P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N-A-L-I-T-Y

 Who Are You?

Do you know the scenario back in school or amidst an online meeting, or perhaps around a boardroom table where the teacher or speaker asks everyone to introduce themselves briefly... and suddenly, your brain goes into hyperdrive? - “What exactly should I say about myself? I really wish I could fast forward time to skip this tedious task!” - Alas, there are no shortcuts. You start contemplating previous self-introductions when you got tongue-tied or when you forgot to mention something important, or worse when you rambled on for too long. Then, you realize you’re not listening to what the others are sharing, and if there were a quiz on everyone’s name, you would fail. Well, the stress associated with introducing yourself is common and not without a warrant.  However, isn't it perplexing that it's always so challenging to explain one's identity as an individual? Even during adolescence, we struggle to form a strong self-identity which perpetuates into adulthood and our personalities (Erikson, 2021).  This itself tells us how influential identity is. 

The reason why it is potentially always laborious to formulate a paragraph/talk about oneself is that MULTIPLE intersecting factors influence one's identity as illustrated below. 

Identity must be one of the most controversial and delicate matters to discuss nowadays as everyone has a different conception of it and attitude towards it. However, I’ve come to realize that identity is essential and rules our daily lives. Identity determines my actions, my reactions, how I perceive myself, and how others perceive me. 

Therefore, who you are, including your identities, lived experiences, life exposures, realities, truths, traumas, and thoughts, influences how you perceive everything in the world. All these things become a lens through which everything is filtered, and we must recognize the power of the personal lens, also known as our positionality. 

Think about this, when someone tells you they’re African or you see an African male - this small machinery inside your head quickly starts working, adding to the mental document in your head about this person. However, how you perceive this person is mainly based on your past experiences and embedded thoughts and beliefs. Furthermore, this African man’s perception of you is also going to be different, based on his unique experiences of discrimination and privilege. For example, when interacting with a bearded Muslim man, this mental machinery may channel alarm thinking Muslims are associated with terrorism. Alternatively, when interacting with a random African male on the street, I may be extra vigilant because people of all the crimes in my neighborhood are usually executed by the African race. Now, this is not racism but rather shows how everyone’s lived experiences become a lens through which they view the world.  This illustrates “positionality” as it depicts how one’s personal, social and political context influences or biases one’s perceptions.

Reflecting on the factors that establish my positionality I realize how our identities are not fixed but are a result of a complex social network that interacts with each other and oftentimes they are created FOR us and not BY us.

I am a 20-year-old female, currently in my final year of an undergraduate Occupational Therapy degree at UKZN. I originate from an Indian-Islamic community and can conclude that I have the privilege and luxuries of a higher middle-class socioeconomic status. Despite being born and brought up in South Africa, my roots hail all the way back to the rich cultural land of India as my parents immigrated from there in their early 20s. Hence, I am somewhat of a bilingual/polyglot, due to my proficiency in English, Urdu, and Gujarati along with minimal Arabic, Turkish and isiZulu. The first half of my life was spent in Limpopo, my birthplace, and in Port Shepstone. During this time, we related to a lower socioeconomic status, and it was only in my later teenage years wherein my parents climbed up the ladder of success and I grew up as a highly privileged individual. Nevertheless, I cannot say that I have directly experienced the struggle of low socioeconomic status as I have always been insulated and protected, shaping my views of the world in a rather idealistic way. Furthermore, during our geographical shifts across the country, I have always been blessed with residing in convenient locations with easy access to amenities. I am abundantly appreciative of never having to worry about the source of my next meal, or whether I will have a roof over my head or a bed to sleep on. In addition to my household background, my educational background has also been pretty conservative as I attended an all-girls, Islamic high school for most of my schooling years. During the second phase of my life, I experienced a major cultural shock as I transitioned into a multicultural and diverse university environment. As my interest in and enthusiasm for cultural mixing and socialization grew, I became increasingly interested in expanding my social circle to interacting with persons of diverse backgrounds and stories. Lastly, I believe that being the eldest amongst my three siblings, a choice I never had, is a major part of my personality trait, which is present in my instinct to always take responsibility and manage my environment along with its inhabitants. I was raised with the idea that I always need to contribute to a group, and I will be a part of a group with interdependent members.

In my case, we can already see how the threads of my personal life factors, weave my positionality. Due to my close association with a conservative religion and culture, there was always a fine line between modesty and the necessity of my job demands. For example, when interacting with males, I was hesitant, uncomfortable, and reserved due to being comfortable in my traditional bubble which hardly ever collided with the opposite gender, more so on such a personal level. The only way forward was to develop a progressive mindset, step out of my comfort zone and look beyond my positionality to render effective services and bloom as a therapist in the making. In opening myself to growth and challenging my naivety, could I attempt to dismantle my idealistic beliefs into realistic beliefs? I did not compromise my religious beliefs. Instead, I courageously paved a path to navigate beyond my personal beliefs, placing myself in my clients’ shoes to offer the most realistic and efficient intervention. This itself, was a drastic shift in my positionality.

Furthermore, it was enlightening to realize how my socioeconomic privileges had very subtly crippled my mindset. For instance, I had embedded a generalized idea of a basic household, relevant to my exposure. However, in the community context of Cato Crest, something as simple as asking a client “When do you go to bed?” can be inconsiderate when they don’t even have a bed to sleep on. Similarly, being skilled at languages, due to the early pressures of confirming to English, made me feel like everyone should know English regardless, because if I had to do so, then so can they. However, delving into a critical analysis of the community I am in one of the many such communities in South Africa- I realize that not everyone has the same support and attention to their growth as I had. Hence, I am empathetic during sessions and try my best to accommodate Zulu speakers. Several realizations and reflections of these sorts are actively shaping my positionality to make my lens more accommodating of diversity.

Therefore, it is evident how our background gives us a particular lens through which we see the world. We also acknowledge that the same information could have a different meaning for someone with a different identity.

As a South African, I am inevitably a construct of apartheid and coloniality. White people remained in positions of power and kept their high-income jobs and houses while the people of color remained in low-income jobs and areas, as seen explicitly in the image below- a typical poster of the still prevalent effects of apartheid and coloniality in our communities and country (Malala, 2019).

Therefore, I still identify with a divided society, battling the injustices and trauma of the past. However, when my university application for The School of Medicine was rejected due to the QUOTA system, I felt discriminated against and could not help but have second thoughts about the majority of doctors and health science graduates in our country. Frustration and confusion clouded my judgment because I had to work thrice as hard and be competent to get reserve a seat in another degree of choice, simply because of my race and ethnicity. However, this module has been a blessing in disguise as I realize that they are attempting to compensate for the crippling repercussions of apartheid and coloniality and this is in fact THEIR country by right and roots. Hence, I fuel my motivation and channel empathy to provide the most efficient services holistically, so that the community can somewhat experience appropriate health care, contributing to making a difference in their lives in the long term.

Hence, we see how some aspects of positionality are culturally ascribed or generally regarded as being fixed, for example, gender, race, skin color, and nationality. Others, such as political views, personal life history, and experiences, are more fluid, subjective, and contextual (Strater, 1996).

Therefore, it is so important to consider one's positionality when assessing conditions, working in communities, and imagining and co-creating programs/projects with and for the people of the community. The reason being, it is unethical to be biased, based on any condition, as we treat the symptoms and work our way forward for the person without prejudice. Analyzing my positionality has taught me that we often don’t see things as they are, but we see things as we are. We can have a lot to assume about lives we have never lived but have we placed ourselves in their shoes? Would one willingly want to be in that position if they could clearly see it coming? How can we make sense of the social world we are tackling, if we don’t know our own characteristics within the social world? The way we see and understand the world influences how we interact with others, make decisions, and interpret others’ actions. To be equitable service providers, or even simply humans, we must understand how our identities bias our perceptions.

Especially in the community context, it is so important to be aware of and consider your own positionality because the inhabitants of these communities experience a different reality from your own. They have different home environments; they grew up with different kinds of parents/guardians, who were potentially emotionally distant or insufficient for their physical needs and they are tackling many unseen battles. Consequently, they themselves got caught up in this cycle because of the lack of change and opportunities (Bourke, 2009). I note the need to consider and change our own positionality in order to see things from their own perspective and to plan treatment more appropriately by not pinning our personal views/ beliefs on the people we work with. Subsequently, this feeds into providing a realistic treatment program vs. an idealistic treatment program. In the event of co-creating programs for the community, not understanding cultural perceptions can actually lead to a lot of miscommunications, rendering our carefully detailed and executed projects, pointless. Hence, we understand how one’s positionality directly influences how the treatment is carried out and determines the prevailing outcomes and results. Lastly, awareness of one’s positionality helps to increase awareness and extend greater empathy, compassion, and understanding to others. At the end of the day, all these positions make up the world we live in all these different perspectives merge into one, in a big social world/society. Hence, we need each other to understand our position in the world, no matter how far one’s belief is from another person- They’re both essential to each other in a way that always reflects each other’s social position.

 References:

1.      Malala, J.  (2019). Why are South African cities still so segregated 25 years after apartheid? Johannesburg: The Guardian.

2.      Piotrowski, A.  (2019). Colonialism, Apartheid, and Democracy: South Africa's Historical Implications on the Land Reform Debate. Journal of Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research.

3.      Pollock, M.  (2021). What is Positionality? Engineer Inclusion

4. Bourrelle, J., 2015. How culture drives behaviours. [online] Youtu.be. Available at: <https://youtu.be/l-Yy6poJ2zs> [Accessed 20 September 2022].