I’ve had a hard time with how to express my thoughts on this
subject, out of fear that it’s not appropriate to discuss on a blog designated for one of my graduate classes. So out of that intellectual
insecurity, I would normally resort to my community of associates: former
classmates, colleagues, and long time friends. I go to them because they see
the world through similar lenses as I do, we speak the similar idiolects, and
we share some similar values and ideas. Though, through an array of differing
complexions, we also share the most apparent aspect of life: a Black experience.
Simply put by Wikipedia, a community can be a rather small
or personal social unit of individuals who share similar values. In which ways
are these communities constructed? For my current intents and purposes of
needing to be subjective, I will attempt to answer this question.
As I sit here in my apartment, I realize I’ve been deprived
from a certain sense of community that I’ve been accustomed to for my entire
twenty-five years of life. It was at my own will, though. I came to graduate
school wanting a new experience, and boy, did I ever get it. Coming from a
community of near racial solidarity at my alma mater and HBCU, I relocated from southeastern
Virginia to the Atlantic coast of New Jersey to attend Monmouth University, a
PWI. (Stop
right there! If you find yourself asking what do HBCU and PWI stand for, don’t
you dare Google it! I will make my point with this example soon enough!)
Being at Monmouth for the past few months, I’ve found myself
faced with the task of making new acquaintances. I’m not saying I’m looking for
a whole heap of people to call my friend, but in a new surrounding, it’s nice
to have people around that you can share with and be comfortable around.
However, I’ve found this to be somewhat of a challenge. Not only because I’m
somewhat of an introvert (although, that doesn’t totally help), but because I
realize that when I speak, I may be heard, though not always listened to. I
usually take it upon myself to converge to my surrounding peers, because
honestly, I’m a rather friendly and eclectic gal. However, I seem to be, if
anything, diverging from the Monmouth community as opposed to with it; because
again, perhaps I’m heard, but not listened to.
I find myself in a state of sociolinguistic limbo.
Maybe I don’t speak the same language as the majority of
my peers, because I’m now the minority. To build a commune of like-minded
individuals here is almost like finding the ethnic needle in a haystack;
getting poked by cues of what seems like a sharp contact, communicatively
sizing them up and only learning to find that it’s not the needle I need.
Back to the example of the acronyms I mentioned earlier.
There are certain pieces of my vernacular with which I’m more familiar than
others. Because of my experiences as a semi-southern young Black educated
woman, I’ve adopted words and phrases that may not be relevant to the majority
of my peers, and vice versa. The acronyms HBCU stands for Historically Black
College/University, the inverse of this would be the PWI, or Predominately
White Institution. Again, this is a small part of the language I speak, because
it is a major part of my own experience.
It is not solely race that classifies a community, just like
race isn’t the generalized factor of culture. A community is established
through the orality and expression of like-minded individuals. And even if the
ideas are not necessarily the same, we become attracted to or disinterested with
it based on how it is presented, because as my mother taught me “it’s not what
you say, but how you say it”. So, given my experiences with gaining or
establishing a community in my new location, one may ask (if one actually
cares) where I find that sense of familiarity and commonality?
