Narrative Reflection

I had two realizations within the first two months of starting the Higher Education

Student Affairs program at Loyola University Chicago. First, our academic program was

going to impact me far beyond my imagination. Second, my professional experiences

would foster incredible personal growth, despite not being part of my intended career

path. The transformation I would experience is a result of what I would consider the most

important content I learned from our program: systems of power, privilege, and

oppression.

My Loyola experience is inextricably tied and defined by my exposure to systems of

power, privilege, and oppression and the personal reflection that has accompanied that

exposure. I remain most impacted by the Multiculturalism for Social Justice in Higher

Education course I took my first semester at Loyola. The course, taught by Bridget Turner

Kelly, required vulnerability and discomfort as I began to unpack my privileged and

oppressed identities, and how those identities have impacted me and others throughout

my life. The exploration of my racial identity was especially powerful. It is my most salient

identity and the one on which I continuously reflect as I gain a deeper understanding of

what it means to be white and how I have continuously benefitted from my whiteness.

The exploration of my whiteness also had a significant impact on how I understand

my professional interests and what role I want to play in advancing the field of admissions.

As a first-generation student who became involved with admissions through college

access work, I believed myself to be an advocate for traditionally underserved populations

in my previous role as an admissions counselor. Additionally, I understood that my first-

generation experience was unlike many students first generation experience, largely

because of my socio-economic status. However, I never considered how my other

identities, specifically my race, impacted my lived experience AND how my lack of critical

reflection on this identity limited my ability to be an effective advocate. Subsequently, my

interest in admissions has transformed from simply participating in the field, to desiring to

work towards changing the field to engage in more social just admissions practices. I

believe that engagement starts with critical reflection and understanding of individual

privileged and oppressed identities and how those identities have and will continue to

impact our lives and how we engage with prospective students and their families.

Through my experience at Loyola, I realized need for critical reflection and continued

learning through cultural competency training. The need for cultural competency training

for admissions counselors has become my passion and is where I believe I can create

tangible change.

I love admissions and want to create a career path that will allow me to continue to

do the work while enacting change. Upon graduating, I hope to return to undergraduate

admissions to gain that experience and exposure to a different institution. Additionally, I

believe it will be important for me to first gain credibility within a new office and in the

field. As I gain credibility, confidence, and continue to learn and understand best practices

for cultural competency facilitation and connect it to admissions best practices, I will seek

to enact change and create dialogue about the importance of it within the field.

My desire to enact change within admissions is rooted in my passion for the field

and for social justice work. I also believe I am immensely privileged to have had this

education and therefore believe it is my responsibility to engage my privilege in a

transformational way. The belief in my responsibility to leverage my education privilege

also extends to my white privilege. In literature discussed in many classes, as well as what

I have seen within my own social spheres (of white identified people), an immense

discomfort and guilt that usually follows the unveiling of white privilege. While

discomfort usually leads to growth, guilty is generally believed to be unproductive. We

are taught to acknowledge the guilt, and then reframe it to encourage positive action,

instead of allowing it to result in animosity or resentment, both of which are unproductive

for creating change.

My whiteness and the subsequent role I play in maintaining white supremacy and

systems of power undoubtedly causes me some discomfort. However, I understand that

allowing that discomfort to paralyze me and prevent me from acting, makes me even more

complicit in the systems that marginalize and dehumanize. With this perspective, I want

to continue to educate myself on the power of my privileged identities while also seeking

to share my education and my realization with other White identified individuals, who like

myself before this program, may have never been exposed to or believe in the reality of

white privilege and white supremacy.

The desire to understand and explore white privilege and power with other white

identified folks led me to accept an additional graduate assistantship with Loyolas Office

of Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, supporting their white affinity space.

Ramblers Analyzing Whiteness (R.A.W.) is a program for white students to engage in

conversations about white privilege and its pervasiveness and then to consider what it

means to be an anti-racist advocate. A key component to anti-racist work involves the

belief that it is not the responsibility of people of color to educate white people on what it
means to be white. This is important, because it puts the responsibility on those who

experience the privilege to educate themselves about systems of oppression, and their

existence despite our blindness to it. Furthermore, we are generally more likely believe in

the validity of these concepts if they are explained by someone who shares similar

identities. This is not a phenomenon limited to white identified people, but nevertheless,

it is an important aspect to consider. Working with this group has had a significant impact

on my understanding of how to engage other white identified individuals about topics of

white privilege and white supremacy, which I know will be critical to my work moving

forward. Additionally, being in community with other white identified students engaging

in this work helped to normalize the challenges we face when engaging in this work.

However, those challenges also demonstrate the need for this work.