Entering a course labelled “digital literacy” I expected a much more online-specific curriculum; however, throughout the past month we’ve explored topics like bias, empathy, and oppression through unconvential activities. This curriculum, although isn’t exclusively online, it sheds light on how important the roots of a widespread problem need to get exposed and fought against for the problems to get fixed and not escalate. We also learned ways of how we can resist these issues, limit their growth, and even stop them branching off into more future problems.

Intellectual learning

In my opinion, the most impactful source we used in class was the TED talk “The danger of a single story” by Adichie. She first shares personal stories about how she was affected by single stories, whether as a victim or perpetrator. I learned the term and how it can be shown throughout our everyday lives, I related to some examples and chuckled at others. Later she expands to global consequences of single stories, most notibely the colonilization of America and the genocide of native americans. The atmosphere of single stories changed from dumb or pitiful situations to nations destroyed with a false narrative corrupting their true identity, and I’m only lucky to be educated enough to know both sides of the story. How can I be more aware of communities affected by this phenomenon and how can I help them? That’s a question I hope my experience in Soliya help me in answering it by meeting new individuals who educate me of single strories I’m unaware of. I’m heartbroken at the thought of dehumanizing entire groups of people and strpiing away their voices, the mere thought. I couldn’t imagine how these peoples’s lives are everyday form the, until I realized I’m a victim of single stories.

Interpersonal learning

Anyone can be a victim of single storoies, it’s what makes them so dangerous. Reading “How ‘African’ is Northern Africa?” posted by Global Voices reminded me of my african-arab identity. The one that has been challenged ever since i can remember, which sometimes lead to me being ashamed of my heritage or the qualities i derived from it. Arabs in the african community have always been underepresented but coptic arabs are completely unheard of across media. I will be the representation media outlets never show to the people I meet through Soliya and I hope in meeting others with different unrepresented identities to enrich my awarness and knowledge. I’ve always had major rage towards the west for dehumanizing my identity along with many others. My egyptian culture has been appropiated or stolen, my coptic traditions are actively being erased, and my african roots are seen as invalid. But something I never fully comprehended or tried scratching beyond the surface is how these outer factors can affect the deepest parts of my inner self. I’ve always hid behind english as I grew up with an unjustified hatred towards arabic, I never had the confidence to represent my coptic identity, and always tried to manipulate my african features into something they’re not, specifically my tight curly hair. These weren’t just some personal flaws as i always thought.

Interaction based learning

My “flaws” came from internalized hatred and fear. I now realize the importance of breaking the cycle of isn’t just for me, but it’s also for every kid that was once in my position or will be. In class, learning the four I’s of oppression and how interconnected they can be gave me more of an outline to the “how” of steryotypes resulting in different types of othering and their impactful degrees. I’ve became more aware of why it is important to engage with differences with curiosity instead of judgement. Living my entire life in a small town was the extreme opposite of my life now. Casually meeting so many international arabs in classes and events was a frightning idea for me, I saw our different dialects as a “language barriers” and our unique cultures as “unfamilliar”, but it only took turning my prespective around to see how sharing our differences showed our similarities. Having made many international friends, I’ve been trying to learn more from their different backgrounds instead of being too unsure on asking. To my surprise, most of the time I see them thrilled to find a person having a genuine interest in their identity outside of the familiar. I’m excited for my Soliya experience to challenge my fears of meeting different people from various backgrounds, it might be scary at first but necessary for developing my role as a “global citizen”, or “human” as I see it.

Managing sensetive topics

My heart goes out to all those victims of wars, genocides, or any forms of oppression. Although I consider myself more of a rational person I get extremely emotional when the topic of Palestine, wars in middle east, or the battles innocent arabs have to fight in order to survive, but an assignment we did was reading, annotating, and coommenting on “War in translation: Giving voice to the women of Syria.” by Mounzer taught me something important in managing these types of topics. My empathy and compassion aren’t weakness, however I have the privilige of a voice. And that voice should be intentional enough for those with none. Controling my emotion and being percise with my words while being educated gives me the ability to raise awarness on the situations of people with the most need. If I had the chance to direct a discussion like this I would focus on listening to everyone’s different viewpoints and allowing the room for respectful critisism. I would need others to be sensetive about their words and always engage with the want to grow.