Often when working with the population that I serve, underserved, under-represented, I subconsciously define or label people according to their situation. Quiet literally, the beginning of my TD speech is "This program is one for students that come from underserved, under-represented and marginalized populations" Why is it ever okay to identify a group that way and why did I never notice how harmful that could be before? Why would any students ever willingly say "Yup, thats me!" Its madness. On that same accord, students tend to think that they have to prove why they are "disadvantaged" enough to be part of the program. In their essays they feel that they have to express all their trauma to be considered.
We've become a society that will label populations by their pain, conduct interviews, gain insight, ask them to explain things that may be traumatic and private, create data and then never go back to actually fixing the problem. Often, we just spread the data, but then what? Who goes back to check on these families? I appreciated this reading because not only did it make me sit and think about things that I have done but also point me in a better direction through desire-based framework. I will use this to recruit and review applications with a different mentality.
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