Jayneese Fitzgerald

Jayneese Fitzgerald: Class of 2017

Was there a moment when you realized there’s a stereotype against blacks?

“Definitely. I think one of the first moments that I realized it was through a reverse-racism situation. I would try to be around people who were like me and they would respond with things like: ‘you talk white,’ or ‘you talk proper,’ or ‘you don’t dress like us.’ I didn’t understand what they meant. I just really didn’t get it. Now, I feel like I identify more with a lot of different people. I’m not necessarily trying to fit in with one group.”

Who are we? The Stories of Southwestern

I remember walking across the train tracks. With every step I took my path became less clear and my comprehensive plan, set in stone in middle school, began to unravel. The seductive allure of rebellion infected, then dominated, my escalating panic. I simply couldn’t ignore the warm fluttering deep in my belly. Somehow – despite the heavy drag of my heart, which didn’t lift upon my decision – I let go of my pediatric dreams and opened myself instead to this bizarre crossbreed of social justice, journalism, political science, law, English, and Spanish that I’m in now.

Anyway, it took about 30 minutes of trying to explain anything about anything for rebellion’s allure to shrivel up and light itself on fire in a desperate attempt to free itself from misery. No matter how many times I rephrased; no matter how many different perspectives I tried to take on; no matter how many academic sources and studies I had to offer the conversation would end with me feeling as if I was speaking about one world, while they were hearing about another.

Then my trusty light bulb beamed with a beautifully simplistic thought: I was living in one world, while they were living in another. My socially constructed reality and their socially constructed reality were at odds, so for all intents and purposes I was speaking of an entirely different world.

I’ve shifted my approach. While facts can be disputed – not to say that they should be if they are indeed facts – experiences are unique to individuals: not one is like the other, not one can be explained nor understood by anyone who didn’t experience it.

Now I ask: what has been experienced here? What are our stories? What does it truly mean to Be Southwestern?