A Letter to Crenshaw From a Latinegra Feminist Higher Education Access Scholar

• In Event: Toward Mentoring, Solidarity, and Equality: Faculty Women of Color in Higher Education

Abstract

The racialization of Latinidad within U.S. domestic borders is an area in need of contextualization, especially in relationship to the national discourse surrounding the militarization of police and the criminalization of Black and Brown bodies. Although Latina scholars have employed Chicana feminist epistemological frameworks in understanding college access and choice for Latina students, how can future research interrogate constructions of Latinidad as a form of black solidarity in moving to a more transnational understanding of racialization. Using postcolonial approaches in understanding college access and choice are examples of women of color scholars using transnational approaches in order to contextualize how white supremacy and capitalism function in shaping the college opportunities of low-income, Black and Latino populations, concurrently. As a woman of color faculty, the third panelist draws from Crenshaw’s (1991) “political intersectionality analyzing both feminists and antiracist politics (p. 1245)” in the relationship between global racializations, local communities and access to local higher education institutions. Furthermore, the identities of women of color faculty can be political tools in bringing intersectional solidarity. Preliminary work on reclaiming Blackness (i.e., within the Hispanophone Caribbean: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic) within conceptualization of Latinidad can further assist in theorizing inequality in college access and choice discourses shaping U.S. domestic and transnational Black and Brown populations.

Author

• Amalia Zuleyman Dache-Gerbino, University of Missouri - Columbia