Sunday, September 12, 2010

BETRAYING HUMANITY

BETRAYING HUMANITY
RYAN “BUGS” WILLIAMS- VIRDEN
SEPTEMBER 12TH 2010

One of my students, with a look of disgust on her face asked the question I absolutely hate fielding. She struggles to find the words and finally puts it, as plainly and painfully as she can “Why don’t people stop this?” I literally have no answer. I have theories, guesses, and assumptions, but no answer. This is of little comfort to my class of twelve, which by this point are all starring at me waiting for my response. I tell them the truth—I don’t know. They proceeded to shout out their own theories and we had a productive class, but I couldn’t shake the feeling from that question. It is so innocent and comes with an unmistakable sense of betrayal. As I sat on the crowded bus home attempting to understand why this feeling was nagging me I realized it wasn’t the question that prompted this reaction, but rather a truth that in many ways is much more painful—so many don’t share the feeling of betrayal that fueled the productivity of my class that day.

TRUTH TELLING

A truism in life-the truth hurts. Sometimes there is nothing harder to do than tell the truth. None of us like to hear about where we have messed up, or where we have inflicted harm towards others. We surely don’t enjoy hearing about a history of oppression and exploitation with us doing the oppressing and exploiting. So we don’t tell it. We tell at best partial truths that might acknowledge some poor decisions, but never by any means do we allow space for complete realities. We teach our youth Christopher Columbus discovered “the New World” and is worthy of our admiration. We leave out the ugliness of this “discovery” or that it is impossible to discover something already inhabited. We ignore evidence that Columbus did not consider the indigenous of Hispaniola his equal or worthy of his respect as illustrated in his early correspondence with Spain after encountering the Arawaks, "They should be good servants .... I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses.” By 1560 less than 100 years after first contact the Arawak’s were extinct. We acknowledge slavery happened and that it was a terrible practice, but this is typically the extent. We continuously hold our founding fathers up as models of citizenship and solid character. Nowhere do we discuss to any significant degree the fact that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many others actually owned slaves, or that the White House was built by slaves. Nowhere do we see any respect or validity given to the slaves that rebelled such as Nat Turner, or other Europeans who fought for complete freedom like John Brown; both of whom were truly freedom fighters, and worthy of acknowledgment. We absolutely don’t consider the implications of structuring a nation without the voices of females, the poor, the LGBT Community, or people of color being present. We don’t critically engage the United States foreign policy, and never wrestle with the idea that perhaps our motivations were not as pure as we were told they were. Rather than try and tell these stories and right these wrongs the realities and voices of marginalized communities are coming under attack—Texas radically manipulated their curriculum to remove slavery, and Arizona made ethnic studies illegal. It is now conceivable that in Arizona it would be deemed illegal to teach a lesson on the internment camps set up in this country for Japanese Americans during World War II.

These omissions and glossing over is not accidental. If our historical narrative included the realities of all that make up this country it would be hard to imagine the inequalities we see today being allowed to persist, if form at all. For example, if we told the truth regarding slavery and the number of whites and blacks that worked together to end the horrendous practice, if we told the truth about the label white being used to cause political division and the subsequent practices such as: red lining, the GI bill, and other housing restrictions it is hard to imagine racial tensions, and race based discrimination being as pervasive as they are today.

CONSEQUENCES

Sadly the vast majority of Americans are left in the dark when it comes to these realities. This ignorance has very real effects and consequences. By severely limiting if not all together eliminating these voices, and refusing to consider these realities we strip those groups of their humanity. When the perspective of Native Americans is not present in our history books it becomes possible for Andrew Jackson to be considered a good man. When we don’t tell the truth about Abraham Lincoln it becomes possible to believe the Civil War was a moral rather than economic conflict. However, even more worrisome is the effect it has on the individuals receiving this information, and the messages internalized by those individuals. When we fail to be completely honest about our story and leave parts out we are sending a message, mainly that we are covering what is important therefore by default what is not covered must not be. This is why it is impossible to be neutral; we have already acted on our bias by choosing what to cover and what to leave out. When everything that is covered reflects the viewpoint and reality of Europeans it tells all non- Europeans they are not as worthy, their reality does not matter. When you grow up internalizing these messages it has tangible effects on your self-esteem, relationships, performance in school, etc. In the long run it has real effects on an individuals life and the quality of that life.

Another disturbing effect is the dumbing down of our citizenry, making us all more susceptible to manipulation and significantly easier to control. Perhaps the best example of this is in our economic curriculum. Economics is defined as the distribution of goods and resources. There are several economic systems yet with out exception our schools from high schools to universities fail to teach systems other than capitalism. If others are covered they are covered as failures and non-options. As a result we are left with a population that is largely economically illiterate and utterly incapable of critically thinking about economics. So when the wealthy that have benefited greatly from capitalism start screaming about communism or more recently socialism, they have a ready audience hanging to every word e.g. Tea Partiers. If we told the truth regarding systems of economics, and our commitment to ending poverty it is hard to imagine free market capitalism being accepted in any form given its history of utter failure in this country and around the world.

HEALTHY FEELING OF BETRAYAL

As I sat on the bus I longed to see the feeling of betrayal that was so unmistakable on my students face earlier that day. I wanted to see it on every last person riding that bus, on every face that blurred as the bus drove by. We have all been betrayed. We were told this country was founded on ideals of equality and freedom yet we live in a system that has minimalized or totally eliminated the realities of women, the poor, the LGBT community, and people of color. Leaving so many anything but equal or free. I came to one final realization on that bus-- I realized I don’t need to be able to answer my students’ original question; I need to be able to tell her people are stopping it.

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