The experience of being a multidimensional
person whose excellence and oppression are treated as if they can't exist at the same time.
It happens when
society recognizes you as successful, capable, privileged, resilient, or exceptional in one context, but dismisses the discrimination, barriers, marginalization, or disparity you experience in another. Instead of seeing the whole picture, people
pick whichever part of your identity fits their narrative.
Basically: “You can be oppressed OR exceptional, but apparently you can't be both.”
Segregated identity scarcity is a social phenomenon, rather than an individual who possesses contradictory or fragmented identities.
The
person isn't necessarily internally divided.
The recognition of the
person is divided.
This distinction moves from asking:
Why does this person have such contradictory experiences?
to:
Why does
society require contradictory experiences to be separated in order to recognize them?
Navigating social services and systems while utilizing conventional behavioral health services while trying to have language point towards the complexity of existing in a multiplicity becomes less difficult when understood through the lense of the segregated identity scarcity experience. It is a kind of magnetism and vacuum for enhance projection of dualisitc experiences onto a
person navigating what might otherwise be called 'twice exceptional' in a K-12
education setting and evolves to be applied to
live more broadly.