THE COST OF "FITTING IN":

REFLECTIONS ON THE INTERSECTIONS OF RACE & GENDER AT A PREDOMINANTLY WHITE INSTITUTION

by norris "eJ" edney

Iremember my transition to this institution fondly. One of the first people I met when I decided to enroll in the University of Mississippi in 2007 was myself. The faculty, staff, and students here seemed to really care about me and my needs. And yet I quickly learned that for me — and other students from marginalized backgrounds — being successful here would require us to learn, understand, value, and articulate the richness each of us contributed to the diversity of this institution by way of our intersecting identities and the lived experiences they inform.

Intersectionality refers to “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group” and is “regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.” It is why I felt so out of place at my first football game here. Here I was, a first-year student who listened in confused amazement as what seemed like 10,000 of my newest friends and colleagues half sang and half yelled “The South will rise again” to the tune of the closing measures of “From Dixie with Love.” I was deeply conflicted. I wanted nothing more than to be in on the traditions of this place, and to love them like some of my friends seemed to. This seemed a necessary prerequisite to full membership in the “Ole Miss Family.'' However, through deep self-reflection, I realized that as a black man from Mississippi whose grandfather was a sharecropper in the Delta, embracing that particular tradition and others that seemed to encourage us to romanticize a past in which marginalized folks were dehumanized was too high of a membership fee for me. I wanted to understand how I and these other members of my collegiate community could have such vastly different interpretations of such symbolism. The curiosity and learning resultant from that experience crystalized for me the reality that we hold multiple identities all of which contribute to the ways in which we perceive ourselves, each other, and the systems and structures we navigate together as communities.

Now as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion, I create programs and provide services that help individuals and groups do the work of considering how their individual identities, perspectives, biases, and culture influence their relationships with other individuals and groups and how those interactions ultimately shape participation in the system that is the University of Mississippi. It is my hope that dedicated work in this space will continue creating pathways to belonging for students, faculty, staff, and community members who chose this place to produce and acquire the knowledge and tools they’ll use to build our collective futures.