their sexual behavior or promiscuity. What defines queerness? Cohen argues the term "queer" is associated with assumptions of race (whiteness) and class privilege, preventing queers of color from wanting to participate fully in the community: "Because of my multiple identities, which located me and other queer people of color at the margins in this country, my material advancement, my physical protection and my emotional wellbeing are constantly threatened." An expanded understanding of queer, beyond sexual orientation, as a resistance to all oppressive systems of power, would be to broaden the scope of queer politics. Brittney Cooper articulates that "one can't truly be a feminist if you don't really love women. And loving women deeply and unapologetically is queer as fuck." Cooper extends the label of queer to mean resistance to and rejection of dominant culture's norms. The queer of color critique might incorporate this understanding of queer and argue, alongside Cohen, that in order to become more radical and liberatory, queer politics must center "the marginal positions of punks, bull daggers, and welfare queens, for example, [as] the basis for progressive transformative coalition building." Queer of Color Critique Today: In Theory and Practice Queer of color critique exists to challenge and push queer theory toward greater inclusivity and intersectionality. By centering the lived experiences of trans and gender non-conforming people of color, and operating in an anti-Black framework, transformative solutions and collective liberation become possible. In Unapologetic: A Black Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, Charlene Carruthers- an organizer from Chicago- articulates a Black queer feminist lens as "a political praxis (practice and theory) based in Black feminist and LGBTQ traditions and knowledge, through which people and groups see to bring their full selves into the process of dismantling all systems of oppression. By using this lens, we are aided in creating alternatives of self-governance and self-determination, and by using it we can more effectively prioritize problems and methods that center historically marginalized people in our communities." In practice, organizations across the globe are doing work to dismantle systems of political oppression, create tangible change for people and seek joy in the process of the work. Among those practicing the queer of color critique include but are not limited to: The House of Tulip, Southern Fried Queer Pride, The Transgender Law Center and Spirit House. For example, the House of Tulip is a land justice organization that fights gentrification in New Orleans and provides affordable housing through community land trusts to trans and gender nonconforming people who are historically marginalized from accessing safe and stable housing. This work has long term political goals of disrupting racist and homophobic discrimination while providing tangible change to the experiences of trans and gender nonconforming young people, demonstrating how the queer of color critique can manifest in political practice.
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Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Revised tenth anniversary edition., Routledge, 2000. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true
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MoragaMoraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa
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: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Fourth edition., SUNY Press, 2015. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true
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scope=site. This Bridge Called My Back
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Carruthers, Charlene. Unapologetic: A Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements. Beacon Press, 2018.