Perhaps the most difficult kind of awareness within intersectionality is realizing when you're oppressing someone for whom society categorizes as 'just like you, enough to not matter to most of the rest of us.' In this instance, mainstream society categorizes all Indigenous Nations into one bloc, incorrectly, and doesn't view members within that bloc as capable of harming one another vis a vis axes of oppression. I beg you to please save yourself if you're doing this because it's painful to watch this repeat over and over and over and OVER, and in the end after hurting so many others you'll end up hurting yourself.Īva Jarvis, retired reviewer, Vietnamese person, has seen so many marginalized creators fall this way as to feel nauseated when this pops up repeatedly and wanting the cycle to JUST STOP ALREADY. I've seen this kind of sad story run its course too often. A very recent and well-publicized example that you should NOT emulate: Sherman Alexie. PLUS in the end, Whiteness has no loyalty to you, and will destroy you one day for some vice they'd eventually let slide with a White creator. That's going to haunt you eventually, and it will suck. Please do not appropriate from another marginalized culture even if you are yourself marginalized, it's a bad look and while it's financially successful to play into Whiteness in this way, you are legit hurting other people who are already hurt by the same society that is hurting you. But suffice to say that these examples are also rather successful despite how they negatively stereotype cultures society lumps in with the author. There are other examples I can think of but I don't want to bring them up here. It's no surprise that Roanhorse is using the language of Whiteness to defend her harmful appropriation as not harmful at all it's a language that utterly ignores social context to propagate lies, and is of course part of the system that perpetuates the false idea I mention in the previous paragraph. But as demonstrated in this situation, this is an idea based on falsehoods that it's too easy to assimilate into even as a marginalized person. Perhaps the most different kind of awareness within intersectionality is realizing when you're oppressing someone for whom society categorizes as 'just like you, enough to not matter to most of the rest of us.' In this instance, mainstream society categorizes all Indigenous Nations into one bloc, incorrectly, and doesn't view members within that bloc as capable of harming one another vis a vis axes of oppression.

This is very easy to forget, and something I've learned that it's best to be conscious of as much as possible-especially when creating (writing, visual art, programming, architecture, etc). Something that we all have to learn in the framework of intersectionality is that just because one faces oppression among one axis, that doesn't mean one can't also oppress others on that same axis, or on a different axis.

Race to the sun roanhorse