Getting Fired, Giving Some Interviews, Taking Action

Before Occupy and all its myriad (and at times catastrophic) effects on my life, I was a one-trick pony of sorts. My focus in activism was a narrow one, born from personal experience and thrust onto the national stage.

In 2004, after one tour in Iraq and staring another one in the face, I made a decision to come out of the closet. I marched into my Commanding Officer’s office and delivered a carefully prepared statement (already vetted by a lawyer) to his desk declaring: “I will return to serve in Iraq but I will do so as an openly gay soldier.” Surprise (not really)! Ian is gay.

Predictably, I did not return to Iraq. I got drummed under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, and since my job was a mission-critical position (Arabic translator) it instantly became news.

After making the rounds in the Advocate, Instinct Magazine, Anderson Cooper and others, I got tired of refuting John McCain’s asinine comments about the dangers of perverts in the Armed Forces and retired from activism for a few years in order to do things like be 22, do massive amounts of drugs, and catch HIV. Let’s admit it. Talking to reporters is boring and the people who were excited to get my story in the public eye felt that the end-all and be-all of activism was press statements. Spending thousands on cocaine seemed a lot more fun.

Finally, in my late 20s, a certain troublemaker named Dan Choi popped up and I snapped out of my self-obsessed desire to destroy myself and realized that activism didn’t necessarily end at giving interviews to Wolf Blitzer. It could be about chaining yourself to things. It could be getting arrested! It could be exciting.

So then this happened:

On November 15th, 2010, I handcuffed myself with Dan Choi and 11 other friends to the White House fence in protest of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. A month later, it was repealed.

While that landmark legislation was the result of years of hard work on the part of legislators, advocates, and other pissed off people, I like to think that my participation in that protest brought enough focus on the issue that it was thrust into the limelight and acted on quickly. For a couple years, I have been proud of the fact that the direct action that put my face in Newsweek might have changed the country for the better.

Here’s the thing: I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it.                                                

I. Hate. Being. Wrong.

Before you write me off as crazy, hear me out.

It’s not getting arrested for a cause that I object to. Since I was very young my elders had impressed upon me that if I felt strongly enough about something, I should be willing to go to jail in order to bring about the change I wanted to see. That’s not the problem.

The problem also isn’t that LGBs are now free to join the military and be honest about who they are. That’s great! Playing the “pronoun” game and fearing getting fired on the basis of your sexual orientation is stressful and tiresome. I see this picture:

… and it pleases me! When I came home from Iraq, my mother and a boy I was dating were waiting for me when I got off the plane. I hugged my mom and awkwardly shook the hand of my “friend.” If I had been able to do what the gents above could do… that would be awesome!

So what’s the problem?

The problem isn’t that gay soldiers are now free to be as gay as they want in the military. The problem is that gay soldiers are now joining the military without hesitation. I helped to make that happen. I encouraged people to support the military industrial complex, an industry so large and so profitable that wars are seemingly now fought in order to award high-yield contracts to weapons manufacturers and private security operations like Blackwater.

I. Was. Wrong.

Who Did I Help?

When I handcuffed myself to that fence, it seemed clear who I was helping. LGBs in the military! Cut and dry! Freedom to serve their country! Sounds great, right? What I didn’t consider was who I was harming. I had no thought that the cause I was supporting was the wrong one.

Everyone knows that the military is a huge resource drain. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually supporting this vast war machine which gets used for corrupt and imperialistic purposes (any surprise we have the most expensive military… and are also the richest country on Earth? Hmmmm…). The most recent and glaring example may be the war in Iraq, which was started on false pretenses and seemed to benefit no-one other than defense contractors and the politicians who hired them. You know. The war I was in.

I went to Iraq thinking I was going to be helping people form a better democracy. Instead, in the aftermath of our military action and the instability the invasion brought to Iraq, thousands were killed in a violent insurgency and a war that seemed to last forever suddenly became very murky. After a while, the only people who really understood why they were there were the military contractors (to make a buck), and I understood that what I did there didn’t help many people.

Ask the LGBT population of Iraq. Since our military action and the instability it brought, openly gay Iraqis have been slain in droves.

You can imagine how that made me feel. I still never know how I forgot how upset this made me when I leaped at the chance to chain myself to the fence.

Goodbye, Friend. Stay Safe. Stay Sane.

Since I left the military I have struggled with mental issues. A classic sufferer of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I have terrible nightmares, am frightened by loud noises, and am plagued with panic attacks when reliving the details of my time in Iraq. Those profound months that I spent invading a foreign country had affected me in ways that it took me years to understand.

Last fall a friend bought me a US Army pin. I immediately affixed it to my coat and wore it for months.

Some have mistaken my purpose for wearing it, and I didn’t understand myself at the time. The circles I run in don’t exactly love the military. I’m surrounded by people who have been pressured to join because it was the only way they could get college money (ha, that was totally me), people of color who have seen their friends and family members enlist only to be sent to go kill other people of color, peaceniks, and people with the empathy to realize there is no such thing as “the Enemy.” People have taken my wearing of the pin to symbolize that I supported the Army, which baffled me. When I put it on, I didn’t feel proud. I felt regret, something I couldn’t admit to myself at the time.

You see, I killed people while I was in Iraq. Well. I’m almost certain I did. I fired an artillery piece. It blew up a building. If there were people in that building, I killed them. Me.

Why did I do that? I won’t go into it. You’re not my therapist. But when people see me wearing that pin, they don’t realize it’s not me proudly displaying my service: I’m admitting to something. I’m sort of like Hestor Prynn in that this pin is my scarlet letter and I’m admitting the sin of murder. Of imperialism. I’m admitting a mistake.

A friend of mine just joined the Army, active duty. He is a fey young thing, a little foolish but a good person. He is a member of the local chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and a self-identified gay man. Because of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, he can consider signing away his life (figuratively, I certainly hope not literally) for four years without hesitation due to a discriminatory policy.

Will he have his own scarlet letter someday?

Getting Pepper Sprayed Is Better Than Supporting Imperialism. Trust Me On That.

In the end I don’t think that what I did on November 15th, 2010 was an act of prime evil. I know now that I look back and say “oops.” I know that I feel like I have honed my empathy and my political understanding to the point where I think more carefully about what I’m going to have to bear on my conscience later on.

Honestly, this is less about me, and less about my friend, and more about the fact that war, frankly, is wrong. War is waged so that the privileged elite can give the impoverished masses guns and then send them to kill other poor people because they’re pissed off at the privileged elite over there.

The reason I’m wrong isn’t because gay people shouldn’t join the Army. It’s because no-one should join the Army. No-one should go kill people so that Blackwater can line its pockets.

Will we ever exist without war? I… well, probably not in my lifetime. It’s something to work toward. We need to start thinking, as a society and as a human race, not about how to kill each other better or more fairly but how to prevent each other from killing each other at all.

One year to the day after my arrest in Washington DC, I marched with Occupy Seattle. I don’t even remember what the march was about, but we took to the streets and the police responded by pepper spraying us. One of the people hit that day was Dorli Rainey, the 84-year old woman whose face then circled the globe as evidence of police brutality.

I was pepper sprayed that day too. I am far more proud of that.

**i try to read this every year around this time, as it’s not only a piece of oratory genius, but a necessary validation of the crushing irony of the united state’s independence day celebration. apparently in 1852, the leading citizens of rochester, NY thought it was a good idea to ask a former slave to speak at their 4th of july festivities. escaped slave frederick douglass accepted, and on July 5th, 1852 (11 years before the emancipation proclamation), proceeded to deliver a thoroughly scathing critique of a nation celebrating its own liberty while holding nearly four million of its inhabitants in bondage. Douglass began:**

“Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? …I am not that man.

“…I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? 

“…Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future…

“…What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages…”

douglass had a lot more to say. the full version is here (it’s long, but i recommend it), while an abridged version with a bit of info on douglass can be found here.*

whats most disturbing is how relevant many of his words still are. next year it will be 150 years since the emancipation proclamation, and nearly half a century after the passage of the civil rights act, and structural racism remains thoroughly intact.

the US has never limited its oppression to people of color. and here i want to avoid the oft used and pretty much always problematic racism = insert other oppression, but i will say that i think the idea that douglass is speaking to — that to celebrate the “liberty” (the privileges) of one group while others remain oppressed is tragically and almost comically fucked — does have much wider applications. even as a white, twenty-something, US passport-holder, as a genderqueer and visibly trans-feminine person, i do not feel free, safe, or protected in this country. and with my (thankfully) long-past teenage boy socialization to blow shit up, i have no desire to participate in celebrating a nation in which the vast majority of states want me unemployed, uninsured, incarcerated, and really, fucking dead.

i have no desire to glorify a nation forged from genocide and theft, baptized in the blood of the indigenous and built by slaves whose descendents still haven’t been made equal.

i have no desire to celebrate the widening income gap, the world’s highest incarceration rates, and record numbers of deportations and detentions of undocumented people.

and i certainly have no desire to do so by simulating those bombs bursting in air — especially while we’re currently dropping REAL FUCKING BOMBS KILLING REAL FUCKING PEOPLE.

in conclusion: happy independence day everyone, white, able-bodied, straight, gender-conforming, moneyed, US passport-holding dudes.

*sidebar: that link is to the freeman foundation and features a video interview with freeman — the wealthy white canadian man who appears to be deeply interested black history, which spans from the collection of artifacts to interviewing black folks to leading seminars to promoting the teaching of black history. shit like this always feels so complicated; i mean, the man seems sincere in wanting to combat racial ignorance and cultural miscommunication, and some of what the organization does seems OK (though none of it seems power-analysis oriented — a lot of it is about getting along, presumably so you can make more $$ together). and then there’s also this undeniable aspect of cultural tourism and fetishisation in situations like these– not to mention that freeman is yet another white “expert” on race and a (both externally and internally) colonized group of color. (and yes, because white voices are privileged in this society, freeman’s presence here does mean there is less room for people of color to be seen as “experts” in the same area. and he certainly ain’t doing it for free!) how does an organization like this address the space it takes up, as well as its own white/anthropological gaze which itself is a form of neocolonialism –all of which are a part of contemporary racism? i’d definitely be curious as to what folks think. freeman’s institute is obviously very different, but it’s complications remind me a bit of the tim wise conundrum…

A TRANNY WAS GIVEN YOUR TAX DOLLARS TO TEACH YOUR TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS THAT GENDER ROLES ARE CONSTRUCTED BULLSHIT AND THAT QUEER PEOPLE ARE AWESOME. AND THEY FUCKING LOVED IT.

ah. that did feel good. too bad the unit only lasted two weeks and i’m unemployed again. on the other er, same hand, i’ve been sick for over a fucking month on and off (mostly on) which, given my previous interwebz-lite phase, has meant a chance to really explore my new found love of buffy the vampire slayer, which i somehow missed out on in the 90s (sexism and some internalized homophobia probably had a lot to do with that), as well some good ol fashion books and video games. btw, everyone should read octavia butler. seriously. she’s the shit. (i recommend starting with kindred or parable of the sower).

but those video games. what a wonderful way to ignore the sick and constant bullshit of the real world and just slash some generic baddies, find some gems, and… experience homophobia and transphobia! escape my ass… for the uninitiated, i was playing fable, a role playing game for the original xbox set in a fantastical, medieval-esque world. the game’s signature gimmick is that it allows players a relatively large amount of freedom to do what they want with their character (the notable exception being, of course, that you have to play as a white dude). you basically run around electrocutin’ goblins and collecting shit, but then you have some sims like options such as getting other characters to like you –i mean, like like you. and here’s where it gets fun (by which i mean obnoxious). This is what the official fable guide tells you about finding a partner:

isn’t that interesting?! two men — whudda thunk it?? and  if you choose to flirt with and marry women, more often than not they’ll directly ask you to “go to bed,” with them, whereas if you ply the men with smiles and gifts (yeah, that’s the “process”), you just “have a nice lie down.” following either dialogue, it cuts to black and you just get audio. all the speech and sound fx are pretty over the top, so all the women’s moans sound a bit comical (your character remains oddly silent), but they’re nothing compared to the abrasive, jerky yelps that the dudes uniformly let out. it seems the developers went out of their way to make gay male sex seem as absurd as possible.

now, it’s not like this is altogether surprising given the straight male dominated world of gaming. as a group they are definitely not known for their “tolerance,” but the next tip did really throw me. if you aren’t gender-conforming, there will be actual in-game negative consequences. you’re fucked if you equip that dress or those silk gloves instead of that leather tunic. they actually wrote transphobia into the game –transmisogyny, to be specific. it’s that feminine article of clothing that marks your character as “revolting” –revolting! even the language is unabashedly reflective of the way male-assigned expressions of femininity are regarded in our culture: disgusting, perverse, the ultimate deal breaker. hell, i don’t need to play a video game for that experience.

in any case, while we’re on games (never really thought i’d be blogging about gaming…), jay smooth offers some harsh rebuke to the virulently misogynist dude gamers who fucking POUNCED on feminist frequency’s anita sarkeesian for daring to launch a kickstarter campaign to fund a (much needed) study on female representation in games entitled, “tropes vs women in video games.” see her own roundup of the sexist shitshow here. (oh and ps, that shit got funded like mad! #fuckyeahfeministgamers :)

anyway. enough about games. there’s so much more to share! like this incisive piece by jos at feministing:       

“…“I date women and trans men’ is the definition of cissexism. It’s basing your frame for sexuality on the gender coercively assigned to a person by their doctor at birth, not on that person’s actual identity. In this case, we’re talking about folks who were assigned female. Of course, “women” means cis women – trans women totally drop off the map.

“…It’s incredibly undermining to frame sexuality in a way that lumps [trans] men in with all female assigned folks instead of with cis men. It’s a failure, in the realm of sexuality, to recognize that trans men’s male identities are just as legitimate as cis men’s. If you’re going to base sexuality on gender, better base it on people’s actual genders.

I get why a lot of female assigned folks exist in this frame for reasons that aren’t overtly about undermining trans identities. There’s a ton of gender based trauma out there, and I understand that folks associate this with cis men, and not with trans men. But that’s not a reality-based approach to gender. A lot of that trauma gets easily linked to genitals, but this isn’t about bodies, it’s about patriarchy…

“…This approach to sexuality totally erases trans women by excluding us from the group of sexually existing queer women. Yes, it’s also incredibly undermining of trans women’s identities by moving us out of the category “women” when it comes to sexuality… It’s part of the broader problem of privileging masculinity over femininity, and specifically  of privileging masculinity in female assigned folks and hating on and marginalizing femininity in male assigned folks. The problem goes beyond gender theory about masculinity and femininity – this is about really specific, really real transmisogyny. Even when some femininity is accepted, it’s in female assigned folks. Trans women (even the butch ones) get left out in the cold. (I think it’s time for everybody to re-read Julia Serano’s groundbreaking book Whipping Girl with their sex brains on.)…”

i’ve just cherry-picked it here, but the full piece and some of the responses are well worth the read. (i also found it surprising– and disheartening — to see all the defensiveness and negativity coming out in the comments too, though i did especially enjoy this one.) as a genderqueer trans femme (who gets read a hundred different ways) who primarily dates queer women, i found what jos had to say especially relevant. i can’t count the number of times i’ve been crushing on a queer, female-assigned person only to find myself wondering if the presence of my penis is some sort of automatic disqualifier for any kind of sexual/romantic relationship… that may be it’s own post later on. meantime…

updates on the CeCe McDonald case, the black trans woman who was assaulted last june on the basis of her race and gender presentation and in the process, killed one of her attackers in self defense: last month, she was sentenced to a 41 month prison term for the (hard-fought, downgraded) charge of second degree manslaughter. for the past year, she has been held in a men’s prison, and will serve her sentence in one as well. it is common practice for transgender people to be housed in prisons based on their assigned gender, as well as placed in solitary confinement at a rate far higher than their cis counterparts. read more at supportcece.wordpress.com.

this being a news round-up of sorts, I also gotta mention the supreme court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). as usual, the crunk feminist collective offers an excellent breakdown and link round-up, and this little post(er) on the healthcare improvements it provides for trans* folks is great. and while it’s true that the ACA does address some of the problems in our current healthcare system — especially for women and trans* folks — it is also “a love letter to insurance companies, who stand to gain millions of new customers with the implementation of the law,” (CFC). this truthout article provides a useful analysis of this aspect, and how otherwise toothless the act really is. it is also disturbing to look at how (conservative) chief justice roberts siding with the liberal bloc in upholding the constitutionality of the ACA may have a lot less to do with the act itself and a lot more to do with political posturing and long-term strategizing.

“By siding with the liberals, Roberts insulates himself from charges of partisanship for the foreseeable future. This may be worth remembering next year, when the Court, led by the Chief Justice, is likely to strike down both the use of affirmative action in college admissions and the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And if, in the same year, the Justices uphold the noxious Defense of Marriage Act, many will deem Roberts’s motives beyond reproach.” – Jeffrey Toobin in the new yorker

in other more mainstream news, following texas’ example, tea partiers in tennessee have been demanding that slavery and other unsavory aspects of US history in school textbooks be portrayed “in a more positive light” (WTF??) or omitted altogether. apparently, “Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been ‘an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.’” made-up? made-up?! i must have missed the part where the native americans just up and left and all those black folks being volunteers… i can’t believe this is for real. please read that shit, ’cause there’s a fucking laundry list of egregious alterations to what is already a whitewashed curriculum. and i would love to rant about this more, education being near and dear to my heart and all, but as usual this intermission has gone on for too long, and frankly, been rather depressing.

so once again i will end on a positive. ARGENTINA KICKS FUCKING ASS, at least in terms of trans rights. from the new york times:

“Argentina has put in place some of the most liberal rules on changing gender in the world, allowing people to alter their gender on official documents without first having to receive a psychiatric diagnosis or surgery.

The measure, which won unanimous support in the Senate this month, would also require public and private medical practitioners to provide free hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery for those who want it — including those under the age of 18.”

unanimous support. #fuck.yeah.

i wanted to take an opportunity to clarify where i was coming from and address some of the common comments and concerns that i’ve heard, both in person and a great deal on facebook and other blogs. so much of this seems to be related to the gulf that can exist between the intention behind an action or statement, and the impact it has on an individual or community.

i would like to start by addressing what i see as some conflation happening in a couple different areas with regard to my initial writing. there seems to be an underlying assumption that by publicly sharing an experience at Mrs. where i perceived trans-misogyny to be operating, i was trying to bash or otherwise take down Mrs. or the folks who run it. my intentions were far from that — as i tried to make clear in my concluding paragraph — but i nonetheless want to offer my apologies if my language contributed to this perception. i’ll touch more on this later.

another misunderstanding i would like to speak to is the equivocation of me saying that i had an interaction with some individuals where i perceived trans-misogyny to be operating, with me outright calling those individuals trans-misogynists. as jay smooth so eloquently reminded us a few years back, the “this is what i heard you say” conversation is very different from the “this is what i think you are” conversation. the latter is never something i intended to have –or would even feel qualified having. i don’t know these individuals; only our interaction and my experience of it. and i know that no matter what your identity is, who your friends are, or what you consciously believe in, we are all steeped in dominant culture, and as such, are all still capable of — intentionally or not — supporting and perpetuating oppressive systems, even those that target us. that doesn’t mean we’re bad people; it means we’re humans living under multiple, often intersecting oppressions and we’re all working on our own shit, and we’re all bound to fuck up sometimes.

in that vein, i would like to speak to the issue of my being a white queer who labeled a song by a queer person of color misogynistic. (as i learned this weekend just prior to the meeting on saturday, the song that was played was “Ima Read” by Zebra Katz –i believe a remix of it. i have since read up on the lyrics and their intended meaning, the context from which the song emerged, and interviews with the artist.) of course, since we don’t exist in a vacuum — but rather a white supremacist state — i approached the DJ in a culture where white people regularly asymmetrically level charges of sexism against music produced by artists of color while giving white artists a relative pass.

i would like to own my cultural ignorance on the Katz piece, and to extend my apologies to the DJ with whom i had that racially loaded interaction. i can see how a DJ of color who is trying to promote the work of other queer PoC being approached by a white person who immediately labels the song misogynistic — ignorant of its context — and says it’s something they don’t want to hear in that space could be is fucked up, and i can understand that individual’s dismissive attitude more. i’m not saying that i also didn’t still feel silenced in a gendered way based on his response to me –just that it seems both of us were having some real shit come up on the basis of our varied identities, and both are valid and worth unpacking.

and i want to make it clear to the folks who have a different relationship to traditionally misogynistic language and the Katz song, that i hear you. in that linked post, the author states that while i characterized hearing that song as a low point in my night, as a queer person of color in an overwhelmingly white space, hearing that song was a high point for them — the first time they were able to feel safe. and that shit’s real. and while personally, i am still triggered by hearing the repeated use of female slurs (whether by a mainstream white female pop singer or a black queer rapper), much of the feedback i have received regarding Katz and nearly everything i can find online about Ima Read has been enormously positive, and clearly it has particular significance among many queers of color. and that is not something i want to fuck with: had i known the context of Ima Read like i do now — while it doesn’t necessarily change my relationship to the language — it absolutely changes the way i view its presence in queer spaces and how i respond –or rather, how i wouldn’t have responded to the folks playing it.         

hearing the DJ’s perspective was one of the most important things i walked away with from the meeting that the Mrs. folks graciously pulled together on saturday. all in all, the dialogue there was a mixed bag — pretty heated all around and a conversation that constantly vacillated between the Katz song and my interaction with the DJs in a way that made any kind of linear progress or resolution difficult — but nonetheless, it was still an important happening and i  sincerely thank the Mrs. team for putting that together so quickly. (and no, i did not feel entitled to a processing session with them nor expect a meeting to suddenly be called –but i do think it’s pretty rad that they pulled that together and really hope it’s a starting point for more dialogue around trans-misogyny and racism within the queer community.)

as i mentioned earlier, the difference between intention and impact seems quite central to all of this, which was something else i took away from that meeting. the two DJs who were behind the table (the identity of the third person i mentioned is seriously unclear at this point) both spoke to their frequent use of the word queen as an endearing, catch-all term used kind of like dude or man. now, it’s not like i’m unfamiliar with this usage: i just didn’t hear it as endearing so much as derisive when it was used at the end of dismissive statements. however, it was still really positive to hear from the DJs that their use of the word was not intended to be such.

i’m facing similar issues with the difference between what i intended to communicate with my words and how others’ read them. my intent with the initial post was twofold. one was to raise a general question about the music we play and dance to at queer events and its relationship to the maintenance and/or subversion of misogyny (and unfortunately, i did this from an admittedly culturally ignorant viewpoint –not to mention that that question is like a thesis book entire field of study-sized subject). obviously, the impact of the post on the community was different and much more complicated than i thought it would be. my second –and i should say primary — intent with the piece was less about song choice, and more about my interaction with the DJs and raising a red flag about the gendered/trans-misogynistic dynamics i perceived to be operating between us. and again, clearly this impacted some of the Mrs. organizers — in part due to my lack of awareness of the racial dynamics at play — in a very different way than i meant. my point is that we are all accountable not just for what we intended to happen, but also for our impact, regardless of whether or not said impact was intentional or foreseen.

one intent of this follow up post is to shed light on both sides of that coin and to hold myself accountable. another is to try and shift the discussion on these issues away from my specific interaction and the the unproductive “Me vs. Mrs/the queer dance community” frame that has emerged (again, apologies if my own language contributed to this perception) and more into a “Mrs. and the queer community have much needed dialogue on the privileging of masculinity and whiteness within queer spaces.” the idea is to move this away from a place of finger-pointing and side-taking and instead into a conversation that is more focused on how we can hear and support each other from points of difference.

i know that “safe space” doesn’t actually exist. i know that we live in a hostile world and the “isms” are embedded in us all and there is never a guarantee they won’t rear their ugly heads. however, i do believe that safer spaces — accountable spaces — can exist –can be cultivated. and i see this situation, messy and layered and shitfuck complicated as it is, as a part of that.

and that’s what i mean when i say that i am really not trying to trash or take down Mrs. or its organizers. i did not put forth a critique of what i perceived to be trans-misogyny operating in that space because i need attention, or think i’m a special snowflake, or just wanted to “call someone out.” i did it because i thought it was worthwhile; because the space seems so generally rad and inclusive; because the atmosphere that Mrs. creates is so positive and welcoming of queers who don’t fit in a lot of other places. i did it because i felt enough connection to the community space that Mrs. creates — in the few hours i was there before my interaction with the DJs — to feel like it would actually be worth it to publicly raise tough shit. after all, there are very few queer events where i would even consider approaching a DJ to discuss any issue, let alone write a blog post about the presence of trans-misogyny there. and i truly think that speaks to Mrs.’ credit as a rad space.

and from the personal response i got from one of the organizers, to the meeting on saturday that was put together in a matter of hours to ensure the conversation started before the next event happened, Mrs. continues to demonstrate this. i hope that this trend persists, and that we as a queer community can continue to talk about issues of identity and oppression and hold each other – and ourselves – accountable for the impact of our actions.

sometimes when i’m out dancing, surrounded by queers i love and queers i don’t know, appreciating how so many folks around me are as much of a gender-fucking mess as i am, i forget that a “safe” space is never a guarantee. it is an ideal. a code of conduct that we hope people adhere to. it is, at root, a goal–not a proclamation. not a guarantee. sometimes, i think we forget this.

“Shut up queen! shut up queen! shut up! queen queen queen queen queen!” i can still hear that last part. it does this kind of echo-loop in my head sometimes where the word runs together, like a CD skipping right before the “en” sound. “Quee-quee-quee-quee-quee–.” If i wasn’t so appalled i might be impressed by their ability to repeat the same word so goddamned fast.

i’ve had bits and pieces written on this since it happened around mid february, but haven’t gotten around to organizing them into something coherent until now. And since I realized it’s still something i’m thinking quite a bit about, and something which influences my relationship to portland’s queer scene, I should get it out.

it was my birthday celebration and a group of friends and i had decided to go to Mrs. together, a monthly queer dance party at mississippi studios. watching blow pony slip further and further into mainstream gaydom (straight onlookers in welcome tow) left me wanting for more explicitly trans and genderqueer friendly spaces. while i had never been personally, Mrs. was repeatedly billed to me as just that, and it sounded great.

and here’s the thing: for the most part, it really was. the theme was “let’s get physical,” so there was plenty of brightly colored spandex, hot pants, swimsuits, you name it –and it all looked pretty fabulous. plus the absurd workout videos from the last four decades they were projecting behind the stage didn’t hurt. i even saw this one hipster in full 80s workout gear (sweatband and all) walking around with a walkman and headphones. such commitment! sidebar: are all party themes automatically retro now? is that just like, default?

Anyway, for the most part, the music was really enjoyable too. i remember one song — a sign of things to come, though we didn’t know it yet — that came on which made my friends and i stop our bodies to talk. i don’t even remember what song it was anymore, but the point it brought up was why, at queer dance parties, do we consistently listen–and dance–to super misogynistic music?? is it somehow ironic? is it okay because ‘hey, we’re all in the know and feminist and stuff, so we can just enjoy it?’ what, exactly, makes it okay?

One of the DJs had an answer they would share with me later, but for now my friends and I were content to sit out the song and jump back in when pump up the jam took over. The room filled up, the DJs continued to make us dance, and there was suddenly double-dutch on stage. Ya know, good things were happening. Up to that point I was having a wonderful birthday celebration with folks I love in a space where I felt comfortable, dare I say even safe.

And then the end of the night had to happen.

The DJs thanked the crowd and bid us goodnight, and put on the last song of the evening. To this day, I don’t know what it was called or who it was by—one reason was that the DJ refused to tell us, the other being that the only audible lyrics in the song were “bitch-bitch-bitch-bitch-trick-trick-trick-trick.” Now, even these take a hot sec to sink in when you’re dancing. But sure enough, I watched one of my friends after another slow their bodies, turn an ear toward the speaker, and screw up their face before stopping completely. As I watched, it wasn’t just my friends and I. It was at least fifteen other people standing around us.

“What is this?”

“I don’t think I want to dance to this.”

“Ew.”

I heard all of these — echoed some myself — as I watched cluster after cluster of dancers slow and then stop during the song.

When it finally ended, a renewed conversation on queer spaces and misogynistic music took place as we lingered on the floor. “What a depressing song to end on. All I could hear was ‘bitch’ and ‘trick’ — that doesn’t make me wanna dance!” my partner said.

She suggested that we say something to the DJs before leaving, to let them know how we — and what seemed to be a significant portion of the crowd — reacted to the song. I agreed, and we were soon standing in front of a table full of audio equipment being broken down for the night. There were three individuals behind the table, and for the sake of simplicity (and ‘cause I don’t actually know what each of their titles were) I will refer to all of them here as “DJs.” While of course I don’t know their respective identities (hence my use of “they” for all of them), I can say that they all appeared to be presenting very masculine. Myself, I was pretty high femme that night: heels, a purple dress, pink scarf tightly around my neck, gold hoops and full make-up. I can’t be sure how I was read by the DJs, though if I had to guess based on our interaction I’d say i was — rather incorrectly — assumed to be a gay man in drag. I’m not exactly sure what my partner was in by that stage of the night (there had been lots of de-layering happening), but suffice to say it would surprise me if they didn’t read her as a cis woman.

When we approached the table, two of the DJs were hovering over laptops and cords, while the third stood off to the right of the table. “Hi,” I said when we arrived, more to the people over the laptop. They looked up. “I was just wondering if maybe next time, ya’ll wouldn’t end on a super misogynistic song? It made a lot of us stop dancing.” The last of my words were drowned out as the person to my right suddenly leaned toward me with an exasperated noise and requisite eye-roll, saying, “It’s okay, queen. Go away, we got it queen.” When their dismissal didn’t stop me from finishing my point, they raised the volume, resorting to a rapid-fire, “Shut up queen, shut up queen, shut up queen, queen, queen, queen!” before slinking backward, head shaking, to perch on the corner of the stage, where they remained quiet for the rest of the interaction.

Directing my attention back to the other two DJs, I found my partner continuing the conversation. By this point from the start, things were unnecessarily heated. The middle DJ seemed to be taking personal offense that some members of their audience found one of their songs to be misogynistic. “Do you even know who wrote this song?!” They demanded of us.

“No, please tell us!” We both replied earnestly.

“Fucking drag queens wrote this song, honey, so chill out queen.” There it was again. Queen. Once for me, and once for their point, emphasizing drag queens like it was some anti-misogyny ace in the hole, as though somehow drag queens are incapable of perpetuating sexism. “Go look it up and know what you’re talking about before you come complaining to me about it.”

“But we don’t know that when we’re out there dancing! All we hear is ‘bitch bitch bitch bitch trick trick trick trick,” I said, avoiding pointing out the fact that some of those ace in the hole drag queens have long been critiqued by queer feminists for appropriating and perpetuating female slurs.

“Look it up,” the DJ repeated.

At this point, my partner tried to de-escalate. “Look, we had a really great time tonight, and for the most part really loved the music you played,” I nodded in agreement. “We just wanted to let you know, that people in the crowd – a lot more than just us, like fifteen others just where we were standing – stopped dancing because of this song, and I think that says something.” As the condescending, agitated DJ in the center stopped engaging with us completely, the person to our left spoke up. “Thank you, thank you for your feedback,” they said, barely looking up from what they were doing and clearly just trying to get us the hell away from there as quickly as possible.

we left the table. and i brought with me a nauseating mix of disappointment, hurt, and just plain shock. really, here?? certainly, i can understand that after a long night of work, the first thing you wanna hear is probably not a critique of your performance. i get that. but the immediate dismissal and outright hostility we received was never something i would have expected. because here’s the thing: it’s really not about you. or how good a DJ you are (well, maybe this isn’t completely unrelated… i would say that the willingness to hear feedback — especially on issues related to identity and oppression — is absolutely part of the job description of any entertainer, er, respectful human).

it’s about how queers, as a subculture, deal with the misogyny and patriarchy we inevitable carry with us from dominant culture. it’s about our willingness — or lack thereof — to engage in examining the privileging of masculinity, the consistent invisibility and/or absence of trans women, and the uncritical acceptance (and even celebration) of misogynistic music in queer spaces.

it’s about how my feminine gender presentation can be used to silence and dismiss; to label me as a dramatic, over-reactor who needs to step back and let the masculine folks handle it. it’s about how the word queen, while having a rep as a somewhat equal opportunity derisive term short for drama queen, is still completely rooted in sexist stereotypes about women’s supposed over-emotionality and melodramatic tendencies. and it’s not like this was some instance of reclaiming a fucked up term — it was straight up used in its traditional sense: to devalue femininity and invalidate the views of those who express it.

and that’s not even to mention the extreme levels of assumption about my identity that went in to the two DJs choosing the word queen in the first place. i think had i been presenting more masculine — or been read as pretty much anything other than a male-assigned person expressing femininity — that term would not have be used. that’s called trans-misogyny. (after all, even my partner — who was voicing the same concerns as i — was never referred to in this way, though she was treated equally as dismissively.)

The purpose of this post is not to attack Mrs., or its organizers, or even the specific individuals mentioned here. but it is a red flag about the pervasiveness of sexism within our community. when two people associated with an explicitly queer event can derisively dismiss me as queen based on my gender presentation and qualms with misogynistic lyrics, it raises some serious questions about queer complicity in patriarchy and who is welcome(d) in queer spaces. and as a community, if we truly want to create and socialize in “safe” spaces — or at least, spaces where we can critically examine the presence of the “isms” and be accountable to one another for our role in those systems — then it starts with us talking about this stuff. and us talking about it? well, that starts with us being willing to hear it.

i’d thought i’d take this eater sunday opportunity to talk a little bit about the whitening of jesus christ. the above image on the left is what the best of modern forensic and anthropological science estimates a male born at the time and place of jesus of nazareth would look like, while the right-hand picture is of a 1940 painting by warner sallman which serves as a prime example of the thoroughly whitened image of jesus ubiquitous in the contemporary West. (wait, maybe he was murdered looking like the image on the left, but came back looking like the one on the right! case. fucking. cracked.)

certainly, many christians are not surprised by the news that the supposed son of god didn’t look anything like the image on the right, but nonetheless have no trouble looking to that image. because, as evidenced recently and quite visibly by the high profile killing of trayvon martin (among other less publicized killings), as well as the backlash against fictional characters of color, under white supremacy, non-whiteness cannot possibly be ascribed to the epitome of purity and goodness that is the popular image of jesus christ. as savior, as martyr, jesus must be white, because white is all that is good. white=light, after all, and light “drives out the darkness.”

all this, despite the fact that historically speaking, jesus could not possible have been “white” (or at least what we would call “white” today, since white as a racial categorization didn’t even exist til about 1650 years after jesus’ birth). white jesus simply defies logic. as hari kondabolu has put it, “two brown people cannot make a Swedish fucking tennis player… Any child or racist can tell you that.”

(go to 2:21 for white jesus specifically, though it’s all great.)

and while we’re on the subject of historical revisionism and christian fantasy, what the fuck do chocolate eggs and bunnies have to do with christ’s resurrection? eddie izzard offers his thoughts:

anyway. happy white(ned) savior resurrection day, dear reader.

This is a cross-post from Televisual, by Aymar Jean Christian

UPDATE: The arrival of a new character signals a possible shift in season three.

It’s an old and uninteresting complaint: black characters on TV — and horror movies — get killed or written off too early. Clearly, that is what’s been happening on The Walking Dead with T-Dog. (For a good rant, head to Clutch).

I’m going to try to push the debate further, past “isn’t it a shame characters of color get short shrift.” The truth is the T-Dog Problem signals broader problems with The Walking Dead and some other prominent dramas. It’s a symptom of an ailment the writers might actually care to remedy, beyond appeasing black viewers.

First, the basics. Earlier this season T-Dog told Dale he was concerned about being black and a weak link in the group. This was an insightful moment from the writers, foregrounding the idea that being different after the apocalypse might be a problem — after all, in times of stress, people stick to their own — and an interesting meta-commentary on the fragility of being a black character on TV — T-Dog was a great candidate for a quick kill. Then T-Dog disappeared. I literally forgot all about him until last week, when he had one line that was almost comically interrupted. This week T-Dog was similarly marginal, leading Vulture‘s recapper to state: “By this point, the casual dismissal of one of two minority characters…on this show is feeling extremely suspect. The only thing saving it from being full on offensive is that the same treatment is being given to Hershel’s entire white family.”

The problem isn’t only about a tired debate over representation.

The real problem with T-Dog’s absence is it undermines the point of the whole show. Let me explain.         

Viewers might forget that early in the series one of the hardest decisions the group had to make was whether to keep on Daryl’s racist brother (basically, in a nutshell). The overall narrative suggested that even a skilled manly man wasn’t worth having in a zombie apocalypse if he couldn’t get on with a diverse group of people. Good ol’ American values of equality triumphed even with bloodthirsty demons at the door. Walking Dead has always been about re-constructing the nation from scratch. The writers made us root for these people, in doing so we were rooting for America.

Since then, the cast of underwritten characters have become increasingly unlikable. The focus on the Shane-Rick-Lori love triangle, and the stagnant nature of every character — Rick is moral, Shane is evil, Lori is worried, Andrea is unhappy, Dale is self-righteous, Carol is sad — made all these white people seem self-interested and petty. Rick is a good guy but too caught up in family and friend politics. It’s hard to root for people so caught up with themselves and so uninvolved with each other.

The Rick, Lori and Shane story hobbled the show’s underlying point: this was about good people in difficult circumstances trying to rebuild society and find a moral code in a world without laws (that’s what the whole Carol-abused-wife thing was about too). Last week the show came back to this theme. But the group’s reluctance to stop Randall’s death made them seem short-sighted, mean and petty. Why should we care about their journey? At issue is whether they were still decent, whether they still cared about people who were different and outside their personal struggles.

Or whether they cared about each other! This is the point: the show’s limited perspective and singular focus on the nuclear family — underscored this week with what happened to Shane — has eclipsed the large cast. We don’t get multiple perspectives, or different characters interacting — what about Hershel’s family? Or Carol? What do they do? What are they thinking? T-Dog is only the most egregious and visible example because he’s the only black guy.

T-Dog’s invisibility is an extreme example of how the show has failed to include multiple perspectives, or to indicate any sense of mutual caring or consideration from the show’s characters. Other great shows about society — Battlestar Galactica, Deadwood, The Wire – did this well. They utilized a large and diverse cast to make a case about morality, humanity and its institutionalization.

The “big question” of Walking Dead is whether decency and civilization can survive without institutions. When Dale last week implored the group to save Randall last week, he was making the case for decency and compassion. This is (idealized) America! We don’t kill “others”! The writers killed Dale to force the group to get back on message. Yet they need to expand the scope of the show to its characters.

By giving more time to Glenn, T-Dog and the rest, the writers will find more heart and purpose. Because we are supposed to like these characters — Walking Dead is a moral show, not an antihero-driven soap like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos.

While I’m at it, there are a lot of shows that could benefit from this, not the least of which is Falling Skies, which started out diverse and quickly became a show about white guys and the women who love them. (Seriously, the black characters just kept disappearing!).

I checked out of Terra Nova when it seemed clear the “outsiders,” led by the terrific Christine Adams, had “gone native” in the cheapest way.

True Blood still has Lafayette, but, again, underwriting and mishandling Tara, now possibly dead, only made Sookie appear immature and too focused on her silly love triangle. What is True Blood, you know, about any more? Whatever it is, Sookie is at the heart, and she is best when with Tara, which I guess the writers finally remembered in the last episode by putting her in danger.

There could be other examples and counterexamples, but my larger point is that all these ambitious and expensive dramas purport to be about something ambitious (usually, America, capital “A”), which is why they are expensive. But it’s hard to be ambitious when you narrowly focus a sprawling cast on the concerns of a few (almost always white) characters. You have to show multiple perspectives and treat every character with respect. If you don’t, you risk sinking into the narrative sinkhole that trapped The Walking Dead, where the characters appear flat, uninteresting and unsympathetic to the concerns of others and each other. Doing that intentionally might actually make Walking Dead interesting, but clearly that’s not the point.

All this might be premature. Glen Mazzara promises more T-Dog. For the show’s sake, I hope he’s right.

lets start with alaska, shall we?

ad transcript: “Carol runs a daycare center in anchorage. But if proposition 5 passes, it will be illegal for carol to refuse a job to a transvestite who wants to work with toddlers. If she hires him, she risks losing customers. And if she refuses, she can be fined or imprisoned. Anchorage is already a tolerant city. Vote no on Proposition 5.”

yup. because even the idea that a gender-variant person (especially one who is male-assigned) would want to work with children is shocking, threatening –even to this baby! poor, poor carol. what’s a transphobe to do these days??

it’s no surprise that the opponents of proposition 5, an ordinance to include gay, lesbian, and transgender people in anchorage’s already existing anti-discrimination law, chose to depict the most stereotyped, caricatured image of a male-assigned gender-variant person they could. in the ad, they refer to this person as a transvestite and accurately use male pronouns (presumably to emphasize the supposed incongruity and unnaturalness of the applicant’s appearance). it seems like the people behind the ad are well aware of the difference between a transvestite and a trans woman, but are counting on the public to conflate them both with this image. after all, both are male-assigned expressions of femininity, and everyone knows that’s just perverse. disgusting. who cares what the specifics are.

the ad doesn’t stop there. it more than just implies that trans women and cross-dressers are sexual predators just waiting to abuse children –with this image, it straight up says it. apparently, all we’re waiting for is to be given “special rights” and then it’s a green light for molestation. the whole campaign is eerily similar to this widely used video from 1961, warning boys of the “homosexual threat.” seriously, watch that shit.

the ad pulls out some fucked-up orwellian double-think to close its hate-mongering message. “anchorage is a already a tolerant city. vote no on proposition 5.” whew! check off that diversity box!

“Anchorage already tolerates black people and women! Isn’t that ENOUGH?” one anomalously coherent youtube commenter writes

while sadly, it appears that on tuesday, anchorage voters rejected prop 5, it also seems likely that some shady shit went down with the vote, and the aclu is demanding an independent review.

whipping up public sentiment against trans people (trans women, in particular — woo team trans-misogyny and heteropatriarchy!) based on the implication that we’re pedophiles is not isolated to alaska or the 1960s. in february, protesters of an anti-trans discrimination bill in baltimore county lined the streets of the their county councilor’s office, with at least one woman using her daughter to hold up a sign (clearly written by the child herself) reading, “Why won’t you protect me? KEEP THE MEN OUT OF MY BATHROOM.” that bill, thankfully, did pass — restroom protection intact.

transphobia is, of course, not relegated to our shores alone: did you know that 17 european countries force trans sterilization? niether did i, or a lot of people, apparently. from mother jones, “People rightly flipped out… over the news that Swedish parliament would not be repealing a barbaric law that forces sterilization on trans people seeking to change their gender on legal documents… Considering how shocking people find Sweden’s law, it’s worth pointing out the country is 1 of 17 in Europe (shown in red below) that require trans people to have a surgical procedure that results in sterilization before legal gender change is made to their identification…”

oh, joy.

back in the states, the GOP circus continues, with the again inevitable nominee romney coming under fire for his unfortunate — and substantial — financial ties to the National Organization for Marriage (you can guess what they do), after confidential documents were made public by a federal court investigating NOM’s activities in maine. the 2008 internal documents detail NOM’s divide-and-conquer strategy for getting california’s infamous gay marriage-banning prop 8 passed, stating, “The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key democratic constituencies.” it is being speculated — and with good reason — that as a high-value donor to NOM, romney was aware of the organizations blatantly fucked up tactics.

meanwhile, last holdout santorum –i’m not even counting gingrich anymore–almost forgets to filter.

One more reason not to go see the lorax movie emerges, as the film attempts to reach unprecedented levels of irony by commercially partnering with monsanto (fucking monsanto!), in addition to over 70 other promotional partnerships — which is why shit like this now appears in our sidebars.

what else we got? oh yeah… dharun ravi, the college student who secretly broadcast his roommate, tyler clementi, kissing another man. clementi soon jumped to his death from the george washington bridge. last month, ravi was found guilty on 15 charges ranging from invasion of privacy to tampering with evidence, and sentenced to ten years in prison. ten years. i’m all for decrying homophobia, but what the fuck good is locking up this kid for a decade gonna do?

“I can’t justify Ravi’s decision to invade his roommate’s privacy, especially not at a moment in which he would be extremely vulnerable. I also cannot justify Ravi’s decision to mess with evidence, even though I suspect he did so out of fear. But I also don’t think that either of these actions deserve 10 years of jail time or deportation (two of the options given to the judge). I don’t think that’s justice…

I’m also sick and tired of people saying that this will teach kids an important lesson. Simply put, it won’t. No teen that I know identifies their punking and pranking of their friends and classmates as bullying, let alone bias intimidation. Sending Ravi to jail will do nothing to end bullying. Yet, it lets people feel like it will and that makes me really sad. There’s a lot to be done in this realm and this does nothing to help those who are suffering every day.”
–danah boyd, quoted on racilicious

one last important read: i know we’ve all probably read a lot — or written some ourselves — on trayvon martin, but this little post by Aurin Squire is a must. the author reflects on what happened to martin and his own experience Walking While Black, and manages to say so much with such economy of words. i really like this piece.

of course there is more. there is always more. more thoughts on the hunger games and its “unisex” appeal, katniss’ general badassery and a mainstream film with a female lead breaking pre-sale records in addition to a $155 million opening weekend, not to mention how sick i am of fucking love triangles in YA fiction (did Collins think it wouldn’t work without a bit of twi-puke thrown in? umm but seriously, TEAM GALE!). but after all the depressing shit, and enough talk on HG already, i want to leave you with this: gay dolphins. seriously. not only are they fuckin smart but they’re also hella gay. that link also features a slide show of other examples of queerness in the animal world, all fantastic.

and that about does it for me right now. i gotta go get back to not meeting my body’s basic need for sleep and other unhealthy patterns. or something. good talk, internet.

cinna and katniss embrace before the games begin

Full disclosure: i devoured the books – read all three last summer (loved the first two, meh on the third), and i had super low expectations going to see the movie last week. but then i came out… surprisingly impressed. [**assumed familiarity with the story/spoiler alerts still stand**]

i wasn’t particularly impressed with the whitewashing of katniss and district 12, as i discussed earlier, though i was quite fond of some of the casting choices. Kravitz as cinna worked really well for me — as did Donald Southerland as the understated president snow — and i’m excited to see more interaction between them and katniss in the upcoming films. in fact, the acting was pretty solid all around. (well, peeta was a bit wooden but his character was consistently overshadowed by lawrence and Woody Harrelson, so it didn’t matter much.) in fact, harrelson’s haymitch ended up being another highlight. though he wasn’t as overtly cruel to katniss as he was in the book, their banter was still heated and engaging, and harrelson — even as a sexist, condescending alcoholic — remained entertaining and strangely likeable (much like the haymitch of the books).

harrelson’s surprisingly cunning drunk

as for my qualms with the movie visa vi the book, they are mostly relegated to the portrayal of district 12, hunger, and the day to day of living under military (police?) occupation. life in district 12, like most of the others, is fucking hard. you’re under constant electronic and human surveillance. a (sporadically working) electric fence keeps you in the district, and you are forbidden from entering the woods beyond the fence, especially for hunting. it even carries a potentially lethal sentence. and still katniss and gale must do this regularly, knowing it’s the only way to keep their families fed. and yet, none of this sense of pressure is communicated through the film. that sense of all encompassing oppression (especially within the walls of district 12) that was so present in the books was lost — unnecessarily, i think — in its translation to film.

additionally, for taking place in a society built around the idea of food scarcity (or at least, manufactured scarcity), there was very little in the film for us to actually see the need or the hunger of the citizens of district 12. no constant talk of where the next meal will come from, or how it will be payed for, or how to sell the illegally caught game at the Hob without alerting the peacekeepers. many of the people in 12 appeared dirty, but not particularly skinny or malnourished. and after their lifetime of hunger, when katniss and peeta finally arrive at the capitol, there is maybe one (brief) scene of them eating the lavish food put before them — not the exciting, wide-eyed feasts of lamb stew (where was that lamb stew?!) and the other delicacies that katniss and peeta wolf down greedily in the book. (a concise analysis of the major differences between the book and the film can be found here.)

one of the biggest alterations comes in what we see in the aftermath of rue’s death. katniss mourns the same way in print and film — wreathing rue in flowers, though in the book she knows there’s no chance in hell it will be nationally broadcast; it’s a personal gesture to rue and a personal “fuck you” to the gamemakers and snow. district 11 did, however, learn of rue and katniss’  partnership –friendship, even, and sent katniss a loaf of bread in the arena as thanks. later, we learn that rue’s death and katniss’ actions do lead to a revolt in D11, but we’re never shown it. in the film, the gamemakers actually do broadcast katniss adorning rue with flowers, and this immediately leads to a violent uprising in district 11, pitting the majority-black district citizens against the peacekeepers.

and here’s where i’m conflicted. i thought it was a well done, potentially even moving scene of the marginalized suddenly rising up against state oppression. on the other hand, it was the *only* riot scene in the film, and all i kept thinking was do we really need to further popularize images of black people rioting?? especially when it’s one of the only — and certainly the longest — scene where we even see more than a handful of black folks in the same shot. i can’t help but wonder how the longstanding white fear of black gatherings and collective anger affected the creation of this sequence…or the decision to show this district uprising rather than another (like 8, for instance, which i believe also rebels around the same time)… In and of itself i’m not sure this would have stood out, but given how few faces of color we see anywhere else in the film, i find it interesting to note which aspects of Collin’s fantasy world were whitewashed and which were allowed to retain their melanin.

anyway, the camera work had its own problems, though it at least kept things moving along at a brisk enough pace (sometimes too much so) and seemed to include more shots of blurred light and trees than the blair witch project. because this is what has to happen when you make a fucking family film about 24 children murdering each other on reality tv to keep an oppressed population docile. You get lots of screams and quick shots of forest and sky. IF you want that pg-13 rating, IF you want to get the whole family in for that slaughter-fest, then you can’t actually show the brutality of it, even if its in the books. even if the visibility of the brutality serves a significant thematic purpose, raising questions around culture-wide voyeurism, consumption, and sadism. well, i guess those things could stand to be lost in order to get that kid dollar, that family dollar. after all, as david edelstein says in vulture, “The murders onscreen are quick… The cutting is so fast that you can hardly see what’s happening, which has already won Ross praise for his restraint, his tastefulness. Tasteful child-killing!”

Tasteful child killing.

lets just sit with that for a minute, shall we? sit with it in the context of the social critique Collins provides through the hunger games. sit with it in the context of our world, of our media. of us watching this movie.

at base, the hunger games is a social critique of our voyeuristic, schadenfreude-driven, borderline sadistic culture, obsessed with “reality” tv, celebrity status, and sensationalistic news, steadily being desensitized to human tragedy through visual media. and now we can actually consume the visual representation of this written critique of our own love of voyeuristic violence –which is itself, by virtue of its source material and hollywoodization, violent and sensationalized. and we’re praising it for its portrayal of “tasteful child killing.” tasteful child killing – what kind of oxymoronic joke is that? with the movie, we are encouraged to visually consume this tasteful barbarity wrapped in a narrative ostensibly intended to indict what itself seeks to provide — visual entertainment through violence and human suffering.

there’s definitely some super meta, fucked up levels of irony operating here, but i can’t quite wrap my mind around them right now. goddamn, i’ll have to come back to this… postmodern irony-loving film students, have at it! oh, where’s abed when you need him…

I’m really not sure where to start with all this… it’s all such a shit show! i’ll save all my nerdy thoughts on the book translation and more technical aspects of the movie for a later post so as to first focus on the shitshow that is racist fandom…

this was one of the first character posters for the Suzanne Collins book-turned-movie The Hunger Games released last november – the first widely available shots of the actors in their roles. Lenny Kravitz plays cinna – and is definitely one of my favorite parts of both the book and movie, while Amandla Stenberg is brilliant as the cherubic, tree-jumping rue. the character posters came out about 5 months ago and these are some of the responses they recieved. from t(w)eens. a whole fuck-ton of em actually.

right, right... because obviously a black man can't be "sweet and loving," (or even "simple and lovable looking"), let alone have a "calm temper" or a "quiet personality." #areyoufuckingshittingme??

umm i got the impression yall just pictured cinna as white either cause you wanted to or because under white supremacy, white's the default for a racially-unspecified person and you just didn't think about it. can you...really not get over it?

the funny thing is, cinna’s race is never mentioned in the book. Collins’ gives us some of his wardrobe choices and the fact that he has green eyes and always wears gold eyeliner. that’s pretty much it. but everyone is falling over themselves because the gay (i read him as such, anyway), white protagonist they’ve been rooting for is suddenly – gasp! – black. which of course means he’s physically incapable of embodying all of that calm, reassuring, sweetness stuff that their fantasized white cinnas did. uhg.

but wait, there’s more: we haven’t even got to rue yet… and this was a character who was explicitly described in the books as having very dark skin. more than once.  but lo, the movie opens, and with it, the floodgates of barely latent t(w)een racism.               

you get the point. if you need to see more of this shit, you can read it ad nauseum with a TRIGGER WARNING for seriously fucked up racial language on the original tumblr meant to collect this crap. additionally, there’s some good analysis on the hunger games and race in these posts from racialicious, jezebel, feministing, and an interesting piece on katniss, femininity and compulsory heterosexuality over at blog of disquiet. Jezebel even has a super friendly character and race guide to the hunger games, in which rue is described as having “…dark brown skin and eyes.” Suzanne Collins was very explicit in the EW interview, saying of Rue and Thresh: “They’re African-American.” In the books, Collins adds that Rue has thick dark hair, dark satiny brown skin and “golden eyes.”

so apparently, some HG fans are not only super racist, but seem to have very low reading comprehension. or, equally likely, the power of whiteness as default in this country is so powerful, that most people — whites and PoC alike — will typically assume a character is white until specifically pointed out otherwise — a sort of white-until proven-black kind of a thing. and as evidenced by the above social media comments, some people buy into whiteness so completely that it overrides the words right in front of them –the ones describing their favorite characters as people of color, allowing them to read the description of rue as very dark skinned, for instance, and continue to imagine a button-nosed blond white girl (maybe with a tan?).

just reading the comments on cinna and rue a very clear racial narrative emerges. Kravitz, a black man, cannot play the calm, gentle cinna, because in white-supremacist culture, black can only mean aggression, violence, and a lack of emotion. and so HG fans are angry. i mean, if you read their words they just sound pissed, betrayed, even –but by what? do they think by the director –the casting director, perhaps? but really it’s just their own uncritical adherence to whiteness that has betrayed them, limited their own imaginations and ability to even take in new information if it’s contrary to the logic of whiteness.

funny how none of these outraged fans batted an eye when the filmmakers whitewashed the hell outta the Seam –maybe all of district 12 — including katniss, our supposedly black-haired, brown-eyed, olive-skinned heroin played (quite well, actually) by naturally blond, blue-eyed white woman with a tan jennifer lawrence of winter’s bone and x-men fame. but it wasn’t just her: with the notable exceptions of her mother and sister prim, gale and the other members of 12 are almost all described as having “olive skin” similar to katniss’ — some even darker. in the film, most of the people that appear in 12 — while occationally covered in dirt — seem to be about as white as prim.

katniss, waiting for the reaping in district 12

like cinna’s haters, a similar sense of betrayal and resentment runs through the racist tweets about rue. “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not  the little blond innocent girl you picture,” one tweet states. in white supremacist culture, innocence is white. of course. purity is white. kindness and sweetness are white. cuteness is white. noble sacrifice is white, too. so how can rue  — friend, motivator, and innocent martyr for katniss and the emerging rebellion — be black?! the last tweet on rue above is perhaps the most telling. the author of the original hungergamestweets tumblr summed the phenomenon up better than most:

“All these…people… read the Hunger Games. Clearly, they all fell in love with and cared about Rue. Though what they really fell in love with was an image of Rue that they’d created in their minds… And then the casting is revealed (or they go see the movie) and they’re shocked to see that Rue is black. Now… this is so much more than, “Oh, she’ bigger than I thought.” The reactions are all based on feelings of disgust.

“These people are MAD that the girl that they cried over while reading the book was “some black girl” all along. So now they’re angry. Wasted tears, wasted emotions. It’s so sad to think that had they known that she was black all along, there would have been [no] sorrow or sadness over her death.”

and that right there is the crux of it, plainly spoken (er, blogged): black deaths are less sad – evoke less of an emotional response from white folks — and black life is valued less. what do these dismissive and/or outright hostile attitudes toward a fictional black child say to the real rues of the world –to black girls and young woman? to their families? what does it mean to tell someone, your life — and your death — mean less to me because your skins a different color? and doesn’t the internet just make it that much easier to do?

the hunger games fervor is a barometer of social attitudes at the same time it continues to shape them. these aren’t just benign tweets and posts sent out to the internet netherworld, this shit is real, and gettin passed around, and is part of a much larger problem with very tangible consequences for people of color in this country. when teens seem literally incapable of seeing a black man as gentle or sweet, and find it completely inconceivable — insulting, almost — that a black girl could represent innocence, its no surprise that the mainstream news remains saturated with stories of beautiful missing white women while more than  40% of missing persons are people of color. with these attitudes toward black life, it’s no wonder that black students, while comprising only 18% of the school system, account for 39% of all expulsions and are suspended 46% more than their peers. the wealth disparities, incarceration rates, constant police harassment, schools as segregated as they were over half a century ago — these are the real world consequences of those attitudes. these are what we reap for our adherence to racism. we don’t need teenagers on twitter to awaken us to the reality of white supremacy, though it’s certainly disheartening to see it flowing so freely from a younger generation (we’re making racial progress, right? i mean obama was elected we’re already over it!). we need only look at people of color’s mortality rates, relative access to healthy food, toxic pollution in black and brown neighborhoods, and modern day lynchings victims like 17 year old trayvon martin to be reminded of just how much — or how little — lives of color are valued in a white supremacist state.

by now, the story of trayvon martin is in the national spotlight. The 17 year old black kid was unarmed, carrying nothing but a bag of skittles and an iced tea, walking to his stepmother’s house in a suburban neighborhood of sanford, FL, when he was shot and killed. the shooter was a neighborhood watchmen named george zimmerman, a latino man nearly 100lbs larger than trayvon and armed with a handgun. zimmerman has a well documented history of racial profiling and is a frequent caller to the police — 46 times since jan 1, 2011 — often reporting young, black men. since of course being black and wearing a hoodie is a crime waiting to happen, zimmerman deemed trayvon a threat and decided to tail him. he even called the police to report trayvon for “looking suspicious,” (becuase he was “wearing a hoodie and walking slowly in the rain”). the dispatcher told zimmerman to wait in his car and leave martin alone. during the call, zimmerman reportedly muttered “they always get away,” and “fucking coons” – later changed to “fucking goons.” the details remain unclear and suspect, and eyewitness testimony has been changing/getting changed. what is clear is that at some point, zimmerman, disobeying the dispatcher’s orders, continued to follow trayvon on foot until he approached him and forced a confrontation. orginial eyewitness statements say they hear trayvon screaming for help, though the police insist it was actually zimmerman. the shooter claimed self-defense under florida’s “stand your ground law,” scary ass legislation which gives people the right to use lethal force to protect themselves outside of their home if they feel sufficiently threatened, even when the option to safely retreat is available. (that link has an excellent map for seeing which states have such laws in place). as of yet, zimmerman has yet to be charged with anything, police citing “lack of evidence.”

“Apparently an unarmed, dead Black teen is not evidence enough.  If this were 1912 and not 2012, we would call a Black man killed by a one-man firing squad with no just cause what it is: a lynching. These days, we search for euphemisms. Self-defense. That feels so inadequate…

What is this peculiar thing about whiteness that it makes criminals look like victims and victims look like criminals? Trayvon’s skin, not his actions, not his character, made him a criminal. Blackness always looks suspicious. Whiteness always looks safe…

In 1857, Justice Roger Taney infamously declared in the Dred Scott case that “a Black man had no rights that a white man was bound to respect.” In this post- most-racial moment, we must seriously re-evaluate this narrative of linear historical progress that we are beholden to. No, Black men don’t routinely find themselves hanging from trees. But that might be less an evidence of progress and more an evidence of white racial adaptation.”       -CFC  (emphasis mine)

the murder of trayvon martin has sparked national outrage. from stupid hoaxes to professional sport players showing solidarity, to marches planned accross the nation. even president obama briefly weighed in, stating “if i had a son, he’d look like trayvon.” of course, being obama he couldn’t say anything definitive or godforbid mention race directly (this is an election year after all), but by saying what he did about the looks of his own hypothetical son, the president implied he knew damn well this was a racist killing.

and how has the media responded? at first, it was surprisingly positive. major networks rallied around this tragedy, amplified community voices for zimmerman’s prosecution, and opened up a space for speaking about racial profiling and the different value society assigns to black and brown lives.

and then the racist right woke up, and found it had computers, and the campaign to smear trayvon as a truant-prone drug using aspiring thug that somehow deserved to be murdered was off and running. white supremacists hacked trayvons email and social networking identities as part of this effort, widely trumpeting that trayvon was suspended from school, caught with “marijuana residue” and once wrote “WTF” on a school wall (scandalous! its almost like he was in high school or something!). oh, and there was a facebook photo of the wrong trayvon martin circulating, in addition to one of the trayvon martin zimmerman murdered, showing him smiling into the camera with a gold grill in his mouth, presumably disseminated to make sure everyone at home knows just how threatening this “Gangsta” really was.

because all of that really matters. because even if trayvon was the drug addicted high school dropout gang member fill-in-your-favorite stereotype of deviant black youth the racist right would have you believe, it doesn’t even come close to justifying a cold blooded murder (what would??).

and this is about more than just trayvon — hes the face of this right now, and thats not accidental. martin, in his death anyway, is lucky enough to have an image that people are willing to rally behind. not everyone does, and they’re still getting killed. this is about more than racist killings, even, but about what it means to live in a society where some are deemed “normal” “insiders” and “safe,” while others are deemed just that – Other, foreign, different. and when different can so often mean threatening, and in 22 states, “threatening” can get you shot, this raises serious issues not only for black folks and PoC in general, but for trans and other gender nonconforming people as well.

for trayvon, oscar grant, sean bell, and the many other young black men –boys, many of them — executed by our white supremacist state or its self styled vigilantes like zimmerman, all it took was their skin color. (funny how we are so quick to ascribe adulthood to black folks; were a white 17 year old the victim of a horrific murder, the media would almost certainly refer to him as a “boy.”) their murders need only to be followed up by racist smear campaigns and blame-the-victim fox news segments, and the new narrative is all too perfect. Geraldo declares, “I think the hoodie was as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.” for. fucking. serious. the victim-blaming language used here – as others have pointed out – is frighteningly reminiscent of the messages our culture sends to survivors of sexual assault — “YOU made the wrong clothing choices, YOU were in the wrong place. you were asking for it.” also Geraldo, not that any of your points are valid, but c’mon, at least get your facts straight. “wear hoodies only when its raining!” he says at the end of the clip. newsflash, mr. newsman — IT WAS FUCKING RAINING THE NIGHT TRAYVON WAS KILLED.

theres no good way to end talking about the racially motivated murder of a teenager. and i don’t know that there should be. but since i cant bring myself to actually embed fox’s nauseating clip here (its hyperlinked above), i’ll let this sum up geraldo/the right’s fucked up framing:

Writing to Transgress: rethinking identity, social systems, and youth

A brief introduction: I was a student of education (specifically critical pedagogy), sociology, and creative writing, three fields I sought to intertwine in my project. I wanted to explore creative nonfiction/autobiographical writing as a way of understanding the self in relation to systems of privilege and oppression, both on my own and with a group of youth. I am interested in how we choose to story our experiences and the personal and political implications of creating these narratives. After spending the preceding years studying the way we are all inculcated into these systems, I wanted to know exactly how much of me they accounted for. The more I explored this question, however, the more I realized that I was asking the wrong one. My socialization into whiteness, into maleness, into queerness, and into every other social construction are all inextricably bound to who I am today. There is no individual somehow outside of or untouched by these systems. I cannot strip away their influence anymore than I can remove my own skin.

What I can do is try and tease out the complex ways they operate on and within me. In order to do this, I have to move away from asking how were my identities created? And instead focus on how have I experience them at different points in my life? The identities were always there – though not always marked or apparent to me – so how did they manifest?

Part I: telling my own story is an attempt to make visible the ways systemic forces have impacted my identity, with a focus on analyzing how I experienced identity in my own schooling and childhood. Employing multiple modes of writing, I critically examine my past, trying to illuminate the larger social forces at work. Explicitly naming one’s identities and the power structures that shape them is always a political act. In exploring my own privileges and oppressions, I am transgressing the silence required by a culture of domination.

The Doll

Conquistadores

Something Between Us

Boy Legs

Make Yourself at Home

We Don’t Talk About That Here

Part II: the identity unit  is an attempt to offer a group of youth the tools to explore their own socially constructed identities –similar to some of what I undertook in Part I, though obviously not as in-depth. It is a collection of twelve lesson plans I created paired with the stories of implementing them. I approached this component with two assumptions counter to conventional wisdom on elementary education: that young people are capable of discussing and personalizing complex social issues, and that as an educator, it is my responsibility to ensure that those conversations are happening. In the tradition of critical pedagogy, I sought to explore how critical thought and social consciousness could be cultivated through the use of personal writing. In order to prepare students to both exist in and work against oppressive systems, I believe it is essential for them to develop an early awareness of those systems and how they affect their identities.

Senior Project Part 2: introducing the classroom and developing a curriculum

Lesson Plans Days 1-4: identity overview and thinking about gender

Organized Chaos: introducing identity and gender

Lesson Plans Days 5 & 6: exploring personal narratives by youth and discussing LGBTQ identity

All Promo Homo: discussing sexuality in school

Lesson Plans Days 7-9: introducing race and racism and writing about racial identity

“…But what does this have to do with today?” Discussing Race and Systemic Inequality [Part I]

Lesson Plan Day 10: power structures, part I (or, you’d better pull up those bootstraps)

Lesson Plans Days 11 & 12: power structures, part II and the final writing piece

“…But what does this have to do with today?” Discussing Race and Systemic inequality [Part II]

In Their Own Words: student writing on identity

Notes on Curriculum: limitations and implications

Conclusion: rethinking the project as a whole

In addition to creating a window into my own experiences and positionality, I hope the stories and lessons here can provide an accessible resource for other educators seeking to explore identity and social justice with young people. The curriculum was always intended to evolve and be adaptable to different educational settings and age groups, so feedback of any kind is encouraged.

In many ways, conversations about identity and systemic privilege and oppression are much easier with kids than adults. Younger people are familiar with the attitudes of the larger culture without having as much investment in those attitudes. They are less attached to one specific worldview, because their outlook is always expanding. Many of them have a passion for fairness, and a keen eye for spotting injustice, as I saw when we played my card game.     

The workshops showed me how much I need to stay mindful of in order to be an effective critical educator. Due to the wide variance in both student’s academic capabilities and identities, my own adaptability and reflection became key. It is essential that I be sensitive not only to each students’ specific abilities, but also to the interplay between our respective identities. An awareness of my own positionality needs to be embedded in my pedagogy, so the question is not only “how I can I help this student understand? But, how can I, as a white adult, help this student of X race understand? Or, how can I, as a queer person, teach this student about sexuality and gender? What are the strengths and limitations of the dialogue between our different identities?

Similarly, it is essential that I stay conscious of students’ identities when engaging the larger group. Which students do I call on?  Whose words and work am I validating, and whose am I not? In an effort to avoiding reinscribing the very oppressions I am trying to teach against, I need to pay attention to the ways my own power as an adult in the elementary classroom legitimizes or disrupts power and privilege in society at large.

I have tried to reflect this practice in my writing; any time I introduce a person, I spotlight their race, their gender, their physical appearance. I pay attention to these identities because society does, though white writers are seldom encouraged to talk about them, especially race. As bell hooks states in Teaching to Transgress, “We are all subjects in history. We must return ourselves to a state of embodiment in order to deconstruct the way power has been traditionally orchestrated in the classroom… To call attention to the body is to betray the legacy of repression and denial that has been handed down to us…”

Throughout the course of this project, it has been immensely difficult to decide where to focus my writing. I have been oscillating between exploring my own positionality as a student and educator, and creating a curriculum which prioritizes student needs and experiences. It has been a delicate line to walk. With limited space, what do I concentrate on? Do I write about what it was like for me as someone with a queer gender identity to work in the intensely gendered sector of K-12 education? Or do I discuss how the students responded to talking about racism?

Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. I have tried to bring them both together in this project, exploring socially constructed identity first from the standpoint of an artist, and then as an educator. In the hopes of avoiding excessive naval gazing, as well as creating a resource for other teachers striving to critically examine identity with their students, my focus was ultimately weighted toward the latter.

But what does this mean for the autobiographical writing I undertook before creating my curriculum? Certainly, much of it feels incomplete. I even have a handful of pieces I outlined, but was never able to bring to fruition. It sometimes seems as though I undertook two, separate projects and finished neither. Other times, the two seem inextricably bound. Though I often wonder how much more I could have accomplished had I focused only on curriculum or my own creative writing, I have found the interplay between the two parts fascinating.

In many ways, my work as an artist allowed me to be a better educator. In interrogating my own socially constructed identities, I learned what questions would be useful in encouraging others to critically examine their own. I was able to see the differences in how older students like myself approach identity, and how I would have to adapt those approaches to be accessible to a younger group.

My own work on identity and creative writing helped me realize that I was principally undertaking the autobiographical writing not to improve my skills as a creative writer, but to try and make sense of my own intersectional identities and experience within systems of privilege and oppression. It helped me to see that my focus with the students shouldn’t be on perfecting the craft of memoir, or even on improving writing conventions; they get plenty of that through their normal lessons. In order to provide a transgressive – and hopefully, liberatory – pedagogy, I needed to concern myself primarily with fostering in students the drive and ability to deconstruct the messages they receive about identity; to help them see, name, and ultimately, step outside the boxes society forces all of us into.

To that end, was I successful? It is difficult to draw conclusions about students’ internal processes with any certainty. I can, however, comment on what I observed. By the end of the lessons, many of the students demonstrated their ability to critically examine media messages, to recognize injustice, and to question power. Their writing shows an emerging awareness of societal expectations for their identities, and for many students, a desire to break from them. Who knows what this will mean for this group as they age and become more aware of mainstream messages on identity and systemic inequality. How would my understanding of society and myself have changed if someone had talked to me about whiteness and racism in fifth grade, when I was just beginning to see it?

For me, the most satisfying times as an educator were during students’ moments of revelation. From Mary Beth’s growing awareness (and disavowal) of gender roles, to Will’s realization of the power of boycotts, witnessing these moments was truly inspiring. Throughout my curricular unit, students demonstrated their willingness to explore subjects that are supposedly taboo in K-12 education – let alone elementary school – with an honesty and openness that often seems completely beyond many adults in similar discussions.

Ultimately, it is my hope that both my curriculum and the experiences documented in this project can be useful for other educators attempting to address identity and social justice with youth. The work has confirmed my belief that young students are not only capable of, but eager to discuss complex social issues. It has shown me that I am capable of facilitating these conversations, and reinforced my faith in the liberatory potential of critical education.

In retrospect, I think the biggest shortcoming of my curriculum was a failure to highlight activism or resistance to systemic forces. Naomi and I spent a great deal of time talking with students about the massive power structures which support the oppression of various identities, but comparatively little on ways that they as students – many of which are heavily targeted by these oppressive systems – can resist and dismantle those structures. Faith’s comment during the discussion on lynchings – “I’m staying in my house from now on!” – illustrates the potential of introductory lessons on systemic oppression to backfire. Naomi and I addressed Faith’s comment and the outlook it indicated immediately, but not before it demonstrated the necessity for lessons on oppression to leave students feeling empowered and able to resist, rather than overwhelmed and paralyzed.    

Resistance was not the only area we failed to emphasize: social class was almost completely omitted. Though I had initially planned on devoting an entire day to class – as I did for race, gender, and sexuality – my underestimation of how long it would take to explore race and racism with students ultimately forced us to forego the class lesson. I did include some lessons on class in my plans for the subsequent days on power structures, but I was trying to cover too much too quickly and we never made it there. Now that I know more than a single day is required for even a cursory exploration of race/ism, I think providing a lesson on class following the gender, sexuality, and race lessons would be powerful, as it could help students understand the way those other identities affect social class.

With so much of my attention on the content of the curriculum – deciding what identities to explore and what specific information would be most useful and accessible to sixth graders – I lost some focus on the methods I would use within my lessons. Since the magazine ads were so effective in illustrating societal messages about gender to students, how much further could we have gotten if we had used media that was more relevant to the sixth graders? For example, we could have examined the lyrics of one of the pop songs I often heard them humming, or watched and analyzed a beloved Disney movie. Looking at the media they already eagerly consume could be very powerful.

In addition to a lack of cultural relevancy, another drawback to my lesson plans were the extended periods of time where students were required to sit still and listen. During these periods, the students were understandably less focused. During my lessons on race/ism and power structures, I realized how more engaging my lessons could be if I broke up these periods with an exercise requiring students to move around, or even examine a relatively simple visual. In some ways, I approached the social justice content with the students in much the same way I have approached it in various college classes: as a straightforward discussion – a practice which does not always translate well for sixth graders. If I am to be as committed to alternative teaching styles as I am to non-traditional curricular content, I need to further consider how to adapt my teaching methods for different audiences.

Looking back at my field notes as well as student writing, it is clear that there was a wide variance in both student’s writing capacities and their engagement with the curriculum. Some students, like Faith, had clearly already began reflecting about their own racial identity, while others, like Stacy, seemed almost entirely unable to conceive of themselves in relation to societal messages about identity of any kind. Some students just weren’t there yet. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that these students are still in elementary school – most of them have been going to school together since before they even knew socially salient identities existed.

During this past semester, I spent time participating in an after school creative writing group at a large, regional middle school in addition to my internship at Miller’s Hill Elementary. The group met once a week and consisted of about six regular attendees and the overseeing teacher. The difference between how the students at each school thought about their own identities was striking. During one meeting at the middle school, I prompted the group to write about a time when they experienced being gendered – when they could tell that they were being raised as a boy or a girl. Reading my piece on the Barbie doll helped clarify this for them.

As soon as we began talking about gendered messages, the group launched into a discussion on other socially constructed identities. Many of them asked if it was okay to write about sexuality or race. One student, a biracial girl of European and Chinese descent – and coincidentally, a Miller’s Hill graduate – told the group that she had not considered her race until this year, when she came to middle school and noticed how the lunch tables and cliques were segregated. That prompted a whole group discussion on the topic; it seemed everyone had something related to share.

My time at the middle school demonstrated how much difference a single year and a vastly different school environment could have on students’ identity development. It also showed me how much further my lessons could be pushed if they were implemented with students who have had more exposure to societal pressures surrounding identity.

This is not to say that my lessons weren’t useful with a slightly younger group. On the contrary, I think that introducing students to the idea that their identity is – and will be – policed by society and impacted by systemic forces is powerful, even before students know exactly what that means for them personally. As they negotiate what to wear, how to act, and all the other ways we express our identities, I believe that having an awareness of socially constructed pressures will help young people more intentionally define their identity for themselves, and not for anyone else.

In September, most of the students in Naomi’s class will head to the regional middle school. In that larger, older, and more diverse environment, they will be forced to confront their identities in ways that they haven’t had to before. I can only hope that our discussions of stereotypes, systemic forces, and the struggle against societal expectations will help them resist a culture hell bent on putting them into boxes.

Who I Am

By Faith

Who I am

African American or black

I say I’m black

But society wants to hold me down to just

African American

My race

My thinking

Who I am

Shouldn’t be bound down to just

African American

I’m American

Yes

African

No

Who I am

People of society can’t tell me

I am strong willed

But that doesn’t matter to society

They don’t think it describes

Who I am

Telling me I’m African American

IS NOT

Who I am

Telling me I’m black

IS TELLING ME

Who I am

No one can tell me

Who I am

So I have to tell myself

I am Black

The Toy Dinosaur

By Sara

One morning I was happy to wake up and go to Sunday school. I knew that today was going to be a special day, Toy Day. I arrived at the small building and started playing with my friends.

Everybody had already gotten there toys. I noticed how all the girls were playing with the same dolls, and the boys were playing with the same action figures. I figured out that I should probably get a Barbie or something. I looked in a box to find something to play with. I saw dolls, Barbies, Polly pockets, action figures, and more. I reached my hand to the bottom to see what else there was. My hand searched through it. Then I accidently hit a button that made a toy dinosaur rawer. I thought this was an awesome toy, a lot better than a Barbie. I took it out, and went back to all my friends.

I was playing with it for about a minute when my friends started staring at me. They saw what I was holding and were very surprised that I wasn’t playing with a Barbie or something. They asked me why I choose that toy out; I just shrugged and explained to them how I thought it was awesome. Some girls thought it was weird, but others thought that the dinosaur was cool.

A boy arrived late and there were only a few Barbies left. He looked around the room then saw what I was playing with. He walked over to me and said that I had to give him the dinosaur. He told me that there were no more “boy toys” left and I should go and get a “girl toy.” At first I told him “no” and that I liked the toy. But then he called me “weird” and “freaky.” I didn’t understand why I was weird and freaky, but I didn’t want to be called that. I sadly gave the toy to him because I obviously wasn’t allowed to play with it. At this time I was only six and I was already learning the “rules” of being a girl or boy.

India – I am From

By Ayjay

I am from India,

The place I was born,

And brown skinned.

The night is so dark there,

I can’t see my hands in front of my face.

The stars are like

Tiny suns in the night,

Where I did everything

Until I was two,

I am here,

People everywhere

And I am Indian.

India – I am From

I am from India,

The place I was born.

Where there are people of all colors,

But many people don’t know it.

White people, brown people

People from around the world,

Where there are rich cities,

Poor cities,

Many of them flourish,

Some kids work all day,

Some sit idly

Anyway they both work hard,

And most get a reward.

Food like the heavens there,

But some food is okay to share,

Actors everywhere,

Religions all ‘round

You’ll hear everyone’s sound

In India, my hometown.

“…But what does this have to do with today?” Discussing Race and Systemic Inequality [Part II]

“We’re the rainbow team!” Marcus announces, two days into our section on racism and structural oppression. I have just split the class up into two table groups based on whether or not they are wearing the color red. We are about to play the card game I created to explore systemic discrimination. Previously, I had been calling the groups the “red team” and the “not-wearing red team.” I guess they don’t like being defined by what they are not.

Grinning, I deal in the teams from their respective decks (the red team is privileged with face cards), and then ask the two teams to each send half of their players to the other team’s table, so that everyone is mixed up. “But remember what team you’re on!”

With a sudden eruption of activity, the students begin playing, and the room fills with laughter and the gleeful or dismayed exclamations of fourteen twelve-year-olds. I can’t help but smile as I watch them play; it’s the most alive I’ve seen them outside of recess.

After about five minutes, I ask them to pause. “Okay, everyone count your cards – without looking at them! Who is winning?” Three out of the four students with vastly more cards than their peers are from the red group. “That’s interesting,” I say, “Why do you think most of them are from the red team?”

Faith immediately suggests that the red team was given better cards at the start of the game. “Maybe,” I reply simply, trying to hide my delight.

“Oh, well they also had that rule where they got a card if they couldn’t get back in! We don’t have that,” adds Marcus, looking supremely disappointed.

“You’re right. Ok, so when we start playing in a second, I am going to remove that rule,” I tell them, “Now everyone will have to knock to get back in; no one gets a card from me.”

I start to ask them to resume playing, but Marcus interrupts me. “No, that still won’t be fair,” he says firmly, “They already had that rule for a long time, now you have to give it to us.” I am thoroughly impressed. I had no idea students would be able to make that connection so quickly.

“Well, that’s not how the game works. The rules have to be the same for everyone now.” He continues to frown, but doesn’t protest any further. “But first, is there anyone from the red team who is currently out?” A brilliant and generally shy Indian boy named Ayjay raises his hand, along with Will and Danielle. “From the red team,” I repeat. Everyone but Ayjay lowers their hand, frowning. “Okay, here’s a card – it’s the last one you’ll get from me,” I tell him, dropping a face card onto the table and ignoring the various cries of “that’s not fair!”   

Soon, students are happily playing again. I watch as Faith and Danielle stare intently at Caleb and Alisha’s card battle, knocking and then scrambling to snatch up the doubles before the winner takes them in. After another five minutes, I stop the game. “Okay everyone, please keep your cards and come sit on the carpet.

“So who won?” I ask, “Go ahead, count your cards.” This time, there are three Big Winners, and two of them are from the red team. All three of them have well over twenty cards each.

“Why is that? I ask again.

A rush of excited and bitter yells suddenly overwhelms me. Though students’ individual responses are at first hard to discern, I hear the word “unfair” again and again. Faith repeats that she thinks the red team was given better cards. I pause, waiting for the commotion to ebb with a placid expression, appreciating how all of the students’ answers focus on the structure of the game, rather than each player’s competence, or lack thereof, at playing it. In the mainstream discourse on those who “make it” economically (or don’t), the last thing people tend to mention is the unequal opportunity structure of this country.

When the din finally fades, I tell them, “Faith is right. I manipulated the decks before we played and gave the red team face cards and only gave the rainbow team number cards.” I sit through another wave of exclamations, smiling this time. “Why else do you think the reds won more?” I ask them a moment later.

“That rule!” Marcus cries.

“Yeah, that rule that kept giving me cards when I got out, “Ayjay adds.

“But why does that matter? I took away that rule during the second round so it would be fair,” I assure them, feigning confusion.

“But we still had our cards from last time!” calls Hakim through a wide grin. He was one of the winners.

“That’s right,” I say, “You all kept your cards, even though you won them with unfair rules.” I ask Marcus to repeat his point about giving the rainbow team the free card rule in order to make it fairer.

“So even though I eventually made the rules the same for everyone,” I sum up, “And that seems like it’s fair, really it’s not, because it ignores the fact that the rules favored one team first.” I pause, allowing a moment for the point to sink in.

Alisha breaks the silence, “Wait, so are you gonna give something to the winners?” she asks hopefully.

“Didn’t we just figure out that the game was rigged? Do you think it would be fair if I awarded the winners?”

Most of the students respond with an unequivocal “No,” and I can’t help but notice the winning students are less emphatic in their reply.

“So if this game were supposed to represent something real in society, what do you think that is?”

Alexis’ hand shoots up. “Racism.”

“Good, why?”

She scrunches her nose. “Because you privileged one group.” Alexis’ vocabulary consistently amazes me. As a class, we expand upon her answer, detailing the privileges of the red group and how the structure of the game mirrors the material privileges and disadvantages of whites and people of color in the US.

However, as I began to make the parallels between the game and real life discrimination explicit, pointing out how blacks were legally barred from well paying jobs, educational institutions, and housing, Alexis strikes a very different tone. “But what does that have to do with today?” she snaps, rolling her eyes. Is she already exhibiting white resentment toward discussing the significance of historic racism?

“Everything,” I tell her, “Those face cards that people started with didn’t go anywhere – the people who won them when the rules were unfair still had them at the end of the game, even after the rules were changed. The new rules didn’t make them give up anything they had gained under the discriminatory rules.” Alexis remains quiet, chewing her bottom lip without looking at me, and I can tell she is thinking hard.

*      *      *

There are only two blue-eyed students in the class; the rest of them have brown. They all stand in a line, and I watch as Naomi takes each of their invisible job applications with a mock-thoughtful expression. “It would be illegal for Ms. Pierre to only allow blue eyed people to apply,” I narrate our simulation, “So instead, she takes all of the job applications, but only seriously considers the ones from blue-eyed people.” It’s the penultimate day of the identity unit, and our last lesson apart from the final writing assignment, which we will do tomorrow.

“Instead of deciding between fourteen people, how many is Ms. Pierre actually choosing between?” I ask the as ‘applicants’ sit back down on the carpet.

“Just two,” offers Stacy.

“That’s right, just Alexis and Sara. All the rest of you weren’t even considered by Ms. Pierre or her company, because they are discriminating against brown-eyed people. So for Alexis and Sara, there really wasn’t that much competition.”

“Well, what’s the problem then? I got the job, didn’t I?” Alexis asks pointedly. Behind her, Jaden nods vigorously.

Naomi and I are appropriately unsettled, but I try and remain composed. “So you think it’s right and it’s fair that you got the job because other people were discriminated against?”

“Well, what good is not taking the job gonna do?” Alexis counters.

“Yeah!” Jaden adds, “If she doesn’t take that job, the next blue-eyed person that applies will.”

“It’s true – if she doesn’t take the job just because she knows the company is racist,” Will jumps in, “Then she’ll be out on the street along with the brown-eyed people that couldn’t get the job, and then some other blue-eyed person will just take it…”

Faith, who had previously been hugging her knees and staring absentmindedly at the carpet, suddenly lights up. “But what if they boycott it?” These simple words trigger more “Ooohs” than I can track, and the students begin to talk over each other with their revelations.

Will works through it aloud. “Oh yeah! So, if every blue-eyed person were to not take that job because it was discriminating…” He trails off, his eyes growing so wide I worry he might strain himself.

“…Then maybe that employer would be forced to stop discriminating,” I finish his thought. The class seems to breathe a collective sigh of comprehension, and I know we’re ready to move on.

For the second part of the lesson, Naomi and I pass out a list of white privileges that I composed to be accessible for sixth graders, drawing largely from Peggy McIntosh’s famous article, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege. We ask students to read over and discuss the list in pairs before exploring it as a group.

“We’re going to go around the circle now, and I want each pair of you to share one item from the list that you found surprising, interesting, confusing, or important,” I tell them about ten minutes later. As we go around, it becomes clear that students are most fixated on the privileges that have apparent exceptions, such as the ability to find foods that fit white cultural traditions.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Jaden states, “At my grocery store, they have lots of food from all over.” Naomi and I tell him that unless he is shopping at the International Foods Market, his grocery store probably has an aisle or two dedicated to culturally diverse foods, but not much more. But Jaden is insistent, so Naomi shares a couple stories about being unable to find Haitian food locally, and having to shop around to even find black beauty products.

“But what about Amherst Chinese?” Alisha asks. “There are lots of Chinese restaurants around.”

“But do you really think that the Chinese food you eat in those restaurants is anything like what Chinese people actually eat in China?” I reply. It is clearly the wrong tactic, as several students nod their heads earnestly.

“Yeah,” Stacy says, “Especially if there are Chinese people working there.” Thankfully, Ms. D is in the room at the time. She tells the class that her son works at a Chinese restaurant and often notices that what the Chinese employees eat on their breaks is nothing like what’s on the menu. While her story ends this debate, it is only the first of many.

Jaden seems to take particular issue with many of the items on the list. As a very light skinned boy of Puerto Rican descent (Naomi and I both read him as white initially), I often wonder how he thinks of himself. “Black people have a lot of these privileges too,” he tells me, “They are in the newspaper, and in sports and music.”

“You’re right,” I concede, “Black people are certainly represented in sports and music – it’s a notable exception. But you know, a lot of that has to do with the fact that white people have a long history of allowing black people to entertain them, so in a way, black representation in those areas makes sense.” This point seems to go over most of their heads, so I add, “But black people are only one group of color, what about Asian representation? Or Native American? Besides, remember the ‘one-hand rule?’ A few exceptions still prove the rule.”

Jaden considers this for a moment, still eyeing the list with skepticism. Eventually, he mumbles a begrudging, “Okay…” and soon, it is his turn to share an item from the list. He mentions the privilege of being able to talk with your mouth full or be late without having people put it down to your race. “I don’t get this one. These things are just rude.”

“Yes, but it’s about those rude things not being attributed to the color of your skin if you’re white,” I reply.

“But no one of any color is supposed to be late!” he cries, “It’s just rude!”

Caleb stops poking Marcus in the leg with his pencil long enough to reply, “Yeah, but when white people are late other people don’t say ‘oh, it must be because you’re white.’”

Jaden frowns. “It’s still rude…”

Faith and her partner are up next. They talk about the privilege of being able to purchase “flesh” colored Band-Aids.

Immediately, Alexis, Jaden, and Will cry out in protest. “But those don’t match anyone’s skin tone!” Alexis insists.

“True, but whose do they match more?” I ask, and Will slowly nods in understanding.

Alexis persists, holding out her arm, “But look – I’m white, and they wouldn’t match my skin!”

“But what about mine?” Naomi asks, rolling up a sleeve. “If I have a cut on my arm and want a Band-Aid that blends in because I need to look professional, what am I supposed to do?”

“Get superhero ones.”

“Try the clear ones.”

“Roll down your sleeve.”

“But why should I have to make all these accommodations?” She asks, “Shouldn’t I be able to buy Band-Aids in ‘flesh’ color just like white people?” The class is silent. “That’s always what it comes down to: people of color are considered ‘different’ by society, and have to make accommodations white people don’t, because white people are considered ‘normal.’ Everything is made for them.”

The class remains still, absorbing Naomi’s words. After a moment, I ask students to look at the list and try to find examples of the type of privilege Naomi is talking about – the privilege of being ‘normal.’ It seems a fitting place to end the lesson. To wrap up, I ask the class to picture the “average American.” “What race is the person that you are picturing?” Going one step further, I ask them – regardless of whether or not they believe – to picture Jesus.

“Whoa!” exclaims Will, comprehension dawning, “He’s white too!” The power of normalization is truly astounding, and I think they are beginning to see it.

Day Eleven: Power Structures, part II

Lesson Development: Building off of yesterday’s lesson on how historic forces have shaped current inequality and landscapes of opportunity in the US, today I wanted to explore how contemporary systemic discrimination and privilege operates. Specifically, I wanted to highlight the concept of white privilege in concrete, accessible ways. To do this, I created a list of white privileges that I thought sixth graders would be able to understand by drawing from and expanding upon the list of white privileges in Peggy McIntosh’s  essay, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Additionally, I felt it was important that students begin thinking about what they can do to change oppressive systems. I wanted them to understand how even speaking out against – and so calling attention to – racist, sexist, etc. comments or actions is essential in an era where people believe racism and sexism are largely things of the past.

• Review yesterdays card game:
• · What was it? Why did we play it? What were the two main things that made it unfair? What did that represent?

• How do racism and other forms of systemic discrimination operate today?
• Physically run through a scenario/skit to illustrate this: Ms. Pierre is working for a corporation that is hiring right now. Everyone in the class needs a job, so we all have to apply. That’s fifteen people all going for the same job! A lot of competition, it’s going to be hard to get that job… But what if Ms. Pierre imposes her prejudice on the job – she decides that someone with brown eyes just isn’t what she’s looking for. She doesn’t make that official – that would be illegal now – so she still lets everyone apply, she just doesn’t seriously consider anyone with brown eyes.
• · Now how many people are left competing for the same job?
• · Is it easier or harder for non-brown eyed people to get that job now?
• · Do the non-brown eyed people even notice?

• Even though official discrimination is illegal now, when many people in positions of power hold prejudice, it becomes part of a system.     
  

• All of the identities that society values less – women, people of color, queers, etc. – are targeted by this type of discrimination. It happens in different key areas (applying for a house/apartment, a loan, an education, a job) that affect people’s ability to make money.

• What do people need that money for in our society? What does class mean? Turn to your neighbor and try to come up with important things that people need money for. Report back (make the connections between student ideas and human necessities).

• What is the opposite of discrimination? Privilege – in the context of identity, privilege is unearned advantage based on someone else’s systemic disadvantage.
• · In our employment scenario, the non-brown eyed people were privileged­­ – meaning that because the corporation only wanted people like them, they benefited from it discriminating against people with brown eyes.
• · In the game we played on Tuesday, the red group had certain privileges that made it easier for them to win.
• · Another way to think about it is to flip stats: saying “blacks are six times more likely to be shot by police than whites” is the same as saying “whites are six times less likely to be shot by police than blacks” – the second way highlights the privilege of being white. “The wealth of the median white household is fifteen times the wealth of the median black household.”

• What are some privileges people have because they are white? Pass out the list and have students read them over with their neighbor. Have students ‘turn and talk’ about any that stand out to them – are surprising, confusing, or that they think are especially important. In a few minutes, report back to the class and discuss. **Mention being considered “normal” as a privilege if they don’t**

White Privilege

What is privilege? In the context of race and other identities, it is an unearned advantage stemming from someone else’s systemic disadvantage.

What are some privileges I have if I am white?

• I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
• I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.
• I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
• I can be sure that in school, I will learn all about the accomplishments of my race.
• When I am told about our national heroes or about “civilization,” I am told that people of my race created it.
• I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
• I can talk with my mouth full, or be late, or do almost anything, and not have people put this down to my race.
• I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
• I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
• I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed because of my race.
• If a cop pulls me over, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
• I can think over many options of what to do with my life without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
• I can choose band-aids in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.
• When I think of the “typical” American citizen, I picture of a person of my race.
• I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life (schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, media consumption, etc).

• Does it seem fair that one group has these privileges?
• · Can you think of similar privileges other identities that society values more might have?
• · Nearly everyone is privileged in some ways. In what ways do you benefit from discrimination against others?

• The people with more privilege need to be made aware that discrimination is still a significant problem. Like we saw in our card game and employment simulation, privilege is often invisible nowadays. The rules no longer say to give an extra card to the red team, and the non-brown eyed people don’t notice that they are given priority in applying for the job…

• What do we do about it? What are some reasons these systems are still in place? The first step to changing things is noticing unfair treatment and speaking up. If people don’t believe the system is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., then why would they want to change anything? For example, most white people don’t believe racism is a problem. According to polls from about ten years ago, as little as 6% of whites believe racism is still a serious problem. Even in 1963 (pre-Civil Rights Act), two thirds of whites polled by Newsweek said that blacks were treated equally in their communities, while 85% said black children had equal educational opportunities.

• Closing: breaking the silence – connect speaking up to bullying, a subject which the students should all be familiar with (a presentation was done last month). “Remember that time when Mr. S came in and you talked about why bullying continues? What do most kids do when they see another kid get bullied?” Silence in the face of discrimination works the same way – it encourages it. It says that you are OK with what is happening. If you don’t say something, who will?

Day Twelve: Writing About Identity

Lesson Development: As this was the last day of the unit, I wanted to give students the opportunity to critically engage the issues we have been talking about for the past three weeks through writing. I developed the following prompts (with the exception of the last one, which is a staple identity-themed prompt), trying to allow students many different ways of expressing themselves while keeping it directly related to our unit. These prompts, including the introduction, appear on a handout they were given exactly as they are written below.

Today we are going to write about our identities. In this unit, we have been talking about the identities that society pays attention to, like our sex, race, class, sexuality, physical ability, etc. Over the past three weeks, we have been talking about the different messages society sends us about our identities and how these affect people’s lives. How has your identity affected you? There is no right or wrong answer. The goal is to write about your own thoughts, feelings, and opinions on the subject. Please take your time and respond to one of the following prompts:

• Look back on the pieces you’ve written in this unit. Revise or expand one of those pieces. Things to think about: have you told the whole story? What are you trying to say with the story? Is it clear? Have you included your own thoughts or feelings in it?

• Think back on the lessons from the past three weeks. Is there one idea or piece of information that was new or surprising to you? How has this idea changed the way you think about our society or your identity? Write an essay about an idea or piece of information that we have talked about and why it is important to you.

• We have been talking a lot about the “rules,” expectations, and stereotypes society has about different identities. For example, society wants us to believe that boys have to be tough and girls have to do housework. Write a short story about a time when you noticed there were certain “rules” or expectations for your identity. Was there a time when you were told to play with certain toys, learn certain activities, or be like certain people because of your identity? How do you feel about this?

• If you were asked the question “how do you identify,” how would you answer? Has this unit on identity affected your answer at all? If so, how? Write an essay about what your answer would be and why.

• Write a poem beginning with the phrase, “I am from…” Use this poem to explore one or more parts of your identity. What does your identity mean to you? Why is it important?

Day Ten: Power Structures, part I

Lesson Development: I created this lesson in an attempt to provide students with an accessible simulation of the real world effects that systemic discrimination – specifically racism – has on society. I wanted to create an easy to play game that would clearly illustrate the way privilege and discrimination make it easier and harder for certain groups to acquire and retain wealth, and to get students thinking about how efforts to redress inequality must take into account how the economic “playing field” is not, and has never been, level.

As readers can see in the structure of the card game below, I specifically designed it with the historic economic experience of African-Americans in mind. However, the parallels the game draws to legal discrimination, as well as the consolidation of wealth, allow the game to provide more general lessons on systemic inequality and privilege. There are also references to specific moments in the history of United States’ racial opportunity structure. Part Two of the game is meant to represent the post-Civil Rights era, where white supremacy is no longer inscribed in law, but de facto white economic privilege remains. At the same time, the second phase of the game also provides one more added “bump” for some players, intended to represent the way the GI Bill, which, only two decades prior to the Civil Rights Movement, provided many white soldiers returning from World War II with privileged access to jobs, education, and housing.

I chose to call the game Bootstraps, referencing the false idea that the socioeconomic structure in the US provides all people with equal economic opportunities, an idea invoked by the old expression, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”          

Card Game: Bootstraps (or alternately, Stacking the Deck)

• This game is played a lot like the card game War: Players get an equal number of cards which they are not allowed to see. To play, players simultaneously overturn their top card onto the table. Whoever has the highest card value gets to take the other players’ overturned cards and shuffle them into their stack. Repeat. The winner is whoever manages to get everyone’s cards, or whoever has the most cards when the game is stopped.

• Start this game with two decks. Making sure students don’t notice, remove ten face cards from the decks and set them aside for the dealers pile. Then, stack the decks so that both have an equal number of cards, but one has nearly all of the face cards.

•  Part 1
• Divide the class into two groups. Somewhere between half and two thirds of all players should be in one group. It would be ideal to divide them by eye color (for example, a brown eyed group and a non brown eyed group), though if this does not achieve the desired sizes of the two groups, another method of division based on physical appearance should be used (ie hair color, jean-wearing, etc.). The larger group gets dealt from the face card deck. The other groups get dealt from the numbers deck. Players must not be aware that the decks are different.

• Deal each student X number of cards (the number will depend on the total number of players) from their respective deck, and then have players cluster in groups of three or four, making sure players from different groups are appropriately mixed. The game will not work if it is only played between members of the same group. If a single player winds up with all the cards from their cluster, they should go merge with another cluster, joining smaller ones first.

• If a player looses all their cards, they should sit and watch their cluster continue playing. A player can get back into the game by knocking on the table if they see doubles (two cards of the same number or face) appear in the round. These players must knock before the winner of the round takes the cards for themself. If the player knocks in time, that player wins the cards from that round and rejoins the game. False knocks render a player’s next knock ineffective.

• If a player from the larger (privileged) group has not gotten back in after three rounds, they are granted a card from the dealers pile (players from the smaller group must keep trying to get themselves back in without assistance from the dealer).

• Freeze the game after a few minutes. Ask players: Who is winning? Why? Does this game seem fair?

• Part 2
• Everyone keeps their cards. From now on, all players must knock until they get back in (players from the larger group aren’t granted a card from the dealer after three rounds anymore). Before this new rule goes into effect, however, the dealer should grant a face card to anyone in the larger group who is currently out. Resume playing.

• Part 3, processing the game
• After a few more minutes, freeze the game again and see who is winning. Ask players to hold onto their cards and form a circle for discussion. During the course of processing, reveal the truth about the decks when it seems appropriate. Processing questions include the following:
• · How did you like that game?
• · Who is winning? What group are they from? Why do you think that is?
• · If you were winning, how did you feel about it?
• · How did it feel to be losing?
• · Did the game seem fair? Why or why not?
• · What happened after everyone had to knock to get back in? Was it more fair? What would make it more fair?
• · Why do you think we played this game? What might it represent?

• Discuss how certain groups such as African-Americans (in addition to other groups of color) have historically been prevented from gaining wealth by the legal and social structure of the US, and how this has affected wealth to this day. It may be necessary to review to the household wealth gap by race that we discussed previously. Even after laws were changed to supposedly provide equal opportunity to all groups, inequality persists. This parallels the game, in that changing the rules to be more even or “fair” was not enough to change which group ultimately acquired more cards because players were still suffering the effects of the previous, obviously unfair rules.

• Discuss the specific ways the game mirrors the structure of opportunity: for instance, how it often takes money get a good education, get into college, and subsequently secure a well paying job that might allow you to buy a house, etc. In the game, it takes powerful cards to acquire more cards and to hold onto those cards.

• The game also mirrors something else: consolidation of wealth.
• · How many people were left with cards at the end? How many were not?
• · Which group were the players with the highest number of cards from?
• · Out of the players who still have cards, how many do they have?

• Wealth Gap (draw on board): The wealthiest 1% of the US population own 33% of all household wealth. The poorest 50% only own 2.5% of wealth. The other 49% of the population own the rest (64.5%)…

“…But what does this have to do with today?” Discussing Race and Systemic Inequality [Part I]

“Why did they do that?” Will asks me on the afternoon of my first day at Miller’s Hill. I have just explained how scientists let four hundred black men go with untreated syphilis for nearly half a century in order to study the effects of the disease.

I hesitate, my eyes lingering on his otherwise blank “Tuskegee Experiment” note card. How do you explain the dehumanization of racism to an eleven year old? “Well, the scientists, who were white, thought that they could do whatever they wanted to black people.”

“But why?” He scrunches his brow, genuinely confused.

I continue, “Since white people were in power – and for the most part, they still are – they could do horrible things to black people without consequences. So sometimes, they used them for experiments.”

Will’s eyes suddenly widen. “That’s awful!”

“It is. And the experiment would have continued if the press hadn’t found out about it and made it public in the seventies. Of course by then, many of the subjects had already died from the disease, and the others were very sick.”

Will is suddenly solemn, his mouth opening and closing slightly as his eyes dart from me to the Wikipedia page. Outside of Slavery, it might be the first time he has heard of any state sanctioned atrocities his racial group has perpetrated.

One month later, Naomi and I sit with the class on the carpet for our race and racism lesson. “So, who can tell me the definition of racism?” I ask the class, soliciting the mainstream definition before expanding it into racial prejudice plus institutional power. Surprisingly, students accept this new definition with little contestation.

“So how do people have power in our society?” I continue, “What does that mean?”

“Like, having a lot of money?” offers Sara, a quiet, tall, and tremendously freckled white student.

“Right! Having money is one way people can be powerful in society. What else?” Students consider the question for a moment. When no responses are forthcoming, I direct their attention to the back wall, where we have hung the ads from the gender lesson, under the heading, “What do these images tell us about ourselves?”

“What about those ads and the messages they send? Do you think people who control the media are powerful?” The class offers a collective noise of agreement before we discuss other powerful people in society, like politicians, lawmakers, police, corporate leaders, and education administrators.

“And what race are most of people in these positions?”

Without hesitation – and almost in unison – the class responds, “White.”

Alexis suddenly perks up. “They’re all men, too!” I am increasingly awed by students’ perceptiveness and acceptance of concepts and information so contrary to mainstream messages.

“Being in power is about more than political positions or laws. As we just mentioned, it’s also about the media and who we see.” Naomi tells them, “For example, think about Disney movies. What race are the main characters usually?”

Several students murmur, “White,” Before Jaden, exclaims, “But what about Mulan or Pocahontas? They’re not white!” A few students nod their heads in support.

“That’s true, there are definitely exceptions to the rule,” I say. “But generally, if you can count all the exceptions on one hand, it’s actually proving the rule.” Jaden gawks, and then leads the class in counting off Disney princesses of color one by one.    

“Pocahontas… Mulan… Taina from The Princess and the Frog… and…. and…”

“Jasmine,” I supply. “But don’t even get me started on Aladdin.” Naomi chuckles. I watch as Jaden stares at his four raised fingers and slowly lowers his hand.

“Oh…” he says glumly, a sound echoed by many of his classmates.

“Another good example is Barack Obama,” I add. “Just because a black person is president – arguably the most powerful position in the country – doesn’t mean that there isn’t still racism or that most political positions aren’t held by white men.”

As the discussion progresses, Faith shares a story about being out with her father and a witnessing a young white child exclaim to his mother, “He’s black!” and then behave fearfully toward them.

“Training to be racist happens from an early age,” Naomi responds. “And it may not be obvious, either. That mother probably didn’t tell her child to hate or fear black people, but often the messages we send about race are subtle.” The usual side conversation dies down as students stare intently at Naomi. “When a mother and her child walk down the street past a group of Latinos, and the mother holds her purse a little tighter, or even crosses to the other side, that sends the message to her child that those people are scary, even if she doesn’t say it.”

Following the discussion about societal power and learned racism, students ask a flurry of questions that bounce from one topic to another faster than I can track. In answering a question regarding how current systemic racism operates, I talk about how the police disproportionately target people of color. “So today, racism and violence is no longer as visible or ‘in your face’ as the KKK was pre-Civil Rights Movement.” I pause, noting some students’ confused faces. “You have all heard of the Civil Rights Movement and the Ku Klux Klan, right?” About half the class nods. The rest remain expressionless, some cock their heads to the side. Did I know what the Civil Rights Movement was in sixth grade? Though this catches me off guard, Naomi later tells me she is unsurprised. We offer a brief explanation of the Movement and discuss how the KKK used white institutional power to get away with murder.

“Back then, public hangings of black folks called ‘lynchings’ were common,” I say to the class. “It was even a celebration of sorts – white people would bring their families – their children – to watch black people get hanged.” The silent disquiet that had settled over the room is suddenly shattered by students’ exclamations.

“What?!”

“They brought children?!”

“I can’t believe it!”

“That’s it, I’m staying in my house from now on!” Faith declares, after which Naomi and I ardently assure her that lynchings no longer occur.

“Besides,” Naomi adds, “You’re probably safer in the white neighborhood you live in than a black neighborhood in the city, because neighborhoods of color are more policed.”

Despite their recent surge of interest, student engagement is beginning to wane again. Unsurprisingly, several pairs of twelve-year-old eyes are now glued to the clock, which reads three-minutes-‘til-recess. Naomi and I wrap up the lesson for today, immediately agreeing to expand it into tomorrow in order to cover everything we want, including exploring how racism and white supremacy were created, contemporary racial inequality, and deconstructing racial stereotypes.

In the afternoon, I watch a short play the students have been working on with Naomi. As the students prepare the set, Marcus, a sweet, quick-to-laugh Latino student, goes to get materials from the cupboards in the back of the room.

“Hey Marcus! Get the cup while you’re over there!” calls Caleb, a blonde white student with a penchant for basketball shorts and occasional attitude.

“Psst, why you always gotta do that Caleb?” Marcus retorts, smirking, “You think I’m your slave? It’s cause I’m not white, isn’t it?”

“Yup, that’s it,” says Caleb, laughing with Marcus as he takes the plastic cup. The two boys are good friends, and commonly joke with each other about racial difference. They are not the only ones; I have overheard several lightly made comments on race and racism from many other students in the class. For me, instances like this highlight the fact that for most of the sixth graders, race/ism is not yet personally salient. Sure, they notice and comment on difference; but openly – without the pain, anger, or defensiveness I often hear in adult discussions on race. For the most part, these students of color and white students seem able to joke and talk about racism without being deeply stung by it, or realizing they are violating the (white) taboo on discussing – or even pointing out – race and racism. It is saddening to realize that this openness will probably erode swiftly as the student’s leave their insulated, K-6 elementary school environment and enter larger, racially stratified middle schools. Here, their relationship to the subject of race/ism is likely to shift as their own racial identity becomes more relevant to those around them, and subsequently, to themselves.

*      *      *

During our second day on race, Naomi and I spend most of the lesson giving students facts on the creation of white supremacy and what contemporary racism/racial inequality looks like. “How do you think racism and white supremacy began?” I ask the class as we form our customary circle on the floor.

Many of the students consider the question, looking thoughtful. “It started during the time of Slavery, in the late 1600s. Now, slavery existed in other cultures too – like the Greeks,” I tell them (they have recently started a unit on ancient Greece).  “But the Atlantic Slave Trade was the first system of slavery to be based exclusively on race.” I flip to a clean sheet of chart paper and draw three green circles on it. “These circles represent the rich European colonist who owned slaves back then.” I draw five more circles with a red marker underneath the others. “These circles represent the slaves they owned. In addition to slaves, these rich Europeans also owned indentured servants. Indentured servants were a lot like slaves, except that they only had to work for a certain amount of years, and when that time was up, they were free.” I draw five more circles next to the red ones, this time in blue. “These indentured servants were usually poor Europeans who traded their years of service to rich people in order to get a spot on a boat from Europe to the Colonies.”

“Do you think that slaves and servants liked serving the rich Europeans?” I ask, making sure I still have students’ attention.

A quick, resounding “No” greets my ears.

“They sure didn’t,” I agree. “In fact, slaves and servants would often team up and rebel against their masters to try and escape.” I point to the ten red and blue circles, noting to the class how many more of them there are than the circles representing wealthy colonists. “When they joined forces, the rich Europeans had trouble stopping their rebellions. So the rich people decided to divide them.” I swiftly draw a line between the two bottom rows of circles. All eyes are fixed on the chart paper.

I narrate how the wealthy colonist created the privileged category of whiteness to divide indentured servants from slaves in an effort to keep them both in bondage. Throughout (or maybe, in spite of) my monologue, students remain engaged, I think in large part due to the help of a visual. They accept this new bit of history, undoubtedly omitted from their textbooks, with more interest than contestation. To them, I imagine, this is just another chapter in American history; business as usual. To many older students and adults, however, this bit of history tends to be met with challenges, hostility, or at the very least, surprise.

Soon, we turn our attention to what contemporary white supremacy looks like. Naomi and I offer students some basic statistics on wealth, housing, education, and incarceration by race. Realizing how useful visuals are for the class, Naomi draws a rectangle on the chart paper, making a grid of fifteen tiny squares inside it. “So if this is the wealth of the average white family,” she says, pointing to the whole rectangle, “Then this is the wealth of the average black family.” She shades in one square of the grid.

“What?!” Faith gasps. Other students make similar noises, ranging from astonishment to outrage.

“It’s true,” Naomi assures them.

“So why might this be?” I ask, “Why do whites have so much more wealth? Or why do they go to college more?”

“Well, maybe white people just want to go to college more,” Jaden answers impatiently.

“Hmm, no, I don’t think that’s it…” Naomi says.

“That’s often what people will think if they don’t know about systemic racism, though,” I add. “That’s why it’s so important to talk about.” Naomi and I use this as a jumping off point to discuss the unequal structure of opportunity, and how hard it is to navigate getting into college if no adults in your life have attended.

We conclude the lesson by examining and dispelling some well-circulated stereotypes about racial groups. To get the class started, I refer to a story I read yesterday afternoon about a Lebanese teenager who gets racially profiled at the airport. As usual, students lose focus as recess approaches. However, when Naomi and I check in later, we are both satisfied with the progress made today. “I think it was eye opening for a lot of them,” she tells me. “Many of them had never thought about racial inequality before.”

go to part II –>

Day Seven: Thinking About Race

Lesson Development: My main goal in this lesson was to introduce students to the definition of racism as racial prejudice plus power, a definition contrary to the mainstream definition of racism simply as racial prejudice. I felt it was essential the students have some context for systemic racism, so I also included a brief history on the creation of white supremacy. Additionally, I wanted to use the lesson as an opportunity to analyze some of our own racial prejudices and stereotypes. To get the conversation on stereotyping started, I employed another essay from Starting with I called My Lebanese Passport, by a Lebanese teenager who gets racially profiled at the airport. Lastly, I wanted to use the lesson to explore some false or problematic notions of race/ism the students had expressed during previous lessons, such as the belief that white people are all mixed race, or that racist jokes are OK as long as no one they offend is present. It is important to note that this is entirely too much to tackle in one day; after failing to get through the lesson in a single day, I split it across two.

• Define Race: Race refers to our physical characteristics, especially skin tone, which is regulated by a chemical in our skin called melanin. Physical characteristics of racial groups are the only things genetic about race. Everything else we associate with specific races is learned behavior or a stereotype.

• What does mixed race mean? “Even though a lot of white people have heritage in different countries, it doesn’t mean that they are mixed race. For example, I have Irish, Italian, and French heritage but I’m still just called white.” Racial groups are based on skin color and geographical origin, not necessarily national origin.

• What does “white” mean? What does “people of color” mean?

• What are the different races?

• Define prejudice: Literally, pre-judgment, especially of a person or group.

• Define racism as prejudice plus systemic power. This means people of color can have racial prejudice, but not be racist. This is likely to confuse students at first – they will likely want examples of how white people are in power and how people of color are disadvantaged.

• How do people have power in our society? Who does what? Take answers from the class, important things to discuss include:
• · Running companies
  
• · Voting/holding public office
• · Media control (refer to the ads from day 3 if necessary)
• · Wealth
• · Legal system – police, courts, lawmakers
• · Schools – Whom do we learn about? Who asses students, and how? Naomi suggests discussing NCLB and the achievement gap, as this may resonate.

• “Was it always this way?” How did racism start? In the late 1600s, ruling whites owning both slaves and European indentured servants (people who had debt, wanted passage to a colony, etc – they usually worked in three to seven year contracts to earn their freedom) feared organized revolt. So they divided the two groups by giving their European servants privileges (esp. jobs as slave overseers themselves) African slaves did not have. This made poor Europeans feel that they were more important and better than African slaves. At the same time, Europeans needed justification for keeping Africans in perpetual, race-based slavery, so they made up stories and rumors that said people with darker skin are less than human. The combination of the special privileges given to poor Europeans and a general denigration of all things of color encouraged poor European colonists to see themselves as having more in common with their wealthy European owners and less as an oppressed social class having more in common with African slaves (and therefore, less likely to partner with African slaves to overthrow wealthy Europeans). The idea that whites were superior to other colors also conveniently served as justification for the genocide of the indigenous [define] and the theft of their land (this also fit well with previous justifications of Indigenous peoples being “savage heathens”). “White” replaced terms like “Christian” and “Englishman” to separate European immigrants from Africans and Indigenous peoples as well as other people of color. (Though it is important to note, some later Europeans immigrant groups – notably the Irish and Italians, and more recently, the Jews – were not considered white when they arrived in the US. These groups had to give up parts of their cultural heritage that marked them as foreign before being allowed the privileges of whiteness. Of course, these groups were only able to do so because they had the physical characteristics already associated with whiteness.)  

• Stereotypes: what are stereotypes of racial groups? How are different races represented in the media? Read My Lebanese Passport and discuss its themes. What is racial profiling? As a class, generate a list of other common stereotypes and expectations of racial groups. Images to consider:

• · Blacks and Latin@s as poor, urban, criminal – living in “bad neighborhoods”
• · Latin@s as (undocumented) immigrants only. [“Illegals”]
• · Academic achievement as a “white behavior”
• · Arabs & Middle-Easterners (as well as South Asians) as terrorists or convenience store owners
• · Asian’s as strict, smart, upwardly mobile (“model minority”)
• · Indigenous groups as “backward” “savage” “in a state of nature”

• Why are racist (or sexist, or homophobic, etc.) jokes bad? What do they do?

Day Eight: Thinking About Race, part II

Lesson Development: This plan was created after I was unable to complete the previous lesson on race in a single day. I wanted to use this day to both explore the topics we were unable to finish and to respond to issues students had raised during the previous lesson, such as expanding upon what systemic racism looks like today.

• Review yesterday: Racism=prejudice + power

• · How is this definition different from how you thought of it before?
• · Why do we use this definition?
• · Why does society want us to use the other definition (racism=prejudice)?

• “Was it always this way?” How did racism start?  [repeat: see previous lesson plan]

• What does racism look like today? It may be useful to employ other representations of these stats – either visually with graphs on the board or physically by having students move around the room.

• · The US has the highest incarceration rate on earth – though home to a little less than 5% of world’s population, the US holds 25% of the world’s prisoners. In the US, blacks are imprisoned at least eight times as often as whites. American Indians and Latinos are imprisoned two to three times the rate of whites. About one in three African-American men are either in prison or on parole or probation(!), and about 12% of black men in their 20s and 30s are incarcerated.
• · On average, Blacks are more than six times as likely as Whites to be shot by police, and in large cities are killed by police at least three times more often than Whites. Latinos are about twice as likely as Whites to be shot by police.
• · 30% of white adults had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2005, while 17% of black adults and 12 percent of Hispanic adults had degrees.
• · Last year, the median income for black households was $30,939. $36,278 for Hispanic households and over $50,600 for white households.
• · White median household net worth is about $90,000; in contrast, it is only about $8,000 for the median Latino household and only $6,000 for the median black household – or 1/15^th the worth of the median white household.

• How do people explain these facts? One way is to regard them as evidence of the myth that people of different races are biologically or culturally inferior, an incorrect idea fueled by…

• Stereotypes: what are stereotypes of racial groups? [repeat: see previous lesson plan]

•  Everyone learns these stereotypes, everyone is taught to be prejudice.  Like smog in the air… “What will people think if they look at those racial disparities and they believe the stereotypes?”

•  Why are racist (or sexist, or homophobic, etc.) jokes bad? What do they do? (Reinforce systemic oppression – contribute to the “smog” of racism by validating stereotypes.)

• Wrap up: what can we do about it? Use MLK quote? “…We will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people… but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people…”

Day Nine: Writing About Race

Lesson Development: In this lesson I wanted students to begin exploring their own racial identity through writing. To get the students thinking about ways they might approach writing about their own experience with race, I read another essay from Starting With I. Color Me Different is about the author’s experience of growing up black in a white suburb and his exploration of what it means to be black as well as what race means in general. To further model the assignment, Naomi and I each read something we had written to the prompt. I shared a brief excerpt from a piece included here called Conquistadores about recognizing my whiteness during a standardized test in fifth grade, and Naomi shared a brief piece about how she identifies racially and why.

• Read Color Me Different
• · What was that story about?
• · Why does Jamal feel excluded from different groups/why does he feel like he can’t fit in?
• · Why is the second definition of race he finds empowering to him?

• Read the excerpt from Conquistadores. (FIRST ask if they know what “default” means since I will be using it in the piece.)
• · What happened there?
• · Why did I think white people didn’t have a race?
• · Why did I say white folks weren’t supposed to know it?

• Naomi should read her piece

•  Write about a time in your life when race affected the situation/your experience.
• The first time you realized you were X race.
• Any situation where you had to think about your own racial identity.
• A time when you were treated differently – better or worse – because of your race or a time when you think the situation would have gone differently if you were a different race.
• A time when you felt like an insider or outsider because of your race.
• A time when you were told that people of X race couldn’t act a certain way or do certain things.
• A time when you told someone they could or couldn’t do something because of race.
• Write about what your racial identity means to you. How has what we’ve been talking about affected how you think of your race?