Ferguson's Identity Politics with The Color Purple

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men”. Alice Walker’s quotation seems to express her concerns on discourses like racism, gender and sexism. Walker continues to examine and critiques these discourses through her novel The Color Purple. In comparison, How does Roderick Ferguson’s critique of the theorization of identity and the discourses of queer women of color related to Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”? 

How does Ferguson and Walker reflect these discourses of queer people of color to real life situations? Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” explores and exposes the different obstacles of queer women of color from sexual abuse by family, to physical abuse by husbands, to the relationship of matriarchy and patriarchy, to sexual orientation, and to sex and race relations. These concepts of queer, race, gender, and sexual orientation revolve around the creation of a person’s self. In this paper, it will be argued that Alice Walkers “The Color Purple” is significantly related to Roderick Ferguson’s notions of the theory of identity and his critiques of queer people of color. 

The Moynihan Report created by Daniel Patrick Moynihan from Ferguson’s critique gives a notion that to further the civil rights movement the family structure of African Americans should be based on patriarchy and that a woman being head of the household only sets it back. “As a familial formation that “retards progress” because of its non-heternormative conformity, the female-headed household impedes the march of civil rights” (Ferguson pg 123).