5 Assignment 09

For most of my life I was basically an outsider. When I first started elementary school, I was placed into a class filled with English speakers, while I was the only Spanish speaker. Being in these classes had caused my Spanish to gradually disappear, this had caused me to even become an outsider in my own home. My Spanish has now become a mix of both Spanish and English. I had at this point become adjusted into American culture and started to classify myself as an American. Growing in Uptown Harlem, there was always an issue with my family being fully Hispanic living in generally African- American neighborhood.   In both Middle school and high school, I had different taste in music, clothes, and interest compered to everyone there. I didn’t understand any of the slang they used nor the music either. None of the shows they watch interested me what so ever. None of the events that they were excited for caused excitement for me. I was more of a reader in most of my school career. My favorite place was always the library, I would sometimes be the only person in there reading a book. I frequented it so much that the Liberian had known my name. There weren’t many readers in my schools, the students were more of dancers and musicians. They would only use it to either skip class or watch a game. Something that I noticed that even in groups of friends there is an outsider. There is always that one person that is less social than the others. There is always a person who must work on their things whether it be school or work. I was busy with school work, so I wasn’t able to hang out some friends or I was extremely scared to become close friends with them due to my past experiences.

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.

There have been a few times in my life when I felt like an outsider. Fortunately it has not happened a lot, but when it does happen it can be extremely hard. I’ve had a learning disability my entire life and I have struggled with it for as long as I can remember. Growing up, for all my exams and quizzes from as early as elementary school, I had to leave the classroom and take it in a special location. I used to be so embarrassed by this because I just wanted to take the exam in my classroom with all my other peers. Having a disability has made me feel like an outsider and made me feel down about myself. It had me questioning myself, that I was not as smart as my friends because I would take me extra time to just finish one assignment. As I have grown older, and became more mature, I have accepted my learning disability because it made me who I am. Instead of being embarrassed by this, I learned to embrace it and not be ashamed of who I am. Correlating my feelings with Paticia Hill-Collin’s essay, “Learning from the Outsider Within” she talks about all different kinds of stereotypes and labels that people have and even give themselves. She discussed families within her essay who comes from all different types of backgrounds.  All of these families she talked about came from different backgrounds, yet they all had a time where they experienced what it felt like to be an outsiders.  Many people think that there is a certain path we as people are suppose to follow. Sometimes, thing’s do not always go as they are suppose too. Social media is a huge influence on our society today. People have this idea in there head on what they are suppose to look like because of the media. 99% of the people do not look like anything compared to what is shown on TV and magazines. This causes people to feel down about themselves and make them feel like an outsider because they believe they are not socially accepted.

When I first felt that I am an Outsider is when I moved to a school in different region in my country. The first one week in the class, no one talked to me. I could not talk to anybody so I was totally isolated. After moving around three month, I remember finally made some friends. Another experience is when I went to Canada for school. I did not speak any language and there were only white roommates. If i try to go to a party, I couldn’t communicate because of the language. Even after I got more comfortable in English I still felt that I am totally outsider because the culture they have was so different to me. It took some time to get used to the flow of the conversation. Most people were very nice to me, but I could not be as open as people in Canada. This might be because I was born in a country where has a little bit totalitarian atmosphere for 18 years without being critic about it. Of course Japan is a Wonderful country, but the country has very special culture. I had been in Japan until I was eighteen, and I still remember I barely made own choices. I only had to do what everyone does without thinking. The society has pressure to be “normal”. Since I was taught to be normal in school, I was so surprised that everyone in North America has own decisions. That’s why I felt so outsider. However, there were some people who are obviously looking down other race who actually say they don’t like specific race. I was told that directly too. Form the reading, I realize that the difference is actually a stereotypes can be advantage. Stereotype actually made me stronger and taught me how to live in countries where I wasn’t raised in.

A time in my life when I felt an outsider was the first time coming to the United States. I was born in Colombia and the transition from one country to a whole new one made a great difference in culture and the behavior of the people within each country. I was part of the society of this new country but I felt like that was not fit for it at all. One of the issues was language, I had to learn how to communicate and the treatment received from some people was discouraging to keep trying to speak and to be part of their society. However, the self-evaluation I gave myself limit my chances to be fully a human. It can be a very simple experience but it shows a lot on how even when I am a part of a different group of people I still can be a “stranger” due to my own perspective or from the other people. Not knowing the language portrayed also an image about me that people immediately were able to place me under the category of immigrant due to all the knowledge and stereotypes they have gained. But now that I learned the language I am able to defend my position and to communicate with others.  Patricia Hill- Collins’s essay explains how black women have experienced oppression as result of the image the society developed about them. While women are oppressed they were able to develop a standpoint after all and be firm in mentally and physically. Patricia gave an example on how in you don’t have a mind of your own then people are going to take advantage of that and begin to define who you are. Therefore, it was important for women to fight any kind of injustice that approach them and try to bring all people together.

I have felt like an outsider most of my teenage years. Coming from a different country right before I became a teenager, I just did not seem to fit in with the rest of the kids. I wasn’t able to speak the language which made it a bit worse too. Kids in America just seemed to act different from the kids I was used to being around in my country. People didn’t used to laugh at you because you weren’t able to do something the way they did or because you weren’t able to act the way they did. I used to get bullied because I just wasn’t like the rest of them, but moving forward I don’t directly get bullied but I still feel like I don’t belong in certain places. The way I see people my age acting seems to be what everyone thinks is cool and what everyone wants to follow. But I don’t do as much as these kids do, I don’t party or drink or smoke or anything like that but that’s what most people my age seem to be doing now. Collings discuses how these experiences teach of the main reason why we feel like outsiders. She discusses how oppression utilizes these opportunities to make certain groups feel like less. I agree with her completely, because when people feel like this they will do anything to try to fit in or even lose their identity in the process. When we lose our identities we could easily be fooled to take on a fake one, where we could be completely controlled by the oppressor. So like she said, it is  important to keep a sense of our identity and culture as a way to remind ourselves who we really are. We give ourselves value, no matter the way others make us feel.

Patricia Hill Collins discusses in her essay “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought” discusses the love that families had for each other from mixed backgrounds. Collins uses the example of black women riding buses to their white families and another example of white families discussing their love for their black mothers.

Although these families had different racial backgrounds, they still felt a sense of being an outsider. They felt as if they did not belong to their spouses as well.

Collins explains that although black families might feel like outsiders, that there is beauty in the fact that one can triumph against these kinds of racial differences, become a feminist, advocate, and a distinguished scholar.

Moreover, Collins explains that feminism varies from person to person and opinions of black feminists should not be weighted against each other. There is no single way of distinguishing which opinion is right or wrong. They do not create their own standards similar to what present day media portrays. Since there are different methods of oppression, there are different thoughts between each feminist.

One time where I felt like an outsider was when I was ordering a smoothie at Cold Stone Creamery. Everyone else on the line (approximately 25-50 people) were ordering ice cream. Although this is a simple example of what it feels like to be an outsider, it felt as if I wasn’t supposed to order a smoothie from there even though they do offer them. This situation is unique from other experiences of when a person would experience themselves feeling as if they were an outsider, which is what Collins hopes the reader will understand.

Society can make a person feel as if they are a minority in a majority if oppression is not resolved. The motif in this essay is that even in the tightest of situations a person can still feel different.

For my entire life, up until college I had grown up in a very synchronized, non-diverse, suburban town on eastern Long Island. Most shared the same class, race, political standing, etc. And while my family fit within many of these categories, I found myself an outsider due to being overweight, unlike most of my peers, neighbors, etc. Though I was not the only overweight youth in my town, I was one of the very few. For the longest time, even today, I felt excluded from the mass majority of people my age. I could never run as fast, wear the same types of clothing, or look anything like my friends and peers. I constantly feel inferior due to my body and the pressures media possess can make me feel even more so an outsider. In a world where woman’s bodies are constantly scrutinized, judged, labeled, etc. it feels frankly impossible for a girl of my size to not feel like an outsider. A woman’s value today seems to be determined by her appearance in so many peoples’ perceptions. I at times feel oppressed being an outsider, because many devalue me as a person simply based on my appearance, while my true self is dismissively overlooked.

I can connect my feelings of being an outsider to Paticia Hill-Collin’s essay, “Learning from the Outsider Within” by focusing on what she says about stereotypes and how they can be a defense mechanism against threats to the patriarchy. When discussing African American woman and how stereotypes can make them feel devalued, she notes how these stereotypes could have been constructed so that black woman would not threaten the power of white men. (page S17) I think that what Hill-Collin is trying to say is that if we let stereotyping control us, and devalue us, we are just giving up our power to those that already hold it most. Connecting this concept to my own life, stereotypes surrounding overweight woman can make us feel powerless. That we are lazy, ugly, undesirable, etc. These labels can strip away our self-worth. But if we can take what Patricia Hill-Collin is saying, and look at our feelings of being outsiders, and interpret that as an advantage, we can fight these feelings oppression. Maybe if I stop letting these nasty stereotypes against overweight woman control me, and see my body as something that has taught me strength and a clearer perspective, I can feel more inner power.

My experience with being treated like and outsider would be back when I had switched schools. I was instantly targeted for by the new kid and was routinely made fun of because of it. The people who bothered stopped after a while since I just stopped reacting to their actions, but I noticed that I wasn’t the only person who was targeted as well. In that school anyone new was targeted by the others, it didn’t matter what race or gender you were back then, if you were new the other children would just bully you just to do it. After they just got tired of doing it you were actually taken in by the group that bullied you. This happened to me and several other people that after we were bullied the people who bullied us would just accept us into their little group. I know that my experience doesn’t fit with the theme that Collins has but it was the only time were I felt truly alone as an outsider. What I learned from that experience besides that people in general are just unpleasant jackasses was that If I could outlast the person bullying me they would tire themselves out from doing it and I didn’t have to deal with it anymore, which to be honest was a bad thing to learn because that would mean people wouldn’t speak out when they should. That connect with Collins had going about sharing the outsider experience with others because I did become friends a lot easily with the people who were also bullied. The thing was that the people who bullied us and later took us into their groups would also influence the way we, the people who were bullied, would look at anyone else who was new. It start a vicious cycle of a new person being bullied and if they stayed in school long enough to be accepted into the group that they too would start to bully the next new person just like how they themselves were bullied. It showed me that it was incredibly easy to switch sides once you’re a part of a group because you get infected with that group mentality and would bully others even if you didn’t want to.

It is very hard to share the experience of when I felt like an outsider. Of course, as every individual I felt that feeling and it is not a pleasant one. We as individuals need people around us because it is completely impossible to live like a lone wolf. Even wolves live in packs. So, the feeling of being left alone is a very strong feeling and it evokes different kinds of emotions. In my case I felt like an outsider was when me and my family moved to Moscow.

However before that I need to give a little backstory. Originally I’m from country called Kazakhstan and this country is known for its friendliness to other people from other nationalities. There are about one hundred and twenty different nationalities that live in my country right now. Since childhood we are taught to respect others and respect their customs. So, at the age of twelve me and my family moved to Moscow and it was completely different experience. I will not say that Russia is racist to other people and I will not imply that because it is dissuasion for another day. However, I started to first feel like an outsider when I went to a new school. Kids were not very glad to see me so there was a special kind of oppression. It was based just on the understanding that I look different, that I’m Asian even though Kazakhstan is partly in Europe and I’m a mix between European and Asian. So, there was an oppression on race and it was simply a discrimination. Even my parents, as they said me later, experienced it on work in some way.

Thus, these kinds of oppressive experiences perhaps make us stronger and more aware of these problems. In addition, Patricia Hill-Clinton mentions it too. Her understanding of this, I believe, is very simple and true. She states that these experiences bond us together and it does not matter where we come from and who we are.