My Cultural Story

This paper was written through a lens of social justice and privilidge. I just finished one of my last classes and it was critical theory and social justice in education. Tough slog. Truth? Although I got alot out of it . . .in terms of my PhD work, it was a bit of a waste of time. There is so much of this in our culure now, it feels like we are all well versed in it, and the class seemed a few years dated. But, we had to look at our lives through this lens as a final project. 

In order to describe my cultural story, it is best to divide up my life in segments based not on how different cultural issues and forces played on my life, but rather through a timeline. This timeline, naturally, starts in my childhood and adolescence, moves through my post high school years, and my post army life, and ends with my being a father and working for a non-profit. By framing a cultural story through these three lenses, a reader should be able to see a how cultural forces and concepts intersected either positively or negatively with my life, my career, and in my family. A reader should also come to realize how I might have been able to adopt or counter these forces, and how each led naturally from one phase of life to another. The concluding section of this cultural story will focus on an overview or summary of these segments of my life. Additionally, the summary will focus on the prevailing cultural concepts and what lessons or opportunities for further growth might exist. 

Childhood

My parents both grew up in Houston, Texas where I too was born and raised. My paternal, great grandfather, who immigrated from Scotland in the early 1900's, was instrumental in developing large sections of Houston in the pre-war period and made quite a bit of money doing so. This led to his being able to leave his family hefty trust funds and a life of relative comfort for his children and grandchildren. My maternal great grandparents also lived in this area and my great-grandfather on my mother's side lived on the east side of downtown Houston. Both sides were scions of the burgeoning city and their children all went to school and university in the area, attended local churches, and were well known in the city. This extended to having neighbors who were mayors of the city, a father who grew up near and was known by name by the Bush family, meeting and knowing local celebrities, and more. 

I have started my cultural essay with this information to highlight the fact that I have deep, family roots within the area that I grew up and continue to live. These deep local roots were a natural part of my upbringing and as I grew up and as my family progressed and we lived in better and better neighborhoods, I was always surrounded by extended family, wealthy friends and classmates, and an understanding that our lives in Houston were a part of a long legacy. Part of this legacy included my attending a very expensive preparatory schools in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Houston. My family, many of my aunts and uncles, both sets of grandparents, all lived in this neighborhood that has a storied and long history in Houston (Gray 2020, Soslow, 2023). Birthday parties at mansions, visiting aunts or cousins with their own large homes, biking through neighborhoods with large estates always protected by a twenty-four hour private police patrol who knew most of the residents by sight, was a common part of my life. 

Church and school were a part of this same lifestyle. Cloisters, carved stoned facades, accounts at the school bookstore where anything for school could be bought, or the fact that the reverends, secretaries, and maintenance crew all knew us all by name. Scholastically, school was a challenge, but for nine years I stayed at the prep school moving up slowly, and when things became too tough or my grades slipped, tutors were found to help me get back on track. At church I served as an acolyte. At all times I was surrounded by classmates, friends, and family who were in a similar socio-economic situation as my family. 

Weekends and summers were spent at my grandfather's farm which included a pre-civil war plantation house that he restored. This farm operated as a bed and breakfast an hour west of Houston where visitors would come to experience small town farm life for the weekend. I would help my grandfather repair and keep up the plantation home, work in the gardens, tend to the bed and breakfast guests, and on most weekends, bartend or work as a bus boy for weddings that wanted a pre-antebellum theme and a garden background setting. At no time, when I was there, was there a thought that it might be culturally insensitive to have a marriage ceremony on a site where the horrors of slavery were once practiced as has come to light since (Hosken, 2020). Instead it was seen as a part of our cultural heritage, a celebration of the deep south, not a celebration of who are family was at that time. 

There was little diversity among the workers, staff, or students at home, at school or at church. This might have been noticed, but for the most part was discounted as a natural part of life.  The most diverse aspects of my social life included housekeepers who were African American, gardeners who were Mexican American, or the one or two classmates who were able to get into the prep school I attended. This not only provided sparse insight into other cultural mores, beliefs, or histories of other cultures, but kept me in the dark about several aspects of our lives.  Although my father was disabled, being born mostly deaf and never being able to hear well without help, this was a part of our life and the trust fund from his grandfather more than made up for the lack of success he had in the job market. This created a happy childhood, but one without depth of understanding about the actual cultural diversity of the world around me or an appreciation of cultural differences.

The first culturally revelatory experience from this segment of the time line occurred when I was fourteen and left the prep school to attend the public school in our neighborhood. For nine years my view of school and life had been framed by a small, very wealthy, prep school. Suddenly, by becoming a freshman, I was thrust into a public high school that although well-established, and near our wealthy neighborhood, was extremely large, filled with a far more diverse group of students, and where I was forced to confront a more authentic reality. I went from having one non-white student among a class of 100 students, to a class of 500 where white students were the minority. 

At about this same time financial concerns began to creep into our personal lives. My father, who had always had a sinecure at his family's company, was bought out and suddenly the family was facing having to move. Additionally, my father's expensive hobby of collecting trains had become too costly. My parents were forced to face the fact that they had no savings, an empty trust fund, and a future of financial future at great risk. Our family eventually came to the rescue and offered a bailout for my father, but this financial downturn acted for me, very much like moving to a public high school had. The life of ease and comfort I had come to expect and take for granted was very much built on sand rather than something more solid. For a decade and a half, financial and scholarly security had been a constant, suddenly, that was no longer the case. 

Another cultural shock occurred regarding how I viewed race in the Houston area at about that same time. The summer before high school my church group scheduled a mission trip to Galveston. Prior to this trip Galveston had been a place where I went with friends and families to beach houses, to ride mopeds, play at waterparks, and enjoy boating and water skiing. Previous activities and trips with this group had been what one would expect from a upper class church, namely car washes, playing pool in the ECYC club after school, or lock ins or trips to bowling allies and movies. This church mission had our group working with underprivileged children in inner city parts of Galveston. Again, this was a look into a world that I had previously not known existed. I learned about Juneteenth at this point, and never understood why it stood out in the minds of Galveston residents. We met and cared for inner city children at daycares and at church after school clubs, and tried to understand why certain parts of the neighborhood were off limits to us. 

Post High School

This next segment of my life is marked by transitions. If my childhood up and through high school was a gradual awakening to the realities of life, this next segment has a focus on beginning to transition away from that sheltered, gilded life to one that would be more independent. Immediately after high school I left Houston to live for a year in Brussels, Belgium. At no time during my years going to the prep school or to the high school would anyone have imagined that I would be interested in being a foreign exchange student however, as soon as high school was over, I let college know I would need to defer a year and I took advantage of a gap year. I lived with a small family, a divorced woman and her two daughters on the outskirts of Belgium. 

The first aspect of this trip that could be perceived as a break from the norm is that I limited my family’s access to me for the entire year. No money, no contact, no influence were the instructions I gave them and that I kept for myself. Like high school, the church mission trip, a new side of life and people were exposed. In this case I lived with a lower middle-class family where the mother and father were divorced. No one in my family, except the black sheep uncle who lived far away from Houston, had been through a divorce. Additionally, instead of two brothers, I suddenly had two sisters. My life until this time had been far more male-focused than it was while I lived in Belgium. My host-mother I saw was challenged almost daily with doing her job, focusing on her family, and trying to do the work of two parents for the entire family. Finally, I was surrounded by a cadre of other foreign exchange students, a support group, who traveled together, experienced European life together, and bonded through this experience despite disparate and vastly different backgrounds. 

During that year I transitioned from rich, upper crust kid, to European kid as best I could. I came back a strict vegan, with long hair that touched my shoulders, yet incongruously shaved as well, an earring and a heavy smoker. All of these things were the antithesis of the persona I had embraced and grown into as a child in Houston. Another foreign exchange student, this one from Turkey, exposed to me the slights and racism that he and other Turkish immigrants had to deal with while in Belgium (Colak et al., 2020). The year in Europe was eye-opening if only because it was the first time I had been away from Houston and my family for an extended period of time. It demonstrated to me how different cultures and societies could have different views on immigration, racism, and nationality. I learned that live might not be as easy for most as it had been for me, rather due to divorce or socio-economic status. It also yielded for me a pride of country or patriotism for my home country as well as an understanding of how the rest of the world might see Texas and Texans. 

Following my foreign exchange experience, I attended university at a very large and well-established institution just an hour and a half west of Houston. My older brother, who had been at this same college for two years, blazed trails for me and helped me integrate myself back into the American culture. Instead of having to find things out on my own, I was ushered into a life pre-selected for me by him. The long hair was trimmed, the earring was forgotten, and the smoking ceased. The university, although large, was still quite homogenous in terms of racial makeup. However, this school, like the high school I attended, was not filled with an upper crust, wealthy elite as my prep school had been. So although there were aspects of a different, deeper, culture, this part of my life was still similar to my childhood. Family was nearby. Although I had a job, tuition and housing was paid for by my parents. My brother was my roommate, and his friends were my own. The surroundings were familiar to what I had when I was a child. 

I enlisted in the Army during my last year of college. I did this without telling anyone. I had enough hours to graduate by October of my senior year, I left to join the army in November. When others were enjoying graduation ceremonies, I was beginning Basic Training for the infantry. Although my grandfather and my uncle both served as officers in the military during different wars, there was not a long, proud, storied history of service in our family. In fact, when my family found out I enlisted they contacted the family lawyer immediately to see how to extract me from the military. Among all of the members of my family who have served to any degree in the military, before my enlistment or after, I have been the only one who enlisted instead of becoming a commissioned officer. Despite having a degree of patriotism instilled in me from my time in Belgium, and despite the tradition of southern military service pointed out by Maley and Hawkins (2023), these did not play a part in my decision. I enlisted because I was looking for something to do and because I was looking for the challenge. I served with privates and soldiers from all levels of society. This as well was a cultural cold shock, but one that I expected and wanted. Due to the natural capabilities my childhood had provided me, swimming lessons, sports, activities, as well as the advantages I had had growing up, tutors, respect for authority, and more,  I soon found myself in an elite unit of spec ops warriors jumping out of airplanes and helicopters, scuba diving, and blowing things up. I gained rank quickly not only because I was four years older than my colleagues in my platoon, but also because I had a college degree and life experiences that were far greater than my contemporaries. I rose quickly through the ranks and became a team leader in this world of special operations much more quickly than others. I was able to train and cross train with others in the military. When I look back on my life, now that I’m a full-time trainer, and administrator for a training non-profit, I realize that this was the beginning of my enjoyment of being a trainer. It was direct, to the point, process and procedural driven, work. 

Another aspect of my military life that has similarities to my childhood life included another mission trip. This one was sponsored by our battalion chaplain while we were in Panama. While others went out to Panama City to drink, enjoy a bit of leave, and get in a bit of trouble, I and several other Rangers found we in a small village helping a church improve and expand the foundations of their buildings. This small, village church suddenly had 25 young, extremely healthy, Army spec ops soldiers moving mountains of dirt, placing concrete cinderblocks in place, and improving their sanctuary through sweat equity and construction activities. But this was as much an eye opener for this was my first experience with true third world poverty. We were hosted for lunch and dinner, and spent a few hours in the small village in the jungles of Panama, and the living conditions we saw there were harsh to say the least, especially when compared to the standards I had come to enjoy through my own childhood. 

This segment of my life timeline was marked for my complete separation from any financial attachments to my family. Additionally, like my time in Belgium, I spent most holidays and vacations away from my family. Visits from my family were few and short. I spent much of my time in the military in the Pacific Northwest, and rarely had contact with my immediate or extended family. I embraced the troops and soldiers around me and although I might have had more in common with my officers, I remained grounded to the enlisted corps. Although I found in the military a belief in standards and in personal capabilities over a reliance on social capital or privileged, the SpecOps forces are still dominantly white and until only recently, all male (Barroso, 2019; Lemmon, 2017). When discussions came up about allow females into the Ranger Regiment, unlike many of the soldiers around me, my views were simple, if they complete the standards as any man might, then they should be allowed to serve; but that the standards shouldn’t change. Additionally, I found that the Pacific Northwest was far less diverse than other places I had lived. 

Post Army/Contractor Career

The longest segment of this time line that makes up my cultural story is my post Army or contractor career years. This segment of time is also the start of my career in the energy industry. Although I moved back to Houston, and despite many offers to help in my career, and offers of positions with friends or family, I found a job completely divorced from any industry that my family was a part of and without any tie to my family. I lived away from my family and rarely saw them. I used the money I had saved and my GI bill entitlement to earn an MBA while working. I slowly made my way up a career ladder in various organizations within the energy industry. 

I married a young woman who was not from the Houston area and had no relationship with my family, a challenge for my mother and my grandmother to accept. I moved out of Houston as soon as we were married. Even though we moved to a suburb of Houston, again, moving out of Houston and the sphere of influence of my family was a challenge for my family. Although we were married in the same Church were, I had grown up and where my family was well known, my wife, seeing that this church did not accept the changes to allowing gay Episcopalian clergy as many others were (Gwynne, 2013) we found a new church to attend. 

My career with contracting agencies in Houston exposed me again to the working-class segment of the population instead of the executive class that I was used to networking with through my family. I saw more how my social capital and privilege was not effective and provided no worth to me in this environment. What was valued was a willingness to work any job well, and to listen to the knowledge, experience, and skills of others in the industry. I took one detour in this career trajectory by taking a job with my uncle who was running the family construction business. There I saw all of the negative aspects of my family, and wealth that I had lived with and grew up in place yet again. I saw a waste of money, inefficiencies, networking within wealthy families, favors for family, and privilege all on display and used regularly. After two years I left the family business and my uncle and returned to following my own path, this time working harder to completely divorce myself from my family and friends. 

Eventually I became a training director for a large national organization and found myself traveling to many different locations to train field workers in aspects of their jobs. This was enlightening for many reasons, not least of which was that I was training people on jobs they knew better than I. I had technical and theoretical expertise, they had real world applications expertise. I found that instead of training I was facilitating and allowing them to train one another and me at the same time. This was also a time when I started to develop a capability for facilitation instead of instruction. I started to notice how a learner’s own experience can be utilized for the benefit of the class as well as for themselves. 

During this time I took a class on facilitation to support a training project on shift ticketing and billing that I had the opportunity to roll out across all of our offices across the nation. Unlike training in the military, facilitation, especially so early in my career, was something I took to quickly. I saw a far more powerful opportunity to be a change maker for the trainees I interacted with. From that point on, for every class I developed or delivered, facilitation became a commonality. 

At this time, I was becoming more and more open to field workers I supported. These were like the soldiers I had interacted with in the Army. Immigrants, people from less well-off backgrounds, workers who worked to provide for their families but also found ways to enjoy life. We might not have come from the same backgrounds, nor did we share similar hobbies, but we work toward common goals and as far as I could see their hard work, experience, and dedication paid off to them the same benefits of raises, promotions, and loyalty that I found. The executives with whom I interacted were very much like me in that they had strong ties to the Houston community and had been raised in well off families. In many cases, they like me, had also cast off their backgrounds to work within this community. There were also within this community of executives and business leaders were many self-made men, workers who had risen through the ranks and were leaders due to their field expertise and experience. 

Eventually I was placed in charge of the recruiting department. This position allowed me to further develop a relationship with field workers that made up the community of contractors who support the energy industry. In most cases the younger cohort, those who were just beginning their careers. I was able to help guide many young men and women into careers and explain what it might take to be successful. At this point in my career I was lucky enough to manage and lead several female recruiters and gay man. These were both new experiences for me and I found that I learned a lot about demeanor, work tempo, and support from both of them that I had not expected. My time working in the field as a trainer and facilitator showed me what success might look like for field workers, and I was able to help guide new workers in the industry to make the most of the opportunity our organizations might provide. Additionally, just as I had been as a trainer, I was able to be an advocate for both the organization and the contracting community. 

By this time in my career I had discovered there were many benefits to being a contractor. There were hardships, but there were benefits as well, and I was able to help immigrant workers, workers with little or no skill, or indignant workers find profitable careers. Additionally, I was pivotal in creating and deploying a career development path for new workers. This career development path provided a route toward an associate degree for our new workers. Much of the development of this career development path was developed from lessons learned from watching privates advance through the enlisted ranks in the military. Having been a part of that development path in the army myself, I knew how important it could be for workers to have an illustrated, navigable path toward success. We were also able to provide leadership training and support to workers who had started with nothing and risen through the ranks to become crew leaders and supervisors. 

Finally, I was asked to join a local safety council, a non-profit organization where training was the only and most prominent deliverable. Now, many of the project I was able to lead in my previous jobs were a part of what I could develop and delivery on behalf of the safety council. Additionally, this new position has allowed me to provide for and give back to the workers who enter the community in a far more substantial way. 

Fatherhood and Non-Profit

This final segment of my cultural story time line is focused on my work with this non-profit training organization and becoming and living as a father to my two sons. Working for a non-profit safety training organization has allowed me to use all of the skills and abilities I learned working as a contractor, but put them to use not for the sake of a single organization, but for an entire community. This position has allowed me to help more people become better facilitators, improve training for multiple organizations, and raise the standard for safety training for every contractor who works with us, both new hires and experienced workers. 

Working with this non-profit organization allows me the ability to do far more than just train contractors. Our non-profit hosts contractor events, community events, allow for contractors to advance their own skills, education, and capabilities outside of work, and promotes safety for the worker, and their families through many different programs. Lately our CEO has started looking at opportunities to help the worker community by providing free addiction recovery and counseling. Additionally, our council has helped set up multiple safety councils in other less privileged communities and countries. 

Three years ago I had the chance to visit two such safety councils that our safety council was helping to start and grow. Trinidad and Tobago has been a part of our safety council system, a sister council, for almost ten years. When I arrived, I was surprised to see that the council was nothing less than one room in a run-down strip mall near the refinery. Unlike East Houston where there are dozens if not hundreds of wealthy refinery owner operators, the Trinidad and Tobago industry has less than a dozen. Their safety standards as well were less rigorous, and compliance was rarely mandated. The gap in sophistication between our safety council and the one on the small island, was as significant as the one between Trinidad and Tobago and what we saw when we reached Guyana. Safety councils, and safety systems in Guyana are completely anathema to their social norms and way of life. The society I saw on that trip reminded me of my time in Panama with the Rangers, but helped me understand how much more work so many other countries have in terms of meeting safe work standards on par with the ours, and what more we can do to help them. 

I became father to three boys throughout this segment of my timeline. My wife and I were fortunate enough to have an opportunity to foster a young boy named Anthony. My two sons adopted him as a brother, and we treated him as a son. We looked forward to hopefully reuniting him with his family or adopting him. Sadly, neither of those outcomes occurred. Being Anthony’s father for two years, seeing his struggles, helped me understand the challenges that foster children must struggle with. Additionally, Anthony was Hispanic and potentially native American as well. Seeing the world and how the foster care system failed him, provided a remarkable insight into how a system that is designed to help the less privileged can ultimately fail them. Finally, I was able to see how my family was challenged by our fostering of Anthony, which sadly, tended to confirm many of the notions I had developed since leaving high school. 

My family has the great luck to live in Sugar Land, Texas, which is an incredibly diverse small community outside of Houston (Wire & Falcon, 2022). From my front door I can look out at ten families and see a family from Nigeria, another from Pakistan, a neighbor from Vietnam, another from China, Canada, India, and Brazil. Commonly in classes and when playing sports our children are far and away the minority in the group. My wife and I try to instill in our sons the value of this diversity while we have seen many of our friends and neighbors leave for opposite reasons (Rodriguez, 2001).

Review and Summary

When I look back at these segments of my life and career, I realize that in many ways I’ve followed a typical route from riches to rags back to riches that many others have followed. I was blessed with many opportunities and provided much more than many other people but since college I have eschewed all of what my family and their position might have provided. In many cases, there wasn’t much of a choice as the trust fund had run out and there wasn’t as much wealth, just position, but often my aunts, other family members, congregants from my church, have all offered positions or opportunities that are outside the natural career path I have been forging. My brothers have followed different paths, one that has been as independently minded as mine, and the other which is far more connected to friends and family. My cousins too have all stayed close to the family and have not been as independently minded. 

My life I realize was very sheltered to the point that I was unable to clearly see any cultural diversity in the city around me or the social advantages given me. In fact, I assumed in most cases that although I was lucky in many respects, the differences between my life and those of non-whites in Houston were not drastically different. Gallagher (2003) writes “the passive interaction whites have with people of color through the media creates the impression that little, if any, socio-economic difference exists between the races” (p. 25). Like those around me, and as I was told by many of my friends and family, I believed that hard work, and perseverance, or a lack of these qualities was what stopped people from advancing or succeeding in life, a common trend illustrated by Gallagher (2003). Working in the Army, where there is less adherence to privilege and social capital for promotion would seem to bolster this argument, but when seen through the lens of McIntosh’s (2019) White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, I can see where even in a more color-blind society as the Army is, there are unseen privileges we all bring with us.  

I understand that in many ways the privilege that has been a part of my life and continues to be in my life, provides me opportunities and a way of looking at the world that less privileged people would not have as shown by the list of privileges in McIntosh (2019) article. The confidence I needed to join the Army and become a leader in the Rangers, may have come about due to my family’s position in Houston and in our local society. The ability to become Captain and President of the lacrosse team in college might have come about in part due to familiarity with a sport very few underprivilege people are accustomed to. How many other areas of my life that have proven successful for me have been due to that privilege? 

How has this affected me? I believe this independence has led to a far more colorful life with much more diversity and “giving back” to a community than I would have had otherwise. My sojourn of working with my family’s company shows me that the alternative choices would have led to choices that would not have made me feel content or independent. The feeling of being independent is something that I try to instill in my children as well. 

Working at a safety council non-profit as I do is filled with delicate situations and opportunities regarding privilege and power. It would be easier in many respects to simply set up a company in Guyana and start a safety council there. Instead, our leadership, headed by first generation immigrants, would rather help these safety councils begin naturally on their own. McIntosh (2019) writes: “whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them” to be more like “us” (p. 1).

Kegan’s socialized mindset in his adult development cycle or orders of consciousness in clues one where one’s sense of self is derived by attachment to others, and where one is not comfortable with disagreement (Hoare, 2011, p. 88). When I look at my life compared to that of my brothers, both of whom have embraced a lifestyle similar to that within which we grew up, I see a difference between socialized mindsets and mine which is becoming less socialized. This past week we celebrated my younger brother’s birthday. My younger brother lives in town near where we grew up, has married into wealth and lives a life similar to that which we had growing up to the point that his birthday lunch was at the same country club where we celebrated birthday’s when we were all children. While he continues to live a life that is similar to our lives when we were growing up, I have tried to distance myself from that life quite deliberatively. Knowles et al. (2014) write that distancing is a form of dealing with white privilege. Although not as socially redistributive as dismantling, distancing does effect indicate some change. They write about distancing, “these results imply that Whites who frequently distance themselves from whiteness, thus adopting a color-blind self-perceptual stance, may fail to perceive patterns of racial inequity” (p. 602).  

In terms of training there might be more deliberate and obvious development toward a more socially diverse and dismantling behavior. From military-style training that is similar to what has been described by Freire as banking, to one that is more open and transformative, or what Freire would call problem posing (Merriam, 2020). Currently I have an outlook that believes that everyone deserves an opportunity to work in our industry no matter their cultural or social background and that they all deserve effective and engaging learning. I also believe that there are multiple arrows in our training quiver that we should be able and ready to leverage to help ensure our learners walk away with the training they need, some may need a banking style, others problem posing, but the results should all lead to something that transforms the learner through critical reflection on the training and perhaps self-reflection on their own careers. Hopefully this will be a benefit to the community and to the industry our organization supports. 

 

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