How do you identify yourself and why?
As a straight, white male, I have never had to identify before. It feels to weird for me to discuss my identify at all. I have never had to, because others see me and accurately assume my identity. I have never had a need to correct someone on my sexuality or race. My identity can be better understood from my counterbalancing rural upbringing and urban college experience, which have impacted my life far more than my race, sexuality, or gender. My rural upbringing has embedded me with a moral compass: treating everyone respectfully, valueing happiness over money, and appreciating the importance of self-expression through art. These three rural-Vermont values will lead me until my death. Then I moved to DC for college, and it taught me something I failed to learn from Vermont: how to be successful. While I value happiness over money, I still hope for a flourishing career. In DC, I learned how move my career forward the practicality rather than ideals. As a result, my Vermont-ideals are my road, and my DC-realism is my car. With both together, I am sure that I will get to where I hope to go.
Is your background a source of pride, confusion, discomfort or something else?
My identity as a straight, white man is neither a source of pride, confusion, nor discomfort but a winning lottery ticket called white privilege. The vast majority in Vermont is white, and consequently I was unable to see my privilege growing up there. After moving to DC which has a strong racial divide, I was only able to see the cash in my skin. For those such as Bill O’Reilly who are unfamiliar or ignorant of white privilege, it is a term used for societal benefits that whites have but non-whites with the same social, political, and/or economic circumstances lack. In a rebuttal to Bill O’Reilly, Jon Stewart provided an great example of white privilege. He described when The Daily’s Show black correspondent, who was wearing a suit, and its white producer, who was wearing homeless-looking clothing, walked into a private building together. The buidling’s security stopped the black-reporter wearing a suit not the white producer wearing battered clothes. The producers white privilege was that he was able to walk into a building and not make security suspicious. The correspondent’s lack of white privilege was that security founder her suspicious despite wearing a suit.
How do others react to your perceived and expressed identity here in the U.S.?
As discussed earlier, my perceived and expressed identity are one in the same, and many react to my identity by allowing me privilege such as white privilege. I have the privilege of never being pulled over by a cop. I have the privilege of never being monitored in a store. I have the privilege of being unaware of my color. I have the privilege of never having to identify before this blog. And in this blog, I have the privilege to identify not by my race, sexuality, or gender but by the places in which I’ve grown.