Safe Spaces and Diverse Faces!

Hello from Ecuador!
Everyone says part of studying abroad is learning more about your home country from a different context and as it turns out I've been reflecting a lot recently on the value of the IRC because of the sociocultural context relating to themes like diversity and tolerance is completel different here.
In the IRC we use the phrase "safe space" everyday, but I never really understood its value until I was really outside of it. Let me tell you that in the IRC we live in a house of tolerance and openness, within a university that is a bubble of liberalism and general liberal-arts based openness, within a city that is a bubble of diversity and within a country that is also at least politically correct. Concepts that are norms within the contexts of these expanding circles of community, like race as a social construct, political correctness or at least consciousness of the use of racially-referenced terminology, general knowledge of other cultures, are often completely novel here.
The first week I was here I got into a fierce argument with my host Dad as I tried to convince him that the world was not composed of three races, yellow, black, and white (which is he was taught in primary school) but is, as any sociology or anthropology student at Barnard will tell you with a yawn, a social construct. Then my host mom told me about how her host daughter had been dating a Chinese guy but that the daughter decided that it wouldn't work out because they were from different countries. Here they still use the phrase "indio" to denote not only indigenous people but also people who "lack culture" or are stupid. I would say there about 10 afro-ecuadorians in my entire university (it is the only private and most elite university in Ecuador). The other day in my class we discussing xenofobia and a girl in my class said "I am not xenophobic, but I wouldn't ever want to live next to a Chinese family because their cooking smells so bad." On that note, here "Chino y chinita" are used for everything remotely Asian, to the point that my host Dad asked me if I liked sushi (assuming that it was a traditional food of my Chinese culture). Another kid in my class found out that I was Jewish and asked me with complete honest curiousity "what is a Jew?"

Today in my Ser y Cosmos class (a general liberal arts requirement class that juxtaposes classical western texts with ecuadorian identity) I had to present on the theme of identity and globalization and I had the class do the "Identity Walks" exercise that we play on the IRC retreat. This game consists of asking a group of people to decide where their identity falls under a given category and organize themselves into groups with those of similar ideas. The category of social classes failed completely- despite the fact that latin america in general is known for having a strong index of economic inequality, no one seemed to know what the term meant or even where they would be. My guess is that in a university that is 95% upper-middle class, there simply isn't the consciousness of the subtle effects that class identity can have as an everyday privilege or obstacle. The exercise in general went really quickly- i'd say in 15 minutes or less we had exhausted 6 categories, whereas on the IRC retreat it took us a half-hour of longer to get through about 4. What the class observed is that everyone simply found their group as quickly as possible, often forming only two or three groups. In the IRC we always had a multitude of small groupings defining their position with subtle degrees of difference from the next, as well as many people standing alone or straddling groups. To be fair, the class is only about 20 people, which is a much smaller group than we had on the IRC retreat. However another comment the class offered is that here in Ecuador, students are used to being guided or following a leader (this is very much a result of an education system based on rote-learning) and so everyone (including the professor) took the task very literally and simply grouped themselves around the first few students to shout out ideas. It reminded me that students in IRC especially have learned to articulate their identities and the context of diversity and learning highlights these unique constructions.

Finally, ironically it is here in Ecuador that I've finally began to understand the use of the term "intercultural" (as opposed to multicultural, polycultural etc) which I'd always used in the IRC without really understanding its specific meaning. In Ecuador writings on "interculturalidad" center on bilingual/bicultural education for indigenous students, it is also a favorite term of those who write about study abroad as experiential education. As one might guess from the word itself interculturality focuses on learning from the spaces that occur from encounters between two cultures. Its the learning that takes place not from studying something in a book but from interacting with another culture in mutual learning.

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying Ecuador and respect its people. However I also more than ever appreciate the space of tolerance, openness and understanding that we strive to create in the IRC. Sometimes it might seem like we haven't accomplished enough in terms of presenting events or workshops or events, but the very fact that the space exists and that we are working to cultivate a consciousness different from the norm makes the IRC something unique and something to cherish. Can't wait to see you in the fall!

(posted by Sarah)