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Date: 23/6/96 10:11 AM
To: Geoffrey Williams
From: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Eugene, in response to your post of Robert's account--
>Thus, I respectfully don't understand, Judy, how the fact that I am white
>and male (believe me I have 1,000,000+ other features that define me) is
>important for you making alternative points. To tell you the truth, I feel
>uncomfortable (but not angry) to be defined as any role that I occupy. Let
>me bring a quote that I "stole" from Bill Penuel's great ethnography of a
>youth organization (I read it as a poem!):
>"I do all sort of things OUTSIDE OF THE HILL/
>
>like I go to YOUTHPOWER/ I'm PART of YouthPower/
>I go to the PLANNING committee meetings and all that staff/
>but at YOUTHPOWER/ they know me because I'm YOUTH/ I'm a YOUTH/
>they want to get a YOUTH perspective/
>
>I go to the PEER INSTITUTE/
>I was on the PLANNING committee/
>the only reason I FELT they felt/ they knew ROBERT/ because Robert was a
YOUTH/
>they want to get a OBJECTIVE from youth/
>
>that's how they PUT me in that position/
>that's how they KNOW me/
>that's how they s-/ um s-/
>how do I say it/ you know/
>um SIGNIFY with me whatever/ what HAVE you/
>
>but when IN the Hill/ it's just like I'm ROBERT/
>I'm not Robert from HILL/
>I'm not Robert from SANDY Ave/
>I'm not Robert from the COMMUNITY Center/
>I'm not Robert who's EIGHTEEN years old/
>I'm ROBERT/ and that's how they KNOW me/"
>
>Penuel, W.R., (1995, April). Mediation in the life stories of youth:
>Resources of identity for participants in youth organizations. Paper
>presented at the meetings of AERA, New York.
>
>I think this quote supports of the points about alienated roles that Jay
>recently made.
>
>Eugene Matusov
>
>P.S. I'm EUGENE/ and that's how I'd like you to KNOW me/ :-)
>
Here's where I think the matter of 'identity' and different forms of
'identifying' or positioning others becomes quite challenging. At a
certain level, Robert is resisting being known and understood as a young
person from a low-income housing development, but is preferring to be known
as 'me', which as you've pointed out to me, isn't so individualistic as it
is 'local-collectivist'. But I think it underscores as well, as your posts
do as well, that these 'positions' are pervasive, and nearly impossible to
imagine stepping outside of. This is, I think, the basic problem with
'color-blind' theories of race identity. You--and I and the rest of
us--like it or not, must position ourselves vis-a-vis these larger
positionings of us. And we can resist them (as you do, and as Robert does
here), but the 'resistance' is probably central to the story of how we
define ourselves. Not only resistance, but also all the other
stances-toward-activity we might take--pious, light touch, etc.
This is why I argue that identity formation involves specialized forms of
'addressivity,' meaning we nearly always must respond to, even if we
disagree with, cultural voices that are 'out there' about who we are or
about how others might perceive us. As identity stories from white males
like Eugene and me point out, this is no less true for us than it is for
those who are positioned on the margins of society. We too resist, accede,
watch/observe these larger positionings, and in understanding who we are,
must articulate some relationship to those positions.
I know, though, that what might follow from my argument, are questions
about what 'ought' to be the case about our identity formation. Should each
of us, from our own positions, be given freedom and place to voice and be
heard our own unique identities? Should groups on the margins be given
time to voice resistance to institutional discrimination? And what about
the 'positions' of body-subjects who are both on the margins and the center
at the same time (European American-woman, gay-male, etc.)? I don't think
I have answers to those questions, but they've been really at the forefront
of my consciousness as this discussion has developed on xmca.
------------------------------------
Bill Penuel
Research and Evaluation Division
Metropolitan Public Schools
2601 Bransford Avenue
Nashville TN 37204
tel: (615) 297-5923
email: bpenuel who-is-at mindspring.com
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Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 18:14:45 -0600
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
From: bpenuel who-is-at MindSpring.COM (Bill Penuel)
Subject: Re: Tacit racism and demonization of problems
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