Thank You

Trying to figure out what to write about for today, I kept racking my brain. I didn’t want to stand up here and give a few minutes of nonesense, and then I started feeling like I didn’t really have anything new to contribute to this space. As I continued to think and rethink about what I could offer to a community that has come to mean a lot to me, I remembered part of why I chose to continue to be a part of Bridging The Gap. On the very first day when we were giving our introductions, I stood up here in front of you all, initially with a shaky voice and a level of discomfort that I couldn’t separate myself from. While others were mentioning what they were majoring in, where they were from and so on, I felt like I had been prematurely forced to divulge deeper information about myself than I was ready to. Just before giving my short intro, someone had referred to me as an African-American. That typical assumption, was not new to me by any means, the discomfort came from having to explain myself once again to people I barely knew, including not only you guys from Otisville but my classmates from Vassar. There’s a really good chance that none of you even remember that moment, but for me it always seems to stick out. The point that I’m trying to make from retelling this story is that throughout my time at Vassar I have spent a large of amount of time attempting to articulate my identity, who I am, what I represent and how to present my understanding of that existence to the communities I am a part of.

Being a member of this community at BTG has allowed me to get closer to finding the answers to these questions. Issues of identity are something that drives my curiosities both as a student and a person living and breathing in the world. I am always wondering how people negotiate their existences and how that may inform my understanding of those around me and myself. These conversations we’ve had over the past few months have helped me progress in my journey of comprehending my place in the world and what it is that I’m supposed do somewhere down the road.

Earlier this semester I gave a speech at an annual event at Vassar known as the Black Solidarity Dinner. The event has historically served as a space to honor the students of color at Vassar and provide an opportunity to reflect on how to continue and maintain an important group of solidarity.  This year I was asked to be the student speaker for the event. The speech I gave discussed part of this journey that I described a few moments ago, the journey to gain a better understanding of who I was. I wanted to read a little bit from it because though I was talking about how to build international solidarity, I feel like those words still apply to what I have been lucky to be a part of in terms of being a member of this community.

So here it is…

During that semester abroad, the program required that each student conduct field research and produce a lengthy report, also known as the Independent Study Project or ISP for short. I chose to write my ISP about the “Swahili” community in Oman and the ways, if at all, Swahili as a language and a cultural influence impacted the experiences of the members of this community. During that research period, among many things, I learned that I was not alone in the struggle to incorporate myself in a sometimes-narrow definition of what it means to be the citizen of one’s homeland. Interview after interview, I heard testimonies about what it meant to be an Omani and how we as people should not feel forced to identify as one thing. There was one respondent in particular that gave me an incredible testimony during my interview with him that I try to share with people whenever I get the chance.

For purposes of confidentiality I will refer to him as Hakeem, which is Arabic for the wise man. The day that I was interviewing Hakeem, we were sitting in his office. He is an art professor at one of the public university in the country, Sultan Qaboos University and has written extensively about Swahili and East Africa. Hakeem is a man of poise and few words. My conversation with him was my first official interview in my field research and I was nervous about the situation and afraid I would say the wrong thing. For most of the discussion he seemed a bit off-put and not entirely engaged with any of my questions. One of the questions during my interview was, “How would you feel if someone identified you as Swahili? What does that mean to you?” Hakeem sat back, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I am many identities and I have no problems with that: Arab, because of paternal ancestry. I am African because I was born there and I speak an African language. I am Omani because it is the country of my ancestors. I am Zanzibari because that is where I was born and grew up. I am a Muslim because that is my religion. I am a human being not just because I am a son of Adam but I see myself as a civil person. People should not be pressed into one identity. There is overlap and no contradiction.”

“There is overlap and no contradiction”, those were the words that stuck with me the most. As I walked away from that interview I had finally become comfortable with the complexity of who I was. For a long time I had been saying that I didn’t want to be diminished to solely a bilingual student or just Dominican, or just black, etc. but it was not until that conversation with Hakeem that I fully accepted who I was. What I am trying to say is that at least in my journey and from understanding, to build solidarity I have found it to be valuable to comprehend who you are first. To have the ability to accept your complex identity as a person of color and then give yourself the opportunity to re-define and re-conceptualize that intricacy in different spaces and contexts enables you to make strong connections with people who have equally complex identities and different lived experiences from your own. As Hakeem eloquently stated, that it is important to understand where you overlap and don’t contradict, in terms of who you are in order to be better prepared to understand the overlapping of identities in those you chose to be in solidarity with. I got closer to learning whom I was, through learning about others who did not necessarily have the same lived experiences, but ones that were equally complicated and parallel in many ways. I believe it is important to know you are in your attempt to build bridges with those you may not know much about or anything at all, or even the ones you think you know well. It is in that process of understanding where effective solidarity can occur, be it here in Otisville or Vassar.

Thank you for being willing to build that solidarity with me and the other members of the class this semester. I have once again been lucky enough to have eye-opening conversations and the ability to speak with people who always speak with conviction and willingess to listen to the opinions of others.

-Kleaver Cruz '11 [for Bridging the Gap's Appreciation Day @ Otisville]