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Assignment #9

Being an outsider is something that one experiences at one point in their life. It makes you feel isolated and it often makes you feel a variety of emotions. This moment in my life when I felt like an outsider was in middle school. As a non-catholic going to a catholic school, it was very awkward when teachers used to talk about religion and as a class when we went to church. In middle school, we used to have a religion class twice a week and it was odd to see classmates participate in discussion about God and share their own personal views. I didn’t feel very comfortable sharing my views on God, because I thought it would offend my classmates. We also used to go to church as a class and I dreaded that because the students would have to kneel on the stand and pray, while I just sat and watched along with a couple of other classmates. At the end of the mass, the students would go up and receive bread along with drinking wine. Again, I would watch the students and it was very uncomfortable because of the non-participation in these religious activities. Although, I do not regret going to this school, I felt like an outsider any time religion came up in discussion. In Patricia Hill Collins piece, she explored how being an outsider made black women learn about oppression and inequality. She mentions black women being mules, the white women were dogs, and white males would never treat them as humans. Collins mentions how these outsider experiences allows these women to go through the pain of struggling to fit in, but also allows them to overcome adversity. Black women naturally have this bond with each other because of their ability to share past experiences of being an outsider. It is important to stick together as people and treat each other as equals.