Richie Lee/UC Davis photo
Students and staff realize they are both insiders and outsiders in any society
On the first chilly Friday of January, I am in a bus full of UC Davis students and staff winding its way toward Clear Lake in the mountains north of California’s lush Napa Valley.
After leading us in a half hour of exuberant competition belting out songs that contain the word “love,” our student leaders have decided to shift gears. Perhaps our strained voices have lost that lovin’ feeling.
They pass around some index cards and tell us to write down what we are hoping to get out of the approaching weekend. I chew on my pencil and stare at the blank card in my lap.
I am headed toward the seventh annual REACH retreat, a conference that stands for Reaffirming Ethnic Awareness and Community Harmony, and is organized by the UC Davis Cross-Cultural Center.
I know the 80 of us will be discussing the topic of oppression and, frankly, I’m a little skeptical about a whole weekend centered on this heavy issue. Will this retreat change my way of thinking, or just make me feel down?
Trees fly by my window as the bus climbs higher toward the lake.
Sitting in a big circle
That evening, I find myself sitting in a big circle with the other participants, filling the large room of a Clear Lake resort. I recognize few faces, and I am feeling slightly out of my element here. The thought of trying to connect with all these different people is paralyzing. What could we possibly share?
As if to allay my fears, our three retreat leaders pull us together in the first of many community activities. They begin by reading into a microphone, “Come to the circle, find your people and be welcomed if you are…the first-born in your family.”
Wait, that’s me! I rush into the center of the room and am greeted by a cheering pack of fellow older sibs. We exchange awkward hugs and high fives before fading back to rejoin the circle.
Again and again, we are invited into the spotlight to share one of our many identities with the group. Third-year student? That’s me! Female? Me again! Those in the outer circle keep up a supportive chorus of applause that gives the exercise its apt title, “Celebrate and Appreciate.”
For the first time in my life, I am able to be part of three racial circles simultaneously. Tonight I affirm that I am “white,” “Asian” and “mixed-race.” I am equally three tonight, without having to assign proportions or “most closely identify” with any label. It is so deliciously easy.
‘I know the 80 of us will be discussing the topic of oppression and, frankly, I’m a little skeptical about a whole weekend centered on this heavy issue.’
Not enough, enough or more than enough?
But I am challenged to probe a little deeper when we are asked to identify the extent of our privilege: did we grow up with not enough, with enough, or with more than enough?
Like a large part of the group, I enter the circle for “grew up with enough.” This is true, but it is also safe, and as I examine myself under a finer lens, I squirm with the feeling that I am not being completely honest. As I rejoin the circle, I wonder - what is really enough?
In the next morning’s warm-up, I get closer to my fellow participants than I thought possible after less than 24 hour’s acquaintance: We are pulled together in a writhing knot of 80 bodies, linked by hands, ankles and hips. We laugh as we untangle ourselves, our energy up and our spirits high, ready to face our next challenge.
The exercise is titled “Power and Privilege” and, like our celebration last night, we begin again in circle. In the center of the floor is a white piece of butcher paper, and in everyone’s hand, a sheet of sticker dots. We will again have the opportunity to share here, but there is to be no applause this time, and no pictures. Only respectful silence.
The leaders begin the call-out: "Please enter the circle and place a dot on the paper if you or someone in your family has a disability. If your religious holidays are not recognized by your school or work place. If you have ever been called a derogatory term or harassed by the police. If you have ever had to hide the person you love."
Entering and re-entering the circle
The list goes on. Slightly stunned, I watch the waves of people that enter and re-enter the circle. Colored circles pile up on the paper, an amassing of stories from my fellow students and UC Davis staff.
When we are asked finally to hold up our sticker sheets, mine has a few holes. I am a woman, I am under the age of 25 and I have a parent who was born in another country – each of which makes me vulnerable to a form of oppression. But by and large, my dots remain, and this tangible sense of my own privilege helps me grasp a private truth.
I live with more than enough.
And in this realization I also understand why I should care.
Not just distant topics
The “isms” we have examined in our discussions so far, such as racism, classism, and heterosexism, are not just distant topics floating in the world outside. They exist in real forms of discrimination that are written in the history of every person in this room.
Yet there is no anger here. I am on the defensive; I have steeled myself against the blame, the bitterness, that I thought must surely arise from any discussion of oppression. But no one points fingers or shouts, “I have suffered.”
Perhaps this is because the leaders and student presenters have made it clear that across the wide range of “isms,” everyone wears both labels of “oppressor” and “oppressed.”
For all the things that we may be denied, the leaders challenge us to focus on what we have. No one is missing all of his or her dots; everyone has a position of power in some arenas.
On the home page: Students and staff members participate in a weekend retreat at Clear Lake for Reaffirming Ethnic Awareness and Community Harmony. (Richie Lee/UC Davis photo)
I feel an initial flush of shame in recognizing all of my privileges, in realizing that at times I may unconsciously be an oppressor.
But as the retreat progresses, I am encouraged not to feel guilty, but to feel empowered. By recognizing our own privileges, we can reach across different circles to become allies for each other.
It turns out that oppression operates in a cyclical nature, reinforced and perpetuated from one generation to the next. But by connecting our dots, we have the power to interrupt this one circle that is worth breaking.