4 minute read
MARGINALIZATION
MAR GIN ALI ZAT ION
HOW WE EXPRESS OURSELVES IN LIMITED SPACES
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: HECTOR SALASWORDS & PHOTOS
if you were tasked to fill a blank page with drawings and sketches, you’d start near the middle. You’d take up space freely; without caution. As you creep toward the edges, your drawings would get smaller and smaller until you’d realize your drawings are being created to fill the space that’s left. There is less and less freedom for every drop of ink added. Each doodle is crammed into small spaces left by the others that had the luxury of having a blank page. This is living on the margins. To be damned to the spaces where no one would go looking for them.
Existing fully within space someone else made for you is the most unapologetic and inspiring thing a person can do. The margins have been relegated to people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, senior citizens, women, people living with a disability, those of lower socioeconomic status, immi- grants, refugees and sadly, so many more people we just don’t have all the room to name.
If our voice doesn’t echo the status quo, then very discriminately we are told not to raise it. Instead, we are regulated to tokenism and agenda-setting puppetry. And when we do get the spotlight, we get it briefly. We get it just long enough for those looking to know what group we belong to. Yet, those watching might be like us. They might be wide-eyed and hopeful. It might be disheartening to see disingenuous representation, but hey, it’s a voice like theirs. Being heard. Being listened to. With this in mind, we have to make the most of the time we are given. Nothing in this world is more symbolic of the proverbial middle finger than existing as loud and as careless and as bright and as odd and as big and as fulfilling and as
unapologetic and as everything you, the individual, wants to be. The more we can do that, the more the door opens for the rest of us to enter. Success of one encourages the success of many. We can dream of a world where there aren't any -isms and -phobias, but if we can thrive in a world where
these ugly things exist, then bursting through the doors will feel sweeter.
Sure, we might look like we’re outrageous and unusual, but why would we want to be anything else?
At Colorado Mesa University, the Cultural Inclusion Council (CIC) hosts a fashion show every year. This show is a full celebration of groups such as the Black Student Alliance,
Latino Student Alliance, Genders and Sexualities Alliance, International Student Alliance and the Ho'olokahi Polynesian Alliance. The alliances come together and highlight what makes their identities important. At the show itself, there is nothing but love shown. Applause and screams fill the room.
CMU student Lucas Torres found himself modeling for the Latino Student Alliance (LSA). He hadn’t engaged much with the alliance beforehand, but he saw the show as a wonderful opportunity to participate in his culture.
“The fashion show allowed me to get in touch with some- thing inside myself that I never fully experienced before. It’s a great reminder of who I am and where I come from,” Torres said.
Gaby Rodriguez, the former vice president of the CIC, was involved in planning the logis- tics of the fashion show. She witnessed countless weekends the alliances sacrificed in order to put on the show.
“It wasn’t only about the tick- ets, pretty lights or art exhibits. It was about the alliances and what their cultures had to say. The overarching message CIC was trying to convey was that there are so many cultures on our campus that we can get involved with so that our underrepresented communities feel at home,” Rodriguez said.
Engaging with culture is an active action. If we don’t engage or let people engage with their identities in a positive, outward way, then the culture remains dormant. Reclaiming identity is the act of finding pieces of yourself and those that are like you after a decimation of culture leaves a wasteland. Claiming and reclaiming identity is not so much about searching for the pieces and parts of our world that resonate with you, but about those pieces and parts finding you. In a cultural wasteland, flowers sprout from what came before. The cultural ash left over from years of oppression is the fertilizer for the budding flora that we recognize to be awfully familiar to ourselves and our people. Once these parts find their way to us, it is now our responsibility to celebrate them. Perhaps if enough people join the festivities, then maybe we can see entire groups of people emerge as the only way we can ever hope to exist: happy. ▪
