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My Auto-Ethnography

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My auto-ethnographic paper will be grounded on a conflict that I have with myself, that has unfortunately been ingrained in my brain since I stepped foot at this institution. I identify as a Canadian born Chinese student, contentedly graduating this year at the University of British Columbia. I often question my positionality in this community as an asian at a predominantly white school that is on the traditional territories of the Aboriginal peoples. I sometimes get apprehensive or uncomfortable, I sometimes feel as if it is too complicated to talk to my white sorority sisters about and I know the conflict I have is also a conflict for many people of color. However, being a GRSJ student has allowed me to explore this in my own comfort in …show more content…

Institutional politics have never been an interest of mine, however, self-reflection particularly on the social conditions in my academic space that has impacted my university experience has triggered my interest in relation to race. Numerous events in the past couple of years have shown the prevalence of exclusion, normativities and inequalities in university spaces. What is not explored as often as it should be since more than 800 campuses in the United States and Canada have a Greek system is the racial conditions within sororities and fraternities. No matter how sororities and fraternities try and fight the misconceptions and stereotypes of their chapters, it is inevitable that it will always exist. However, in this paper, I really want to step away from the sort of stereotyping and reputations these chapters get such as “they are dumb”, “all they do is party” “they pay for their friends”, “they sleep around”, “they take part in hazing rituals”, “all sorority girls are girly” etc. That is not the purpose of my paper and not what I am trying to argue because I have learnt to accept that there are people who will always think this way and that it is unimportant. My focus is solely on the racial differences and how race issues and policies are not enough to push for …show more content…

It is when the majority group uses its power and privilege to “other” those who are not members of this group. “Othering” is a concept that we have come across in our GRSJ courses but now I am able to apply it to a personal issue of mine. I want to explore things like status quo, conservatism, systemic racism and the inability to engage in such

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