Positionality

I am a white woman, and as such I have moved through the world with many unearned advantages conferred by membership in the dominant racial group wherever I have lived.

These advantages include freedom of movement and choice, assumption of competence, safety from racialized violence, stability and opportunity derived from generational wealth, and access to institutions, communities, and networks that have historically excluded people of color.

Identity influences & biases one's understanding of and outlook on the world.

I was born to white parents who were the first in their families to earn graduate degrees and who became tenured professors — a trajectory made possible in part by educational and economic systems that systematically favored white Americans. I was raised with the expectation and support to prioritize my individual advancement, including the freedom to relocate for educational and professional opportunities and access to credit that further expanded my options. I hold two master's degrees.

I have benefited from inherited wealth — cash, investments, and property — that allowed me to eliminate debt and benefit from the wealth-building vehicle of property ownership. I am now an owner of inherited property in Missoula, Montana, a city founded 166 years ago (1860) on land stewarded for previous millennia by Indigenous peoples, where settler-colonial structures persist and are maintained to the continued benefit of people of my race and status.

I operate within these structures, attempting to see and understand them clearly. But my position of privilege also allows me, at any time, to put them out of mind. Nothing in my daily experience or social dealings forces an unpleasant encounter with these facts.

This is not an exhaustive list of the structural advantages of my social position. I may revise this statement as I reflect further.