Responding to your peers discussion

Constance Carroll posted Jul 11, 2019 11:39 AM

 

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I grew up an Army Brat.  I moved around a lot and most of my schools were mainly military children as well.  The only color we saw growing up was green.  The uniform that our parents wore.  As a child, I never was limited by the skin color of a person.  I had friends from all parts of life; many cultures, religions, blended families, and more.  It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I attended a civilian school that was not military affiliated.  This school was very monochromatic.  It was very unusual for me. I am from a multicultural family: dad is Native American, mom is Italian, adopted a black brother and have a Korean nephew and two Mexican nieces.  We are a true melting pot.  Going to an all white school was a culture shock to me.  There was little diversity in the sense of cultural diversity in this school.  I did learn that there was other types of diversity though.  There was the entitled and the deprived.  The socioeconomically status was important to this little community.  The "have's" made the rules and the "have not's" did as they were told.  I didn't stay in this town for too long.  I did not fit in.  I was being ostracized because of my financial status and because I was a "half-breed" (a term they used a lot). I believe this is an example of Intersectionalism as explained by Butler. (Butler, 2017) This showed me that without diversity, people become very limited and narrow-minded in the aspects of what is really important. 

Being military affiliated, I realized as an adult that the military was very diverse in its community.  People from all cultures would join to show patriotism, or citizenship, or to get an education.  Many joined to have a sense of belonging and family.  I found a great article on the SNHU Shapiro Library that dives deeper in the components of the diversity in the military.  It describes that the different upbringing, the different cultures, the different religions, and so on bring a "overall higher level of cohesion" (Kamarck, 2015).  I always knew that I enjoyed having people different from myself around but with this article, I realize that it was expanding my vision of the world and different populations.