Books- Bad Feminist

9/3/15

I have to start by stating the obvious: I am a terrible blogger. All day I have ideas of blog posts running through my head, but beyond time being an issue, I also struggle with the lack of an answer or of hope. I have been reading a ton, and so I am going to start putting some book favorites into posts.

Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gaye because she is a bad-ass who is self-deprecating, funny, accessible and insightful, but she also has a knack for writing about issues without needing to come to any sort of answer. She has a terrific chapter on the kinds of friends women should be to each other and a number of other chapters on race. One chapter in particular is about The Help which I never saw or read.

She confesses that when she thinks about the white author, white screen-play writer and white producer, she thinks "How dare they?" (Gaye 216). She challenges herself to not dismiss the abilities of these white professionals, but there is a difference between being white and black in America and writing this difference is not easy.

A couple of years after The Help came out, our family had read an article called "Oscar loves a white savior" that was published in Salon Magazine. And a couple of weeks after, we went to 42, the movie about Jackie Robinson. As we walked out of the movie with Alex, her boyfriend, Julia and Solana, Alex turned to me and said, "another white savior movie." It took me a moment, and then I realized, she was right. Of course, the real problem is there are so few movies about black people that don't include the white hero. First, a movie acknowledges the plight of being black in America, and then, instead of focusing on what whites have done to get race relations to this spot, there is a white hero who comes to help the black person or persons pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

There is so much more that Gaye writes about The Help, Djano Unchained, 12 Years a Slave and more, and I think you should read her book. It is in the Barnes and Noble employee recommendations or challenge your thinking section.

I DO see color.

August 18

Curt and I are headed to Iowa today to visit with anti-racist activist Jane Elliott.  I have been re-watching the videos that I saw in college about her brown-eye/blue-eye experiment. There is so much there to think about and to comment on, and I cannot write about them all in one post, so I am going to limit myself to two comments. First, after I watched one video with Solana, she commented at how often she hears white people say, "I don't see color." I cannot remember the last time I heard someone say that, so I was surprised. Solana has not said it herself because she does not feel that way, but she said she was never able to explain why the comment sounded wrong. This morning, we were discussing this and then trying to explain it to Frances, who is 10. I asked Frances what it would feel like if I said I don't see her as a girl. We all laughed. It is so ridiculous. And we all agreed, we like being girls and we value this part of our identity. It is just as ridiculous to say one doesn't see race. That basically says that I don't value or want to hear about that person's experience as a person of that race. If I say to Frances that I don't see her as Korean-American, I am saying that I don't see any need to discuss her experience as a Korean-American. I am dismissing a vital part of her existence. If someone says that they don't see me as white, well, I guess then I wonder what they do see. Why are we afraid to say that we see someone's race? A person saying he/she doesn't see race implies that seeing race is a bad thing, and somehow absolves that person of being seen as racist. So then we have to ask, what does racism look like? Is it simply seeing race or not seeing race?

The other part that struck a chord from one of Elliott's videos was a moment when she was doing the experiment with prison employees and picking on a white man (with blue eyes) who was being uncooperative. Something about the way she kept saying, "You," brought me back to my St. Winifred's classroom in Barbados. A black girl, whose name I cannot recall, was standing up in the back corner with the teacher yelling at her about how she was wasting everyone's time, not listening, not following her instructions, etc. "You. . . .you. . . you. . . you. . . "  She was shaming this girl, and the rest of the class sat in silence. I watched other girls of color go through this same shaming experience over and over during my year there. I never experienced it as anything other than a witness. I was called out for pushing the rules, but I was never called "stupid" or made to feel less than. I knew it was because I was white.

Gandhi

August 17

I couldn't sleep last night. Curt and I have been talking about an anti-racist workshop, camp, summer institute. . . Last night, I lay in bed wondering what the objectives would be. It reminded me of six or seven years ago when Macalester (where I was working at the time) opened its Institute for Global Citizenship. At the time, I wondered why they didn't name it the Institute for Local and Global Citizenship. Why is being a global citizen considered so much more sophisticated and glamorous? Are there colleges out there that focus on engaging in the communities around them? Are there colleges that encourage students to become citizens of their city in the same way they encourage students to embrace the international experience, not as white heroes serving the underprivileged, but engaging and learning? The language, the culture, the DIFFERENCES.

I realize that a summer camp for white teens, whether it be a week or six weeks, is far-fetched. We started watching Gandhi last night with the girls, finishing tonight. At one point, someone asks if Gandhi feels that it is hard to get support, and Gandhi responds with something to the effect of, "the surprising thing is that when you are fighting for something that is just, then people pop up out of everywhere to support you." I don't think that is true in America. I don't see the support, or at least not in a way that has cured the unjust. And I want to pop-up and support, but I still don't know how. So I am letting my mind wander at night in search of objectives for my anti-racist teen summer workshop.

Teaching History

August 16

I have been reading Alan Taylor's book, American Colonies, for a class. It is an American history textbook unlike those read in schools. Solana and I talked about how her history teacher in 7th grade, as they learned about the colonization of America, had to stop and interject accurate information about how Europeans didn't just happen upon unoccupied land, but instead claimed land through cheating, killing and annihilating Native Americans.

The American education system has been designed to teach white supremacy and as some white people have become more progressive, instead of demanding wide spread changes to the curriculum, we hope that individual teachers will augment our children's education. It is amazing that not only are most white Americans satisfied with the status quo, but that teachers, including myself, are too scared of what will happen if we question it. I inadvertently questioned the status quo in my second year of teaching and I learned The Lesson (by Toni Cade Bambara). More to come on this later, but if you haven't read it, please do.

So, I have spent some time procrastinating and  imagining how I would teach a US history class. It  would involve timelines around the room: one for white immigrants, Native Americans (unfair to group them since there were so many different tribes, and are still today- but forgive me this), black, Asian, and Hispanic groups. Throughout the class, as we learned about a time period or a war, we would stop and take stock of what was happening to and within each community. Which racial groups were entering the US and why. And within each group, men and women would be discussed separately. We'd have a system of noting the levels of freedom each group had according to their right to vote, own property, get an education, file assault charges against others, bear arms, travel, sit and eat anywhere, etc. Students may have to debate with each other to decide how to rate a group's level of freedom.

We may watch Roots, as I did in middle school, because if there is one time in my life that I can remember a room full of people cheering for a black person, it was for Kunte Kinte. Or maybe not. I'd have to watch it again and see what my 2015 eyes say about it. We would read original texts and examine how our racist nation was formed. Taylor's text would be a great option for my dream classroom as exhibited by my overzealous highlighting.

At one point, Taylor describes "the emergence of a new racial solidarity in 'whiteness' which trumped even the powerful class divisions  between the English. As they came to define a certain minimum dignity due to all white men, the English magnified their superiority over people of another color, especially those who seemed most different: the 'black' Africans" (212). This is the beginning. The rich white men needed to control the slaves and they did so by creating a common "solidarity" for all whites. Shouldn't America's classrooms be teaching and talking about this? When students complain about history and class not being relevant, isn't this how it becomes relevant? Wouldn't analyzing how decisions were made 500 years ago inspire conversation and debate? Can't we imagine classrooms that create just citizens because they UNDERSTAND?

Karachi, Pakistan Part 3/ Barbados

August 15

I can't "leave" Pakistan without saying that one of the things I witnessed in my time with Mansoor was the capacity for men, besides my father, to be proud, curious, loyal and warm. It reminds me again of how important it is for kids to experience these attributes in people of other races. This is what builds trust, respect and empathy. I know now that the closeness I had with Mansoor and Philomena was much like that of Scout with Calpurnia in To Kill a Mockingbird. I believe that they had true affection for me, but they were not allowed to deviate much from their role. Their impact on me was significant, but in some ways they didn't have a choice. And yet, Mansoor did allow me to follow him around and he did insist that I treat him with respect. I believe that he knew he was educating me.

I was heart-broken when we left Karachi. It was home and the people were family. We didn't have skype, email or texting, and even letters were limited given how long letters took to get from one side of the world to the other. So once we left, besides some minimal updates through other Americans, I heard very little about Mansoor and Philomena.

I did not return to Minnesota, but instead, I moved to Barbados with my mom and her then boyfriend. I attended an all girls school called St. Winifred's. This is the first experience of racism that I had as a more mature kid. I knew what was going on when the black girls in my class were shamed and called "stupid" by our teachers. As a class, we rebelled in the only ways we knew how. We passed answers around and interrupted teachers. We had inside jokes and rebelled in every small way possible. I wore a small thin braid in my hair on the side. I wore earrings in my second piercing and hike my skirt up every day despite the fact that the headmistress would tell me to take the braid out, the earring out and pull down my skirt most days. The schools insisted on calling me "Elizabeth" because my name, Jordan, was considered too masculine. I wonder now who else's names were changed.

I was only in Barbados for one year, but it was an education. I was repulsed (as only a teenage girl can be) by white Americans who would get off the cruise ships at the docks and walk through the shopping malls, grocery stores and markets in their bikinis and swim trunks. I went from one country with no tourists to one that was overrun and it was a hard shift. By the time I returned to Minneapolis the following year, I was certain it was not a place I wanted to be.

Karachi, Pakistan Part 2

August 14

Four years ago, in my first year teaching, I read the 1982 play "Master Harold and the Boys" by Athol Fugard. It is the story of a 17 year old white boy in South Africa who has a nurturing relationship with two black servants while his father is a drunk tyrant. In the climax of the play, Hally chooses to follow in his father's footsteps of racist behavior towards the two black men and in turn sacrifices the only nurturing relationships he has. Fugard wrote the play based on his own personal shame after having treated a black man he cared about disrespectfully as a teenager.

When I read the play, I immediately had a flashback to a moment with Mansoor, our driver in Karachi. Up until sixth grade, I spent a good chunk of my free time accompanying Mansoor to the markets where I would listen to the yelling, music and honking of the streets. We would go to the shanty town area in Karachi that was built on mounds of garbage (think of the scenes from Slumdog Millionaire). When we arrived in the three room hut of Mansoor's friend, the family would all crowd in and the soda walla would be beckoned so that the family could buy a Fanta for their visitor, me. I'd play cards with Mansoor and his friend. Once I remember winning money, only to learn from my dad when I arrived home that I was not to take money from people who had so little. I know we had a television in our house, but I spent time watching "Little House on the Prairie" in his room in the servants' quarters. When my parents divorced, and my mom converted to Islam and married a Pakistani, changing her name to Alia Bana, there was a safety in Mansoor's constant presence.

I felt that Mansoor was my friend, which sounds silly for an eleven year to think of a grown man, but his stability provided something for me. Then, when I got a terrible case of malaria in fifth grade, and my father and I were medically evacuated to London, it wasn't Mansoor who carried me out to the car. It was a white American. I can remember wanting it to be Mansoor, and wanting to ask for him, and maybe I even did. I remember realizing sometime later that it meant something that it wasn't him. There was a separation that I hadn't felt before and I didn't like, and I couldn't articulate.

In our last year there, on some random afternoon, I asked Mansoor to take me to the school. He said he would, but that he was going to have his tea first. Maybe five minutes later, I stood next to the car yelling back towards his quarters to hurry, that it was time to go. He walked out, tall and serious, and he looked me in the eye and told me to stop yelling. He told me that he was going to finish his tea, and then we would go. I remember my shame. As I matured, I had begun to accept the power dynamics that go with economics and race. Mansoor reminded me that he was a human.

I have often thought of Mansoor since we left Pakistan; he is the person I miss and wonder about the most, but I didn't remember that moment in the driveway until I read Fugard's play. Now, that is what I think of when I think of Mansoor, and it reminds me of who I want to be, an anti-racist.

Photo is from circa 1984. Philamena, Dwarf and Mansoor.

Teaching about Slavery

August 5

I teach American Literature to tenth graders and since I have terrible retention of historical information, in my first year of teaching the course, I relied on what I assumed my students were learning in history to create a context. I learned that while my students were learning "American History," it was history with a very traditional, sometimes racist bent. The first and most alarming comment a student made in my first year of teaching the class was that they had debated in history whether or not slavery was necessary for the successful founding of the United States of America and that truly America would not be what it is today without slavery, and he was not suggesting that it created the racist society we live in today, he was talking about the amazing home of opportunity.

I did not know what to say. I wondered how my two African American students survived that debate, and which side they were forced to support. I wondered if there was any reading of slave narratives prior to the debate or if the teacher believed and taught that people can have a discussion of the economics, minus humanity. That was my first year.

The last two years, I have brought it up before my students do. I tell my students that I know this debate occurs in some US History classes. I tell them that it is a conversation that I could not sit through. I tell them that while I enjoy many privileges of being a white middle class American, and that I would not have been born without history happening the way it did, I can imagine a society that was able to maintain humane values while creating opportunities for success. I tell them that slavery was not necessary, and that while we read The Narrative of Frederick Douglass and other texts from that time period, I hope they will realize that slavery was immoral, unethical and inhumane in every moment that it existed.

I wonder if students go home and tell their parents what is being discussed in history. I wonder if parents call in and say my kid will not debate the decisions made by elite whites to dismiss humanity for profit. I wonder what is listed as the objectives for that individual or group of history teachers who facilitate this debate. I wonder if parents will call and complain about how I frame slavery and racism. I wonder how this debate continues in history classes in my district or anywhere. I wonder why white parents are not outraged.