Reflecting on my intersectional identity has served as a reality check in some ways. Namely, this
exercise has helped me to be more conscientious of the various privileges I enjoy as a result of my
positional identity. It has also helped me to consider the ways in which I have been endowed with
certain elements of social capital and power in society by the virtue of my intersectional standing. I am
a white cisgender heterosexual able-bodied Christian male; Over the course of my life, I have been
fortunate enough to move from the working class to middle class, and now enjoy the majority of
privileges of the middle class along with my wife and my two young children. It is worth adding to the
list that I live in United States which, by many accounts, is one of the most prosperous and free
countries in the world; this country affords its citizens with an exceptional opportunity for upward
mobility, along with unique individual liberties to think and live as they choose, and it should therefore
be recognized as a significant element of my own privilege as it relates to the rest of the world. Through
this analysis, I’ll begin by giving a short history of my personal background, and I will then reflect on
various ways which my dominant social group identities have caused me to form certain blind spots, and
how it may have shaped my personal experiences in life. Thesis… structural inequity
I was born and raised up in a small river town in Connecticut called Portland. Growing up, I had
two married parents with middle-class incomes and had a well-established family support system in
place. I am one of 5 children and came 2nd in line along with my twin sister, who was technically 3rd; and
then, following us, came my little brother just 20 short months later. Between my siblings and cousins,
there were seven children born in the span of about two years, and because we had a family daycare at
my house (run by my aunt), we were naturally very close-knit and became intimately connected with
one another as kids. Portland is a quaint town with a long history, has 3 beautiful brownstone churches
—Catholic, Episcopalian, and Church of Christ—within a mile of one another, and also boasts some of
the highest rated public schools in the entire nation. My siblings and I were in the local scout troops,
played little league baseball, youth soccer, and we had the freedom to ride our bikes around the local
neighborhood, and often landed at the town hall which had a large parking lot and a field where familiar
street kids would all congregate. Life was peachy in that beautiful middle-class Connecticut town, and
I’ll always remember it fondly.
That picturesque life was too good to last evidently. When I was ten years old, my family moved
to Midlothian, VA which is a suburb of Richmond, and my mother went back to medical school at which
time we came to rely solely on my father’s income, and we subsequently fell into the working class
while I was between the ages 10 and 16. For the first time in life, we experienced food insecurity at
home,
and we were blessed to be the recipients of free lunch at school. I never griped about this much, and
made the best of life anyway. I began mowing lawns and raking leaves, and I built up a large customer
base all around the neighborhood so that I could afford to have all the same name-brand clothes as the
other students at school, and I bought my own videogame system with plenty of games to boot. My
father always encouraged my entrepreneur spirit; yardwork and garage organization became my hustle
throughout my teen years until I could get a real job, at which time I worked as much as possible so that
I could afford a car and a cell phone. I did just that; I worked for every penny, and that was fine by me.
This ideal of hard work and taking advantage of the opportunities that I was given was
engrained in me and my siblings early on in life. In fact, going further back in my family history—to my
grandparents and great grandparents--there are some interesting intersectional dynamics played a part
in shaping my overall worldview, and which I remain eternally grateful. Being a third and fourth
generation immigrant on both sides (from grandparents who emigrated here from abject poverty), I
have always been taught to have a great appreciation for the privileges that me and my siblings enjoy,
and to be grateful for the benefits of living in the land of opportunity. From what I’ve been told, it took a
lot of hard work and struggle to achieve the livelihood that our generation has grown accustomed to;
my grandparents and other family members that came before us sacrificed much in order to provide
hope and security to our generation. I should add that my mother and most adults in my extended
family were all relatively well-educated; the institution of education has always been regarded as
something of immeasurable value to my mother’s side of the family. While it can be said that this value
was instilled in me, I did not embrace this value in my formative years as I should have.
I would be remiss not to mention the familial strife that our household endured. This
longstanding conflict always had its roots in my father’s abusive alcoholism, and was subsequently
driven by my mother’s consuming career aspirations. As it happened, my parents started a family and
then grew in two totally different directions. Honestly, I cannot remember a time in my early years
when my parents did not have routine shouting matches, sometimes loud enough to wake us kids up
from a dead sleep in the night; there were even times that involved the local police. These arguments
always led to my father’s retreat to the bar that followed our family’s ongoing coastal trek, and always
seemed to occupy the various garages we had while growing up. When I was 14, my parents finally
divorced after this long-standing conflict reached its ultimate breaking point. Around that same time,
my older brother and I went ‘off the rails’, so to speak. It had become time for me to find myself, and I
decided to follow the path of my father and older brother by embracing the party lifestyle. Because we
had recently moved to a suburb of Baltimore, MD, and I was the new kid again, I found that this was
also an easy way to make friends who I could escape my circumstances with; and the particular
community our family moved to had an unsuspecting vivacious party culture that welcomed us with
open arms. It was a wonder that I graduated high school on time considering the level of negligence I
showed for my schoolwork. I managed to get through those years without any permanent criminal
record following
me, and had enough of a combination of common sense and an good fortune to veer away from
‘hardier kinds’ of partying. As I looked back in the rearview, I have witnessed many of my friends go
much
deeper into that delinquent lifestyle; for many of them, it led to a life of wasted opportunities, trouble
with the law and, worse yet, I’ve watched as a handful of my high school friends meet the early
unexpected demise as a result of the insidious devices, and/or unpredictable nature of that lifestyle.
In spite of this cavalier attitude during my teens, my years of matriculation were not over. I
didn’t have much of a plan after high school but was blessed to have the spirit of a dreamer and a
mother who always encouraged me to shoot for the stars. So I proceeded to enroll in community
college and then a 4-year university. Somehow I ended up with a degree in English Literature from
Harding University, but quickly squandered the opportunities I might have had to use the degree to
better myself; for a period of two to three years, I worked multiple part-time jobs as a way to sustain my
lifestyle (still partying in moderation), but with the burden of bills and a recently-incurred mountain of
student loan debt, I was living at or below the poverty line. I was no stranger to the life of couch surfing,
sleeping in the backseat of a beat-up car, and consuming a diet of PBJs and pizza-by-the-slice. At one
point, I was working for three hours in the morning at a horse stable, eight hours during the day at an
animal shelter, and seven hours at night at a lumber yard. I barely left myself any time to enjoy with my
girlfriend (which she wasn’t happy about) or practice with my bandmates; so I decided to make a
change. Within the span of a year, I proposed to my girlfriend (now wife), joined the Army National
Guard, went to basic training and advanced individual training, married said girlfriend (who so happens
to be the girl of my dreams), and got a single full-time job as with a flooring contractor. ((This initiative
that I took, and the positive developments that have followed have been possible only because))
This brings me to th
It is fair to say that the two-parent middle-class household and the social support systems that
surrounded me have all been hugely advantageous for my siblings and I while growing up; and it can
certainly be said that these were all invaluable aspects of privilege that helped to shape the adults that
we are today. Outside of those positional markers, I am also white, male, able-bodied, and have
recently accepted Christ into my heart; all of these intersectional identities have afforded me positional
advantages in society; Taking it all into account, I have been lucky enough to experience life with a
‘stacked deck’ so to speak. These p ((geographical positionality, not being exposed to other cultures-
people of similar class) caused blind spots … I can only imagine how things might have turned out for
me if I was not imbued with the social capital that has come from my positional advantages in society.
have adopted the values of meritocracy… which have been continuously validated through my
experiences.. but I’ve also had the benefit of certain critical influences…
mot being exposed to other cultures.
If I had not been routinely forced to dedicate myself to the foundational asset, I don’t know where my
life would have taken me; surely I would not be the same person that I am today.
