The Intersection of Identity and Consumption

Sor Juana's life exemplified how identity—her gender, her intellectual ambitions, her mixed heritage—intersected with her access to knowledge, voice, and power. Similarly, consumption is never neutral: it's intimately tied to identity, culture, and structural inequality. For marginalized communities, supporting Black-owned, Latinx-owned, Indigenous, or women-led businesses isn't just consumer choice—it's assertion of dignity, preservation of culture, and economic self-determination. Conversely, dominant groups often consume without awareness that their choices reinforce existing hierarchies. Ethical consumption requires understanding these intersections: how your purchasing power either reinforces or challenges systemic inequities. Sor Juana would insist that justice requires recognizing how consumption affects different people differently based on their position in power structures. Ethical consumption thus becomes attentive to identity, intentionally using purchasing to uplift marginalized makers, preserve cultural knowledge embedded in traditional crafts, and support communities building economic alternatives outside exploitative systems.