Finding the "I" in Mentoring

“I have the same skin color or ethnicity as the girls I mentor” is a phrase that has been in the forefront of my mind over the past few weeks. Why you ask? Because in response to that question, I walked a few steps towards the side representing ‘disagree’ before walking over to the side representing ‘agree’.

I am a woman of color. I know this because society reminds me of this every day. I know that because of my appearance that I will be perceived differently to my white counterpart. However, to some extent, growing up in a rural predominantly white community has warped my sense of identity when it comes to race/ethnicity.

An integral part of personal identity seems to be the perception of one’s race or ethnicity (even though most anthropologists/geneticists would agree that race is a meaningless construct).Although I can relate to the girls regarding some issues surrounding race or ethnicity, it’s problematic to group all our experiences under the umbrella term of ‘women of color’

I may have faced similar forms of prejudice growing up but my other privileges have affected those experiences. Sure, I’ve had my share of racist sentiments and extra pat downs at airports (at this point I’m more surprised when I’m not ‘randomly’ chosen at Logan) but I’ve never been told that college wasn’t financially viable or taught to identify unmarked police cars.

One of the biggest takeaways from mentoring for me is how much pride our girls take in their identities. I am in awe of how they embrace their cultural differences instead of assimilating to the dominant (default/white) culture like I did. They’ve inspired me to stop anglicizing my identity in everyday situations, for example, when it comes to shortening my ‘unusual’ name.

Had I not attended a retreat about oppression and privilege a few weeks ago, I would have never considered myself as privileged. That’s the funny thing about privilege - it’s difficult to accept that all of us have it in some form or another. There are a lot of default boxes in our society and I think most of us tick at least some of those boxes. Although we can’t get rid of privilege per se, I think we should be comfortable having uncomfortable conversations about it.

We need to ensure that we aren’t hasty when we say that we can relate to what our girls have experienced. Although we may share common experiences with our girls, we need to recognize that there are several factors that affect our experiences. We need to find the similarities that we share with our girls whilst also keeping in mind the differences to avoid making assumptions based on our own norms and values. This tricky balance can only be achieved once we are honest with ourselves about our identities and the biases that we all hold about social norms.

I walked into our chapter meeting a few weeks ago, absentmindedly thinking about how unnecessary identity training was since I knew who ‘I’ was. Little did I know that the identity training that night would lead to an identity crisis and ultimately to an identity quest.