Justin Westdyke

EDUC 318
Professor Fruja
8 October 2013
Identities Reflective Analytical Essay
The Concealment of Intersectionality
For many of us, we are afforded the silent luxury of never being forced to consider what
it is that sets us apart from those around us. In the simplest of explanations, this is due to the very
nature of what it means to be a part of the majority. The majority of us belong to, by definition,
the values, concepts, norms, and structures of the majority--or so that is how it appears on the
surface. As a result, this specific classification of people are considered normal. This dominating
group of normal people are the people who decide what is right and justified on moral and
judicial levels. This, of course, is what happens when we look at the majority and minority as
two simple social structures; a strictly binary division based on outward appearances.
Realistically, however, this is not the case. On the surface, societal forces have typically pushed
most people into either the category of the norm or the other. If you are not White, male,
catholic, upper-middle class, younger- to middle-aged, heterosexual, and able-bodied you will
not be allowed access to this label of the norm. Robin DiAngelo, author of What Does it Mean
to be White? Developing White Racial Literacy elaborates on this idea of intersectionalitythe
notion that the conflicting social positions each individual hols interact with each other in daily
lifeand how it relates to societal discrepancies (DiAngelo, pp. 191). After all, this is more
often than not the actual case, because most people do not possess the entire slough of traits that
are associated with the dominant societal class.
Most of our identities are mixed. Most of us do not have an identity which allows us to
completely identify with the norm, so then why is it that this concept of the norm even still

exists? I have grappled with this question a lot in terms of my own cultural identity, and I believe
that the reason behind it is too complex to look at from a single perspective, but it surely helps.
Outwardly, I am an individual who would seem to identify entirely with the most
dominating social categories that exist in our culture. I am a white, male, heterosexual, ablebodied, young, and healthy person. There really isnt much that would immediately dissociate
me from the dominant social class. This leads to some interesting complications, though, because
beyond the surface-level qualities there is much that distances me from these dominating
associations. The role of intersectionality within our societal hierarchies cannot be overlooked. It
is the exact thing that allows us to create an identity that is unique to our own personal beliefs.
As author and psychologist Beverly Tatum suggests, when we view ourselves in terms of our
categorical social components, the influence of dominance and subordination is vital (Tatum, pp.
22). These factors help determine our own identities, and they also help us to contextualize our
own identities with the social world around us.
Growing up I was never exposed completely to a normal, functioning nuclear household.
For most of my life I bounced around between my divorced parents, both of whom struggled to
make ends meet while trying to raise five kids. The suburban lifestyle just never found its way
into any of our lives, and the working class structure was what we knew. Until I entered college,
though, this was nothing out of the ordinary for a lot of the peers I associated with at my public
high school. There were not too many of us who had a first-hand experience of what it was like
to be upper-middle class, because we had simply grown up in an area dominated by workingclass families.
To this day I find it hard to believe that the socioeconomic status of my family doesnt
allow us to quite be considered middle class. It wasnt until I applied to Bucknell that I was

really able to contextualize the status of my own family in comparison with others who belonged
with the idealized perception of the majority. After countless hours of sifting through old tax
information and conversations on the phone about why the most recent tax information my
parents had was from two or three years before I had graduated high school, I found out that I
was poor enough to receive what was almost an entirely free education from Bucknell (with
the exception of some loans I have to take out myself).
Everything about my socioeconomic status was furthermore internalized upon my arrival
to Bucknells campus. During New Student Orientation I meant so many students who seemed to
talk so casually about the private schools their parents had sent them to prior to coming to
Bucknell. My first-year roommate talked to me about how his parents were currently sending
two of his other siblings to college, and another one to the private school that they had all gone to
before college. Tatum captures this sort of disparity very well in her text, Why Are All the Black
Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Issues About Race, when she brings up the
notion of achievement-oriented versus survival-oriented stresses (Tatum, pp. 85). For my
roommate, the stress was on deciding which private school to attend, rather than on whether or
not it was in my best interest to stay in school or drop out to find a job to help support a family.
In some ways, coming to Bucknell has been a very intense culture shock for me that Ive
tried to downplay since Ive been here in order to more easily form relationships with people
whose lifestyles I simply cannot entirely relate with. As intersectionality suggests, though,
obviously everyone at Bucknell does not fit the above-mentioned description of belonging to the
upper-middle class and being financially well-off. There are many other students in some of the
same social categories as me, so to say that I feel alone in this particular aspect of my cultural
identity would not be true. I belong to the dominating racial group. I am a White male, and these

are the aspects of my identity which I cannot separate from myself or hide. I am very aware that
together, these aspects of my identity put me in a category of social identity that allows for some
serious innate advantages over those who do not fulfill this particular cultural identity. This
aligns nicely with Tatum's suggestion that ...it is the targeted identities that hold our attention
and the dominant identities that often go unexamined (Tatum, 22). In the context of this quote, I
was, indeed, always aware of my White status, and was even awareto some extentof the
privileges I experienced as a result, but I never really felt the need to examine it intently.
The community I grew up in was not completely White, but the majority was clearly
White. As a result, I never remember thinking too intensely into the difference between White
and Black people until I started to analyze people on a broader scale, according to the schema I
had developed. One reason the difference in advantages between Whites and Blacks was never
really examined was simply because we all sort of resided around the same socioeconomic class.
We all had monetary issues we were all worrying about, so the majority of usBlack or White
just never really bothered to consider the role race might have had within it all.
Of course, I had thought passing questions about the Black students I went to school
with, but I had never really acted upon them or thought about them in any sort of breadth.
Furthermore, I had definitely never been prompted to think about my own whiteness. The first
time this was provoked was in Middle School, when I joined the school basketball team. Of
course, I was immediately thrown into a whole new culture of stereotypes and pre-judgments
about race and its role in sports. Even more so, our teams star player was a Black student who
towered over all the other players on the team. Tatum states The culture has embraced the Black
athlete... But even these men will encounter experiences that may trigger an examination of their
racial identity (Tatum, 58). Therefore, this collision with racial stereotypes and differences,

while seeming beneficial to my Black teammate, really was not. This was probably the first point
in my life where I really took a step back and considered my own color, and thought about it in
the context of it possibly being a limitation.
It might seem surprising that my first interaction with my own (dominant) skin color is
one of thinking of it as an inhibitor, but when placed in the context of Tatum and DiAngelos
texts, this fact makes complete sense. We will not question or consider our cultural or ethnic
identities until we are given a reason to do so. More often than not, this reason needs to be
something that we feel is unfair, or disadvantageous to us because those really are the only
circumstances in which we will acknowledge its presence. If my whiteness is advantageous to
everything I put my time and effort towards, it is the last thing I will want to consider giving
credit to when I succeed. However, if (as was the case in my joining the basketball team) I
believe that it is a setback to my current goals, then I will much more readily bring it up
internally and externally.
This is a clear example of White privilege- the benefit of rarely ever having to think
about our race in the context of it being prohibitory. DiAngelo states that ...cross-racial
friendships do not block out the dynamics of racism in the society at large, which continue
unabated (DiAngelo, 226). So while I might have felt like I had some sort of excuse from the
blanket of racism that permeates our society because of how close I became with this particular
person on my basketball team, we were both still working within the culture of a racist society.
This White privilege, though, hits a couple obstacles for me, given the socioeconomic nature of
my identity. While it obviously still exists due to the nature of simply being White, it does fall
slightly short of the standard upper-middle class White model.

This particular weaving of social identities has given me a specific set of tools with with
which I handle the world around me. I can relate to certain aspects of individuals who remain in
the subordinate category of their socioeconomic status, but I am typically still accepted by the
larger, more dominant upper-class White society. The fact that I view my socioeconomic status
as the most prevalent portion of my identity, while it still remains the most hidden emphasizes
the struggle I face in trying to legitimately sympathize with people of color. While I want to be
able to say Yes, I feel your pain, this will never be the case because of my Whiteness. This
discrepency is what allows me to (much more easily than a Black student would) participate in
dominant White culture and society. Even though I might feel out of place internally, these are
parts of my identity which can be concealed and overlooked if I try hard enough to present them
in such a way.
As a result of this hidden interweaving, I have never felt personally or directly challenged
(internally) when it comes to establishing meaningful relationships with those outside of my own
race. Not to say that I dont believe my being White impacts my relationships with others, but
Ive never really been forced to consider it as a meaningful factor. To elaborate, my distance
from the completely dominating social class has given me some insight into what it means to not
fulfill all the necessary requirements one needs to belong to the dominating social categories of
our society.
I believe we all have some sort of conflicting social identities that are consistently
working (whether above or below the surface) to ostracize us from the societal norm. When I
consider my own and relate them to the identities which give me a step above others, I cannot
seem to find a satisfactory conclusion of any concrete means at this point in time. In fact, I do
believe that intersectionality results in such an intricate, non-replicable intertwining of cultural

identities, unique to every individual, that is nearly impossible to understand. Our daily lives are
the result of this complex weaving of dominating and subordinating cultural identities, and it
inevitably leads to our own interpretations of ourselves, as mediated by the societal influences
that we come in contact with regularly.

Works Cited
DiAngelo, Robin J. What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy. New
York: Peter Lang, 2012. Print.
Tatum, Beverly Daniel. "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": And
Other Conversations about Race. New York: Basic, 2003. Print.