The Post-Modern Social Justice Symposium (Jinhui Kiang)

On Feb. 27^th, Michael and I went to The Post-Modern Social Justice Symposium, hosted by the Counseling and Social Change Club. This event took place in the Aztec Union Theater on campus. Upon our arrival, we received a booklet with the schedule for this six-hour long workshop and some information about the keynote speakers.

Dr. Sarah Kahn, the Director of the Counseling and Social Change undergraduate minor, welcomed everyone with a welcome speech. Then, Dr. Starck delivered an exciting and passionate motivational introduction on why social change needs to be addressed urgently among young professionals and college students. At the end of Dr. Starck’s speech, she encouraged everyone to stand up and to shout “Social justice!” three times with her. As a person coming from an introvert culture background, this format of the speech seemed a little overwhelming for me. However, the speeches led us into a curious stage where we were afforded a learning opportunity of diverse identities.

The first speech, Embracing Complexity and Breaking the Binary: The Future of the LGBTQ+ Movement, was delivered by Liz Roccoforte. She talked about the fluidity of one’s sexual and gender orientation, which gave me a better understanding of the identities of LGBTQ groups. The most fascinating part of this speech was the Gender Unicorn.

The unicorn was used as a model to represent the many aspects of gender identity, gender expression/presentation, sex assigned at birth, sexually attraction, and romantic/emotional attraction. The unicorn provided a full picture of the fluidity of sexual/gender orientation that have challenged the stereotypes that people in general have about LGBTQ groups. This speech, along with a PBS documentary Growing Up Trans, reminded me how little the majority of heterosexual people acknowledge the way LGBTQ people see themselves and the identity struggles they experience in everyday life. In the documentary, transgender children started to explore their identity at a very young age. For school psychologists and counselors, the support we offer will be crucial to those children. The fundamental premise of providing adequate service is to fully understand the interchangeable identity of LGBTQ children and to stay professional and compassionate during counseling sessions with them.

Elisa Barnett gave the second speech, with the topic about biracial identity issues. She utilized narratives to explain biracial identity and some common assumptions people will make. One of the questions she asked the audience was, “When we ask biracial people to give up one nationality or ethnicity, what are we asking them to give up?” Answers such as culture, heritage, and identity were shouted out from different corners of the theater. She acknowledged those answers and continued, “We are asking them to give up all those factors of their lives. In fact, we are asking them to give up a part of themselves”. I was deeply touched by her statements. Personally, I’ve been going through some moments of merging a new identity to my original one, that of an unsolidified Chinese. Inevitably, conflicts and accords both appeared in my process. As school professionals, instead of judging dogmatically on someone’s complex identity, our job is to help biracial students to merge both their heritages and cultures more successfully so that they can have a more efficient and more productive school life.

The last speech, Intersectional Feminism, was presented by Patricia Ruiz. I was a little confused about the title before the speech. Patricia made it clear to the audience during the speech – feminism is in the center of an intersection, where one never knows from which direction the criticism (e.g.: racism, sexism) is coming from. Patricia ended her speech with a video of Astraea, a lesbian foundation for justice.

The implication for my future counseling in schools is that, as a school psychologist, I need to respect that students, just like adults, have complex identities that have been shaped from their diverse experiences. When we utilize solution-focused counseling techniques, details like past experience and identities are usually left out. It wouldn’t hurt if we spend a little more time on building rapport and truly get to understand the students. Last, but not least, this photo shows my goal of being a future school psychologist.

Jinhui Kiang