Rosie the Cat and the Meaning of Identity

This is Rosie.

Rosie was rescued as a two week old kitten and was not expected to survive. The family who rescued her have huskies named Lilo and Infinity. Lilo nursed her to health and she grew up to be a strong healthy cat.

And now Rosie and her huskies are inseparable. They do everything together, from sharing birthday cake to outdoor adventures like kayaking.

Rosie’s family say that she sees herself as a husky, and I realized that I relate to this a lot.

This is a photo of me with a group of my fellow grad students in 2015.

As a woman of color, I often find myself in the extreme minority in many academic spaces. I often joke that I forget how short I am until I see myself in pictures. While I’m secure in my gender identity as a cis woman, in some ways (like Rosie), I also forget that I’m not a tall white man.

On the eve of starting my first tenure track job, I attended an excellent workshop by Dr. Missy Cosby while participating in MAA’s Project NExT. During the workshop, she gave us five sticky notes on which we were asked to write our name, race or ethnicity, religion/faith or belief system, hobby/interest/passion, and gender/orientation. Then she gave us three categories: home, in the community, and in the classroom, and asked us to place the sticky notes in each category from top to bottom based on how salient or relevant those features of our identities were in those different spaces.

I realized that until that point, like Rosie believing she was a husky and could go swimming with her large husky siblings, I was mostly unaware of the different features of my identity which set me apart from my mathematical peers. I’ve been very fortunate that throughout my education and academic career, I haven’t personally faced much explicit exclusion due to my race and gender. Of course, I’ve had my share of sexist and racist comments, like the time I was told that I have the “brain of a man” because I’m a mathematician, but for the most part I’ve had the luxury of not thinking about it much. This has been a gift in many ways, in that it often doesn’t occur to me that I somehow shouldn’t exist in this space because I’m different, but historically, I haven’t been making a deliberate choice about declaring that I belong despite these differences.

After Dr. Cosby’s workshop, though, it occurred to me that this was something I could start thinking more carefully about. I’m a very private person, and in most situations, I choose not to mention being a minority. However, when I’m the only woman or person of color in the room, it’s not really something I can choose to keep secret. This comes with a certain level of responsibility.

When I was in grad school, I attended a conference during which I went to lunch with several other attendees, including one professor, one postdoc, and several other grad students. The professor at our table was using a spicy topping on his pizza and took it upon himself to warn everyone how spicy it was. He looked around the table and then pointed to me (the only person of color in the group) and said “it’s very spicy but… for you it’s okay.” In that moment, I was too taken aback to say anything, and I quickly assessed that it wouldn’t be in my best interest to call him out. (He was an important person in my field, and I was just a grad student.) But ten years later, this sticks with me as an instance where, by no choice of mine, my identity was used in a way that singled me out. The only choice I made in that scenario was not to engage, which (unfortunately) was the right thing to do at the time. However, in retrospect, I am now very aware that everyone else at the table also chose not to say anything, and I hope that if I am in their position in the future, I will feel brave enough to speak up.

On the other hand, in one of my faculty positions, there was a call put out for volunteers for a diversity committee. By the time I replied to the email to volunteer, the committee was already full. I looked at the list and quickly realized they didn’t have a single person of color on the committee. I thought carefully about my options and decided to mention this to the chair, and he was incredibly receptive and acknowledged his oversight right away. (In fact, he was horrified by this, noting that he made an effort to make sure there were both men and women on the committee.) This was an especially encouraging experience for me–I felt safe raising a concern and respected by the chair in his response. It was also inspiring. I hope that in the future when I make this type of mistake (which will surely happen at some point since it happens to everyone), I can handle it with the same sort of gracious response.

While I am motivated to stand up for myself and address things that affect me directly, I realize that it is not the sole responsibility of those who are underrepresented to address systemic issues. As a ranked faculty member, I’ve started to view my own minority status as less of a burden and more of an opportunity, and I’m lucky to work at an institution where this is encouraged. We can’t always make a choice about what our colleagues or students know about our identities, but we can choose to pay attention to the way that this affects us and others, and to speak up when something unfair is happening.

There are still many days when I forget that I don’t look like a lot of my colleagues, just like Rosie when she’s out kayaking with the huskies and she doesn’t realize she isn’t a dog. While this doesn’t stop Rosie from enjoying the great outdoors with her canine companions (nor has it stopped me from enjoying math), one of the greatest things about her is that she’s participating in activities which are not traditionally done by cats, and by acknowledging her species we get to celebrate that. Let’s give our fellow members of the mathematics community the same courtesy!

Dr. Victoria Noquez received her Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Chicago in 2017 and is currently an assistant professor at Saint Mary’s College of California. Her research is in logic, mainly exploring connections between category theory and fractals. In her spare time she is an accomplished professional magician.