Academically and experientially, Wofford has taught me a great deal about what identity and identity politics mean. In the classroom, courses dealing with topics such such as feminist philosophy, postcolonial politics, American race relations, gender/queer theory, nationalism, and a variety of others have shown me how incredibly important social constructions of identity can be. One of the toughest parts of having acquired an admittedly rudimentary understanding of these issues is the impossibility of refusing privilege. For example, I would never want to be privileged in any situation because of my race; however, I know that it happens every day, in countless invisible ways. I never want to be privileged because I am male, but it's hard to always see it happening. I never want to be privileged because of the assumption of "middleclassness," but I realize when I say that I go to Wofford what a loaded statement that is.
Service has bolstered my understanding of this problem as well, albeit in different ways. Texts about oppression based on identity are a far different matter than seeing that oppression firsthand. Bonner allowed me to study abroad in Africa, a continent fallen victim to identity-based disempowerment. Even within Uganda, certain groups (the Baganda being a strong example) experienced tremendous privilege due to ethnic identification - no matter how politically aware they were of that phenomena as a problem.
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