How should students be taught when their way of being is heavily informed by oppression? We can work on this question forever, but I recently realized a more nuanced form of that same question: How can teachers work with students to attack internalized oppression when sane and healthy actions are equated to "white" culture? Essentially, how do we teach our students healthy ways of being when many of those ways have been marked as white (and hence different and even dangerous)? Actions such as reflection, statements of love,
not looking to violence to solve problems are all healthy ways of being that are labeled white. Yes, this sounds problematic, but-- from the eyes of inner-city youth of color-- it's the truth. Thus, it is the truth.
The complexity of the answer is driving me crazy because I struggle to live the answer daily. An example from today: I roll up to a yoga place I'm trying out for the first time. I am late. I'm wearing old baggy sweatpants, not yoga-like enough for the middle-class crew inside getting started. We start doing our thing and I am struck by how "white" I feel. I am in a neighborhood that I disliked while growing up because of the beemers and prep-school kids that frequent it. Furthermore, I am in a yoga class. I am paying for a yoga class. Eventually, time passes, poses are completed and I begin to feel like the teacher was truly helping me out. He's a black yoga teacher. Cool. As I get dressed, I noticed that the black-haired man across from me was Latino (an assumption, yes, but important in my mind still). I slip on those sweatpants and saunter back onto the street. Pull on my hood and feel like I did during high school-- a random ghetto Asian chick.*
The point is that pyschologically I went from being a person of color, to white, to a ghetto Asian woman. It is sad that developing spiritually, physically, and mentally (albeit in this one limited way) is equated with whiteness. How do we deeply take care of ourselves yet reject/critque/analyze our desires to partake in "white" cultural practices? How do I teach my students different ways of living their lives, have them apply it, while still critiquing white privilege and their own internalized oppression?
*The truth is highly subjective in this post. e.g.- I may feel hella ghetto still, but compared to the folks I grew up with, I no longer fit... I probably never fit.
I think of this as a playful twist on the "rise up" mantra. This is bathroom decor in Jumpn Java's restroom. I spent a morning working there and half-listening to a high school adviser conduct an hour long parent-student conference. Ugh, painful.
"MOUCH"? I spotted this next to SubRosa Cafe, on my way to test-drive a bike next door... actually at a bike shop I previously disliked because it was named "Manifesto." But that's another story... Believe me, one feels alive cycling on city streets, speeding alongside cars. Oakland is beautiful via two wheels.
About two blocks down... is this mural alongside the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which is on my list of places to get better connected with.
Spring tulips... enjoyed with a dash of Howard Zinn and Ronald Takaki.
