Running Head: Intersectionality Report

Intersectionality Report

Abbey Malbon

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Inner Identity

Growing up, I always wanted to be older. I couldn’t wait for my next birthday and the

additional candle that would inevitably be added to my cake. At a young age, I began to

associate age with sophistication and being taken seriously. Although I had a little issue with

being taken seriously by the adults in my life, I wanted to be like the other people in my life who

could drive, who had jobs, or who went to college. Coincidentally, I have gotten older and

nothing has changed, I am always looking towards the future. However, what I have come to

understand about age, as I have experienced it, is that being young is an extremely essential part

of my identity. All of my interests, both political and personal, stem from this revolutionary Gen

Z mantra.

I began reflecting on my age’s essential association with my identity this summer during

a meeting I had with a few peers and a local politician. In this Zoom meeting, she addressed each

of us by our name and told us that she, a 60 year-old-woman, was young for an activist. She

relayed that most of the activists she knew were all in their late 70s. My peers and I had to hold

back our initial reaction, which would be to burst out in laughter. I couldn’t believe that those

words had come out of the trained politicians and lobbyist’s mouth.

Throughout the meeting, she continued to address our age and the fact that we were

students, each time with a negative or condescending tone. After the meeting wrapped up and I

was reviewing my notes, I realized that it wasn’t that far-fetched for someone that disconnected

from the radical tone of my generation to invalidate our activism and interest in meeting due to

our age. She simply brushed off our credibility because we were students, and it was suddenly so

apparent in my mind that because of my age I was more credible. I knew what teenagers and

college-aged students would engage with, I knew what activism needed to look like for that to

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happen, and I knew that because I fit that age demographic, I was a credible source to speak on

the issues that I was passionate about. Although I dream of the day that I can graduate college, I

no longer wish to grow older at a rapid speed.

I believe that is why I so deeply identify with my age, because I am interested in the

narrative of young people, the power of young people, and the interests of young people. I feel as

though historically our voices have been ignored, and now more than ever before young people

are utilizing the platforms they have, most often social media platforms, to make sustainable

change in their communities and inspire others to do the same. My age, and disposition as a high

school student, was one of the first things that led to my activism which led to the further

development of my interests, and it will forever be a strong part of who I am, both physically and

mentally.

Outer Identity

I understood from a young age the privilege that I had in being white. My parents and

surrounding family members encouraged education and exposure from a young age, and I was

raised with the understanding that I was privileged in the mere sense of existing with white skin.

I have a diverse group of friends that have allowed me the opportunity and exposure to

understand their narratives and experiences in our community and within their lives. My parents

raised me to stand up for others and to be firm in my beliefs, and as I grew up I have taken that

belief with me in my academic perusal of social work. I understand what it means to be a social

worker as a white woman, I understand the privilege I have as a white woman to be awarded the

opportunity to pursue a degree with little to no institutionalized boundaries. I am actively

educating myself to better understand the structural and systemic boundaries that have been

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enforced and built by the U.S. and other institutions. My race is as essential to my identity as

every other part of who I am, and I am growing every day to better understand my privilege.

Experiential Identity

I was raised catholic, I went to church on Sunday’s and religious education courses every

Wednesday night through the eighth grade. It was important to my mother that I grew up with a

religious foundation, but after I completed the process, I could have the ability to practice

whatever religion I found I believed in. I went through the process, I was confirmed within the

catholic church, and then I decided that I hated church. The church that we attended was an

architectural masterpiece, and I found myself more distracted by the stained glass from the 1800s

rather than the content that was being relayed by the priest. As a rational child, I also found the

basics of the catholic religion to be extremely confusing. I distinctly remember asking my

religious education teacher, “Who is God?” in the third grade and they responded promptly with,

“Well Abbey, we don’t know”.

I decided that if my all-knowing religious education teacher couldn’t even tell me, then

what was I doing sitting here listening to these crazy stories.

I also found myself growing extremely anxious before each service, for reasons unknown, I

despised the formality and traditionalism that my church maintained. It wasn’t until my first

European history course in high school that I finally had the historic evidence to vocalize to my

parents why I wanted to stop going to church. I found the catholic church to be inherently corrupt

and counterproductive. I have come to identify most with a quote from James Baldwin’s “The

Fire Next Time”. “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us

larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him” (Baldwin

47).

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Relational Identity

I deeply associate my relational identity with my gender. I believe a lot of my strong

relationships maintain strong feminine energy that is directly associated with both my gender and

gender expression. My parents are happily married, and although my Dad has played an essential

role in raising me, I identify with a lot my mother has taught me and what her family has taught

me as well. My mother was raised by her mother, a high school drop-out and strong woman from

the southside of Chicago, with three sisters. These women have been the building blocks in my

confidence and ambition. They have shown me how to love, learn, and grow as a young woman

and what it means to be an independent person. All of my relationships reflect the same energy.

My friends have humorously observed that I am only friends with other people that

maintain strong feminine energy, but I believe that to be true. I cannot quite put my finger on it,

but in every relationship that I develop my gender plays a strong role in the way, I treat people

and how I expect to be treated in return. I have taken this energy and apply it to all aspects of my

life, but I find it to be most present in the relationships that I develop with people, whether it’s

personal, professional, or romantic.

Developing Identity

Each aspect that I wrote about previously maintains an important role in my developing

identity. I am constantly developing my identity and my place in the world. This is something

that I have grown more comfortable within recent years, I always believed growth to be linear. I

have come to better understand and grow comfortable in the notion that the process of growth

and self-discovery is nowhere near linear. As an individual, I am always actively challenging

myself to grow, to learn more about myself, and to challenge myself to be the best version of

myself.