After reading the short story “Diaspora” by Joanne Hyppolite, I got a vivid understanding of how diaspora can have an effect on one’s identity. Over the past month we have studied many theories and concepts concerning race, gender, and politics. There are three theories that capture the essence of Joanne Hyppolite’s worldview as a Haitian growing up in America: intersectionality, identity, and diaspora.
Individuals oftentimes experience the theory of Intersectionality firsthand. For example, being raised in a majority-white community, African-Americans can often is forced to conform to the notion that they are an insignificant fraction of a population that does not matter. They will find it easy to go unnoticed in a community with a small amount of African-Americans, or at a school where they are the only black face in their classrooms. For African-American females, this tragedy can be even more troublesome because they may be the only black female in their respected classes.
The previous paragraph serves as an illustration of Intersectionality—“The examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation and how their combination plays out in various settings.” Something most individuals have a problem with is conforming to an environment in which live when they know that they are different, this result in an internal struggle with their identity. Most individuals lack a correct perspective of their outside world because of their internal struggle. They will not examine others standpoints; this idea is known as Perspectivalism. Utilizing Perspectivalism will help understand the predicament of the intersectionality of individuals. This leads me to discuss on essentialism and anti-essentialism. Essentialzing is defined as stated in the book “…entails a search for the proper unit, or atom, for social analysis and change.” Having multiple individuals with motivation for social change they have the power to change