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Published: August 31st 2010
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I wonder if it is possible to encompass what I’ve experienced here at the Young Adult Volunteer orientation in simple words. The people are fantastic. Young. Passionate. Confident. I am provided with a profound sense that I have much to listen to and learn in this world.
Early in the week we listened to a session on Race and Power. I think it was good too, that after the four-hour session I continued to talk about these issues and thoughts. Because it cemented the fact that relationships are grounded in experiences. Though categories such as Race, Class, ethnicity are certainly socially constructed. It is this idea of socialization, and how it impacts and controls our lives, that arrested me. During this session, I learned how socially constructed categories will guide and influence my time in San Antonio. I learned that I am powerful. I learned that by simply being, I am oppressing others. These are not new ideas to me.
From 1pm to 6pm Tuesday afternoon, the eighty-some other YAVs and I listened to how our culture operates and works through a system that involves culturally constructed categories. Who I am as an individual is understandable to others and myself because of these categories. I, a white, heterosexual male of the middle class, am powerful because of a hegemonic culture that pushes and forces a certain culturally dominant center outwards.
This is socialization.
It has manifested itself through colonization, to foreign policy and even to academia. It gives me a power that is inherently oppressive to those who are on the “outside.” It is analogous to Althusser’s theory of ideology, but a bit more overt, noticeable. It is powerful. I operate in society through these systems and categories with a sense of freedom, mobilization, and am gifted with a high education because of this power. Furthermore, my race, how others see me is powerful. And given to me. In first encounters it is arguably the most informative social construct that others receive. Though placed within a narrative and constructed through socialization processes built on a biased history full of malevolent motivations, I am who I am (and I—the center—am powerful and oppressive to the periphery). Because, from the moment I am born, I am given these categories. I am most certainly not a self-made man.
So then what I am? How am I to operate in this world riddled with society’s pejorative understandings of who I understand myself to be? What am I to do with these conclusions?
I am told I am to own my power: to accept that this is how society sees me and to use this power for good, to work through the system. I understand the owning the power: I accept the inescapability of society’s perceptions. What I am not okay with is the passivity of the position. I see it as simply perpetuating the problem.
Several months ago, I sat in my college’s honor house living room, and spoke with a young man. He had worked at the after school program I had directed, and volunteered with the mentor program I coordinated. We had grown close. Through 4 years of working together, he and I had shared experiences that exemplified the power that these racial categories wield. He had called me up on this Saturday night, and I went over to his apartment and picked him up.
We sat in my living room; we spoke of various things. He was dating a girl and having relationship issues; we talked soccer. We talked the issues of the town. In the end, we came to a situation that encompassed and evidences the power of these social categories well. He was in the process of trying to renew his driver’s license. It was tricky. The clerk at the office thought that he was undocumented. And each document he produced the clerk dismissed as false or impartial: nothing seemed to be quite enough.
Common, and simple: this is a social issue that plagues much of society today. The young man was at the risk of losing his job, apartment and bringing on a whole slew of new and difficult problems.
Again:
During this past summer, I worked at Ghost Ranch conference and retreat center. It was a good job; a good place to be. One of the things that made the summer so enjoyable were the chances I had to work with a program called Adobe In Action. It is a young not-for-profit organization that constructs Adobe houses for “needy families in a transition to safe, affordable and energy efficient housing.”** Working in Espanola, NM presented myself and fellow workers with economic and social situations that happened far too often to families in similar racial categories. Our groups that were visiting Ghost Ranch during the summer got the chance to work with these families and the inspiring program of Adobe in Action. It was energizing work. Tangible. Real. Effective and most certainly affective.
Throughout this orientation, I have reflected on how best I should act and “own” my power as the culturally dominant center. I struggled between the idea of passively accepting how society views me and the romantic or somewhat naïve idea that I may own my power while simultaneously working to destroy or deconstruct these very power systems.
This romantic notion is the idea that the true work of community development is done through a destruction of power systems. Though probably an inevitably impossible and futile position, I am reminded of the words of Lilla Watson and gain confidence in the certainty that this is the only way to truly do community development:
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Other notable sessions were given by the Reverend Hunter Farrell and Rick Ufford-Chase (Cultural exchange and globalization respectively). They spoke about sending individuals into new contexts, where social systems and structures differ drastically from the YAV’s home. Rev. Farrell spoke to cross-cultural experiences, the sensitivities therein, and how individuals relate and exchange “life-worlds” of culture. Ufford-Chase spoke to the situation of a global economy and the implications of an unequal distribution of wealth and resources.
In the end these sessions are meant to equip individuals who are preparing to enter into a new culture, a new home. These sessions prepare individuals to think intentionally about how they carry out conversations, relationships and the process of building their life in new homes. As I move to San Antonio this week, I move intentionally. Striving to deconstruct that which has provided me with a sense of confidence for my entire life.
*adobeinaction.org
*ghostranch.org
*stoneypointcenter.org
p.s: I'll arrive tomorrow in the afternoon, and will have pictures uploaded soon. I realize the page is a little boring!
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clay stauffer
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Thoughtful analyses
Aaron, your analyses are thoughtful, sensitive, and caring. And Erudite, as well! I'm looking forward to reading more.