What follows is a "self-reflection" paper that I wrote upon completing my first quarter of graduate school at the University of Washington. I had significant difficulty writing a paper for this class, Social Work for Social Justice, earlier in the quarter. The earlier paper ended up being a 15 page examination of my cultural identity. This paper represents my unfinished thoughts on privilege, oppression, my recovery from addiction as it relates to my own mental health and learning disabilities and my concurrent experience living as a member of several dominant groups.
The final stretch of my
first quarter in graduate school looks similar to the way it began, with a
ferry ride and a bus trip. Our four class sessions in Social Work 504, Social Work for Social Justice, are
seven-hour marathons of tears, inner-struggle and overcoming our own
limitations. For me, the quarter is defined by my own search for an identity in
the multicultural landscape that I never considered myself a part of. Of all
the privileges I live with, the one that I’ve made the most of is the ability
to remain invisible as a white male.
From
the first day of class, I know that I want to feel like an integral part of my
30 student Master of Social Work cohort. No more, no less than a member of the
group. Not the leader, nor the servant. As the title suggests, the class has
been driven by our collective desire to make justice out of a country that
capitalizes on oppression at every opportunity. When the quarter begins, nobody
except for myself makes me feel unwelcome in the group. In a familiar pattern,
I start off what is shaping up to be the most important time in my life by
discounting my own narrative and assuming I have nothing of value to contribute
to conversations about oppression and the thousand “-ism’s” that comprise white
male dominance.
Little
do I know, this final day will be very different.
My
fellow student Julie and I commute together. Eight ferry trips have given us a
chance to see where we differ and where we unite. A CPS worker and Chemical
Dependency Clinician, we sometimes align on issues, but frequently disagree
passionately. That’s easy to understand when you consider that I spend my week
trying to help addicts shake off their heroin habit and she spends hers
advocating for the children they’ve neglected for years. We are often at odds,
but I grow to appreciate her dedication and I learn a lot from our
conversations. On this final day of quarter one of eleven, we make our way to the
King County Metro Bus Tunnel in Pioneer Square, Seattle and board the local for
the twenty-minute bus ride to the University of Washington. We choose seats
that sit high against the walls facing each other in the middle of the bus. We
talk about our challenges with the homework and the assigned readings.
Somewhere
past the Convention Center, outside of the bus tunnel, somebody else gets on
the bus. The bus is sparsely occupied with maybe 20 passengers. A tall
African-American man boards. He looks unclean, sick and probably drunk. He makes
a lot of noise as he walked down the bus aisle and as he gets to the middle of
the bus where Julie and I sit on opposite sides he looks towards the back.
“I’ll
probably get killed if I go back there.”
“No,”
exclaims Julie, “no one would hurt you back there!”
“Well,
I’ll just sit here then. By Nicole Kidman.”
“Ha
Ha! Nicole Kidman has blonde hair,” says Julie, easing the tension.
The man is big and he has
very rough hands. Puss oozes from his eye like conjunctivitis. He smells awful
and he keeps looking at me. He sits next to me, with my backpack between us. He
makes delusional conversation, which is hard to recall. “I just got back from
Iraq, I killed so many people there. I have a 1939 Indian motorcycle too. These
white bitches,” he says with a wave of his hand, “they just don’t get it.” He
reaches out with a calloused hand that looks swollen from neuropathy and
infection and grabs my left shoulder and grips it very tightly. I feel scared.
* * *
“Sometimes I feel like
liquid,” I tell my counselor. It is midway through my first quarter in graduate
school. We sit in his Greenlake office for a biweekly counseling session. “Like
you could pour me out of one glass and into another. Like I could be poured all
over a table. When I think of my childhood, I think of a pile of leaves. Just
waiting for someone to come along and do something with it. Waiting for the
wind to blow it over and scatter them all over the yard again.” We’ve been
working on establishing my values for weeks. I’ve been examining my life,
trying to find a sense of importance. This therapy has been a perfect
accompaniment to my start in graduate school, and my class on social justice,
in particular. I spill my guts to my therapist. I talk about my long-standing
codependence and reliance on women to form my identity, my history of being
bullied in high school. We touch on a particularly traumatic series of events
when a large, brown skinned kid pushed me around. I express to him that for the
first time in my life I am proud of my accomplishments. I have a job in
community mental health, which I love. I worked hard for acceptance into the UW
and am earning good grades. When I speak about these things I use the word
“passionate.” I’ve never described my life like that before.
At the end of the
session, I stand up to leave and he says with energy and conviction, “you’re
not the leaves, man. You’re the tree.”
* * *
The man on the bus has
left us alone for the time being. Every passenger on the bus is watching him.
He has moved to the front of the bus and taken an aisle seat next to a
small-framed girl in her early-twenties. The large man boxes her into her
window seat. He turns towards her and begins stroking her face and hair. She
nervously looks over her shoulders while pulling her hair into a ponytail and
draping it over the shoulder on his opposite side. I catch a look in her eye
and she is terrified.
I contemplate asking her
if she wants help, but within seconds I’ve decided not to bother asking. No
other thoughts or fears enter my mind.
“Sir, I don’t think you
should touch her.”
“Yes, thank you” she
says, nervously. His attention has now come back to me. He takes a few steps
back and grabs my backpack.
“I forgot my backpack!”
I believe in distributive
justice, but not at this second, my laptop is in that bag and I need it. I
clutch the bag closer and tell him loudly “sir, do not touch me or my things.”
I look across the aisle at Julie and that’s when he hits me. I catch the back
of his hand in my mouth. It hurts. “Sir, do not hit me again!” I stand up and
take a step back. Two large men get between us as the bus pulls over. The
driver opens the doors and I step off and out of the man’s sight. The man is
screaming that he wants to kill me, that I took his bag. After he runs up and
down the bus trying to find me, he finally steps off the front and I step on
the back. The driver closes the doors and we are on our way, he stands on the
sidewalk yelling. After calming down, I exit the bus in the University District
and the young girl thanks me.
I feel like a tree.
This quarter has been
about deciding what I am all about. It has been a process of trimming the fat
from my belief system and determining, once and for all, what I am and am not
willing to accept. It has been about recognizing my privilege, and learning
that I can use that privilege for good (and understanding that that is a
privilege too). I’ve learned to allow only enough guilt in my life to be a
motivating factor. After the bus incident, another student who usually rides to
school with us named Haywood, large and black like the man that hit me, says
“man, of all the days for me not to be on the bus with you!”
“I’m okay. I feel safe
right now. I needed to have that experience. What if the cops came and nobody
was willing to be a witness? Between the homeless black guy, and me, who do you
think the cops would listen to? If you had been involved, people might have
just seen two black guys fighting on the bus. Thank you, I’m glad we’re
friends. But it feels good to stand up for something on my own.” In this way, I
am reminded of Peggy McIntosh who wrote in Unpacking
the Invisible Knapsack, “I can do well in a challenging situation without
being called a credit to my race.” (McIntosh, 1989) I don’t want to be a
hero, but it feels good to do the right thing.
Unpacking this experience
has caused me to think about the consequences of doing what’s right. I feel
sturdy and strong. I feel like I have overcome something within myself, but I
have a fat lip and a sore jaw too. My sponsor, a Licensed Social Worker, says to
me, “don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you stood up for yourself, but now you know
that standing up for yourself can get your ass kicked too.” He’s right, and I
decide that the only way I can go forward in social work is if I’m willing to
take a literal and figurative beating from time-to-time. As our readings
artfully point out, fighting oppression as a white person isn’t just about
bringing the oppressed into agreement with my values. It’s about surrendering
some of my own power and dominance and not complaining about it or making a big
show of it.
The thing I am most
grateful for is the privilege of having a place like the School of Social Work
to contextualize my experiences. I am humbled by the opportunity to process our
individual experiences with privilege and oppression with a compassionate and
intelligent group of people. I sense that the country would be a different
place if everyone had a group of people who were willing to listen to their
anger and frustration.
After the grand jury
decision not to indict Darren Wilson, many of my white friends mocked the
rioting that occurred around the country. I didn’t participate in any rioting
so I will not encourage the lawlessness in others, but I reminded my friends
that admonished the violence that for me, avoiding violence is as easy as
turning off the television. Many people would need to flee their homes and
communities to avoid violence. Safety is a privilege, and a great beginning in
cultural humility is a willingness to listen to anger and frustration,
regardless of how it is expressed. Lucky me, for having that place today.
