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As a black woman, white supremacy overwhelms me daily but so does patriarchy. Especially when patriarchy comes at the hands of women or POC. Throughout my leadership journey, people of often deferred to men in the room even though I was the one in charge. To that end, the amount of sexual advances made to me as jokes are countless. It had made feel infuriated, disgusted, and enraged. 

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As a black woman, white supremacy overwhelms me daily but so does patriarchy. Especially when patriarchy comes at the hands of women or POC. Throughout my leadership journey, people of often deferred to men in the room even though I was the one in charge. To that end, the amount of sexual advances made to me as jokes are countless. It had made feel infuriated, disgusted, and enraged. 

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I went to a grad school that combined three grade levels.  4th graders were bullied and eventually became the 6th grade bullies.   Years later, there are people still hurting from the culture of that magnet program.

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I was in one of middle school classrooms where a classmate turns to me and says "I hate Mexicans" as he referred to another classmate of ours. The disgust I saw on his face as I saw him say those words, I felt it physically in my body.

I was in shock, I was 12 years old. He hated me? He hated me? How could he hate me because of my very identity? Because of something beautiful? Because of something I was born into? Because of something I embrace?

I uttered "I'm... I'm Mexican." Horrified, he never spoke to me again.

We went to the same middle school and the same high school. He never said a word to me again.

I can feel my heart beat faster as I recount this.

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I saw the shame in my fathers eyes as he slowly died of terminal cancer. He was unable to verbalize his need for tenderness and care as his strong body shriveled to its final weakened state. He still held on to the vestiges of strength even as it revealed itself to be an illusion. The refusal of vulnerability was borne of a history of disappointment and victimization. An absence he'd seen reflected in the men in his life who could not support a family or maintain dignity in a system of white supremacy. The strength he came to embody pushed away those that loved him most. Left his children trying to piece together who he really was in the wake of his untimely departure. Tears that never fell left us questioning what he truly valued or loved. Compassion never expressed made it hard to diagnose when his heart was first broken. For surely it was once whole.

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I grew up in a colonized country where its Mestizo population has been denied its indigeneity and has been brainwashed for centuries to see it as a “deficiency”. I am genetically half indigenous and my family’s internalized oppression and denial of its indigenous roots has caused many intergenerational wounds, many of which, still affect me today and have manifested in my body as anxiety, digestive issues, and many other ailments.

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Homophobia is one of the strongest lines I draw in the sand with my family. In 8th grade I was blindsided by my parents who feared I might be gay because a close male friend had feelings for me and expressed them in an email they found. This was at home, in their room where I'd always felt safe. I panicked and didn't know what to do, and while my reaction and response was lukewarm by my standards today I was outraged and confused with them and myself for long. Today I question and push and challenge my parents at every step and they have learned that this is something I will not tolerate. I'm conflict averse usually and keep trying to build my arsenal when I know something isn't right.

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College American football culture encourages aggression, violence, and - at all times- competition.  This led people to compete while injured, fight at practice, and adopt a "hostile towards complacency" model that still lingers in the sport today.

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This may fit into many categories listed but it was one of the most painful experiences in my teaching career. During a PD in my department, I was both silenced and scolded for asking for recognition publicly. I closed my window and left the meeting to join my prescheduled office hours with Dr. Penn. I am so grateful that she was there to support me that day. At first, I thought to myself that I was overreacting but as I started talking with Dr. Penn, tears flowed. My hysteria had a historical context that I was about to ignore and suppress, as I always do. I sat and felt my pain and had someone acknowledge that it was real. Nothing changed at work, and I still encounter similar experiences, but at least I know that it's real.

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In middle school history, my class did a simulation of "slavery" where 1/2 the class was assigned to be enslaved and the other 1/2 was assigned to be wealthy slave owners. Basically, students spent the day bossing others around or being verbally harassed by peers. I remember feeling extremely uncomfortable and confused, but not fully understand where this feeling was coming from, especially since I rarely questioned my schooling experience. Although this simulation only lasted 1 day, there were definitely some different dynamics in relationships that managed to remain. I can't imagine how my black peers must have felt.

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My dad is also extremely anti-Black... the comments that he makes are so painful to hear, and I always start fighting with him because of it. He thinks he got fired because his new manager was Black, he thinks that a Black man on the beach was threatening him, etc... No matter what I say or do to convince him otherwise, his blatant racism and anti-Blackness continues, and I don't know what to do anymore.

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I grew up with cousins who were several shades darker than me. I was called names like "white girl" and "casper". I felt ostracized and unwanted by my family. I did not know where I fit in. Growing up, I would change the way I behaved to fit in and make them like me.

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My sister has a disabling pain condition and is an ambulatory wheelchair user. She can walk but most days her pain is bad enough that she relies on a wheelchair to get around and to do her job.

Sadly, even members of our own family forget her disability. Probably because it is mostly invisible. If she’s unable to participate in something in the way that’s expected, some react with annoyance, eye-rolling, or dismissiveness.

I get really angry when I witness these reactions. I get heated and very emotionally charged. I want to defend her but as I’ve learned, creating a fiery atmosphere in the living room doesn’t really make anything better.

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As a caregiver to my older brother who is a recent TBI survivor, I have seen how people treat differently abled people and their families. Whether it is the lack of awareness that people with disabilities have full lives and dreams or that as a result of their disability they should be othered has brought me heartache and anger. Much of these experiences occurred in supposedly healing spaces themselevs, including hospitals, and care-facilities. One time, while my brother was admitted into the hospital a technician asked me, "what's wrong with him." I was stunned - nothing is wrong with him. So, I make it a priority to engage, include, and involve all types of people in my life - those with full physcial abilities and those that have full abilities in other ways.

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I am transgender, though I don't prescribe to a man/woman binary. I have been spit on in public before and harassed. I am often times too afraid to go out in public without my partner or a friend and notice that I have embodied that fear so intensely. It has given me pain in my jaw and chest. Sometimes I change what I am wearing out of fear of being harassed in public spaces. I am getting more bold to just live as I please in public but it is hard..

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I think this frequently shows up in the language that I use to describe the students I teach. I've been part of school systems (and perpetuated these systems) where students academic ability are labeled high, medium, and low or are immediately assigned many adjectives and labels based on a perceived disability that are inaccurate, incomplete, dehumanizing and could fit within many of these different categories 

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I think this frequently shows up in the language that I use to describe the students I teach. I've been part of school systems (and perpetuated these systems) where students academic ability are labeled high, medium, and low or are immediately assigned many adjectives and labels based on a perceived disability that are inaccurate, incomplete, dehumanizing and could fit within many of these different categories 

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I watched both my parents be marginalized in their jobs due to their race/ethnicity once they reached management positions. My mom's situation was a more subtle, complicated process of breaking down her professional self-esteem, but my dad's have been much more visible. One moment that really jarred me was when a white woman made an illegitimate complaint about him (saying that his direct reports liked him too much) and he was heavily scrutinized despite her reputation for making claims like this in the past. Instances like these have made me feel like I need to constantly watch my back and can't trust anyone to look out for me in professional settings.

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in elementary school, i used to be hella embarrassed that my parents couldn’t speak english. kids used to tease the other kids whose parents spoke spanish, cantonese, vietnamese, khmer. we’d get called all sorts of xenophobic, racist shit because the languages we spoke. i wanted to avoid re-experiencing that, so when my parents would pull up for things like parent-teacher meetings or back-2-school days, i used to pretend that they weren’t my parents. i’d walk hella distant from them in the hallways, keep my head down. when they’d talk with my teachers —teachers who understandably had no idea how to speak with them because they didn’t understand khmer— i’d be hella uncomfortable. they’d show my parents my drawings and shitty scribbles of work but my parents didn’t know what was going on. my teachers would ask me to interpret, but i barely even knew how to speak my parents’ language so i’d just lie both ways. eventually, i just stopped telling my parents about those parent-school events.

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I have struggled with my weight my entire life. When I was younger, my family used nicknames such as pork chop and blueberry (after the girl on Willy Wonka). As a teenager, I tried multiple diets with my mother and was always trying to lose weight. Now, as an adult I am not comfortable in my own skin. I constantly notice everything I hate about my body. I worry about all the children who are constantly criticized about how they look and compare themselves to photoshopped pictures on the internet. It makes me feel frustrated and angry.

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I was in a discussion just today in a class section where patriarchy showed up in harmful ways.

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I was in a discussion just today in a class section where patriarchy showed up in harmful ways.

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It was an affinity-based discussion about patriarchy – all men – and an older white man shared that he was glad we finally had space to talk. He said he was really being impacted by all these new norms at Harvard, and he was getting frustrated by having to wait to speak last in discussions all the time.  My body immediately constricted.  I felt a responsibility to say something. But it was this group’s first discussion, and I had already spoken.  I felt confused.  I didn’t know whether I should interject and say something right then (because others hadn’t yet spoken, and we were going around a circle).  And then we ran out of time for the breakout room, and the discussion was just over.  I felt frustrated… sick… confused… complicit.  It still impacts me because it feels unresolved – sickening -- and this guy is gonna keep feeling/experiencing this stuff and perpetuating it in his interactions with others.  I feel a responsibility to take action tonight or tomorrow. I emailed one of the TAs to think together about what that might look like. But I still feel sick about it.

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I grew up in Asia in the 70s where gender inequality/ sexism was all I can remember about my childhood. My mom always tell me to be grateful for having the same education experience as my brothers, because girls don't need to be educated. She is brainwashed by the Confucius teaching that a woman without knowledge is virtuous. I always feel like I can't have emotions other than gratefulness, and felt guilty if I have feelings of pain as a result of sexism.

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My parents came from a country that was colonized multiple times. When they moved to the U.S., they didn't (and to this day, still do not) trust the people here and so isolated themselves from community. My parents struggle to see the amazing joviality and love that my brother radiates in his beautiful self and beautiful body, because they fear the retribution of a society that rejects them. They are both suspicious of and reliant on dominant cultures, and it's confirmed by the homophobia my brother faces every single day, from people around him and his own family. How does it change for him, who loves his family? What can change look like?

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Growing up the majority of my classmates and friends were bi and trilingual. When I was in 5th grade I remember hearing my peers speak Spanish to each other in the lunch line and the 7th-grade teacher said, “when in America, we speak English”. The main thing I remember feeling was confusion, why couldn’t my friends speak to each other in a way that was comfortable for them? We weren’t in class, they weren’t distracting anyone. I never thought to question how this made my classmates feel, I internalized that message from an authority figure and considered it a fact, like somehow that was a legitimate rule in America. When I think about it now I feel sick to my stomach and have empathy in my heart for my classmates

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Recently stopped asking kids if they went anywhere over break -- shifted to questions like "did you try something new" or "did you find a new place in your community"