2 Identity

We operate within a highly codified social system, one that is frequently neither rational nor just. We cannot think about power and marginalization without first locating ourselves in relationship to it. We must stand in sometimes “uncomfortable shoes” and examine our own privilege. For many people, including ourselves, privilege is so subsumed within the taken-for- granted everydayness of our existence that we may not even recognize the ways in which our lives are privileged (Tatum, 2007). Doing this work, and teaching through this lens, is an often uneasy attempt to balance, of seeking to understand and be respectful of lives that are different from our own, while simultaneously ensuring that we are not “speaking for the other” (Alcoff, 1991/92, pp.5-32) in ways that erase the lived experiences of lives that are different from our own. The best of intentions, offered through an unconscious taken-for-granted position of privilege, often result in more harm than the good we had hoped for.

An identity is an intricate web of life experiences, choices and lifestyle. A person’s individual identity is nested with family, gender, ethnicity, friendships, morals and interests, among other things. While identity is a large term, applied to diverse areas of interest, defining aspects of personal identity can be examined in terms of what it means to be a unique human being. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (2013) refers to this framework of overlapping identity markers as “intersectionality”, the process of examining various categories such as religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, etc, that interact to create our social identity. The same framework of intersectionality is used to understand social inequality and how it affects people who share the various categories.

There are a couple of very important things to know about these social categories:

a) The first is that every single one of us – and every single person – has a place in every single one of these categories. Our place may be one of social privilege, or it may be socially less-privileged or marginalized. Whether we know it or not, or recognize what it is or how it functions, we have a place in the category.

b) Secondly, every single one of us occupies every single space simultaneously – and so do our students (as does everyone we meet every day). Thus, a student may be a young Black woman – that may be what we see; and she may also be – at the same time – she may be a young, middle-class Black woman who is questioning whether or not she is heterosexual, and what this means inside her Christianity, and she may have an undiagnosed learning disability, and so on. And all of these things are a part of who she is in every moment of every day.

We often begin our courses by asking: So, what does all of this mean for us as teachers? How do we make our classrooms safe and accepting and welcoming spaces for students who occupy these various social and cultural identities? How do we work with the provincial/territorial formal curricula and documents to ensure that content is taught, and done so in a way which also encourages students to think carefully about the content. And how do we do all of this and also attend to the complex and myriad aspects of selves which every single person – students and teachers – bring to our shared classrooms every day?

Because of the ways in which formal curriculum and schooling policies have been developed principally by the culturally-dominant group, teachers often – mostly – have (and do, although to a lesser degree) come from the socially-dominant groups. Many – though not all – teachers went through a schooling system that spoke to them, that provided a place of belonging, that sense of belonging that said to them, this is about you. Their teachers looked like them, their history books taught their history or their ancestors’ version of history. School policies were developed based on their cultural and community values, so many of them liked school, enjoyed school, were successful in their progress through school, and ended up/chose to come into a teacher education program. As we recognize this process, it is important to ask: Are these the only people who would be interested in becoming teachers, or did something else happen somewhere along the way that told some people that becoming a teacher wasn’t going to be available to them?

We use a multitude of social identity categories to speak about ourselves, and about other people. Sometimes, these identity categories are a positive thing, helping us to know who we are, and to be able to seek out other people with whom we can converse, be comfortable, and be ourselves. Sometimes, however, identity categories are used differently, whereby negative associations are attached to particular categories, which may then result in having particular assumptions about that person or group of people. Critical pedagogues sometimes refer to this as a process called “Othering.”

Critical educators suggest that the reason this Other-ing becomes a negative process is because it represents only one side of the story – and in a linguistic sense, this is quite accurate – in order to establish someone as an Other, there needs be an opposite to that – and that opposite is I, Me, We, Us. And this Us is most often not discussed, and is often quite unrecognized, at least by the people occupying the Us position, whatever that may be in any given conversation.

In 1979, Henri Tajfel and John Turner proposed a Social Identity Theory which held that there are three cognitive processes relevant to a person’s being part of an in-group, or of an out-group; such group membership being, depending upon circumstances, possibly associable with the appearance of prejudice and discrimination related to such perceived group membership. These three processes are:

Social Categorization: The process of deciding which group you belong to. At its most basic and non-involved level “any group will do” and no necessity is seen for conflict between groups.

Social Identification: The processes by which you identify with an in-group more overtly. The norms and attitudes of other members within that group are seen as compatible with your own or worthy of emulation by yourself.

Social Comparison: Your own self-concept becomes closely meshed in with perceptions of group membership. Self-esteem is enhanced or detracted from by perceptions of how in-groups and out-groups are held to behave or are held to be able to perform or to rate in society (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 33-37).

(Of course, while the above is a description of the process for one’s own self, we also have a similar process when looking at other people or groups of people.)

In recent years, Tajfel and Turner’s work has generated the creation of multiple variations of something called the Social Identity Wheel. In its simplest form, the Wheel features a circle that is separated into 11 categories. Each section, starting at the top and moving clockwise around the circle, is labeled: ethnicity; socio-economic status; gender; sex; sexual orientation; national origin; first language; physical, emotional, developmental (dis)ability; age; religious or spiritual affiliation; and race. There are many exercises that have been developed using the Wheel, and they can be easily found using a quick search online.

In our classes, we use the checklist below to talk about identity categories and what they mean. When we have these conversations, it is important to know/remember that this content is not about assigning “blame” to people who were born with more/most social privilege. When we talk about our responsibility moving forward, it is important to know what did happen in order to know how things got to where they are now, so that we can decide how best to move forward, and how that is more effective than feeling guilt or blame for the past.

Adapted from Lyon, Catalano, Shlasko, and Runell (attributed as original developers, adapted by many other writers and in various formats)

We hand out the list in class, and the very first thing we ask students to do is to not fill it out in class. Once they have the list in their hands, we discuss the ways in which being in a public space, such as a classroom, and being asked to fill out this form in that public space, could make some people uncomfortable. There may be parts of their identity that they prefer to not share with others at this (or any) time. And by modelling this with our pre-service teachers, we also model how they can use this sheet to have conversations more safely with their own students. Plainly put, it isn’t any of our business what someone’s personal identities are; what is important is that we be able to talk about the categories of identities and what they might mean for students and teachers in schools. Using the checklist, we begin to move into the realm of having courageous conversations, both with each other and in our classrooms. Having courageous conversations means talking about the “hard stuff”, and doing that in the best way we know how to do. It means using the best language we know, and asking our questions, rather than being silent because we don’t know how to ask. What this suggests, then, is that when and where we may perceive a reluctance to talk, either in ourselves or from others, we need to understand the discomfort and then work past it. Not speaking doesn’t change anything; understanding where something is coming from opens the possibility of effecting change within ourselves, and then with others.

Sometimes, as we talk our way through the list together, there are words/categories that are unfamiliar to some of the participants. We ask students, if this happens, to ask themselves: is it possible that this is due to your own position in that category being one of privilege? Privilege is often rendered invisible in its operations, so it becomes something we don’t have to think about at a conscious level.