stormi

etguas adarkan storminit,

It took a while (in it’s original handwriting) before I broke the code to three pages of allthewordswrittenwithoutspacesbetweenthem. Reading aloud the same sentences over and over, listening for meaning, I sounded like I was practicing lines for a play …full of sound and fury, etc.

Because I told Jose how proud of myself I was that I had been able to break the code, and thus discover how great a writer he was, I was then drowned by his prolific pencil – dooming myself to more 45 minutes per page read-alouds.

Damn, and he learned fast too. In the US for less than a year, he guas an assimilation superhero – thirsty for everything, learning the local culture of the projects at light speed.

So he came in one day using the N-word, (much to his wiser friends’ delight) in the way he had heard it used. Trying it out, and in the eternity of a few seconds, each utterance getting such a positive response from the audience that he uses it again and again, Jamelia and Sameka were rolling with laughter pointing to my flustered panic.

In the hallway:

“Jose, that word does not mean the same thing as hombre.”

“No?” he asks, genuine misunderstanding clouding his expression.

So now I what, teach the word?

Wow that’s a stomping on eggshells thing to do in an elementary classroom.

Having done just that for years now, here’s the thing. I felt freer this year to be far more directive in my approach.

This year I was transferred across the segregation line of prosperity to a school where the PTA raises nearly 100k a year. I moved from a school where there might be one Anglo kid per grade-level, to a school where there might be one African American kid per grade-level.

So, again, here’s the thing. I felt freer to speak of the use of the N-word this year because there weren’t any “black” kids in my class. No fear of making African American kids uncomfortable, I could go at Racism in A-merry-ca (thanks F. for that) with both guns blazing.

I recently watched a movie that included a depiction of a 40’s “juke joint” and it looked so fun, I wanted to go. Sadness – that my “white” presence would be disruptive, no matter what my intention – underscored the director’s segregation theme. Reminded me of the freedom I felt in my classroom.

Self-segregation felt then like a comfort zone, and like a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, needed to be examined for it’s escapist qualities. “What am I avoiding?”

Well, are you? ’cause it’s funny!

Yeah,

so the other day, Dan (AKA Sangmin) asked me if I were Mexican. Because he said he wanted to tell me a funny joke, but if I were Mexican, I might be offended.

I’m drawn to lie to you and write that I took away his recess time for thinking I may be a Mezkin. I’m tempted, ’cause that’s funny to me. But I won’t ’cause I want you to like me.

I’m not here to write about my laundry. Inflammation makes my skin itch and my joints twitch (or is it bitch?). I’m inspired to retort to inflammatory rhetoric, and I have questions. These are the same ones I ask myself in reflective reverie.

I want to learn, because I miss stuff sometimes. Like when I lived in D.C., talking to a co-worker about “Do the Right Thing” – what, nearly twenty years ago?

I confessed that I didn’t really get why S. Lee’s character smashed the window at the end. Forrest suggested that he may have been saving the shop-owner’s life. Thanks F.

Do you wonder if Forrest is white or not? I ask b/c I’m not sure if I should include that detail. Is it important to your visual image? Is segregated D.C. an important detail?

It’s our many little aversions to egalitarianism that I want to pluck at. And it’s you I want to learn from. The way I am among those I trust, that’s what this space offers me.

No pretense for you – no tone of mine is ever intended to be self-righteous. (except, maybe just then)

I’ll probably vote for Obama because he’s kinda black-ish. And I’m not a democrat. I was raised on a mocro-biotic diet, and I subsist on white sugar and nicotine.

Six or one half-dozen the other. All the presidential candidates have terrified me. Terrified me like mobsters from The Godfather somehow. Been that way for years.

I’m just tired of saying, “Yeah, you do have to be white to be president.”

The shame bucket is too heavy to carry forever. That seems to be what inspires white liberal guilt and holocaust denials alike.

Truthfully, I was taken with Obama’s “Union” speech. And yet, I want so much to be taken. Such a contrast to the slowed-down pedantic tones G. Bush Senior. would use (remember?)- It would make me want to take off my galoshes and stow them in my cubbie.

Anyway, Dan. What did I say to Dan? And what was his joke?