Identity & Ego

This week in teacher school we talk about identity. My students complete personal identity wheels and social identity wheels, thanks U of M for having great resources and tools.

We have lengthy conversations about the difference between National Origin, Ethnicity and Race and Gender, Sexual Orientation and Sex. We talk about how to talk about socioeconomic differences and the conversation about power in identity rounds out by introducing the concept of Intersectionality.

It is always surprising to me the number of students that don’t know their family stories or where they come from, they talk about their own race differently than we did at their age. And while I fought a good fight for gender equity and changing gender stereotypes as an undergrad they see gender completely different. They probably can tell you their pronouns but they don’t know why they should have to. And I’m with them.

We also talk about getting it wrong. We are going to get it wrong in this life. We will be wrong about pronouns and race and how we talk about and think about all these things but it is in the getting it wrong where we find conversation. When we engage in a way that someone says, “WHAT?” and we can respond with, “What did I say?” then we are really having a connection rather than trying to impress each other with our words.

When we talk about who holds power in a room, we talk about the different rooms and how it can ebb and change and how I as a middle aged, middle class, white of European decent, cisgender, heterosexual, college educated woman I may never understand or have experienced being the only one of me in a room but that doesn’t mean that I don’t truly understand nor experience exclusion.

Power is really the problem.

And those with it, don’t want to give it up. And then I’m away . . . I move back into myself as I’m driving away from campus and I think about all the power I don’t have and how my ego wants me to have more.

And I wonder about ego and Minnesota and ICE and Trump and I try to figure out what I can do from my corner of the world and while I want to do things better and different, I get stuck at times.

And then I go to basketball and there are people behind me talking about the players and the coach in the most derogatory of ways and I think—power. You think you have a say because you bought a ticket. It’s gross and I don’t like it. I sit close to the team and in the section where the parents and families of the team sits because I want to be a bit protected from the vitriol of the general fan.

I am a white, normative female in a world where that is rewarded and I still feel left out and different. I feel like others lord their power over me and I’m constantly striving to be more. My ego says, get more, be more, publish more, get the doctorate, rub the right elbows, be seen, but even with that there are power brokers at the doors who don’t want me to come in. So I think about the thing my dear friend Victoria said, you don’t have to be everyone’s cup of tea. And she’s right, of course.

So I check my own ego and I show up in ways that are inclusive and fair, equitable and just. I don’t ignore people or belittle them.

The oppressed cannot become the oppressor.

And yes, I know, I’m not oppressed on paper but in real life we all can be. I’m re-reading Friere right now for my own classes and I get so angry when I read his work. Angry at myself or a world where it is still necessary 56 years later.

I had an interaction last week with a woman who works at the university—She is considered a god at the place. A diety. A queen. She’s been here forever. She is important. She knows things. And she is a flat out bitch to me every time I see her. Tim says it is because she is as old as dirt and doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground and that may be true, but she’s mean. I moved towards her to say hello and she moved directly the opposite direction. I have to stop worshipping at the alter of Ego. The god I love is kind and loving and sees me for the work I do. When this woman is unkind I think, I don’t measure up academically, I don’t wear the right clothes, I don’t have the right name, I don’t weigh the right amount, I don’t look the way I should, I am dumb, I am worthless, I am not enough.

And that also is ego, bruised and busted ego, ego with a lifetime of feeling left out, abandoned ego and I know better. But my heart doesn’t.

My heart says, keep striving, you’ll get there someday but I have no clue where there is.

I wrote a whole different essay on this topic and it read so negative. I’m not negative, I’m hopeful. I have all these thoughts in my head and while I can get in this loop that no one is listening it just isn’t true. I have a husband who absolutely thinks I could make the basketball game experience much better, friends who see me as creative and kind and co workers that bring me joy. And students who will absolutely change the world. And I am changing the world every day despite what my ego tries to tell me.

We all are. It feels small, but a smile, a word, encouragement, standing up, speaking out, holding a hand, writing good and powerful words. Saying no. Saying enough. Screaming into the void at times and then doing it again the next day. These are the things.

I don’t teach identity to students at the university level so they can understand the definitions of all these words, I do it so they know themselves better and then can relate better to their future students and families so they see each and every student as a human worthy of love and growth. Of care and kindness. Rich, complex humans with a need for connection. And so I’ll go do it again and try to keep my own gremlins at bay. Fucking ego.