ON IDENTITY POLITICS AND THE AVESTRUZ

While an anecdote does not make a history nor one fact makes a theory, they can be used to begin understanding a given phenomena. Once a group is formed around particular issues, which can lead to political demands, policy development or discussion with other groups, it can be argued that the issue has helped in creating a “concentrical identity formation”, not fixed in time, but in existence at a given moment. Group identity is not only driven buy ethnic or national or racial or sexual or class, but by other group concerns. To deny these groupings is to deny the history of humanity. As far as I know we have not become so “individualized” that we all exists in complete separation from others. When these “groupings” are formed in response to particular concerns, then either rational and civilized discussions take place or violent reactions explode, unless members of the group “esconden la cabeza como el avestruz”. It has been written that Harriet Tubman said, that she “could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." To deny the existence of group concerns or racism or homophobia or xenophobia can only help those who benefit or even enjoy being racist or homophobic or xenophobic. Some of us “no nos podemos dar el lujo de hacer como el avestruz” and pretend that one’s self or people with similar experiences are doing “just fine”. Identity politics is only about fixed nationalism or rigid essentialist characteristics in the minds and agendas of those who benefit from such racism or their own essentialist views; not only within the realm of the “reactionaries", but even among members of the so called progressive left or those who do not identify with any ideology or social or political grouping. Some people can be so universal or distanced from social concerns that they become elastic and transparent.