My student asked me today, "miss, are you white?"
I thought "jeez, 6 months and I'm still/just getting this question", and I felt pride for concealing this characteristic that my students have been taught to despise/idolize, and I felt that my race was irrelevant, and I felt torn in a million different directions about how I felt.
It turns out I had said something that sounded white. White like proper. White like correct grammar. White like an unused sheet of paper before it is marred with lines of color.
White like strange. White like foreign.
Not like Miss Sarah who was there to comfort and provide a safe space where color seemed irrelevant.
So you know... I wrote a poem about all my different feelings while I was at the gym, so my handwriting is scraggly, and perhaps my original message that I had in my head got misconstrued or misunderstood but it's an important part of today's theme for myself.
White
Just a plain (home)slice of white bread.
With soda bread grains sprinkled on top.
And plantains drizzled as a side dish lovingly from Grandma's kitchen.
Boiled and spritzed and bubbled with latke oil.
Turns out my people have quite a few carbs in our cells.
Hell, I guess there is no plain jane white.
But why do I try to run from the definition and the labels that others attempt to adorn on my pearly easily burnt flesh?
I mean it's all made up right? Race doesn't really exist.
So do I contribute to this falsehood, this label that rides on my students back, by saying that I work in a predominantly black community- automatically labeling my school, my babies, at risk drop outs.
I want to write a poem my children will understand and embrace, with no N words or race gang affiliations.
I mean lets take the focus off race.
I'm not white, black, mixed, not nothing in between, when you get down to the gist of it- just a (human) being whose heart beats.
I love, I am loved, everyone is, and if they dare say they aren't, this is my love poem to you.
So I'm at the gym writing this, and when I'm done I plug in my headphones to my little personalized TV device (really cool, very unnecessary, but makes my cardio flyyy by!). And switch to the PBS channel where there is a documentary on about post Civil War (today I had the pleasure of explaining to two young minds what the Civil War was... good job Texas public schools) and pre World War II, going into the reformation and the early-mid 1900s. It talked about how after slavery there was a great time for African Americans, they were in office and joyous and things were really cool. Then the KKK happened and you know things went downhill from there. The deep south/south started making insane laws that put blacks in jail from doing anything to walking alongside a rail road, stealing a pig that was worth $1, stealing a rail that was worth 8 cents to raising their voices around the company of a white woman, these were called the pig laws. This greatly increased the number of black males who were placed in prison, in fact about 90-95% of prisoners were black males. The south/deep south then implemented convict leasing- which was basically private companies paid big $ to government to buy convicts to work for them. These convicts were made to work ridiculous hours and treated worse than slaves, their bosses being former slaveholders who were very resentful about no longer having free labor, so all in all this was an awful combination of things happening.
So to recap:
Point 1
The KKK was formed because poor, mostly illiterate whites, felt threatened by African Americans coming into power.
Those same poor whites, probably lost jobs to the convicts who were now employed by their former employers for far less pay.
Thus resentment increased probably even further.
Point 2
When convict leasing occurred, 90-95% of prisoners were black males.
In prisons today, statistics are not quite as drastic, but still the statistics are clearly distorted where black males still make up the majority.
If your father is in prison, and your father's father was in prison, the likelihood of you being a prisoner is bound to increase.
Thus our current prison statistics are probably affected by what prison statistics looked like more than 100 years ago.
Point 3
When looking at systematic racism and oppression how can we overcome 100s of years of oppression that have left lasting marks on a whole culture of people?
Message of Hope (???)
There was a student who used to refuse to work with me because I was white, and his prejudices were so engrained that he barely looked me in the eye when I would attempt conversation with him. Today, after months and months of persistence and stability of me being in his life- he breezed through his math homework so he could sit with me and watch slam poetry- I think he is a natural poet.
Many people come into our lives with prejudices that seem impossible to break down, whether it's the system- or the fact that we continue to desire to fit ourselves into categories in an effort to belong- the best way to break down prejudice is by having uncomfortable conversations and simply "being there", if you provide a consistent non-example for everything they have been taught about race, there is no way that will not have any sort of impact for them.
Living proof.
