Edge People
The following post references an article in a series of memoirs by Tony Judt entitled "Edge People". Here is the link, you should read it or not: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2010/02/23/edge-people/
If you didn't know (or I didn't tell you), this year's Salzburg Global Seminar program is focusing on the current refugee and migration crisis. With no personal connection to the issue at all, I went into my coursework with the initial impression that at least I would be learning how to be politically correct. Getting here and being introduced to a dozen Lebanese and several Syrian students, I've received several mouthfuls of perspective, and I don't mean this in a negative way whatsoever, but they have a lot to say. They should! What's happening now hits literally and figuratively close to home for almost all of them! Even when enjoying their company during down time or discussing other issues, I find that I have inherently different ways of thought from the Middle-Eastern students. I also have inherently different ways of thought from the South-American students, and the European students, and even some of the Americans.
That's not to say that we're polar opposites, it's just to say that my culture and background has brought me up to who I am today, not better or worse than anyone else, but different. Even at Emerson College, my Montgomery County Catholic school-kid bubble was shattered. Here? It's obliterated.
During a workshop, we had to share values of ours by writing them down into a single sentence. Mine was:
I will always find hope in LOVE, love for God, Others, and Myself.
I thought it was a pretty standard mantra. I didn't assume the other people at my table were religious or that they would agree with me, but I didn't expect my idea to be challenged. A girl at my table who was respectful, but ill-informed, told me she didn't understand why "God gets angry at you for making mistakes". It wasn't the kind of question I think she wanted an answer to, I think she just wanted to be heard.
People are heard here. You're allowed to disagree, and you're allowed to not like what people have to say, but it won't lessen their significance as a person.
We have reading groups here, an hour long session with a selected group and faculty member discussing a certain article of piece of work. I met with a faculty member from Bournemouth University in England to discuss a memoir by Tony Judt called "Edge People". The phrase defines someone whose identity is formed by two or more distinct backgrounds, like how Judt grew up in England but was also Jewish. An edge person is someone who has a foot in two doors of society, like how my friend De'Graft was born in London, but his father is from Ghana.
In our group, we talked about how while it can be difficult to embrace both edges of our identity entirely, we can also choose to reject a given identity. We are what we make of ourselves.
I don't feel like an edge person. I am a white, cis-gendered, teenage girl who has a blog. I am the human equivalent of mayonnaise. I suppose my one edge is my large, Irish Catholic heritage, but I've never faced adversity as such.
With more and more exposure to the idea that people aren't black and white, I try not to see people as "pure-bred", meaning, I like to make an effort to see more than just their most prominent feature. For example, in TV shows there's often the token gay who's only character trait is... being gay... and while the real world isn't television, we're all guilty of giving people "identifiers". With more and more acceptance of this idea, I have the utmost respect for people in the borderlands of the "norm", and the utmost sympathy for those who are forced to fit their multi-faceted identity on a name-tag with room with only one.
I like to believe that our world will encounter an increasing amount of people whose whose identities we may not understand or connect with. With the human pattern of migration, we're a few generations away from a world full of edge people; A world where societies are multi-faceted and people can feel comfortable living in a world without edges.
I've been with these people for a mere three weeks and I every one of them teaches me something I didn't know before.