MD Filter: I am not there yet, either. I favor Montessori schools and I think that, especially in a wrecked school system like that of New Orleans, you should do the best you can to meet the needs of your child and that is it.
In general, what I have to say about teaching is that I teach, among other things, Spanish. In the class I find problematic only one of 25 students believes I am white. This is difficult since the content of these students’ compositions indicates that 24 of 25 students would be glad to or did hang nooses in Jena. I can only imagine what it would be like to face these people as an actual person of color. Many of them are far larger than I and all of them are heavily armed, as I know from our conversation sessions.
These students say that they are taking Spanish, not another foreign language, because “those illegals” speak it so they are sure it cannot be difficult. They also feel obliged to take Spanish, they say, because “we are being invaded” by the Mexicans.
When a blog like Rachel’s Tavern suggests that someone like me could not know what it feels like to be a person of color I laugh in their supercilious and over-privileged faces. Of course I do not know. But based on the experience I do have, I have quite an inkling. And when a blog like The Free Slave tells me that since I am a professor I must be in the Ivory Tower, I also laugh in its white face.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Well I don’t know either, and no doubt it is near impossible to teach anyone if they have a mental system of prejudice working against you.
What I have a problem with is that at a certain significant point in my life it was impressed upon me (at least in terms of my understanding at that time), that I had no place in Australian society, because I was a migrant. Like the aftermath of a shocking road accident (except a bit worse, as my injuries were invisible), it has taken me approximately ten years to recover to the point where I am starting to get a much broader perspective on this.
So, there have been many things I could not do — and what has been nearly impossible for me to countenance is the idea of representing to developing Australians their own cultural meanings in some way. If I had to represent their culture to them positively, for instance, I would feel awkward (as I have done) since my own experiences run directly counter to the values and beliefs I am expected to impose. Yet if I am tempted to tell a little more of the truth, I feel like my capacity to communicate is doomed — for they are, after all, not me, and their experiences and mine have not been at all alike.
So, I am disinclined to reduce privelege entirely to the colour of one’s skin — even though (as we ought to all make a point of saying on a liberal blog such as this one), the distinction between Marechera’s turn of fortune (and he having been much more talented in all respects than I) and my own relatively positive turn of fortune, is surely down to skin colour in large part, as I have diagnosed.
But still, that isn’t all of it.
Privilege is about supporting the existing power structure or not. Donald Washington, a person of color, supports the existing power structure, as Keith Ellison, another person of color, points out.
yeah, well apparently I’m “not”.
But it is all a shame really. I had it in me to be a nice conservative goil.
In fact, as I have been trying to explain, my far more assertive and psychologically defiant self would have been at home, in many ways, in my originative society. In this sense, my culturally conditioned feminism and my expected roles would not be always clashing so much.
“my culturally conditioned feminism and my expected roles would not be always clashing so much”
I also have this problem.
When I was attending college in Spain I learned to speak sweetly and clearly and with a nice, thick vosotros accent.
That was more than 10 yrs. ago and since then I have lived in Puerto Rico and Oaxaca and on a little ranchito in central Mexico where I used to wake up refreshed and make my own lena to shower with hot water.
Because I not a native Spanish speaker, my accent is fluid, and so is my vocabulary. I can say “estacionamiento” or “parkeadero,” depending on my audience…Though yesterday I had a terrible time trying to convince someone that I am not a Chilanga.
It is fascinating to me, the way that racism manifests itself in different parts of the country. In southern California, for example, even the most conservative Republicans make great efforts to learn Spanish. Here, though, it is because if you speak the language you can take economic advantage of the monolingual market. In other words, if you can’t communicate, then you can’t screw someone.
Yes – although this is comparatively new (and comparatively enlightened, although I understand the ways in which it is not).
My parents went to Berkeley High (CA) in the 1940s. High IQ students took French, medium IQ Latin, and low IQ Spanish.
A friend of mine got a PhD in Comparative Literature in the 1990s. At the University of Washington, where she started out, Spanish was not permitted as a language/literature because it “had no intellectual tradition.” That is why she had to move to the University of Oregon.
In my PhD program professors did not say such things, but students emphasizing the classic modern triad of English/French/German did.
I personally am annoyed that my public school system foisted French on the Gifted and Talented students, rather than Spanish. I suppose I could have switched, but it never occurred to me at the time.
One of my goals is to learn both Spanish and Brazilian Portguese, if I am going to keep up with my neighbors (though that means in my neighborhood I should also be learning Russian, but that just seems mui intimidating!).
You are funny in this post; almost snarky in your horrified tone at your students and the sanctimony of others. I love it!
O good, I felt mean writing it, so I’m glad it’s funny! I am at my wits’ end and have a terrible headache.
I’d love to learn Russian, and really learn Arabic. Apparently they have similarities – my Arabic T.A.’s were also doing Russian for that reason.
That’s hilarious, the Gifted and Talented language is still French! So 19th century. It was the language of diplomacy and art…