Through observation in the perspective of an afro-latina, queer woman in the United States, even before becoming educated in the “why’s” of things, I noticed how I and others like myself were often being silenced, belittled, overly critiqued, and hypersexualized. I noticed how though white women faced many of these injustices, women of color faced them more often and within an entirely different context. When looking for quotes, I wanted to emphasize what I learned about the significance of race in colonial histories and legacies. I wanted to emphasize how the “othering” of indigenous and PoC women promotes the erasure and discreditation of valuable epistemologies, histories, and cultures. Many of the readings for Feminist Perspectives on Decolonization shed a light on how the overseas reaching claw of racism contributed to the justification of colonialism, abuse, and deliberate erasure, which meant a lot to my personal learning experience. To ignore the consequences of racism when taking on a decolonial lens is to ignore the indisputable truth. The intersections of race and gender are especially pervasive in histories of colonialism.
Because the effects of race and racism is something I constantly want to be aware of, I had already highlighted several quotes from our readings that caught my eye so it wasn’t too difficult to pull out my favorites. I started with the quote I thought was the most important; The “politics of erasure” is necessary to understand the historical trivialization of indigenous narratives, which includes the horrors of slavery. Though the idea “race” is a social construction, as who is perceived as white, black, etc. changes over the course of time, my next quote speaks about how the “coloniality of power” classifies people on the basis of the construction of race. The third quote depicts how the system feeds off the construction, describing how the term “illegal” has dominated discourses within the Latinx politic, but doesn’t circulate amongst undocumented Asian Americans in the same way. The fourth and fifth quotes relate to each other in how they describe the boundaries of who freedom is for: the “white, male, Eurocentric hegemon” and the sixth, seventh and eighth quotes depicts for whom freedom is not for. Afro-Latinas (the quote more specifically focuses on Peruvian women and society, but may extend to encompass many groups of women), are either caught as extremely invisible in one setting, or extremely visible in a belittled, primitive and sexualized way. My ninth quote serves as a call to action. It reminded me of a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “there comes a time when silence is betrayal”. If others choose to ignore the oppression of the black and indigenous woman, it is their duty to act against it. Through the final quote by Aurora Levins, I wanted to express that the mother of all comes from the heart of Africa. To disrespect your mother by abusing her daughters and your brothers and sisters, is to abuse yourself, your legacy, and your ancestors.
