The Confessional Narratives: A Critical Intervention

Until I came to UNT, I was the product of a semi-rural, traditional, conservative Texas education.  I learned and knew my role exceptionally well:  good attendance and grades (except when I rebelled), speaking when called upon in church and school (for the most part), and minding my manners (usually).  Comply now, complain later.  Docile.  Colonized.

I went to UNT for my undergraduate—100% online.  UNT’s Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences was a good option for me after working in government and big show business.  Theory and the social sciences set me free.  This is my first semester on a college campus since 2009, but I’d been to Denton before.  In my past life as a Jehovah’s Witness, I helped build that big Assembly Hall out on 380, west of Denton (14542 US-380, Krum, TX 76249).  I knew “Little D” was like Waco (where I grew up), but with jazz.  Long before Magnolia.

I feel like a refugee in college.  I’m here to get my future right; to open doors that would have otherwise been barred by educational requirements at future jobs I already want.  Education is my “way up”.

On arriving to campus, I immediately noticed the jarring contrast of the effects of UNT’s liberal education, and the protracted effects of traditional, conservative education.  I consistently observe that materially privileged students from non-liberal collegiate backgrounds can be dangerously oblivious to their colonialist tendencies.  They stand around inspecting, as if surveying a future colony; getting my attention and delaying the question; loudly asking too-personal questions and not listening to the answer.  All while withholding eye contact.  The strangest, disturbingly fucking bizarre interpersonal communication of my entire life.

I will, however, proffer that UNT’s neo-imperialists may be too naïve and inexperienced to understand that their behaviors oppress others.  They may not perceive themselves as behaving unethically due to their tremendous lack of self-awareness.  Their lived experiences may not have taught them any degree of social finesse.  Perhaps they’ve never been challenged in their narrow world view, and simply cannot understand that communicative humility will serve them much better than petulant entitlement. 

I am the redeeming voice that was stolen from my enslaved and converted ancestors, yet I silence myself in classroom settings where I believe my ideas will be appropriated—real talk: stolen!  This is not imaginary.  It has already happened to me this semester!

What would bell hooks say?  I believe she would encourage me to name my pain and tell me to stop being complicit in my own domination.  She offers me deep comfort in Teaching to Transgress:

“Fear and anger about appropriation…have led black [and brown] women to withdraw from feminist settings where we must have extensive contact with white women.  Withdrawal exacerbates the problem: it makes us complicit in a different way (p 105).  Painfully clear biases...distort education so that it is no longer about the practice of freedom (p. 29).  Though the call for sisterhood [is] often motivated by sincere longing to transform the present…there [is] no attempt to acknowledge history, or the barriers that might make such bonding difficult, if not impossible” (p. 102).

Belonging is a verb.  Belonging begins with extending basic courtesies and continues through reciprocity.  Become humbly aware of how your words and actions affect the marginalized other.

Please do not minimize experiences you haven’t lived.