When people of colour are expected to educate white people as to their humanity, when women are expected to educate men, lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world, the oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions.
So I was debating posting this but I think it needs to be said.
So I’m a student teacher and this week, we started at a new school district. Now I won’t presume to begin to pretend that I know what everyone’s political ideologies are in this school district but keep in mind that it’s in rural New York State and rural New York State tends to run red. Not as red as some other places but definitely not blue and not even really purple.
Anyway yesterday was my first ever professional development day. So I’m all dressed up, introducing myself to other teachers, and I shake hands with the superintendent who seems like a really nice guy.
And about halfway through the day, he goes up to the front of the theater and he starts talking about the best ways to talk to and help transgender/nonbinary students. It’s the basic things we all learn in our education classes. And you can tell that he’s a bit uncomfortable and so are some of the teachers. And at last, he stops and says, “Folks, I have to be honest. My father is rolling in his grave right now.”
And I’m in the back like, “Oh no.”
And so he pauses again and then he starts implying that he was raised to have a very negative opinion on the transgender community. And he continues to say that he had to unlearn a lot in the past few decades and then he admitted that he still doesn’t get it. He outright admitted that he personally doesn’t understand how someone comes to the conclusion that they’re not their assigned gender. And he admits that of course he doesn’t because he’s never had to go through that.
Another pause.
And then he says, “But I don’t have to get it.”
The theater fills with whispers and then he says [and I’m paraphrasing here], “I don’t have to get it. I don’t even have to agree with it. Because it doesn’t matter what I think or what I feel or what my beliefs are. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that I respect that student and I respect their choice.”
And then he reminded the teachers of every single policy that the school district follows from letting any student use their bathroom of choice to changing the students’ names per the students’ requests to not telling the parents anything unless the student gives consent to do so.
And at the end, he brought it back by saying, “My father just rolled in his grave again. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t matter what you believe, because it’s not about you. It’s about your kids. And you need to love your kids! Love your kids! Love your kids!”
Long story short, this looks like it’s going to be a good placement.
Beyoncé’s “visual album” Lemonade was released a year ago this week, but its impact continues to unfold. Just last week, the project won a Peabody Award. But the singer is also focusing on making its resonance felt through a very different vehicle: a group of scholarships called the “Formation Scholars” awards.
“ “was that a new york thing? do they teach you that kind of stuff there?” yes. here is your metrocard, and this is how you publicly dismantle insufferable dicks.”
The best line in Lilo and Stitch is, “No! Don’t touch that! It’s from my blue period!”
Like not only is Lilo familiar with goddamn Picasso despite being maybe 8, but she’s made enough serious art of her own that she can divide it into similar periods.
Lilo is a goddamn prodigy. She is an eccentric genius on par with Tesla or Van Gogh.
Like those pictures she took were both dismissals of beauty standards (she mostly photographed fat people who were not conventionally attractive and she referred to them in awe as beautiful) and subversions of the dehumanization tourists subjected her to as a native Hawaiian (she photographed tourists like they were simply part of the landscape, just as they did to her).
