Some may remember a month ago when I kicked those three guys off the PLC because they weren’t able – no blame – to wrap their heads around the truth and the new heightened levels of awareness around the George Floyd murder. There was that stink those guys brought.
I chose to kick them off because they voiced their opinion that in America different points of view are all part of the fabric of our society. I don’t agree with that. We can agree to disagree on whether pepperoni pizza is better than mushroom and sausage, but not on issues of morality.
I said at the time that I wouldn’t write any more here about the BLM movement, but that ain’t gonna happen. Why? Because I think it is THE defining moment of our time. We can’t not talk about it. It affects every single aspect of our society. I am working on how BLM interfaces with language teaching, because that is what I know.
Memories from my four decade life in language classrooms are starting to haunt me, pop up at all times of day, as I begin now the hard work of uncovering my own racist past as a teacher.
Man are we racist!
I know, I know. We’re not really, right? We’re good people.
We may be good, but we don’t get it. What we see as normal is not normal. There is a racist thread there. Pull the wool from your eyes. Pull the shit out of your ears. Shut your mouth and reflect. It can no longer be the same.
This is just the beginning of a time – be proud to be an America bc we are the ones who are going to shove this boulder up the mountain – when humans start to recognize all the little instances when we miss the BLM point, and how we are on the wrong side of awareness of the experience of people whose skin happens to be of a different color.
We’re just getting glimmers now. I spend my days now – while you guys suffer with triple cameras all over your room – wrapping up a five-year long project I’ve been working on, and it absolutely floors me when I get the kinds of insights that I’ve been getting since the murder.
I mean, y’all, this is some big shit. We’ve merely scratched the surface and that’s all. Wait ’till it all goes deeper and we can finally see the racism and bigotry that have defined whom we are since forever. Do we rip off the bandaid to see the ugliness below, or do we pull it off slowly? I ripped it off.
It’s like Smaug. He’s still buried to our vision under the treasure he has hoarded from regular people. But wait until we get to where we are looking directly into his eyes. We’re getting there. We’re going there. Yes, we have scaly eyes, too!
Don’t try to tell me I’m blowing it up too big. You’d be wrong. Grow up. Deal with what is happening now. All the little MLK kids, all those beautiful little souls, shouldn’t have to wait like the sharecroppers and cotton pickers of the old stinking past had to wait for something that never came to them.
Now with all of us working together as allies, all of us keeping conscious about what we are learning now, since the murder, they can become what they really are – God’s perfect little angels, and not have to alter who they are when they walk out of their houses each morning.