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Alumni
Perspective : A turning point As an anthropological perspectives student, I was exposed to the cultural studies and awareness that continues to fuel my chosen path. My experience at Binghamton played a crucial role in my personal development.
My passion for the study of human culture comes from my own background. As the child of an African American and Italian mother and a German American father, I was raised in a diverse family. My experience growing up in a racially segregated suburb on the white side of town and studying at the local high school (which was just as segregated) was drastically different from my family life, and left me with a void that I have since been trying to fill. I could not articulate the politics of my situation at the time, but I had a passion for a deeper knowledge of the human condition and experience than was presented to me in my high school and by suburban society. There had to be more to life than malls, cars and Bennetton sweaters, and I was destined to find it. My experience at Binghamton played a crucial role in my personal development. My journey to Binghamton allowed me to get out of the environment in which I had spent most of my life, and created the opportunity for sharp self-reflection and exposure to new information. When I began to study anthropology, things began to come into perspective for me. My study of under-represented peoples throughout history helped me develop a radical paradigm for the way in which I interpreted society, and it informed the position I began to mold for myself within it. Through the study of the Inuit tribes of Alaska, the Yanomamo of Brazil, the cultures of the Andes Mountains, the cultures of the Middle East and the comparison of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, I began to realize there was so much left untold in my previous education. The world had been taught to me from one narrow perspective, and I felt robbed, yet inspired, by my exposure to new information. In my quest for knowledge -- or more specifically, knowledge about the non-Western world -- I decided to travel to Ghana through a SUNY-sponsored study-abroad program. It was a transformative experience. In Ghana, I had a profound realization about the nature of the global economy and how non-industrialized countries are both dependent upon it and controlled within it. All of the products that were sold in Ghana were foreign imports, from toothpaste, soap and crackers to flour, rice, and milk products. Very few of Ghana's agricultural products -- oranges, peanuts and cattle among them -- were actually distributed within the country's border. The Ghanaian dollar, the cedi, was one of the most devalued currencies in the world. When I arrived in Ghana, 700 cedis were worth only one American dollar. When I left the country seven months later, the number of cedis to the dollar had shot up to 1,000. When a country's economy is based on the importation of foreign goods and its agricultural staples are exported, that country has no autonomy. It cannot stand on its own. I automatically linked this pattern of dependency to Ghana's history as a major source of slaves for building the New World. I had never heard the term "neocolonialism," but now I understood it in a visceral way. I will never forget traveling up north in Ghana and drinking water sold on the street in little plastic bags. The water smelled like gasoline. I believe this must have been caused by foreign petroleum companies trying to cut costs and not having adequate containment mechanisms. The gasoline must have been leaking into the ground, contaminating the water supply. I remember seeing children playing on top of mountains of garbage left to rot on the ocean shore right next to the tourist beach, but far enough away that the tourists would not see. The slave castles along the coast stood in grim remembrance of an earlier economic arrangement that would lead to a country in shambles just two centuries later. Young children chased all foreigners in the dirt roads, calling, "Obruni! Obruni!" (meaning "one from over the horizon") and begging for "one pen." As an American, I found it difficult to come to terms with being the beneficiary of an economic arrangement that exploited a country's natural resources to the detriment and continued impoverishment of its population. It was this understanding that became the foundation for my work since that time. I feel very strongly that being aware of the world's inequities -- and, especially, benefiting from them -- gives me the responsibility to work toward changing them. This concept has been at the root of my work for the last seven years. From performing politically charged poetry, to facilitating creative writing and performance workshops with inner-city youth, to co-founding an organization for women artists/entrepreneurs, my work is all based on an attempt to heal the world's inequities. An awesome task, and one that is certainly more of a journey, or a way of life, than a goal. When I reflect on this turning point in my life, I realize how truly amazing it is that one experience had the power to synthesize all of my previous experiences into an awareness that then determined the rest of my life's path. Tomasia Clarice D'Agostino Kastner, poet, emcee, writer, teacher, activist, organizer and novice deejay, is also known as infiniTEE or infiniTEE da Quadroon. Her work combines social commentary with entertainment. Born in Portugal and raised in Rockland County, N.Y., she has performed at numerous venues throughout the metropolitan New York area since 1995. Former co-director of Elevated Urban Arts and Education, a hip-hop poetry and arts workshop at the Robert E. Wagner School of Art and Technology in Queens, and co-founder and co-director of WERISE, an organization that supports women artist/entrepreneurs, Kastner has received broad media attention. She is the events coordinator at Bluestockings Women's Bookstore in New York City and is working on her solo album, a blend of hip-hop and spoken word, with deejay Stef Ð I. |
