reflective essay |
A reflection on my Social Justice education and personal development at Century College and Hamline University
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I have always loved math. Growing up, the highlight of my day was always when my dad would email home a worksheet of numerical patterns for me to solve. He taught me little tricks and shortcuts for practical math, and encouraged me when I started college intending to study and eventually teach math.
I have also always loved music. In Kindergarten, I told my parents that I wanted to learn how to play piano. We were fortunate to find an excellent piano teacher -- Dr. Reid Smith -- and by junior high I was performing on the international stage. So when I got stuck on my dislike of applied math, I decided to switch to studying music. This seemed a decent path until I found the Gender Studies program at Century College.
I struggled for about one semester to balance Gender Studies classes with piano practicing before realizing that my attention would always be drawn to the injustice of inequality, and that I was lying to myself if I thought I would be happy doing anything other than fighting for justice.
As I began exploring social justice ideas and philosophies, I learned an entirely new set of vocabulary -- social construct, intersectionality, gender binary, and more. These words opened my mind to new ways of thinking about my own identities in the context of the world around me. I experienced two major periods of questioning my identity during college.
The first period of identity crisis was around gender. Understanding gender as a social construct allowed me to explore my own gender and begin to conceptualize myself in a whole new way. I came to understand myself as non-binary, an identity under the umbrella term "transgender."
As I progressed in college and learned yet more terms and the theories behind them, I began to conceptualize my gender simply as "queer." Social Justice courses were the only place I could find representation of people like me. Those courses offered me guidance in understanding how my identity interacts with the world around me.
The second period of identity crisis stems from my tangle with my racial identity. I am made up of a complex mix of colonizer/colonized, agent/target, White/Filipino. Yet I am always identified by others simply as not-White, or some anonymous form of Asian. Though I claim two races, I move through the world in such a way that never allows me to experience my whiteness. By this I mean that I am never treated as white, though I do reap the benefits of having light skin. It is difficult to understand my heritage when half of it is constantly erased, and the other half is either thrown in the spotlight or brushed off as "not-White."
To throw a wrench into things, the main source of friction in my life stems from people's reactions to the intersection of my race and perceived gender. That is, since people most often read me as female and as Asian, I deal with a whole host of sexism, racism, and fetishism.
These two identity crises led me to focus my studies on the relationship between US imperialism in Southeast Asia and Asian fetishism. Among my earliest studies within my concentration was research into the way racial and gender stereotypes about Asian women affect the Asian sex trade. My research convinced me that there is a relationship, and that many of the common stereotypes about Asian women stem from an intentional American propaganda effort designed to facilitate a diplomatic relationship with Japan and China.
Naturally, my next question was how to disrupt the perpetuation of stereotypes. So I turned my focus to early elementary education. I have worked with kids for most of my life, but only recently began developing curriculum and thinking intentionally about the ways I could begin facilitating growth towards justice, even as early as age 3. For example, in any interaction with children, I am very intentional to use phrases such as, "When someone says 'no,' you have to stop." This example teaches even preschoolers about consent in a way that makes sense to them. The context often relates to sharing toys or picking spots at the lunch table, but the phrase teaches them not only that they must stop when someone says "no," but also that they have the right to say no and expect to be listened to.
I have also found children's books to be wonderful resources, and in addition to using Harry Potter to talk about justice with later elementary children, I began cultivating my own library of children's books with a bent towards justice. My library is small, but I am always eager for book suggestions to help it grow.
Now that I am at the end of my undergraduate journey, I look back at where I started and recognize that transitioning from a math major to a social justice major is not quite the giant leap that it may seem. Math is not really so far off from Social Justice. Both present a problem and expect a solution to be found. Both are incredibly applicable to everyday life. And though they have different theories, both teach students how to think about the problem at hand.
I reflect frequently that if I did not hold the oppressed identities that I do, it is likely that I could be very happy as a math or music teacher. But because of who I am and the way that I interact with the world, I will always be dealing with the repercussions of societal problems as they crash into my identities. Managing mathematical problems on top of societal problems is certainly a goal achieved by more and more marginalized people, but for my part I am entirely dedicated to social justice. Perhaps one day marginalized people will not have to commit to choosing between pursuing an interest or defending their identities.