My Social Identity

My social identity is made up of quite a few characteristics that feed into the way I am both perceived and how I perceive the world around me, but two stand out as the most important. I have grown up and exist now in a space of privilege because I am white. Although I spent my childhood in a fairly diverse and progressive place, that does not take away from the fact that I experienced white privilege in ways I both recognized and did not. My social identity is also formed by my being a woman. This part of myself is something that I didn’t realize affected my life in such a great way until high school. I grew up in a very masculine household; with two brothers and a dad who deeply ingrained in me an excitement around sports, which I am grateful for. What came with that, however, were expectations that did not really fit how I viewed myself. I need to be serious, but not so much that I can’t have a little fun, I need to be gentle so as to not appear unladylike. I need to figure skate instead of play hockey like my brothers because there weren’t opportunities for young girls to play on a team altogether like the boys had. It was marked up to not enough interest from the girls, but when that interest isn’t sparked like it is for boys, how can that be the explanation? I always had to push a little harder to get where I wanted to be. I find that this has fueled my desire to become a sports reporter even more. These two identities can present bias in the way I consume and contribute to journalism, but also an alternate perspective that I think can be powerful. I will never understand how it feels to have a target on my back because of my race. This means that I need to do my research, I need to consume media from POC writers and sources and educate myself to be able to write and speak on these subjects through these people as a journalist. From being a woman and facing sexism on different levels, ranging from passive comments to fully being told that I cannot do something because of my gender, I can provide a perspective that may be important to the conversation.