negotiating dialogue

Right now I've been at the McNair Scholars program at CGU for almost two weeks now. It's been quite stressful doing so, but it's what I expected. I think the same with Breakthrough. Because I expected BT to be tough, when the bad came, I dealt with it. I am hoping the same goes for McNair. It's awkward explaining what McNair is to people who have not heard of it before, and it's a different type of awkward depending on who I am speaking to. If I speak to someone who I rarely speak with about race and that sort of things, then I'll say in general that it's a program to help me get into graduate school. Again, depending on the person I might elaborate and go a step further. I'll add that it is supposed to help first-generation and working-class students (despite the fact that I don't fit into either of these categories.) As you can see, no race mentioned yet. The third layer is the word "underrepresented," which I will emphasize in quotation marks, even if I am comfortable speaking to them about race/ethnicity politics. I find the word a bit problematic because its difficult to assess who gets to determine what "underrepresented" means and even while applying, I was unsure if they would accept me. I was unsure if if I fit the term. But even then, I feel like people might not understand or are a bit confused as to what it is. So in general, I try to keep it to: it prepares me to get a PhD graduate school.

I applied for the program, not thinking about how this program is a method of tracking but only after I had accepted the offer did I realize this. Today in our race/class/gender class I was reminded of this. It's difficult for me, who such opposes tracking in public education to be a part of a program like this as it compromises my principals. And it's not like I don't see the reasons why I'm against because I do. I see it when I talk to my friends, most of whom are working-class and people of color and say: graduate, school whaaa? Simply by doing this program I am more likely to get into graduate school even though I might be in the same social position as them. I'm given an advantage through this form of a bandage, while plenty of my friends may likely not think twice about applying to graduate school. And yes, all this despite the fact that I go to Pomona because simply attending the school does not mean that you will do the same things that the typical Pomona grad will do as a person of color.

I also think this program is humbling as I realize and remember how different attending Pomona is to other schools. We get so many benefits such as a chance to work closely with professors, along with our small classroom sizes. On the other hand, some of these students in McNair are used to interacting with other students of color all the time at their home institutions. For Claremont College students in McNair its the opposite. Some of us are ecstatic at the fact that we will not be the only self-identifying (insert race/ethnicity) in a classroom. Today was an example of that. While in some of my Chicana/o studies classes at Pomona, you see more students of color than you would, in per se an Econ class, the class remains to be filled with many white students. And if not necessarily numerically present, they are vocally.

McNair is a chance for me to be in a class with majority students of color in the classroom, many of which know their shit! It's exciting. I think last year, I would have been upset at the students of color who either did not self-identify or who believed in capitalism/assimilation/color-blindness. I mean, I was! There are a lot of students in this class and its the first time they are in a classroom where race/class/gender is put in the forefront. It's interesting but also a weird experience for me. I have to remember that simply because I talk about this stuff every day, it doesn't mean that I know more. I may know some theory and vocabulary but I definitely don't think that I know more, or gosh even try to teach them. When I think of students trying to "teach" other students, I find it to be ridiculous/oppressive. I hate the idea of teaching. It hurts. But anyways... It's a setting where I am finally able to place all students on an equal level. And that's a first. Usually I think the other students know 10x more than me, or in race/class/gender classes I know more than them. I think I'm in the mindset now to hopefully implement my own daily critical pedagogy. woot woot.

But also despite all this fun talking about race/class/gender with people of color in a classroom, the course work is a lot. I'm trying to manage and find support in various ways, primarily through friends on campus. It's a taste of graduate school, one McNair scholar told us, where we have to learn to decide who we want to spend our time with and who we think is going to support us during this time.