 A new advert from the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, has sparked a debate about how identity politics can be mobilized by establishment institutions. The ad is called Humans of CIA and is delivered alongside the hashtags Know Your Worth and Women in Intel. When I was 17, I quoted Zora Neale-Hurston's How It Feels to Be Colored Me in my college application essay. The line that spoke to me stated simply, I am not tragically colored. There is no sorrow, damned up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. At 17, I had no idea what life would bring, but Zora's sentiment articulated so beautifully how I felt as a daughter of immigrants then and now. Nothing about me was or is tragic. I am perfectly made. I can wax eloquent on complex legal issues in English while also belting Guayaquil de Misamores in Spanish. I can change a diaper with one hand and console a crying toddler with the other. I am a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender millennial who's been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise. I am a walking declaration, a woman whose inflection does not rise at the end of her sentences, suggesting that a question has been asked. I did not sneak into CIA. My employment was not and is not the result of a fluke or slip through the cracks. I earned my way in, and I earned my way up the ranks of this organization. I am educated, qualified, and competent. And sometimes I struggle. I struggle feeling like I could do more, be more, to my two sons. And I struggle leaving the office when I feel there's so much more to do. I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, but at 36, I refuse to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be. I am tired of feeling like I'm supposed to apologize for the space I occupy, rather than intoxicate people with my effort, my brilliance. I am proud of me, full stop. My parents left everything they knew and loved to expose me to opportunities they never had. Because of them, I stand here today a proud first-generation Latina and officer at CIA. I am unapologetically me. I want you to be unapologetically you, whoever you are. Know your worth. Command your space. Miha, you're worth it. Now, that video went viral largely after it was tweeted by some left accounts, including Ayesha Ahmad, a PhD student at Oxford. Now, alongside the video she wrote, actual quotes from this new CIA recruitment at, I am a woman of color. I am a cisgender millennial. I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional. She says, I think it's safe to say the contemporary American left has failed. What do you make of that video and do you agree with Ayesha Ahmad that it is proof the American left has failed? Welcome to intersectional rendition, baby. We're going to waterboard you, but we're going to be sensitive of your identity and marginalization while we do it. Only macroaggressions here. Only macroaggressions here. Rest assured, I will not touch your hair as I hook electrodes to your nipples and put your feet in the water. Okay, so what's going on here? Is this a failure of the American left? Is this pointing to the inerrant decadence and individualism of identity politics? Well, a bit, yes and no. The reason why this language has made it up to the CIA is because it's already been used in corporate diversity and inclusion measures. So this is something which has already been appropriated and taken very, very far away from the kinds of contexts of grassroots organizing in which it first emerged. And I think that it does speak to some weaknesses in terms of the politics of it that something which did come from these radical spaces has been transformed into simply rhetorical and aesthetic gestures which communicate a sense of political identity, but actually are completely devoid of political principles or any kind of structural critique. So yeah, it does speak to a certain weakness within the politics that this was able to happen. But look, it's the American Empire. They've managed to appropriate all sorts of progressive movements and languages and discourses in order to further the goals of domination and pursue American foreign policy goals. So cast your mind back to the war on terror. It was absolutely drenched in the language of liberalism and also in some cases, the language of feminism. I remember seeing one of those posters of female American fighter pilots and the tag line was, hey, Taliban, look at the sky. Your women can't drive, but ours can. So would you say that that means that feminism just needed to be chucked in the bin? No, you can have an awareness of how these things are appropriated and still maintain a sense of well, no, like anti-racist, discourses are unbalanced good. So our ones around transgender rights, our ones around gay rights and acceptance of marginal identity is generally, that's a good thing. It doesn't mean that it can't be appropriated. It can and it will be appropriated. And the American status is, I think, in some ways uniquely good at that. If we said that the moment someone bad uses the framing, you have to drop it, I mean, we don't have to drop working class long ago because, I mean, Donald Trump used that to promote American empire. I mean, he wasn't the first person to do that either. So I think that was a very nuanced take that even if that was one of the grossest two minute videos I've probably ever seen in my life.