Luz del Alba Acevedo in her testimony, “Speaking Among Friends: Whose Empowerment, Whose Resistance?’ displays the challenges and contradiction between feminism race and ethnicity in implementing new curriculums to undergraduate studies focusing on women studies.
This reading provoked in me the most interesting of reactions because I had never read anything on this topic before. I think it would be great in the United States could incorporate a nation wide “basic” curriculum for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Women Studies.
I would like to point put the distinction the author makes between “what a woman is” and “who we are as women”(page 251).
I feel that the transition that Luz del Alba Acevedo mentions from being invisible to being the visible minority might be an experience that many of the “other” might experience when they arrive to this country, however sometimes is not always in the same way for everybody. I have a personal experience to share, before moving to the United States I was always Costarricense, if somebody (not that I remember anyone doing it) asked where I was from, Costa Rica that would be the answer, simple as that. I had always lived with Costarricenses around me.
When you separate yourself from the comfortable space is when you start realizing who you are. Oh the first thing here when I was applying for school, how would you describe yourself?
Latino, White, Asian, Other.. I was in my head like “hmm I am white”, I associated whiteness to the color of one’s skin, not to race nor ethnicity..
Who defines diversity? After these profesoras find themselves with this puzzle, a new code for the “other” is created “women of color” I wouldn’t necessarily say Asian are people of color, then we go again with the differentiation between color, and ethnicity. Luz argues how her professionalism was shadowed by the university’s need to fulfill their inclusion and multiculturalism quota.
It is amazing how whiteness would mostly be associated with patriarchal power regardless of gender. I cannot believe the whole women’s studies faculty would team up against a professor that challenges their ideological teachings, instead of acting as professionals in their field they behaved as petty ignorant people.
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