On Socially Programmed Divisions
A thriving people need visibility, respect, and education. Empowerment simply will not occur without personal agency and knowledge of history. And no matter how much we want to justify our biases, the truth remains that steps toward progress will be in vain if we step dividedly.
The recent turn of events surrounding undocumented immigrants in the United States has demanded that I see our commonalities in a different respect. Immigrant rights are queer rights. As June Jordan so eloquently articulates in A New Politics of Sexuality, freedom is indivisible, and to divide ourselves into easy-to-reference categories creates a culture of compulsive taxonomy where the emphasis is on labeling, not truly seeing each other.
Presently, I fear our critical and over-active minds have tricked us again. We've lost ourselves in impassioned discussions of “immigrant rights” or “lesbian rights” without understanding that, as long as these discussions take place separately, we've signed the dotted line on a promissory note entitled We Are Not One.
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