Performance Reflection Video

This is the video I used in my performance reflection assignment.

My White Identity

Dr. Tatum's chapter on "The Development of White Identity" from her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria hit really deep with me. As I have stated in past blogs, I am a white female. My road to recognizing, understanding, and coming to terms with race has been a very long and windy one. 

I was raised in a white, blue collar household in the middle of Latino barrios in San Jose. I was very conscious of race from a very early age. It was because I was different, I stood out. I went through periods in my early teen years of trying to "act Mexican," thinking that it would help me blend in, but it never did. When I reached high school, I experienced a bit of a culture shock because of how racially diverse my high school was. Even more so, it bordered Saratoga, so we had a lot of the yuppie, rich white kids there. 

I had never been around rich, sheltered white kids in any meaningful way before and I was confused and fascinated by them at the same time. One day a guy from that group came up to me in class and said, "I saw you riding your skateboard to school, you a skater?" I said, "No, I just like to ride my skateboard. I don't can't grind or anything." Next he said,

"Why do you always hang out with the Mexicans?"

I was shocked and didn't know how to respond. I had hung out with the same crowd most of my life. They were the people I lived around, my friends. And even though I knew they looked at me like I was different sometimes because of my race, I never thought of my friends as "the Mexicans" before. I was angered by his questioned, and felt defensive, but didn't really know why. I ended up telling him to mind his own business and walked away, but I was still really bothered by what felt like his interrogation. Why did he care who I hung out with? This was a question I still struggle to answer, not because I don't know his basic reasoning, but because the meaningful answer is extremely complex.

By the time I left high school though, I had somehow transitioned into the "white skater group." They weren't the rich kids, but they were white nevertheless. It was at this point in my life I started to realize what white privilege was, and where Dr. Tatum's cycle of white identity began for me. I feel like I skipped over the contact stage, because I had always felt and witnessed racial prejudice on one side of the color line or the other. I have never felt "just normal," and knew from a very young age that many of my neighbors struggled because of their racial and national identities, although it took me years to understand why.

My white identity began its development in the disintegration stage, and was definitely marked by discomfort and tension. On one side, I was different in a world where all my friends were the same, but on a larger scale I later found out, my friends were the "different" ones and I was "normal." 

As I became more and more aware of the racial lines around me and the consequences of those lines, I began moving into the pseudo-independent stage and assumed the role of the guilty white liberal. I started looking back at the history of our country and all of the racial injustices I had cleanly and quickly been taught about in school. I became angry and ashamed... and then I wanted to act. I didn't know how, but I wanted to. I started hanging out with my white friends less and less and kicking back in the hood more. I became defensive and angry for my Latino friends. I couldn't understand how a country, a system of government, could fail entire groups of people, and not even just fail them, but stand on their backs to get ahead, and then not even help them afterwards. It didn't take long for my friends to tell me it wasn't my place to be angry though, and while I was discouraged, I knew they were right. 

This is a lot of the reason why I chose Berkeley to study at. I wanted to find a place that could help me realistically and respectfully understand what to meant to be a part of many different groups, and to learn how to be helpful and compassionate to my neighbors without trying to carry their burdens for them. I wanted to realize my own burdens, and the strengths in my self and others as well, what we could learn about each other and from each other. I wanted to understand all of my identities, and the identities of those around me. So far I think I am on that path. I definitely believe it is a life long research project that is never finished, because it is always changing, but I am grateful to Berkeley for helping me get started. 

Image taken from http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_224/1199913671dwUzl7.jpg

Choosing to Isolate

While reading Stacy Lee's piece this week on the "Model Minority" stereotype of Asian Americans, I began to think about something I had heard one of the students at St. Martin de Porres say last week. I even made a brief reference to it in my field notes, but didn't think too much about it at the time. The student was a Latino boy, and was around 8 or 9. I was not involved in the conversation taking place, and only heard him say this one quote. He said,

"Are you Mexican? 'Cause I only hand out with Mexicans."

It caught my attention when he said it, but I realize in retrospect, that I did not think as deeply about it as I should have at the time. What caused him to say this? What caused him to feel this? This was not a belief that he was born with, it was shaped. How?

These are all questions that came up after reading Lee's article. She talks about Korean Americans, and why at Academic High School they chose to stick together and distance themselves from other Asian American groups. This was the most comprehensive explanation I had heard or read for why an ethnic or cultural group chose to isolate themselves. I am not arguing that is is an accurate explanation, I am not a Korean American, nor do I have any legitimate social experience with this ethnic group. Maybe it is accurate. What I am pointing out is how in depth her explanation was, based on her ethnographic evidence.

This article magnified the complexity of trying to understand why different ethnic and cultural groups isolate or segregate themselves for me. I am highly aware that the some groups, in some areas are isolated against their will, but for the purposes of this discussion, I am am focused on why some groups choose to withdraw themselves. I am also aware that different groups who make this choice, do so for different reasons.

I will be perfectly honest, I am a white female, and while I grew up in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, and have never lived a homogeneously white life, I am in no way experientially equipped to speak to this topic, but I am highly interested in it.

Does anyone have any experience within their own ethnic/national/cultural group on this topic that they would be willing to share with me?

I believe that the more understanding people have of one another, the more compassionate we can be. This seems like a good conversation to add toward the goal of better understanding.

I appreciate anyone's comments.

*image taken from http://www.francineturk.com/images/gallery/current/isolation3.jpg