Week 5 Draft Questions - Elena Orlando

1. Gonzalez writes that “Testimonio has been an important intervention in an effort to de-center subjective knowledge and Western research paradigms that often ‘other’ communities of color” (136). How does the partial and subjective knowledge produced in academia contribute to the processes that go into social death?
2.  Gonzalez quotes Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson who writes about relationality and its essence that “ we are the relationships that we hold and are a part of ” (136). How does relationality signify a transformation of U.S society? How would relationality change how farmworkers are being treated during COVID?
3. Within the song Sobreviviendo, the lyrics “The roots are what matters/for all humanity” were really powerful to me (Gonzalez, 134).  Why is honoring one’s roots essential to fighting practices of social death?
4. The racial wealth gap in the U.S. has a myriad of implications in COVID’s disparate impact on communities of color. How do the direct outcomes of the wealth gap on one’s vulnerability to premature death relate to Cacho’s concept of social death?