Facing your own identity and how you feel about yourself can sometimes be a challenge. When your race, gender, class, religion, or sexuality put you in a position to be oppressed it can be jarring. Being subjugated based on who you are is difficult, no matter your place in life. Fortunately, it is empowering to learn your own identity and not only accept it but own it. Through this class and this assignment I have learned more about myself as a woman and a minority, but also as a person. In many ways I face oppression, but I am prepared to make my way in this world, despite how it attempts to impact my opportunities and development.
Throughout my life I have faced many forms of oppression, both as a woman and as a visible minority. I am a woman of South Asia, not born in this country; there is no hiding it, not that I would want to. I moved to Canada when I was eight years old and have since also been oppressed for being Muslim. Religious affiliation is easier to hide than the color of one’s skin, not that I would want to ever hide that fact that I am Muslim. I have found, since moving here, that my gender does have me marked for oppression but it is secondary to my race and religion by far. At one point I was unnerved by all of this and almost wished to be somebody else. I remember thinking as a little girl that the boys did not get treated this way, and that the children of other colors were also treated differently, so there must be something wrong with me. As I grew I quickly realized this was nonsense. Now, at 21, I know that I have been granted many opportunities that others will never receive. Having been born a foreigner, I have had the privilege of being multicultural. I speak English, as well as Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi.
Though I am proud of all that I am, I still faced subjugation at the hands of those who thought I was lesser than them based on these traits. Tracing my own privilege within this oppression is rather simple. I have never had any; I am a Muslim woman. Not only am I sometimes oppressed at large but I am often oppressed within my own community. There were not many places for me to go. Before I had a chance to formulate what could be done about this uneven playing field I had been put on, the 9/11 attacks occurred, causing chaos for the innocent within the Muslim community. This event had a profound impact for the American community as well as the world at large, there is no denying that. However, the Muslim community who did not have anything to do with the terrorist attacks are often overlooked in this situation. My family and I obviously were not involved, nor were any of our extended family or any of our friends. Yet this event created the largest wave of oppression I had ever experienced. Since the attacks I have yet to go through airport security for any reason without being searched “randomly”. The same can be said for my family. It is obvious that these searches are based on the color of my skin as well as my name and clothes.
What my part in privilege and complicity has done for my sense of innocence is a tender question. At times the sway I allowed privilege to hold over me makes me feel guilty. Prior to 9/11, individuals of privilege did have influence on my thoughts and feelings. I was once told by a white teacher that I might get better marks in school if I had white parents who had taught my English instead of “whatever foreign language I had learned first.” I was very young. This made me feel inferior. For a time it made me feel as though something was wrong with my parents, or with my people. I was too young to understand what was being done to my mind. A person of privilege was telling me it was my fault that I could not learn the material she was teaching me because of who I was, because of who my parents were and because of how they had raised me. It was not the school’s fault or even the fault of the education system but rather my status in life, who I had been born to that had shackled me to the poor grade I had received on a test. The guilt of not being a native, English speaking white girl followed me for longer than I care to mention until I realized that the poor grade was not the fault of my race or my parents.
Several of the other white children in the class had also received poor grades. They were not chastised in any way. What was the common denominator between us? None of us had studied as much as we should have in order to pass the test. The poor grade was not due to my race or my background but was attributed to my momentary laziness. Unfortunately, because of this oversight, I had felt the racial oppression so many had felt before me all because a teacher wanted to blame my English speaking skills instead of asking if I had studied, like she had my white classmates.
The privilege shown by my teacher as well as the complicity I witness on a daily basis by my peers is, I fear, not becoming an embedded ideal but already an embedded ideal. It happens so often and so carelessly that it seems it has already been naturalized, as much a part of our lives as drinking water when we thirst. Privilege, as my teacher knew, is a handy tool to avoid responsibility and keep people in their place. I see it used every day in politics, churches, schools, and homes. There is a hierarchy. Men belong in one place, women in another. Everybody is divided by race. We are all more or less important than the person we stand next to in this line of oppression and privilege sees to it that the chain is never broken. Once this became a sufficient means to an end, complicity was a quick supplement for individuals to keep themselves in line. I see it most often with women, as I mentioned. Though still disadvantaged, white women in Canada, and also America, have many rights not afforded to other women across the globe and still they claim to have no rights at all. When a privileged person is not there to remind them of their place in the chain, they remind themselves through complicity. People have become comfortable with this hierarchy and I believe these social discourses have continued because without them there would be relative chaos.
I realize after learning more about it, that privilege is not something I want. “Privilege” sounds like something worth going after but it is used to control people and I do not wish to do that; I wish to set them free. Complicity is also not something I ever want to find myself doing. I have seen what real oppression is; I know that some cultures would rather murder their people than allow them equality. Keeping silent or oppressing myself is not something I am willing to do. I spent too much time thinking of myself as lower than others based on characteristics I had no control over; this is oppression’s greatest trick. I was not good enough simply because I was born this way. I know better now and with all that I am learning about myself and all that I am learning from this class I look forward to educating others and speaking out against oppression.
References
Jakubowski, L. M. (1992). Schooling and the Naturalization of Racial Injustice. The Journal of Human Justice, 71-88.
Moussa, H. (2007). Violence Against Refugee Women: Gender Oppression, Canadian Policy, and the International Struggle for Human Rights. In N. Cook, Gender Relations in Global Perspective: Essential Readings (pp. 214-240). Canadian Scholars.
Wuest, J. (1993). Institutionalizing women's oppression: The inherent risk in health policy that fosters community participation. Health Care For Women International, 407-417.
