September 4, 2016 - 08:41
I’ve spent most of my life as an outsider, trying to connect with others in every new place I moved to. Connection, as June Jordan explains, depends not only on race, class, gender, or shared experiences. Connections are forged through real and visceral need of another person: the need of a friend, the need of a companion, or the need of a confidante. June Jordan explores her own feelings of race, class, and gender identity as she relays experiences she had while in the Bahamas as well as in her own classroom. She explains that although we may have an identity that has been imposed on us, such as our gender, we all have individual identities that really determine whether we make a connection or not.
As for my identity, I’ve struggled with that for years. Moving every three years has changed who I am, and I always feel like a completely different person after living in a new country or state for a year or three. My own identity is comprised of various cultures, experiences, and individuals I’ve met along the way. I can’t claim to have a certain home or area that I return to every year, and this has proved difficult at times. However, living in different countries has allowed me to have certain experiences I wouldn’t have had anywhere else.
A few years ago, while I was living in Armenia, I played soccer with the Armenian women’s national team. Not that I was especially talented or anything; I was quite the opposite. The problem was that there was only one women’s team in the entire country of Armenia. The football association of Armenia was forced to have a women’s team due to the fact that FIFA would not allow the country to compete in world tournaments without one. They wanted their men’s team to be successful, and so an official women’s team was established. There were no feeder teams, no A team or B team, just the one official team. My younger brother also played soccer at that time, and when my dad inquired as to whether I could simply play with the boys, he received a stern “no.” I had just moved from Fairfax County, Virginia, where women’s soccer was extremely popular. This drastic cultural change shocked, as well as angered me. Although I was young, I knew that not setting up any other teams besides the women’s national team and discouraging women from playing sports in general, was entirely unfair.
Recognizing the injustice, the American Embassy set up an event where some of the women from the national team, as well as their coach, would come and speak in order to promote awareness as well as hopefully prompt change. One of the coordinators of the event, knowing I had practiced on the team for a little while, encouraged me to come out and speak. I jumped at the opportunity to finally make a difference for these women.
For weeks I desperately searched for the right words to say. Words that would make a difference in the lives of countless Armenian women, words that would convince the sports officials to change their minds about the whole “no women in sports” situation.
The time came and I hastily recited my prepared speech. It was short, but sounded overly rehearsed and fake, compared to the real encounters these women talked about. What had finally dawned on me, at that moment, was that I was in no position to talk about the level of oppression these women had faced throughout their lives. I thought we shared a connection through soccer, through being women in a sport, and through being discriminated against, but such was not the case. I felt the disconnect between my words and theirs that night. Mine felt naïve, whereas the words of the other women on the team and the coach felt profound and much more meaningful. I was just a young girl who wanted to play soccer for fun, whereas these women had faced oppression trying to pursue a livelihood. We connected on a shallow basis; not as deeply as I had thought.
I have replayed this experience over and over in my head throughout the years, and still cannot shake the feeling of resentment and shame. I wish I had let them speak more, share more of their experiences, and simply allowed myself to listen and understand. “So far as I can see, the usual race and class concepts of connection, or gender assumptions of unity, do not apply very well,” June Jordan remarks. I cannot agree with her more. Although we were all women, we were all of the same race, and we were all facing discrimination, we did not connect on a deep and personal level.
That evening proved to me that no connection could be forced. Connections happen fluidly, naturally, and easily. They happen when you least expect them, just as in June Jordan’s story.