Race Journal #2

“I don’t know what to write about” - A

“You could write about that” - N

I really just didn’t know what to write about today. I sit here writing and I am aware that I’m sort of forcing myself to dig through a list of potential things I could write about but nothing that I have to or want to talk about. I don’t want to force any connection making especially in this class where we’re asked to really represent our true selves.

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I began to write this post last Tuesday, the day our race journal postings on media were due. I wrote a lot, deleted a lot, and repeated that process a couple more times before I decided to set this week's journal aside. Luckily for me (I guess…?) we didn’t get a chance to talk about our posts from last week so I never had to discuss the fact that I didn’t put anything up. I’ve been thinking about my absent post all week since then, it just hasn’t been sitting well with me to not put something up. We’re all asked to do this work together, so I want to show up as best I can. I think there are many reasons why these race journals have been hard for me even though we’ve only had two so far, but with this past one I was just so worried about freewriting my thoughts without being able to stand next to them, to say “hey this is me, Abby, writing this!” So it’s clear that I’m not just a white student writing this post, but that I'm me writing this post, telling this story, working these questions out. I feel like the context of my presence, intention, voice, etc. have become critical in this space to express what I’m saying. I think this comes from my worry of being misunderstood - and since we’re talking in our classes so intensely about identity and history, this anxiety is magnified. And once I put my thoughts/experiences on the internet, I have even less control over how they’re taken up and digested. So I didn’t want to post without knowing what to post, or how to say it, but I didn’t want to not post at all either. Ugh! I’m frustrated with me. But it’s a journey, and we’re all here on it. Anyways, I didn’t exactly know how eloquent this post would be, or what I’d even put in it, but I wanted to keep in the conversation and for my classmates and professors to know where I’m at for better or worse.