In my morning class, when we read the Times article about Michelle Obama’s “shocking” family tree, we had a conversation about the issue of family histories, about Jefferson and Hemings, about the “important American story” Megan Smolenyak is trying to tell for black people in this country.
“Why might it be hard for African Americans to trace their family histories,” I asked after we’d been talking for a while
Tanya, one of my sweetest, funniest and most endearing teens, had the answer. She was so sure she had the answer. She was ready to explode with it. So I called on her, “Ok, Tanya. Why might researching family history be hard for black people?”
“Because they all look alike?”
” … “
Yeah, I didn’t have anything to say. The class took a collective, scanalized little gasp of a breath, as they all waited to see what I’d do. My brain wasn’t ready for that response, however, so there wasn’t anything to do in that moment but smile, give Tanya a little hug and say, “Trust me that that’s not the reason.” I assured her we’d have that conversation another time, because it was BIG and I didn’t want to get so far away from the article we were supposed to be discussing.
Because we all look alike? Oh dear. Oh dear to the 100th power! I have to say it wouldn’t surprise me as much to hear someone my age say this. But a 17-year-old? What is that?
I walked into class the next day with some photocopies:
I gave each table a set of these pictures and asked them to try to figure out what these women have in common. There were all kinds of guesses. (Someone even imagined that I had magically gotten my hands on photos of Michelle Obama’s family!) Everyone was certain the order in which I’d handed out the photos wasn’t correct, so I said we should look at them from oldest to youngest and I held up the pioneer-looking woman and then I held up the ladies with the Andrews Sisters hair and then the glam photo of the young woman in the cardigan … and then I pointed to myself. Because, of course, all these women are my ancestors: my mother (glam photo), Mildred and my grandmother (Andrews Sisters) and my great-grandmother (pioneer woman).
As one student pointed out: “Even in one family, you don’t all look alike.”
Catching up with Jay, I was happy to find this little history lesson on tap:
As a life-long ‘East Coast Cat” myself, I’m glad Jay chose to step up and share a little knowledge with Larry Johnson about Stonewall and ‘weakness’ … and in the process help us all remember that prejudice starts with ignorance.¹
I’m wondering when calling someone a ‘fag’ is going to stop being a go-to insult.² It’s an easy slur, right? “You fight like a girl,” makes such a smooth slide to, “You’re a fag.” Never mind the fact that there are plenty of girls who could kick anyone’s ass, making that first dig meaningless. The second is more on my radar right now because I’ve begun to hear it a lot more, and I’m wondering what that’s about. Let me just get wild here and say that being gay has nothing to do with anything other than sexual orientation. Lest there be any doubt, let me clarify: being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with physical strength or athletic ability. Being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with the right to have an independent thought. Being gay has nothing to do with who’s at fault for bumping into whom on a crowded street. And yet I hear people called ‘gay’ in all these situations. You let that quarterback get past you? You’re a fag. You chose not to fight that man who got all up in your face? You’re a fag. You have a different opinion? You’re a fag. You accidentally bump someone as you’re walking down the street? You’re a fag.
What is that? What does it even mean when people say it? And why am I suddenly hearing it so often? I’m hearing it almost as much as I did during my politically-incorrect and insensitive high school years, a time during which we would have stared at you with blank incomprehension if you had tried to talk to us about homophobia. (And then we would have snickered, Beavis and Butthead style, because you said ‘homo.’ Ah, the glorious days of my small-town youth!)
But we’re not living decades ago in a freakish upstate backwater. We’re here, in 2009. We know more, we’ve seen more. How can we be getting more stupid rather than less? What are we so afraid of? Where does it stop? How?
__________
¹ I was going to say “prejudice starts with stupidity” because that’s much closer to how I feel and also because I like the little alliterative run it makes, but I thought “ignorance,” while less accurate and more anemic, would make me sound vaguely more tolerant. And Mr. Johnson? Do some homework: Dave Kopay much? Esuara Tuaolo? Get over it, already.
² I have two fronts to fight on here with the go-to insults. Sexual orientation and body size are the two remaining ’safe’ insults … and the former is only safe in a handful of circles. I should probably focus my attention on the fat-phobes, but I feel obligated to spread my vitriol around.
Author’s note: I’m cleaning house today and found this post lying around in my “Draft” folder. It’s from April 30th, so it’s the 14 1/3 weeks before April 30th that this post refers to. Not sure why I never hit “Publish” when this is pretty much whole and says what I wanted to say. WordPress tells me it was last edited at 11:49pm, so did I fall asleep and just forget about it? Weird. In any case, step into my time machine and go back six months to see what I was thinking on a Thursday night in April …
My students and I talked about this last night, about how much we thought we could accomplish in a few months … about how much of that stuff would have real import, about how much might have a positive impact on anyone other than ourselves. We had an interesting list as our brainstorming continued:
get a job
unpack in my new apartment
do community service
get together with other people to work on some big project
do a lot of reading
write a lot of essays
start to learn something new
maybe watch the news more
travel
We talked about it for a while. Fourteen and a third weeks. Fourteen and a third weeks. They had some wacky, not-quite-reality-based ideas, too, but they kept cycling back around to getting stuff done in their houses or with their families and friends.
And then I asked: “About how many days is 14 1/3 weeks?” (And, after the mad scramble to do some math …)
“It’s like 100 days.”
“A hundred days? I heard something about that on TV.”
“Why, what’s 100 days?”
“Isn’t it something about the president?”
And there we were. One hundred days. About three and a half months.
I know the first 100 days is supposed to be a big deal, supposed to tell us what a new administration is going to be like, tell us whether we made the right or wrong choice at the polls months earlier … but can it ever actually to any of that? It is, after all, only three and a half months. What is the real point of putting this kind of pressure on our politicians? Are we really so hungry for instant gratification that we can’t sit back and give our pols half a minute to get things moving? At the same time, I understand wanting to see some movement in the first couple of months, but this still feels like an empty milestone.
So, what’d you get done in the last 14 and 1/3 weeks?
Yes, I’ve left town for another conference. This one’s the National College Transitions Network shingdig in Rhode Island. Today I was here to present as part of a panel. Our session went well: more people than we expected and lots of questions and conversation. We were only marginally prepared — two of our group of four, including me, were last-minute substitutions and weren’t entirely sure what we were going to be doing — but somehow it all came together well and people seemed to like it.
And now I’ve made the surely irresponsible decision to stay over tonight so I can go to the morning sessions tomorrow. I’m feeling guilty about not being in class tomorrow, but we already had a workshop scheduled for the day, so my students will be fine without me. And, too, I’m learning all kinds of things to bring home and make class better for them, so I’m not exactly an ogre for missing tomorrow.
But this has got to be it for a while. I love conferences, but I can’t keep running around like this. I need quality time in my classrooms and in my office. No more conferences until WE LEARN in March. Period.
You can take a 100-question husband or wife quiz (so fair-minded!). I originally took the quiz about year ago and scored a 34, making me a “Poor” 1930s wife. Yeah. I took it again today …
Quel surprise! Clearly in a year I’ve come a little more into my own. No 1930s husbands for me, thank you!
But what about 2009 husbands? Is this quiz an indication of how ornery and set in my ways I am, how little I would be able to adapt to life as a wife? Perhaps I should have AC take this quiz and see what kind of 1930s husband he would be. Then we could compare results and decide if it could possibly make any sense for us to be married.
Yes, that’s right, using mindless internet quizzes to make major life decisions. Exactly.
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I gave each table a set of these pictures and asked them to try to figure out what these women have in common. There were all kinds of guesses. (Someone even imagined that I had magically gotten my hands on photos of Michelle Obama’s family!) Everyone was certain the order in which I’d handed out the photos wasn’t correct, so I said we should look at them from oldest to youngest and I held up the pioneer-looking woman and then I held up the ladies with the Andrews Sisters hair and then the glam photo of the young woman in the cardigan … and then I pointed to myself. Because, of course, all these women are my ancestors: my mother (glam photo), Mildred and my grandmother (Andrews Sisters) and my great-grandmother (pioneer woman).
