Who Am I?

When I think of my positionality in America, I cannot help but think of myself as a young, educated, black man. This is no coincidence as I believe it has everything to do with my current time and space. When I lived in Zambia, I hardly ever saw myself through racialized lenses. Perhaps due to the fact that almost everyone around me was black or perhaps due to my country’s indifference to racial matters. Dominic Hill (2014) defines positionality as, “the way in which people are ranked in society and this ranking transcends larger structural systems and follows people into their places of work, classrooms, and how they see themselves and their relationship to others” (p. 162). According to this definition, it is no wonder I position myself as a young, educated, black man in American society. The three identifiers I have used are certainly used to rank or classify people in society. This paper will seek to illustrate the systemic educational structures of my country (largely influenced by our former colonizer, Great Britain) and the United States, and how they have influenced my epistemology and positionality.    

Growing up in Zambia I attended schools that used the British education system blueprint. Our postcolonial governments (and the governments of many former colonies) have not done enough to create an education system that values and qualifies the local people’s cultural capital, knowledge, and ways of knowing. Many postcolonial governments seem content to carry on teaching and using English as an official language and transmitting Western beliefs and ideals. This has deprived many former colonies of their true national identity and heritage. The method of co-optation through Western education has led many people of Africa to believe that their traditions and ways of knowing are inferior to Western traditions and ways of knowing. Many Zambian families still insist on having their children attend schools that would make them behave, dress, and sound more British. This has had a profound impact on Zambia and its traditions.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I have a personal inner struggle reconciling with the fact that I am a beneficiary of Western education. If it wasn’t for my country’s insistence on learning the English language among many other Western forms of civilization, I probably would not have received the opportunities to study in England and the United States. This raises the question of whether we are limiting the opportunities of future Zambian generations by insisting on creating an education system that deviates from Western education. The fact that many former colonies were stripped of their own identities and robbed hundreds of years to accumulate their own wealth, makes regaining all that was lost a herculean task. Many former colonies are still poor, under-resourced, and in huge debts with their colonizers. This situation creates a colonization of the mind that leaves them powerless or without the agency to enact policies that would distance them from their former colonizers.

In the domains of knowledge chart that I presented in class, I placed family and academics at the core of all other domains of knowledge because I firmly believe that I am a product of family and academics. My social milieu at home was mainly composed of family, friends, and school. In America, I have spent most of my life in academic institutions, and as a result, my knowledge creation is heavily influenced by academics. As we all know, academic institutions are notorious with giving institutionalized identities such as, “the expert, the genius, the marginalized, the disabled [etc.]” (Acevedo et al, p. 28). This form of social ranking or positioning of individuals impacts individual’s confidence in knowledge creation and limits their abilities. Acevedo et al. (2014) stipulates further that,

the conventional educational models have been critiqued for practices that reduce and decontextualize knowledge (Morin, 2001), preserve and reinforce hierarchical and dominant social orders (Freire, 1996; Giroux, 2007), and disenfranchise the knower from the production of knowledge (Freire, 1998; Shor, 1992; hooks, 1994) (p. 30).

I have personally experienced many conventional educational models that disenfranchise the knower from knowledge production. For example, my confidence and credibility to create knowledge is limited by my positionality as a current graduate student. On the contrary, a professor’s positionality may increase my confidence and credibility.

The above quotation inevitably leads me to think of our society and how it is stratified in social classes. Academic hierarchies and stratifications are mirror images of our society’s hierarchies and class distributions. Education has been used to put people in different social levels according to their academic achievement. Bright students are singled out, praised, and rewarded with prestigious awards whereas struggling students are held back, and not encouraged to make anything of themselves. As someone with a lot of confidence in social justice and equity, I believe social classes only promotes individualism and competition rather than collaboration, knowledge co-creation, and togetherness.

In conclusion, it is clear to me that my family and education influences my perception of reality. I therefore cannot determine what my perception of reality would be had I received a different form of education. I also know that it is difficult to personally deal with the dilemma of personally having received the benefits of a Western education system or replacing it with our own local education system. Furthermore, my social positionality is highly influenced by my level of education and vice versa. This implies that what I do and do not know now is bound to change as my social positioning varies with time and space.

References

Acevedo, S. M., Aho, M., Cela3, E., Juei-Chen, C., Garcia-Gonzales, I., MacLeod, A., & ... Olague, C. (2015). Positionality as knowledge: From pedagogy to praxis. Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary & Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, & Praxis, 11(1), 28-46.

Hill, D. C. (2014). A vulnerable disclosure: Dangerous negotiations of race and identity in the classroom. Journal Of Pedagogy, 5(2), 161-181.