Culture and Identity Reflection

Heidi Winters Vogel

19 October 2015


Privilege...Whether prefaced with "White", "Male", "Economic" or "Cultural", this concept is all over the news, opinion pages and blogs.  And I figure I have them all (except male).  Privilege is not something I asked or worked for, not something I am actively deploying, but is something that I am becoming more aware of and often a source of guilt.  I was slapped in the face and had my eyes opened about privilege right here at EMU this fall. 

The campus read this year at Eastern Mennonite University is Emily Raboteau's book Searching for Zion: the Quest for Home in the African Diaspora.  Ms. Raboteau's maternal ancestors came from Ireland and her paternal ancestors from Haiti.  This book, from page one, immerses the reader in the untenable confrontations her bi-racial identity affords.

 The first chapter describes an encounter with Israeli security personnel in the airport that escalates into a strip search when they refuse to believe she isn't of Arab descent.  The picture of Ms. Raboteau, standing naked in an icy room enduring a cavity search, is seared in my mind.  Insult is added to her injury when one of the interrogators slaps at her tattoo and asks her what it means.

She writes, "This was the first time I'd been racially profiled, not that the experience would have been any less humiliating had it been my five hundredth. 'It means 'Fuck You,' I wanted to say, not merely because they'd stripped me of my dignity, but because they'd shoved my face into my own rootlessness.  I have never felt more black in my life than when I did when I was mistaken for an Arab." p.6

 Wow, these words still horrify me for the violation of basic human dignity represented.  I can't imagine experiencing anything like this, safe in my white, North American, highly educated skin.  

I was asked to do a public reading of this passage, and the pages leading up to it, for the fall EMU faculty and staff conference that began the academic year this past August.  It happened that this two-day event took place in the sanctuary of a local Mennonite church because it was large enough to hold our burgeoning group. 

Could I, in my aforementioned white skin, do this?  Was it fair for me to represent Ms. Raboteau's humiliation while embodied in my privilege?  I decided to venture into it, trying to approach the reading with humility and honesty that gave power to a voice that is not my own, a value we aspire to in our theater work all the time.  Afterwards, it was with fear and trembling I encountered feedback from my colleagues.  

Some were offended all right! Were they offended that once again a privileged person was appropriating a story of oppression that doesn't belong to me?  No!  They were offended that the bad words were used in a holy space.

What [tf]!?!

 I was astounded that "Fuck You" was what was heard.  The pain, injustice, humiliation, unfairness, etc. got lost because of two simple, but admittedly powerful, words that succinctly summed up the author's feelings.  How can we be so armored in our [...?..] privilege that we can't hear the cries of injustice?

Wait, do I do that too?  What are the sacred cows that distract me from loving and honoring the experiences of my fellow humans?  In the article "What do I need to know about culture?" by Kevin Avruch, professor of Anthropology at George Mason University, he identifies:

            "Culture links individual and collective identities, providing symbols (some    of them deeply invested with affect or emotion) that connects individuals to         others 'like them' while at the same time separating those individuals from 'unlike others.'  Thus, culture defines social markers for constituting  boundaries between collectivities (social groups).  This is the way in which culture gets implicated in ethnic, religious, nationalist, or other communal conflicts." p. 79

 

Let me emphasize: I own my guilt and realize that changes nothing.  I also own my "in group" unwritten (and often unconscious) norms that exclude outsiders and lead to separation.  Unfortunately owning is not the same as clearly seeing.  My experience with Ms. Raboteau's story, words and their power emphasized my complicity in reinforcing my privilege.  My challenge is to identify my assumptions about behavior, language and identity that serve to exclude. 

 My prayer is that we may learn to be horrified and offended by injustice and not be distracted by violations of cultural norms and taboos.  And then may we join the cry and call out, in solidarity, the words that scare us because the injustice scares us more.

 

 Heidi joined the EMU theater faculty in 2006 as the acting and directing faculty. Her theater scholarship also includes participatory and social justice theater. Prior to coming to EMU, Heidi served as visiting professor of directing at the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University. She has also taught acting, directing and theatre studies at Pennsylvania State University University Park, St. Louis University, Shenandoah University’s Theatre Conservatory and Washington University in St. Louis. Heidi has also been active in new play development, working with such playwrights and dramaturges as KC Davis, Susan Gregg, Naomi Iizuka, Thomas Kincaid, Carter Lewis, and Marisa Wegrzyn. She has participated in the Wise Write Playwrighting Program at the St. Louis Repertory Theatre, the A.E Hotchner Playwrighting Festival (Washington University in St. Louis) and was associate director of the Blue Sky Playwrighting program in State College, Pennsylvania. Heidi’s commitment to using theater as a tool for social justice has led her to co-found, with CJP graduate Roger Foster, Inside Out Playback Theater (www.emu.edu/insideout) to facilitate re-entry for EMU cross-cultural participants and, more widely, build community and resilience through interactive story-telling.


Last modified: Thursday, October 29, 2015, 9:09 AM