Bryce McKay ’09

Rudolph Patzer was born as a German immigrant living in Russia. His mother and father died before he was 20, and at that point, he packed up his few belongings and managed to afford a passage to America. He changed his name to Pazer, hoping that he would sound more American when he introduced himself in the United States. Eventually, he came to LaCrosse, Washington, with a few acres to call his own.

Rudolph and Dora Pazer gave birth to Bonnie Jean Pazer Jones, who gave birth to Laura Jean Jones McKay, who gave birth to me. I am a descendant of immigrants, and Rudolph Patzer was not the only one. I am German, French, English, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, and Norwegian. Some of my ancestors lived in huts made of sod, some of them led rebellions, and some of them attended Whitman. They lived in a different age — in an age when no one was simply “white,” and being German or Irish meant that you were something different. As Matthew Frye Jacobson writes, it was not until the early 1920’s that the terms “white” or “Caucasian” connoted a monolithic group of people that hailed (mostly) from the European continent.

My family has wound its way from the Atlantic Ocean to Eastern Washington, and into relative affluence. I was born and raised on 2300 acres of farm-ground near Almira, Washington, and in our area, the McKay Farm is considered to be of middling size. During the summer when I was13 I reluctantly pulled weeds for three days before deciding to quit the farming business. At age 14, I pulled weeds all summer long. At age 16 I began driving the tractor during the spring, and driving the combine during fall harvest. I am allergic to dust, but I am not just an asthmatic farmboy. The other members of my family are not just farmers.

My father is steady and wise, and cosmopolitan in his own way. He has set foot on 5 continents, traveling abroad every year and managing a farm and a business. My mother is passionate and creative — she works three jobs and still makes time for her art. My brother is like them both — an athlete, an “A” student, and a great friend. I love my family very much, and I would never give any of them up, but I am not they.

I am not just a McKay. Neither am I just a farmboy. I am not merely Scotch-Irish, and I am not simply White. In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault highlights the human tendency to categorize things — to create artificial divisions in order to divide the mind, and order the world. So when I say that I am not my family, I mean that I cannot simply be placed into a category with the McKays. And when I say that I am not just a farmboy, I mean that I cannot simply be placed into a category with all rural youth.

I am not just a McKay. I am not just a farmboy. I am not just white, or a son, or a brother, a Whitty, a student. I may be called these things, but unless one expends the effort to see how each of these categories affects into my everyday life — my identity — none of them mean a thing. I believe that here at Whitman I can reasonably expect that effort to be expended. Certainly, you should expect no less of me.