Dear Campus Community,
We have an idea, and we want to run it by you.
The Oracle has strived to include diverse voices and stories. We believe we have been successful in this department, but to a point. We think we can do better, and we want to ask you to help align us with this goal, for the overall education, compassion and political consciousness of New Paltz.
This semester, we are introducing a new column: Crossroads. As the metaphor of a crossroad suggests, this column is all about intersectionality. Mainly, this column will focus on intersectionality in feminism: weekly stories, opinions, voices of women of color, genderexpansive people, trans women and any other people that all “waves” of feminism have historically and systemically left out.
But intersectionality doesn’t stop at feminism and neither will Crossroads. Coined by civil rights advocate and Columbia Law professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, intersectionality is a lens that highlights how a person’s many social, ethnic, political, sexual, gender, etc., identities overlap or “intersect” to form the person’s unique lived experience.
For example in the realm of feminism, the experiences of a white woman and a Black woman differ so feminism will differ for white and Black women. Further, the experiences of a Black woman differ from a queer Black woman, and so on. According to this way of thinking, the experience of “woman” is relatively empty without recognizing the unique identities that contribute to different people’s lived experience of “woman.”
We invite you to ask yourself, how is my identity unique? What forms my identity? Where do I or an aspect of myself feel underrepresented by the dominant culture?
And with that, if it feels right, we invite you to share the story of you in Crossroads. Any and all submissions are welcome (personal columns, culture or campus critiques, etc.). Not a writer? Don’t worry. We can work with you to share your story in the most authentic and powerful way possible. . . and if that means we don’t touch it, great.
Any and all diverse voices and their stories deserve to be heard and we invite you to start here at The Oracle.
Email interest or story submissions to spencea1@newpaltz.edu or eisenbee1@newpaltz.edu.
Much love,
Ethan and Amayah