Theorizing about the past

I have only recently begun to theorize about what has driven me to pursue higher education. In my view, many people from so-called “first gen” backgrounds are encouraged to pursue higher education perhaps by family, friends, or even an invested high schooler counselor. There is a plethora of personal stories. As for me, I had a different experience distinguished by the absence of any encouragement.

In addition to being the “first-generation” in my family to attend college, I am still the one to have been enrolled for a substantial amount of time.  Not only did no one set an example, college was not something my family really talked about with me nor was there anyone to set the example. This is not to say that my family was discouraging, but higher education was not in our orbit.

Yet, even when I was young, I always assumed I would go to college. In fact, I was indignant about it. Without citing statistics, my intuition tells me that few people in my high school graduating class ended up going to college. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I always felt “different” from them somehow.

Looking back, I wonder if my experience was as idiosyncratic as it might seem. In retrospect, I attribute much of this to my LGBTQ identity (more on this later). Perhaps obvious to us now, kids who are perceived to have LGBTQ identities are often ostracized by their peers. It can be a struggle to relate to people who constantly brand you as different. Despite having grown up with other working-class kids, I could not relate to the things that they (especially other boys) were interested in. I was fond of geography, history, art, literature, and other things associated with “intellectualism.”

There may have even been somewhat of an “anti-intellectual” culture in my “rural-ish” hometown. With no clearer explanations as to what drove me from this environment, I am left to assume that being “different” from everyone else in one way caused me to not only relate to, but also to pursue, markers of this difference. Ultimately, I would not trade my education, travel experience, knowledge of several languages, and future job opportunities for a different childhood. That said, I have been wondering if my experience has been shared by other gay men.

In preparing to write this post, I came across the article Gay Men Earn Degrees at Highest Rate, Study Finds. I was surprised to see that recent data corroborate my experience. I am even more surprised that I was not privy to this research until now. In the article, Maria Carrasco reports that 52% of gay men have undergraduate degrees where only 35% of straight men do. Moreover, the study she cites shows that 6% of gay men in the United States have an advanced degree, which is 50% higher than straight men (It is worth nothing that these numbers do not hold up with lesbian women; a very interesting observation but obviously this could be a dissertation.).

Apparently, this phenomenon has been labeled the “Best Little Boy in the World Hypothesis.” The hypothesis goes that gay men tend to be “overachievers” to deflect attention away from their stigmatized sexuality. What pondering my own experience has revealed to me is that a desire for class mobility may not be the only thing that pushes us into the sphere of higher education.

“You should play into that.”

“I haven’t seen too many Black women with judicial clerkships; maybe you should... play into that.” 

 

This was the advice offered to me by someone who I, at the time, considered a mentor and confidant. I had come to them for advice on applying for post-graduate opportunities, and because I thought that they understood what it was like to navigate law school and the job search, as a first-generation student themselves, I honestly thought that they would have my best interest in mind when I came to them. I had many conversations with them regarding the barriers that first-generation students face, and I thought they “understood,” so you can only imagine how I felt when I heard these words. 

 

While on the surface, it might not seem all that bad, and I am sure that they were well-intentioned, I was disappointed to know that instead of recognizing the barriers that my identity brought me, they saw it as some sort of diversity tool or a “free pass” to securing employment. As if being a Black woman made things easier for me; as if the reason that Black women are not reflected in judicial clerkships is that they simply aren’t “playing into it” or that they, too, are not interested in such positions. I’m sure that if it were that easy, Black women would represent far more than 2.7% of federal law clerks and more than 2% of lawyers across the nation. 

 

In retrospect, what bothered me the most about their comment was that it lacked any consideration for why things are the way they are. It lacked any perspective on intersectionality. 

 

Although my mentor had been the first in their family to go to college and law school, they were not Black and they were male-identifying. This meant that their experience and perception of what it means to be a first-generation student varied greatly from mine as a Black woman. Even though we connected through our somewhat shared experience in education, their failure to recognize the complexity of my identity hindered them from truly being able to approach our conversation with a broader sense of cultural awareness. 

 

Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and, thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and, thereby, the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.

-Audre Lorde 

 

The reality is that Black women, like some other similarly situated marginalized groups, face double discrimination, that is, gender and race discrimination. And in reflecting on our recent class discussions surrounding intersectionality, I started to think about how the discrimination of Black women is often considered in proximity to either the race discrimination that Black men face or the gender discrimination that white women face; however, the overlap between the two are never considered in unison. 

 

The issue is that when we do not consider all facets of our identities, we overlook the barriers that accompany them. To fully understand intersectionality takes a bit of nuance, but I think that this is a critical undertaking if we are ever to truly address the ways in which marginalized groups, such as Black women, face oppression. 

We will continue to think that the reason certain groups are not represented in higher education or in certain professions is because of their unwillingness or lack of desire; rather than acknowledging the pervasiveness of the gender and racial bias they face. 

 

Although many institutions are developing initiatives to better support Black women and other marginalized groups, I think a lot of these initiatives struggle to fully address the unique experiences many of us face. At our very own “King Hall,” a school named after the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black people make up only 2% of the entire school population and there were only seven Black women in my entire 1L class. 

 

I say all of this to say that there is so much more to be done to increase outreach and retention to Black women in the legal field, and until we do so, we will continue to overlook the issues they face. 

 

As best said by Dr. Moya Bailey on ending misogynoir, the unique form of discrimination that Black women face:

 

A world with no misogynoir is possible. I really believe the Combahee River Collective statement when they write, ‘If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.’ We need to be honest in K-12 education about the history of violence experienced by Black women as we also work to dismantle the oppressive power structures of society. Our world needs to be recalibrated and rebooted such that people, particularly those multiply marginalized, are valued more than profits.