June 27th - Reflection #2
It is no secret that this reflection, which was assigned to me during my scholastic endeavors in New Orleans, has been one I’ve been sitting on since my professor uttered what I might, at times, consider my doomed fate, in the form of a question, on one of our first nights in the Big Easy, in mid-June. How. Do. We. Do what we do. Without. Getting in the way?
Now, this question could be very easy to answer. It could be the simplest of them all. As a sociology student, in fact, I can happily break it down, pull it apart, deconstruct, destabilize, reconstruct, restabilize, toss in some poignant sociological theorists and call it a day. But for me – the person, the individual, the girl whose heart may or may not still be in Southeast Louisiana – this question has been the equivalent of the pain and challenge I encountered when my Psychology 120 professor told me to stop looking at things as a sociologist and start to look at them through the eyes of the individual.
I must admit that I somewhat “check out” of that class at that point (yes, my grade did happen to reflect that a little bit, but still finagled my way to a BA, Cum Laude), but, at the very, very least, my undergraduate career taught me a great deal about the importance of passionate sociology and what it means to be engaged in academia, instead of just a passive participant. One of the men I’ve admired most over the years, and who’s become an immensely significant mentor to me, despite being someone I encountered through a high school ex-boyfriend who has long since been cut out of my life (Facebook “un-friended” even, so you know I meant business) liked to remind me, especially in my existential fits of stress and being suppressed by “the man”, that so much of life happens to us, while so little of us happens to life. In fact, he sends me emails every once in a while that literally read “Kathryn, go out there and happen to life. I know we will be all the better for it”. Now, the latter is certainly debatable, however, the need to happen to life is one on which I will gladly accept a challenge, but something from which I will not back down. This highly grammatically-incorrect concept is one that has become a little gem to me over time, and something in which I firmly believe, especially in applications of labors of love. And if four years of school that literally took my blood, sweat, and even tears is not a labor of love, I absolutely do not know what one is.
And so, here we are. Twenty-two year old girl, suddenly armed with her empty RedHawk-red diploma holder (“diploma to arrive in six to eight weeks, pending meeting of graduation requirements”), plopped in the middle of one of The South’s biggest cities, trying to put such immensely challenging, influential, life-changing, and at times: trying, weeks of her life into context, all the while, pondering life’s biggest questions (“what, truly, does one do with a sociology degree aside from talk endlessly about systematic change and white privilege?”) and how to enter a space such as New Orleans, while having an impact but not getting in the way. Is this even possible? How do we act and move throughout such a space and place as to not disrupt, offend, or harm those we are there to learn from? How do we integrate ourselves into programs and organizations in which we’ve placed so much hope, without giving a sense that we are there to “help”, as that word alone implies that this is a community that is somehow lacking, one that needs to be “saved”?
There is nothing glamorous or admirable about the West’s belief that they somehow need to rescue “the Rest” (for more on this, please read William Easterly's The White Man’s Burden, I promise it won’t be a waste of your time) but we must acknowledge this painful history of ethnocentrism and change being “done” to people, who may or may not have even asked for such things to take place. As a white woman, certainly of at least academic privilege, I must keep myself constantly accountable and aware of the way I interact with people and spaces, because, more often than not, what is mapped onto my body, regardless of the truth or validity to those assumptions and connections, is a history of oppression, privilege, and pain. We should also be mindful to never speak of these things as though they are the problems of those who have long since passed, as that is another naively shaped idea about our “progress” as people. We change, we grow, we adapt, we learn. We have yet to overcome many of the racist, sexist, unequal flaws within society, and our own mindsets. When I look in the mirror, I see a young woman eager to learn, excited to enter into this “real world” for which Seattle University and some rock-me-to-my-very-core life experiences have prepared me. Yet, I recognize that is not necessarily what other people see in or on me. I do, in fact, look like a lot of the individuals that entered spaces like New Orleans, with well or mal intentions, but ended up doing more harm than they did creating good. I certainly do not have to like this, but I cannot do the work I am attempting and hoping to do, if I am unwilling to see in myself what so many others have seen in people who mirrored both my body and my resume.
What has the potential to set me apart, however, is how I choose to acknowledge this. Truth be told, there are days I wish I could ignore it away as I often tried to do throughout undergrad with my homework. But this cannot be answered as easily as an all-nighter and a few pots of coffee. How hard I worked to move beyond the world and life I know in my encounters in New Orleans is something I know I will need to apply to my work at both the academic and life levels. While I may not want to get in the way, there is certainly a part of me that wonders if that can ever even be possible. Or, should we even try? Is it not just as important to bring [the [positive] things we have to offer, as it is to learn from those people we meet and spaces we enter? Should both learning and living not be filled with as many equal exchanges as possible? There are few things I loathe more than people who try to push their beliefs onto others, and one of them is people who do not hold fast to who they are and what they believe. That is not to say that one should ever do the work they do, especially in the field of sociology, only through their own personal lens and narrative, but merely that we should allow and welcome the ability to grow from that starting place.
In complete and utter honestly, it was very hard for me to work with some of the organizations I had the opportunity to in New Orleans, without “getting in the way”, as I found myself in many situations that couldn’t have been further from “right” to me. And while there are definite concepts of right and wrong, good and bad; there is also a history and cultural element to the realm I entered that I do not know, have not lived, and cannot compensate for. There were times I caught myself trying to jump in about problems in systems and institutions, or where I internally thought “goodness does this person just need to read some Andre Lorde or Patricia Hill Collins and get back to me”. But that is not the sociologist, nor person, I want to be.
New Orleans offered a great deal of things to me, and one of them that I truly hoped I gained was insight. There is no room for entering a space or place and being disrespectful, under any circumstance. There is nothing to justify the rewriting of history or contemporary experiences, that so many attempt to do. But there is everything right with sitting amidst such a new experience and doing everything within our power to soak it in. From there – from knowledge, insight, understanding, and solidarity – there is the potential to “get in the way”, the potential to stand along side – not speak for or over – those who need to be hear, to work for those who work the hardest but receive the least, and to take the time to listen to the communities that the generalized “other” continues to omit and fail to acknowledge. We cannot do the work we do, without acknowledging where we come from and how that impacts our ability to understand, learn, grow, and integrate and while we must be willing to put off getting in the way on hold, we must be willing and able to reconcile those worlds with a medium that allows us to navigate, and accept: both.
