On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day episode of Messy Liberation, Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown start with the “where are you really from?” question and follow it into who gets to look and who gets looked at. Taina, who is Afro-Latina with Taíno roots, explains the difference between race and ethnicity, what separates Latin from Hispanic, and why self-identification is a form of resistance. It’s an intersectional feminist conversation about objectification, colonialism, and letting people name themselves.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why “What are you?” is never okay, and how to tell real curiosity from nosiness
• Taina’s PT appointment, and a lifetime of being mistaken for Egyptian, Indian, Dominican, and Middle Eastern
• “Clarity is kindness”: why a blunt question can be better than a covert one
• Intent vs. impact: how treating someone as a puzzle to solve strips their dignity
• Becky’s confession about staring at a trans woman in an airport 30 years ago, and what she’d do differently now
• Who gets the privilege to look and who becomes the spectacle, from Shane Gillis’s SNL “spandex” joke to the history of slave auctions
• Oppositional looking: refusing to look away, and why white women should stare at cops, not at the people they’re harassing
• Jordan Peele, Get Out, and horror that doesn’t center whiteness
• Latin vs. Hispanic, explained through Brazil, Guyana, Mexico, and Puerto Rico
• Race as a social construct that still shapes real lives, plus the “file folder” metaphor for identity, gender, pronouns, and reclaimed language

Timestamps

• 00:00 – Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Hispanic Heritage Month & Filipino American History Month
• 02:42 – Being mistaken for everything: growing up racially ambiguous
• 07:00 – “It’s really none of your business”: lessons from college
• 11:40 – Objectification, intent vs. impact, and human dignity
• 17:47 – Shane Gillis, SNL, and who gets to be the object
• 21:00 – Ways of Seeing, Stuart Hall & oppositional looking
• 25:01 – Stare at power, not at the oppressed
• 26:40 – Jordan Peele, Get Out, and horror that doesn’t center whiteness
• 29:41 – Why travel (or a new neighborhood) can radicalize white folks
• 36:10 – Race as a social construct, from slavery to ICE sweeps
• 40:41 – Latin vs. Hispanic: what’s the difference?
• 47:48 – How perception changes race: New York vs. Florida
• 49:17 – The Hyphenated Life, file folders & gender as a construct
• 53:02 – Capitalism and the myth of limited categories
• 56:50 – Refusing the file folder: queer identity & she/they pronouns
• 1:00:05 – Messy Liberation Circle open house (Oct. 15)

Resources mentioned:

• "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger: https://link.amazon/B05cwPa5S
• “The Whites of Their Eyes” by Stuart Hall: https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/c/4578/files/2015/04/Hall-Whites_of_Their_Eyes_Full_Text.pdf?bid=4578
• “The Oppositional Gaze" by bell hooks: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduates/pgmodules/femlit/bell_hooks.pdf
• "The Hyphenated Life" by Han Ren: https://link.amazon/B03IkAQOr
• Messy Liberation Circle open house, Thursday, Oct. 15: https://bit.ly/4yjbTVW

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