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The politics of identity.

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Each reading from this week made me go back to the negotiation of my own identities in life. As a non-resident alien in US, as a oriya Brahmin in India, as a middle class family, as a researcher with subaltern groups and so on. We all as Andalzua writes, live in borderlands, straddle them, look across the borders. We also form our own 'imagined communities' (Anderson) in those spaces. Our history, our ancestors lives, they define us, our paths whether we are conscious of it or not. This is so revealing when one reads the accounts of the Black folks and the successive movements that have brought this population, this country to where it is. (if John really comes home!!). The identity of being a Black in this country has a lot of history behind it which continues to shape and reshape the present and reflects on the social conditions with grievous results. Nonetheless, the framings and representations continue, as in Mississippi Burning or in Black auto-ethnographies or in music videos and their analyses. The question is which argument is privileged and by whom. Malcom X for all his rhetoric never really practices what he preached or comes out of Elijah Muhammad's shadow on his own. It was also interesting to see the strong association and leadership role of the Nation of Islam (current vestiges alive in Louis Farrakhan etc..) and Black struggle in the US and the continuous call of Malcom X to identify with non white populations and also Muslims globally. I could not help but thinking that how would this be reflecting on the current strategy documents of the US government regarding the Black population after 9/11 and the war against terror in Islamic countries like Iraq, Pakistan, Afganistan.
In my recent trip with BCC to Chicago I saw an exhibition on the Black panther party and the courage of the educated, creative and brave members against a repressive police and security force. I wonder if those events are forgotten or they do make an impression on the psyche of the black population today.
Inequality is a reality which people deal with everyday for living their lives globally; this is the story of Blacks, browns, other shades of color, hispanics, mestiza, queer, chicano/a, indigenous people, tribals, Dalits, the list keeps lengthening. A key commonality is money and access to resources. That many a times becomes a definer of how unequal you are (notwithstanding today's knowledge economy!!). I feel, in the end, its the politics of identity and representation. And this politics is highly connected and at the same time removed from the material inequalities, material realities.

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