Reliving a Nightmare

Sharing a post I wrote about a year ago. It feels all the more relevant today. We have neighbors, friends, community members who are crying out for justice and so often it seems they are not being heard. I feel particularly challenged to do something to amplify that voice, to join in to support that voice.

I have privilege. I have choices. What will I choose to do?

*****

Nightmare (originally posted July 3, 2016)

I just woke up from a nightmare. I had been called into the office of a school to meet with school staff about my daughter. As it is in most nightmares, I was in a school I had never seen before and the staff members were equally unknown to me. What was important about the scene was that these people were making observations about my child and telling me what they were going to do about what they perceived to be her problems or difficulties.

But I couldn't talk. I couldn't get my mouth open, or if I could, I could barely make sound or form words. When I tried communicating through writing I could only produce a scrawl. It was infuriating. These people were making assumptions and choosing a plan of action that was wrong and I couldn't even make myself heard. I kept pounding the table.
What else could I do?

Now that I am awake I'm thinking about how incredibly dehumanizing it is to be put in the position of having no voice. Tomorrow is Independence Day, which makes it all the more urgent, I think, to face up to the fact that there are so many people in this country that have been rendered voiceless:

By racism
By poverty
By sexism

I woke up from my nightmare to a world where the deck is pretty much stacked in my favor. I have the ability to make myself heard. It's my little piece of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Shouldn't that liberty, and justice, be for all?

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog