Identity Week UChicago @identityweekuchicago - Tumblr Blog

Sumaya Bouadi

I don't actually exist, I think, as an Arab-American, Muslim woman. At least, that's what every single media representation tells me, because I have actually never in my life seen an Arab-American, Muslim woman as a lead on a TV show or a movie (or even as a secondary character. Or really as anything not covered in a niqab. So if I exist, I exist with only my eyes showing. The census tells me I'm white, which I deeply disagree with - the way I look is not a standard of beauty, I have never seen people who like me in any political position of power in America, I have never had parts of my cultures discussed in anything but a deeply racist, xenophobic way on the national stage. So. I'm a woman of color, but I'm white passing enough to avoid racist comments on the street, but not if I'm wearing my hijab, and not enough for the, "With a name like that, I knew you couldn't be a white girl!" comment from my high school boss when she noticed my roots were curly, back in the days when I straightened my hair. So I'm a woman of color, but not enough to share the experiences of other people of color; instead of having stereotypes about myself, I am erased, or reduced down to a single article of clothing: the hijab. Other than that, I am invisible: Arab-Muslim men exist as violent terrorists in the American consciousness, but Arab-Muslim women? We're just headscarves. And we certainly can't be native born Americans with a deep love of Texas. I'd say we speak with an accent, but I've never heard us speak. So this leaves me: someone with an African citizenship who isn't African-American, an Arab-Berber that is somehow white, and still not existing in the national conversation.

Emma González Roberts

As a half white-half Hispanic woman with fair skin, people have often been confused by my Venezuelan heritage. Occasional microaggressions over the past four years at UChicago have included “You’re Hispanic? I NEVER would have guessed!”, “González? Where did THAT come from??”, and “HOW did your get Spanish so good?” That being said, my identity had never been directly challenged at UChicago until one moment this past September.

I’ve been a part of the Chicago Bound program through the UCSC for the past two years and both years we have spent a day in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, contributing to service projects and meeting community leaders. Both years we began our day with a discussion at the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture about the history of the institute and neighborhood. This year, the conversation quickly and naturally turned towards Puerto Rican culture and politics as well as race and identity. It was a heated conversation and at one point one the of community leaders said aggressively, “There is no such thing as a ‘white Latino’. That simply does not exist.”

The first thing that popped into my head was, “So, I don’t exist? What about Puerto Ricans or Venezuelans or people from any other Latin American country who are of 100% Spanish descent who identity as Latino?” I was distraught for a few hours afterwards, but by the time I’d had time to reflect both on my own and with the group, I felt grateful for that moment. I felt grateful because it gave our group an opportunity to really focus on the concepts of race, ethnicity, personal identity, and group identity throughout the rest of the week. I felt grateful because ultimately, the brief dismissal made me like more of a white Latina than ever before.

Now I check off “White (Non-Hispanic)” for my race and “Hispanic” for my ethnicity without hesitation in the demographics section and use my full name on social media, emails and papers without thinking it’s too long. While the concepts of “race” and ethnicity” are overtly social constructs, I feel grateful that I can describe these aspects of my identity with confidence and pride.

Jason Kent Fernandez Jr

Afirmación de la identidad.

Where have I come from and where am I going?

The answer changes every day. And who are you to ask this of me?

It’s not my job to explain my very existence to you.

It’s not my job to fit into your box, because I can’t and I won’t.

For this reason I can only ever give you a glimpse of my identity; a single frame stolen from a film.

My identity is not something concrete that supports me so that I may stand tall, but instead fluid.

It’s abundantly swirling around me and I can swim with the current as it flows.

Sometimes it’s a complete drought and I feel as if I have deserted myself.

Other times it surges around me with such fervor that I can barely stay afloat and I become lost within myself.

I am an object at rest that is in constant motion.

Who I am depends, on my mood, environment, who I’m with…

“Arte soy entre las artes, En los montes, monte soy.”

I aspire for passion; for freedom; for adventure; for happiness.

These are not only my aspirations for myself, but also my aspirations for others.

Rechazo la avidez,

I fight against cruelty,

I fight for equality,

Y temo el poder del odio.

No matter where I start nor where I end the day, I am always me.

Desdel amandecer hasta anochecer, soy único, soy valioso, soy yo.

Aerik Francis

It has taken a while to become comfortable in my own skin, and I have had a lot of hoops to jump to reach that point. I came to this school with social anxiety, problems with body image, denial of my sexuality, and confusion about how to navigate my multiraciality. I was really lucky to find a network of support people to help me discover myself and pieces of my identity. Over time I came to accept that I was queer. I began to relate to others who were nothing like me. I joined student groups to explore my Black and Latino heritage and created one of my own to explore what it means to be multiracial. Most importantly I learned how to love my body and myself. It was in loving myself and the various parts of my identity that I was able to step into leadership positions to help others do the same. It made what I learned in classes resonate more and helped me challenge the things I was taught growing up about me and other people.

I have many different components of my identity, but they make me who I am. They make me who I love...

Vo Ram Yoon

"Are you from North or South Korea?"

South. (But what if I had said North? Do you think it would have been okay to probe me about what life is like over there?)

"Your English is surprisingly good!"

Oh, thanks! (I mean, there are such things called bilingual schools outside of the United States. Also, I find it astounding how often people ask this to non-white Americans.)

"So I heard that you speak English, Spanish, and Asian?!"

Why, yes, you could say that I speak two types of Asian since I'm Korean and I'm currently learning Japanese. (In reality, I was too surprised by this one to actually say anything, so there was only awkward silence.)

Before coming to the University of Chicago, I would have responded to these comments without thinking about the racism and ignorance that were lurking behind those words. Since I grew up in Bolivia, I was always used to being teased about my narrow eyes and having people yell that I was a dirty chink whenever I was out in the streets. These incidents happened so often that I eventually grew to accept the fact that I would never be considered Bolivian because I looked Asian.

When I moved to Korea for high school, I was still treated as a foreigner to some extent. Although I was fluent in Spanish, my Korean was quite rudimentary and accented, so I was occasionally berated by strangers for not knowing my mother tongue. However, as long as I kept my mouth shut, I could finally be part of the majority and go out in public without wondering how many times I would be jeered at for my race.

Now that I am at the University of Chicago, I am once again part of the minority, so I have to face the microaggressions that Asian Americans must endure on a daily basis. Through my conversations with other minorities and my involvement with PanAsia Solidarity Coalition, I finally began to realize how harmful stereotypes, colorblindness, and lack of accurate representation in the media can be. From the model minority myth to the offensive portrayals of Asians in television, Asians are often treated as a giant mass of people who have no distinct traits. Thanks to UChicago, I have become aware of the ways that society can place people of a particular ethnicity to a passive, subordinate position. I have learned that I can take pride in both my Bolivian and Korean background while resisting the perceptions that others may have of me. But most importantly, I am no longer willing to restrain my voice thinking that racism is just part of life because I now have hope in a future where people from diverse backgrounds can co-exist without hurting each other with false assumptions.

#asianamerican microagressions nationality UChicago #Multilingual IdentityWeek Identity OurCampus OurStories

Introduction video explaining the inspiration and mission of Identity Week! Video by Anna Greg, UChicago Class of 2017.

Identity Week Photo Campaign

#race #identity #IdentityWeek #multiracial #uchicago #change #blackness #Latinidad

Lillian Erickson

Leaving your family last year was not

as hard as you thought it would be.

Maybe because it's you who was doing the leaving

and not them.

You have insipid white scars but still bruise purple. You like pink

and wearing dresses but you still

haven't figured out if that makes you a girl or not, you still

haven't figured out if the feminine experience exists

like that poem you wrote or whether you merely

created your own mythology of “females” to

guide you and your vagina forward through life.

You wore pants today but you spilled Harold's on them

so you took them off.

Now you are half naked, staring at your legs and hating them,

hating the little bumps on them and the indentations the seams

on those pants made. You want to put them back on

but face it, these thighs belong to you and you alone.

Love your mottled little legs and your mottled little face.

If you are you with glitter on your eyes or antlers on your thighs

you are comely either way. Eat ants on a log, savor

the elements and let your heartbeat

radiate from your palms and soles alike.

Drink the Bartlett elixirs and let their warmth fill you-- people

pretend to be miserable here but don't let that infiltrate you,

you're better than that, you're healthy and free

and it's okay to be okay, kitten,

purr and cuddle and rebrand yourself

as you desire, like the ads you desire, suck fluid vitality

from your wounds and murmur forward

with the power boost.

You are a sister and a brother and a mother and a son,

you are a cliché and and and the dirt and grease

from your skin is home to a billion microorganisms.

You are your own world and your own God

feed every vestigial psyche organ and ripple on

#poetry #identity #IdentityWeek #uchicago

Nora Helfand

Coming to UChicago after having recently become disabled meant that two major changes in my life became one. While my upbringing in Portland has largely made me who I am, it is Chicago where I have learned what disability means to me (and the often-unsavory meanings it holds for other people).

To even describe myself as a "disabled person" rather than as a "person with disabilities" is to take a major public risk. Like most abled people (I was abled until age 17), I grew up with an extremely distorted view of disabled people. I understood them as symbols of pity, and of nature gone wrong. I learned that despite this pity that society harbored toward disabled people, my access to facilities and activities was considered more important than theirs; clearly, these people were so used to constant despair that they surely wouldn't mind exclusion from certain buildings and social activities. I learned that the only disabled voices that mattered were those of people who had "overcome" their disabilities to achieve something monumental - objects of inspiration who stood out from an amorphous "they" whose negative attitudes condemned them to a cursed life of entrapment by their deformities.

Thus, calling myself a "disabled person" and admitting that something as "ugly" as disability is something I accept wholeheartedly as a part of my identity is off-putting to many, especially since my disabilities are not visible. I learned during my second year here that the Student Disability Services office at U of C has discouraged students from disclosing their disabilities, under the assumption that they must feel shame about them. It is this very stigma that prevents better lives for people with a diversity of disabilities. The pressure I have felt since my diagnoses to become one of those inspirational success stories, free from the shadow apparently cast over me by disability, has nearly destroyed me at times. As soon as I send an email to a professor requesting an accommodation, I am generally seized by a desire to take it all back, to work a little harder and prove that disability cannot hold me back. This borders on absurd every time I am lying in the ER, knocked out by drugs, and cannot possibly do my work. But these are the effects of culture's hatred of disability on my life. I am learning, slowly but surely, how to advocate for myself without apologizing. In doing so, I am signaling my permission to all disabled people to demand their basic rights, and to gain access they have been denied for generations. I dream every day of a world in which people of all identities, including the disabled, have an equal opportunity to claim their deserved place in the world.

#uchicago #IdentityWeek #Identity #diability #dis/ability

Vincente Perez

My life is marked by resistance. It took every ounce of effort I had to overcome being trapped in the life I escaped from. From experiencing homelessness to being affiliated with gang-life, I’ve constantly had to stay focused on what the future could provide so that I would not succumb to the life I was surrounded by. I’ve watched my mother struggle just to put food on the table and feel helpless because even providing everything she could wasn’t enough for her children. I became hyper-aware of all things concerning money. I made do with what I had and anything extra was given to my younger siblings. I worked a job, raised my sisters, and paid for Christmas all before the age of 15. I was forced to face existential crises that many adults would be shaken by before I had even entered high school. I’ve seen things I can’t speak about to other people. I've done things to survive that some couldn't fathom. I've learned that few people have ever had to truly survive and because of this the very word survival has a unique personal definition.

I was neither “really” Black nor Latino to my friends. I listened to members of my family, the people who were supposed to love me the most, throw racial slurs around about other parts of my identity. I grew out my hair just to piss off racist members in my family. I learned that trying to deny parts of who I was only made me feel disingenuous and gave people power over my life. I struggled to find myself in the midst of everything and this struggle informed the formation of my many identities. Without Art, such as Hip-Hop and Poetry, I would never have coped with my depression to be who I am today. This resistance and passion has followed me to college.

My presence on this campus is an anomaly for kids like me. The only thing that separates me from the kids back home is that I was given the chance through education and mentoring to see the power in my voice and my existence. People who don’t know my background are always surprised that I was able to make it through what I have. To be honest, I’m still struggling to truly come to terms with the seemingly impossible obstacles I faced. However, it was not due to my own strength that I am in my current state: It took plenty of people to help me envision a future that I felt I deserved and could obtain. Now I do everything in my power to help others see the same in themselves. I am passionate and brash, but everything I do is out of love. There are plenty of illusions we have created to make people seem completely different from one another. However, these illusions have real implications that play out in the lives of the people they affect. I am here to ensure that people do not ignore the lived experiences of people that have been pushed to the margins. I fight to help people see how powerful structures affect the lives of people on a significant level even if they individually cannot notice them. I am constantly learning how to become aware of new perspectives and unlearning the destructive things that cause people to ignore others’ experience. I am here to spread love and listen to those who have something to teach. My identities have caused me to experience oppression, but it has also made me appreciate the privileges I have experienced and fuels my desire to bring change. We cannot blame society because we are what make “society”. This gives us the chance to remake society to be inclusive and equitable in a way that benefits us all. I hope that my resistance inspires people to act and initiate the changes that we must all make to become the society we claim to want for ourselves. I am moving forward, but I’ll never forget where I came from. I am SubVersive: a fighter, a lover, but most importantly, a friend.

#IdentityWeek #SubVersive #lowincome #multiracial #race #Homelessness #poverty #identity #activism #privilege #oppression #structures

Jonathan Katz

I've always had my feet in different places. My parents came to this country in 1982 but never lost the affectations of South Africa - their homeland, or Israel - the country they passed through. I grew up with one foot in the United States and one foot in all the lands my ever-wandering family had passed through for generations. I do not see these things as a contrast, but rather as fluid: I can move from mindset to mindset, or dwell somewhere in between.

So to be religious and queer is yet another rendition of this for me - on the one hand I am Jewish and proud, seeking grace (doresh chesed) whilst I trust in G-d (b'yado afkid ruchi - into His hand I place my soul), and though I might not be Orthodox, being Jewish is part of everything I do. And I am also a guy, who mostly likes guys (and others, so not just "gay"). And for some that blending of faith and sexuality just doesn't fly, or doesn't exist. I'm asked how I reconcile my religion and my queerness, and I don't see what needs to be reconciled. It's all love - for G-d up above and for people down here.

I've loved my four years here, but Chicago isn't always the best at this sort of holistic thinking. Even when I came here, the fact that I have dual citizenship and declared it - even though I was born and raised here - caused paperwork snarls. Or the number of times I've gotten stares at queer events here for bringing in religious experiences into the discussion. Why should there be walls in a place that claims "let knowledge grow"?

I once had an ex-boyfriend tell me that I wasn't really Jewish, basically because I didn't meet his (fetishizing, inaccurate) stereotype. But now I respond that I am - more so than he can ever understand. Judaism is about living with the whole heart in avodah - service - of G-d, and that includes all the things that don't end up in stereotypes.

UChicago gave me the strength and the thought process to realize this. For that I am grateful.

#IdentityWeek #uchicago #jewish #queer

Raymond Fang

I grew up in suburban Kansas, in an area that was 92% white. Because of this, I never really had a sense of my Chinese-American identity growing up. Throughout elementary and middle school, I was surrounded by white faces and white culture, and never really had a sense of my difference. Though this might sound like a good thing—post-racial America, and all that—it really ended up having detrimental effects. I was ashamed of my Chinese-ness, and did my best to embrace whiteness. I became embarrassed when my parents would speak Chinese in public, or speak accented English to other white parents. To resolve this, I frequently told them not to speak in public. I didn’t often invite friends over because my house was weirdly “foreign,” and I was embarrassed of the “strange” smells that would fill the house when my parents started cooking. If friends did stay for dinner, I would push for my parents to order pizza or buy McDonald’s.

When I visited China in the summer of 2009, after 8th grade, something changed. When, in my parents’ hometown, I chose to eat KFC instead of hand-pulled noodles, I thought I was affirming my American-ness in the face of exotic Chinese-ness. Instead, I felt silently judged and snickered at by my Chinese cousins and by my immediate family for making such a commitment to whiteness, and for having such an aversion to Chinese-ness. I made a vow to experience more Chinese culture.

In high school, as I matured a bit, my Chinese identity started to enter my consciousness, if only at certain points. If my sense of self can be thought of as a circle, then my Chinese-ness is a point that only entered that circle at certain moments in response to certain events—e.g. Amy Chua’s tiger mom controversy, or when I’d eat at Chinese restaurants with my white friends. However, by and large and day-to-day, I still thought of myself as “white” and no different from other white people.

Now, at the University of Chicago, I find myself surrounded by other Chinese-Americans for the first time in my life. It’s relieving and liberating to know that other people are going through the same problems I am, and have had similar experiences growing up. Full consciousness of my identity as a Chinese-American—the permanent presence of that point in my circle of self-identity—is something I have only begun to grapple with in the past month. Chinese-Americans face a unique problem of identity: because of our physical appearance, we will never be fully accepted into white America, but because of our birth in the United States, Chinese people consider us “bananas” who are “yellow on the outside, but white on the inside.” Locked outside of the two cultures that constitute us, it’s up to us to carve out our own identities and create our own space for existence and activism. We have to decide what it truly means to be Chinese-American. I'm coming to realize that a big part of that identity creation occurs through maintaining a connection with China through language, food, and art, while also incorporating aspects of American culture. I have become more cognizant of racism, and of speaking out against it. As it turns out, Asian accents aren't funny and aren't cute "jokes," but are insults to my parents, my aunts and uncles, and any other Asian immigrants who have ever had the courage to journey to a foreign country to start a new life. My challenge to other second-generation students is to start speaking out against racism when you experience it, instead of letting it slide by and normalizing racial stereotypes: this is the only way we can ensure this sort of discrimination doesn't occur in the future.

#IdentityWeek #uchicago #asianamerican #kansascity #identity

Nicholas Sapp

I remember walking to 64th St. for an event during fall quarter and seeing this little black girl cursing out the other boys on the playground stating, "don't think I won't beat yo' ass just cause I'm a girl!" And the first thing that ran through my mind was that somebody needed to go get that little girl's momma. I remember going and telling some friends of mine about the experience, and they expressed to me that they could not really understand my excitement given their backgrounds, that is, scenarios like that don't occur where they're from.

I remember joining PhiNix Dance Crew and being surprised that, aside from a couple of people, no one ever really engaged in any social dance. I noticed that the black kids, most if not all coming from urban centers (Philly, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis) understood the significance of the pause in my dougie; they knew all the 90s dance grooves that I watched and did growing up; they shouted "ayyeee" with me; they understood that when I said "ooh killem," it not only was a reference to little cousin Terio but also a greater reference to all of the urban black youth cultural notions that we entertained back at our respective homes when we was out chillin with our niggas.

The debate over whether Worldstar is holding black people back as a race is something to pay attention to, yes, but that doesn't stop me from going to watch Vine compilations or seeing some people dancing in the middle of traffic and expressing my contentment in one of many expressions. I recognize that the term nigger carries immense power, but I also recognize various social contexts and find a great deal of solidarity when you get what I mean when I say that I'm the only nigga in one of my classes, and what them niggas was saying last week was some wack shit, and the "niggas be like" jokes that we see on one side of Black Twitter and Instagram and all that.

I'm an urban black youth. Not in the sort of monolithic socioeconomically disadvantaged way that the term seems to mean today. I just grew up in a big city, around a lot of black people, and I'm proud of that. And I notice that I like it a lot when I meet other people who share that in common.

#IdentityWeek #uchicago #blackness #Identity

Sara Rubinstein

For me, my queer identity has definitely been my most important identity since coming to UChicago, and also the one that’s changed and grown the most. I was never out in high school, so I didn’t have any experience being a part of an LGBT community before college… so definitely originally, I saw “being a lesbian” and seeking out a queer community at UChicago as this sort of involuntary, apolitical, “Born This Way” thing. Not that I didn’t want to be gay or thought it was wrong or anything, but my thought process was basically, “well, I’m a woman and I happen to be attracted to women, and I don’t seem to be at all attracted to men, so I guess that makes me a lesbian…and queer seems like a broad, all-encompassing label, so looks like I’m automatically included in that too”. And of course I didn’t know anything about Trans people or Trans issues, and was super emotionally invested in marriage equality.

But now, nearly two years later—after finding and becoming part of a great queer community at UChicago, and taking all those Gender Sexuality Studies classes, and just having so many different experiences—I conceptualize my queer identity so solo differently. It’s funny, because now the fact that I’m a woman attracted to other women is in some ways not central to my queerness at all. What are much more important are the friendships I’ve built and the community(s) I’ve become a part of, based upon a shared queerness. Additionally, being queer has become a much more political thing--in a pretty radical, broad way—then it used to be for me. Queerness is about challenging, critiquing, and analyzing all these norms-- surrounding gender roles, gender identity, sexuality, what “sex” is, should, and can be, relationship structures, friendships, and more--that we grow up with and encounter in every aspect of society and pop culture, and can very easily take for granted. Queer politics have also made me realize how intersectional different identities and modes of oppression are and can be: how homophobia relates to transphobia relates to racism relates to sexism relates to classism relates to ableism relates to xenophobia; and so on. And that’s all made me super critical and disillusioned with mainstream gay politics, with the way it hugely overemphasizes issues that primarily affect well-off cis white gay men and lesbians (like marriage equality) while throwing other queer people under the bus; and seeks to integrate LGBsometimesT people into problematic social institutions and structures rather than fundamentally change them. But, it’s also made me really passionate and motivated to get involved with social justice work throughout my life in order to help change and improve society, even though y’know, of course I’m very aware that there are significant limits to how much of an impact one privileged white woman can (or should!) have.

I guess overall, it’s so funny and fascinating to me how even though my “identity” has in some ways stayed the same over the past two years (like I’ve thought of myself as gay/queer the whole time), the way I conceptualize that and what my identity labels mean to me have shifted enormously. That’s one of the reasons why I think a lot of the “Born This Way” rhetoric that many LGBT organizations use—which says that people are born with one sexual orientation and gender identity, which stay the same throughout their lives and can’t be influenced by social factors or choice--is kind of problematic. Like I definitely get that many people think of their LGBT identities that way, which is super valid, but I don’t think it should be thought of as the ~only~ valid way someone can conceptualize their gender or sexuality. For me, I don’t view my basic sexual attraction to women as a choice. But what I’ve built from that attraction—the numerous queer friendships I’ve formed and communities I’ve become a part of, the way I’ve made my queerness very visible and central to my life, identity, and politics, how I conduct my sex life and what I do with my body—all of those things are very much choices, and are incredibly crucial aspects of my current queer identity.

#IdentityWeek #uchicago #queer #gender #sexuality #identity #lgbt #privilege #politics

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