Web Paper or Special Event

I believe that it takes a village to raise a child.  We develop our identities mostly from our environment and the people that surround us, be they family or otherwise.  Now, at the age of eighteen, I have finally left the village that raised me, but it will never leave me.  The experiences I have had are the very fabric of which my personality is comprised.  I have been influenced by all of the people who helped to raise me, for better or for worse.  Like many people I was primarily raised by my parents - two lower-middle-class Roman Catholics of Irish descent, who have been working exhausting jobs for the same industrial supply company for about thirty years each.  

I grew up catholic and like a stereotypical catholic girl whose family is super involved in the church I came to college with the mindset that I would never set foot into another mass again. I even had a plan where I would look up each week’s readings so when my parents called I would be able to discuss a possible homily with my dad and reassure my mom that I definitely still believe in god. Hopefully it would take away some anxiety from my parents because they were so worried when they found out that my new home wouldn’t be surrounded by crucifixes and priests. During this last summer I felt my parents influence fade away as my love for this omnipresent lord diminished. And to be totally honest I didn’t mind too much.

            There are various connections between people that bring together shared experiences; whether they may be seemingly insignificant occurrences or meaningful times, they create conversations that grow. The factors connecting people may include static descriptions of the self: race, gender, class. Of course, experiences and emotions can also bring together others from various paths and yet, these very experiences are also the factors that divide such similarities people believed they had with others. Jordan demonstrates the sharp differences that arise from disconnections through her own experience with people.

I recognize and appreciate my privileges.  Sometimes I do not understand them, but I have learned to humbly and guiltily accept this reality.  At the airport, I am left untouched and unbothered.  People who look like me do not fear being killed mercilessly by police officers.  I am white, so I escape racial discrimination.  I can only imagine the constant fear, isolation, and hatred felt by those living a life dictated by the color of their skin.  People cannot hide their appearance, the color of their skin, their ethnicity.

But I can hide.

Americans are insane. 

Dim light, loud music, yelling people, dancing crowds. The music the girl on the stage was singing felt completely alien to me. The dance everybody but me was dancing made me feel like in a cult.  

In June Jordan’s Report from the Bahamas, 1982, she demonstrates the idea of connection between people who share similarities and differences through various different interaction stories. In these short stories of interactions between different people she proposes questions like how do people really make a connection? In her short stories, she expresses issues among gender, race and class, and believes that people do not make connections based on these superficial assumptions on identities. She believes that a true connection is made based on the feeling and concern for one another, the need and trust for another person.

Over two summers ago I went on a week-long volunteering trip with a group called Outreach 360 in Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic. Before this trip I was expecting to just meet some adorable children and do fun English lessons, but little did I know how much of an impact this experience would have on me.  The night before the camp started, the organization that runs the summer camp informed us that there was no air conditioning or a running toilet, which immediately made me nervous. On the first day I did not know what to expect with not being in the conditions that I am usually in. The first thing that I saw was a concrete floor, two very small rooms, and a frail leaf roof.

I’ve spent most of my life as an outsider, trying to connect with others in every new place I moved to. Connection, as June Jordan explains, depends not only on race, class, gender, or shared experiences. Connections are forged through real and visceral need of another person: the need of a friend, the need of a companion, or the need of a confidante. June Jordan explores her own feelings of race, class, and gender identity as she relays experiences she had while in the Bahamas as well as in her own classroom. She explains that although we may have an identity that has been imposed on us, such as our gender, we all have individual identities that really determine whether we make a connection or not.

            In June Jordan’s Report from the Bahamas, 1982, Jordan begins by expressing her discontent of the idea that Bahamian and black people were not given the same credit and recognition that white people like Christopher Columbus were given. This statement along with Jordan’s “consciousness of race and class and gender identity” begins to set up the feeling of disconnectedness and tension between the people of the Bahamas and Jordan. She even declares herself along with her siblings as “intruders”(7) as she recognizes her differences such as being able to afford gifts for her family while the Bahamian women risk going hungry. She also recognizes that she has different rights than Olive, the maid who works at the hotel Jordan is staying, does.

Princess Jefferson

Emily Balch Seminar

Professor Anne Dalke

1^st 3pp Paper

1 September 2016

Shaping Your Identity

Report from the Bahamas, 1982 is the equivalent representation of racial de ja vu. After reading this passage from the 1980’s I realized that times have not adjusted that significantly when it comes to the relationships among minorities to one another. From observation I can infer that no matter what culture you belong to, the commonality seems to be one’s own culture can judge, look down upon, or say something to devalue, but if an “outsider”, were to do the exact same thing, there would be a problem.  Time continues to fade into eternity, but the power of change seems to be halted.