looking at power and privilege
after taking a class on mutli-cultural counseling, i can absolutely say that i still have a lot to learn as far as power and privilege and looking closer at ways i can be part of the problem.
a few things i have taken away from this class, the readings and this interviews is that:
-i can never speak for someone else's experience.
- part of being an ally, is simply moving aside to allow other people to speak.
- i am never exempt from holding prejudices or acting ignorantly and microaggressing.
- no matter where someone is in the oppressed/dominant scale of their intersection, they are always capable of harmful microaggressions.
- everyone's identities are completely unique; i cannot know the experience of every woman, every latinx woman, or even every bisexual latinx woman.
- i have had to experience pain at realizing where i have exploited or held prejudice, or spoken over people whose experience is silenced.
- i have white privilege; no matter how much content i ingest on the matter, there are parts of dark-skinned prejudice i'm never going to understand/feel in the way that people who experience it do.
i have seen the pain of some of it first hand, and admittedly sometimes it shocked me.
but that's how silence works, right?
out of sight and out of mind- so we come to believe that silence means that people are okay with something, and not oppressed, not spoken over.
i will do my best to keep the door open and leave space for people to correct me,
but more importantly to continue educating myself to fill the gap where people would have to perform emotional labor explaining their experience.
i will keep trying to remember i am always capable of being an asshole,
and my voice doesn't always need to be the loudest.