Reimagining the 'I' Perspective

By HT Xue ‘26

“Rather than saying, ‘everybody loves apple pie,’ say, ‘I love apple pie, and my friends do too.’”

This analogy was one of the first things I remember learning at Milton. A bushy-tailed freshman, I sat in one of the bright-red fabric seats of King Theatre along with the rest of Class IV as DEIJ Coordinator Dr. Melissa Lawlor explained the ‘I’ Perspective. To speak from the ‘I’ Perspective, she declared, means to share solely one’s own experiences when making claims in a conversation. The logic is that rather than asserting universal truths that risk invalidation and generalization (say, about apple pie), one should implicitly recognize their own biases: “speaking from the ‘I.’” Today, the practice has become fundamental to how we have conversations at Milton, used everywhere from in affinity spaces, as an untouchable guideline for dialogues about identity, to in the Stu, as a semi-sarcastic quip. As DEIJ Board Member Montse Martinez Víndas ‘26 points out–correctly, in my opinion–“everyone’s situations are different,” and generalizing those experiences with sweeping statements reduces the value we gain out of sharing stories. I fear, however, that our community’s adherence to the ‘I’ Perspective has gone beyond its intended purpose of being a necessary guideline in discussions on identity and into the realm of harmful dogma. The thesis of the ‘I’ Perspective is that everyone’s experiences are equally valid, a sentiment crucial to effective conversations about identity, yet the instinct to catch ourselves from speaking out of the ‘I’ Perspective has seeped into our political dialogue, identity allyship, and fundamental mindset such that it limits our engagement with each other’s experiences and prevents us from interrogating our own beliefs in the face of new information. 

First, this slogan discourages us from speaking up for our peers of different backgrounds. The Milton Paper published an editorial last year about the reluctance of men on campus to engage in discussions about sexism and rape culture. A major reason cited for this indifference was that men “feel afraid of saying the ‘wrong’ thing and being labeled as problematic,” a phenomenon in no small part due to our collective, subconscious obsession with the ‘I’ Perspective. The pervasiveness of the norm deters men from engaging in a topic for which they cannot draw on their own experiences, precluding their ability to confront their own roles in misogyny, ironically perpetuating the problem itself. Similarly, as Head Monitor Nehemiah Sanon ‘26 pointed out in his election speech, culture clubs on campus increasingly resemble affinity spaces as students become less comfortable learning about cultures that they cannot speak about from the ‘I’ Perspective, even though the essence of a culture club lies in promoting cultural understanding. I recognize that, absent discouraging generalizations about identities we don’t belong to, students risk harming each other—“microaggressing”—by reducing each other’s experiences. Yet, when Milton greets white students with a culture that treats uninformed interest in experiences of color as a signifier of plain ignorance–as we do when we overzealously enforce the ‘I’ Perspective–we should not be surprised when the idea of appearing at a culture club terrifies them. In a word, the ‘I’ Perspective in practice pushes students away from earnestly interrogating their own place in conversations about identity, turning those conversations into one-sided, superficial affairs. Conversations about identity are effective only when they are difficult—when they push us to consider identities beyond our own; when we allow the ‘I’ Perspective to dissuade us from doing so, we shirk our responsibility to understand each other.

Beyond identity, the ‘I’ Perspective also hampers campus dialogue about politics when we dogmatically apply it in the political realm. Essentially, it forces us to performatively “agree to disagree” while never reconsidering our own beliefs and thus never making anything productive out of discourse. Consider, for example, the fact that 89% of 2025 State of the Acad respondents indicated that they would be friends with someone who disagreed with them politically, yet the 2025 edition of the same poll found that an overwhelming majority of students at Milton, including 86% of conservative respondents, reported feeling need to censor themselves because of their political leanings. In other words, Milton students are comfortable talking about politics amicably, but rarely in a way that explicitly forces anyone to self-reflect and to develop a more holistic understanding. The ‘I’ Perspective again rears its head as the culprit: the principle that everyone’s experiences are equally important, when applied to politics, implies that everyone’s beliefs are simultaneously correct and unproblematic. When everyone speaks from the ‘I’ Perspective, we merely recognize our differences. And yet, for the fear of overstepping what we are allowed to speak on, we neglect to proactively try to challenge each other. Furthermore, when we miss out on the chance to have our beliefs questioned, we eventually lose the willingness to question our own beliefs. In a political climate where more than two-thirds of people think that people with opposing political views are too “close-minded” to talk politics to, per the Pew Research Center, we must break out of the superficiality of merely “agreeing to disagree” and be ready to change minds and to change our own minds. Only by taking this extra step can we become better and more connected people.

I am not arguing that you should go out of your way to generalize someone’s experiences, but I do hope to present reasons why we should learn to step beyond the ‘I’ Perspective for some conversations. I am advocating for breaking out of our habit of dogmatically allowing the ‘I’ Perspective to shape every aspect of our discourse. DEIJ programming teaches us the ‘I’ Perspective as a general principle to avoid patronizing others; we should use it as such, but avoid living by it. We need to rid ourselves of our fear of imagining perspectives other than our own; we should constructively and civilly try to change each others’ minds on a political issue while being open to changing our own; we should earnestly speak up for people of different identities while inspiring our peers to do the same; and, we should try to undo the instinct of catching ourselves every time we think we are overstepping our right to speak. In a world where earnest dialogue is rarer than ever, confining ourselves to the comfort of the ‘I’ Perspective dooms us to drift perpetually apart on islands of fearful apathy.