I am writing tonight to update my blog for my new academic endeavors. Because I am starting a new quarter I of course have new classes. Thank the goddess I am finished with the Methods sequence of my M.A. program. Although I highly enjoyed and learned a lot from them I am excited to be continuing along in my concentration of Culture and Communication. This quarter I am involved in a lower level grad/undergrad class on Intercultural Communication as well as a rhetoric class on Public Deliberation which is also grad/undergrad but at a highly theoretical and philisophical level to a point that I often find myself going huh? I don't get it. For my Interultural class I have to make an e-portfolio using the program Keep Toolkit, which like my public deliberation class makes me go huh? I wish I could just use this Blog.

Anyway, I am writing because I am finding myself to be deeply challenged by my Intercultural Class, not because of the material but because it is somewhat simplistic and the people in it seem to have no understanding of race, class, gender, sexuality and their intersections. The readings are interesting but we are broken up into small home groups for discussion what seems like pretty much everyday. I do not want to write this to sound completely arrogant, or rude and because I truly care about implementing critical feminist pedagogy but it just doesn't work if the other people in the room are not willing t critically engage the material.

For example today we were discussing bell hook's article, Homeplace: A Site of Resistance and my group members were having a hard time understanding the article because they could not relate to it because they all but one are white privileged het girls. The other grad student who happens to be from Afghanistan and I were trying to explain that resistance works in opposition to the dominant modes of society and that people who are oppressed need a place to regroup after tiring days of being strong, staying tough, and surviving the harsh conditions of life. Now I have no idea what it is like to walk through this life as a person of color but I am completely empathetic to the fact that I do not know and can only try to be as supportive and helpful as I possibly can to people of color. I have seen the devastating effects of racism of someone who is Indian being asked what tribe they are from and their response being "dot not feather" (you idiot mumbled under their breath.) I have seen black students and faculty be racially profiled in the town where I went to college. Of course I do not have a first-hand account-I can never know what it is like to be read as a person of color-to walk through life having people judge me as inferior based on the color of my skin, I don't know what it is like to not have my narrative in the normative forms of media that others who are white are bombarded with on a daily basis. But I don't have to be a person of color to be accountable for my actions, to be empathetic, or to see my privilege, to see my dominance, and the power I have in situations simply because I am white.

While I can never connect on this level I have provided a sense of homeplace for people of color because people of color's situations are not homogenous and not all people of color only feel at home with other people of color. Specifically my ex-girlfriend who is multi-racial was raised in whiteness and feels at home with white people. Although she does share a bond with people of color sometimes it is not always the case. I do not want to be presumptuous but I do know that many times she came to me and not only because we were partners but because we were friends and I was supposedly a person who "got it" that she was able to feel most at home with me. Of course as a queer person I do understand being othered to an extent although completely different but connected. Oppressions are connected, the manifestations of oppressions and inequality are not the same. Although my queerness does not exempt me from my participation in the domination of whiteness I am able to connect through otherness often with people of color.

My largest and most interesting thing that happened was that during class we were introducing ourselves and against my better judgement I came out as queer/lesbian whatever. But we also were discussing the articles and the focused on race, I was trying to be helpful in discussing issues of race since everyone in my group that is an undergrad is a whitey whiterson. They apprently could not connect to the article because they had never had to resist anything and then relayed that this was the case because they were fortunate. As though by their good luck they were born white and hetero and middle class and they had never experienced discrimination based on their female-ness. WTF?!?! They have never resisted and they can't connect and thus understand because they see themselves as so different. So to give an example of homeplace I talked about the Apartment which, I have written about a few times in this Blog. I discussed facing oppressiona nd discrimination based on sexual orientation but even more so for those who do not conform to normative modes of gender presentation. This they could completely understand. It made complete sense. Again..>WTF?!! Now I know this is not performative and Bernadette would chastise me for not being very compassionate to the students in the class but I couldn't believe it. No one else in the group is openly queer and most openly identify as heterosexual so how can there be understanding in relation to queerness and no relation to understanding the same principal but for the concept of race.

I have to think it is somehow fashionable to have gay friends but the stigmas for people of color run so deeply that people do not feel they can find comonality in any way. And maybe it is the histories of both of these groups of people and the guilt (King) people feel for the enslavement and genocide of people of color. And while the gays are discriminated against it is not in the form of making gays slaves or servants. And the truth is that most gay people especially gay men have/make more money then people of color allowing them to blend into mainstream society in the way that a person of color cannot. i don't know but I am so astounded that I could barely speak and knew that I just needed to write.

I know that I need my goal to be to reach people pedagogically to allow for personal experiences and ways of knowing enter the conversation but I have a hard time just letting the conversation flow if no one is willing to think critically about issues. And I shouldn't say no one because the Afghani grad student I know is thinking critically but as she told me after class, "Thank you for saying what you say and the comments you make. Otherwise I am always come off as the angry brown woman and since I am usually the only one in the room I am the only one advocating for this position. So thank you." So she doesn't always speak, which I understand but want to change because her voice needs to be there telling her narrative. Without it the group will truly miss out because it is a voice often shunned and degraded. I am hoping to do my part but I find myself really just searching for more. I know that I have a chance to reach some people in this class but in other ways I just want to be like really-this is my responsibility? but I know that as a member of the dominant and oppressive group that "gets it" it is indeed my responsibility and unfortunately because of my privilege maybe someone will listen to me. Argh...