Shaping Identities: Ongoing Process Between Self-Doubt and Resilience

• In Event: Educators Combating Midwestern "Slow-Drip Racism": Spirit Healing Narratives of Women of Color in Academia

Abstract

There are many moments I can think of regarding my positionality at a university where most students and faculty /staff are white. I started my doctoral study without knowing what it would look like because it was not planned when I came to the US due to my husband’s enrollment in a doctoral program. Even though I was always passionate about higher education (after I had two masters in education), I was not quite ready for the doctoral program, especially language competency and cultural awareness for being a doctoral student.

The journey of the study in my program was full of self-doubt and resilience for surviving and awakening as a Korean woman who started a new life in the US overcoming the minority of race, gender and language.

The first hard hit to my self-esteem happened in the first semester when I took an educational psychology course. The professor was not showing any cultural understanding to HER international students in the class. Her performance as an instructor only revealed the convenience of teaching without cultural competence, which resulted in the exclusion of students from diverse backgrounds. She mainly talked to a few outstanding students who happened to (!) be native English speakers and from her department. She never asked students like me (international students) if her choice of articles in class were relevant to us whose backgrounds were not familiar with US classrooms and cultures (e.g. chess game as examples of course teaching). Based on the class materials and the way of her interactions, her assumption about students indicated that everyone in her class should act like Americans in terms of language, culture, and interactions. I felt completely isolated and foolish in MY class.

The second anecdote I want to share was related to my status as a teaching assistant. I taught one class where pre-service teachers learned about how to teach in the elementary classroom. The majority were white female students. A few students’ body gestures (raising eyebrows, indifferent facial expression, etc.) and interactions with me through emails (e.g. no acceptance of my advice for their work) put me on the dark road to undermining my self-esteem. While the situation I encountered could happen in any classroom with various students (believe me, I had many similar situations based on my whole teaching career), I suspect (!) that the same students would do the same behavior with their white and/or male instructors. The question about my positionality in the class where dominant norms of language, gender and race prevail undermined my identity as an instructor and my personal dignity.

These are just a few examples that I encountered during my graduate life. The hardship has been transformed through my self-reflection and to resilience with much support from a few colleagues and professors who were critically aware of oppressions that students like me would go through in academia.

Author

• Eunjung Kim, Carolina University