Thinking About Identity

 After reading Tatum's article I learned many things about racial identity that I wasn't aware of before. One quote that stood out to me from her article was that her experience has been that, "most of her students, regardless of their class and ethnic background, still find racism a difficult topic to discuss." I also agree with what she observed from her students, because in my own experience, this topic is hard to talk about with my friends and family.  After reading journal comments from the students in her class, I easily connected to one of them because it was exactly how I feel when we think about racial identity. 

Journal entry from her student:

"I had never thought about my social position as being totally dominant. There wasn't one area in which I wasn't in the dominant group. . . . I first felt embarrassed. . . . Through association alone I felt in many ways responsible for the un-equal condition existing in the world. This made me feel like shrinking in a hole in a class where I was surrounded by 27 women and 2 men, one of whom was black and the other was Jewish. I felt that all these people would be justified in venting their anger upon me. After a short period, I realized that no one in the room was attacking or even blaming me for the conditions that exist."

Growing up, and even now as an adult, I have never thought of my social position being dominant in our society. I believe this is because personally, I have always treated any individual with respect and kindness. Since I do not feel that I judge people by their race, it doesn't usually occur to me that others do.  I hate that in our society there is still a divide among people based on their racial identity and background. It makes me extremely angry that we all can't be treated equally, no what our racial identity is. In college I have taken many classes that touched upon race, and discussed my own racial identity. 

My social work classes made me realize that we are still living in an unjust society. I remember sitting in my first social work class as a freshman, and talking about deep topics with my classmates that I hadn't discussed or thought of before. I think the one thing that was hard for me was hearing many of my classmates stories and feeling like I couldn't connect with them. It is sometimes hard to realize that someone has such a different reality than your own, especially when you feel like you are in a good place. One area where I have struggled the most was sharing my own experiences in class. I think this is because I was scared that people would judge me based on what my appearance was, and not my story. It can be hard to share your personal experiences in front of people you don't know well, especially when you feel like your experiences might not relate to theirs. Racial identity was a topic that I did not grow up learning about, and when I got to classes where I would have to share my own thoughts and opinions, I immediately freeze up. It is particularly important to me not to offend anyone, and I'm not always sure how my classmates will agree, disagree or feel about what I am saying, so this makes me anxious to share. Now, as a senior in college I have taken many social work classes and these classes, along with my YDEV classes opened up my eyes to a lot of things. I realized that everyone comes from a different background and have their own racial identity, but that's okay. Everyone is different but unique in their own way. I know that for me many people think of me as being in the "dominant group." I don't like that phrase because our society shouldn't have groups that stereotype and define who you are as an individual. 

One experience that I had regarding racial identity is when I interned at an elementary school in an ESL classroom. The classroom was mostly people of color, and I was the only white person in the room besides the teacher. I had not been in a situation like this previously, so it was a new experience for me. I'm not sure if it was my own perception of being a minority in a room for the first time or that people were actually doing this, but I felt that I was being viewed differently. I felt like everyone was looking at me and thinking that I didn't belong in that situation or didn't fit in. This was such a new feeling for me. It made me sad to think that other people experience this daily. I wish that we could all be looked at the same way and that race wouldn't play a part in how people look at others. This experience opened my eyes to feelings that I've never felt before, and while it was uncomfortable, I learned so much from being in this situation. Race can be an extremely difficult topic to talk about, but I think that it is important that we continue talking about it to get more comfortable with the subject.