I had a short conversation with a friend and classmate today about the level of identity overload caused by being a member of an oppressed group at this particular institution of higher education we're attending. We're both in an intensive graduate program at a pretty prestigious university. It's the quintessential ivory tower, and the air is seriously thin up here sometimes.
I watched her eyes well up as we stood in the rain outside the train station with people jostling past us, and felt my heart contract. Her experience here is so different from mine: her identities make it impossible for her to "pass" in the way I can choose to, however painful passing may be.
As her umbrella bobbed away into the crowd, I turned and made my way down into the subway, shaking my head. There's so little space here for acknowledging the impact of existing as an individual at an institution that was built without people of color, or queer people, or immigrants, or women, or working-class people in mind. If you belong to one--or several--of these groups, each day is an exercise in invisibility. Each day means walking through the small interactions and routines and nothings of life with the fear that the entire day will pass without you really being seen or really being heard by another human being. You routinely encounter people to whom you are a novelty, and there's zero assurance that your day will include a required reading or conversation in which you find yourself represented--accurately, or at all.
That's exhausting.
And some days--in the rain, on the sidewalk, amidst the crowd--it all becomes too much. In that moment, I'd wanted to hug her and to simultaneously smash oppression into tiny, incidental bits.
Instead, I settled on some empathic listening and a kiss on the cheek. It seemed the only thing to do.
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