Ed Equity Autobiography

The majority of what I “know” about myself has been challenged and redefined in my recent college years at Willamette. I entered college feeling very much that I was an individual, unique and special, pretty sure of who I was and what I believed in. Through a series of influential classes and opportunities in Residence Life and student activism, I learned that I am, in fact, hugely influenced by other people. I am a product of systems and institutions, cultures that are often as invisible as they are powerful, and I cannot fully separate myself from the responsibility and experience that comes with group membership. Now, I can name various parts of my self that are influenced by group and individual identity. I can’t give percentages or say one part is more important than another—the truth is that each “part” of me is influenced by another, and I am a complex and rich combination of experiences and identities. I exist in what Gloria Anzaldua calls “La Frontera,” the borderlands, a place where intersections are alive and active in our day-to-day realities and relationships.

In my Introduction to American Ethnic Studies I was challenged to write a serious of racial autobiography papers, one focusing on how I learned “the racial other” and another focusing on how I learned “the racial self.” A section of the paper on “self” is below:

"My race is a large part of my identity that I have had the privilege to overlook. I do not remember learning about whiteness, talking about what that means, or even thinking a whole lot about white culture until I reached college. I grew up in a white family, surrounded by white friends in a very white city. Race did not become an issue when trying to fit in or identify with those around me. Other things like my age, gender, height, and religion were more of a deciding factor in whether or not people could identify with me. Or, at least, I thought that race was not an issue. I have come to find that being white has a whole lot to do with all of those things. In a homogenous city and state where skin color is basically a given, my white people give individual interests much more weight in shaping identity than the color of one’s skin. The big picture piece that is missing from that analysis is that a bunch of white people avoiding the race topic still play it out, still teach each other how to be white, and still talk about whiteness even without saying its name.

The little bit of formal education I received about race was the classic color-blind model. However, having very few, if any, people of color in my life early on did not provide much opportunity to be blind to any color other than my own. I learned to disregard my race and assume that white was normal, that I was normal. I was seeing race, my race, all around me without acknowledging the culture of whiteness. I focused more on my own individual identity within a sea of white faces. I was special because of the things I chose to make me different."

As I learned more about whiteness and white culture, I began to re-examine other facets of my identity like gender and sexuality. I have identified as a woman for my whole life, sensitive to feeling patronized and limited in a society that is generally male-centered and male-dominated. I am a feminist and always have been, but my understanding of individual, institutional, and cultural power dynamics has changed whole lot since beginning to see ways that my experiences intersect. For one thing, I can’t fully separate being a woman from being white. And further, I find my gender to be very much tied up in my heterosexuality. The expectations of me as a woman have always been very heteronormative. I was raised in a family that supported me as an intelligent, capable, and strong woman—great things. I was also raised based on the assumption that I was and would be romantically interested in men.

This new exploration of power and privilege has greatly complicated my understanding of relationships with other people. I try not get stuck in identity politics, but I can’t help but examine the ways that dominant and subordinated identities play out in my interactions with others and my vision of self. The list of identities continues as I learn more about society, specifically U.S. American capitalism. I grew up in a very comfortable financial situation, and I have to wonder how much of that comfort is due to other privileges awarded to my family because of race and legacy. I know my parents work hard. I know my parents are incredibly wise and mindful of ways to save money in order to be prepared for the future. I also know that my grandparents were also able to contribute to my comfort as a child and are hugely responsible for my ability to attend college. Unless I am intentional while considering the dynamics of socioeconomic status, it is easy for me to forget the ways that other privileges and systems affect the experience of many people in this country and around the world.

It’s easy to buy into the mantra of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps; to forget that there is more at play than hard, honest work. It’s easy to forget the generations of wealth and dominance by white folks in this country. It’s easy to forget the ways that physical and mental ability grant access and opportunity not awarded to all. It’s also easy to think that none of the responsibility of oppression in this world is my responsibility because of my identity as a woman—I ought to be more sensitive and aware of others’ experiences because of my own, but I am not simply a woman. I have learned to participate in various cultures and practices that are oppressive at the same time that I was internalizing and experiencing sexism.

I guess the most concise way to describe who I am is to say that I am a complex individual, influenced by and participating in multiple dominant and subordinated social identities. I feel responsible to other people, responsible for doing everything I can to change the realities of oppression, and that process makes me feel more whole than ever before. I work to live out what bell hooks calls the Beloved Community, a place where “love is an action, never simply a feeling.”