all buttoned up.

Right to Comfort, March Edition

I no longer roll in circles with people who speak wisdom into my life as a matter of divine purpose. I do, however, roll with people who speak a lot of truth into my life in the name of survival. Their words are no less potent, no less encouraging, no less face-wrecking than the ones that were prayed over me since childhood. They are words shared by people who see me and see how I land and where I need to Get It Together.They also see my children and my parenting (for better/worse) and they see my partner-- tired eyes and shaking head-- and then they go in with love. 

When I left the church, I assumed I would no longer be held accountable for my behavior in some kind of spiritually lofty way... I was wrong. Or maybe we just fell into the wrong crowd? I have been thinking about what this looks like and how we buoy and encourage each other while still holding ourselves and others to a high standard of compassion and discourse. And I've been thinking that all the best people I know who are able to navigate life in this way-- which also requires humbleness and a small amount of self-deprecation-- are very curious. Some are curious by nature and some through practice. This curiosity braves discomfort, navigates treacherous dialogue, and claims very little stake in being right. It is a bright light that holds uncomfortable truths without judgement and grasps on to unfamiliar narratives in order to understand the world a bit better. As an in-curious person by nature, I am drawn to this kind of open-endedness and work to practice it. I'm a lousy beginner, though, and try hard not to walk the beam between multiple narratives and high moral standards. 

Curiosity is not the same thing as being open-minded, although the two often cross paths. Portland is a breeding ground for The Most Open-Minded People in the World. But try moving people toward a narrative where their comfort is not the highest priority and you will be met with a virtual wall. Or in the case or school boundaries or low income housing or racial equity, sometimes a real life wall. This Right to Comfort is a tool of I'm adept at wielding-- because at it's core, it's a tool of Whiteness. I'm working on it. 

****

Angela Tucker wrote a wonderful piece on transracial adoption and gentrification. She details the conundrum of white families moving into neighborhoods to provide a cultural mirror for their children of colour while systematically displacing the diverse community they seek. Paul and I moved to our neighborhood 7 years before we adopted August but timing hardly makes a difference as our impact on our part of town has essentially been the same. 

What Happens When White Parents Adopt Black Children and Move to Black Neighborhoods

The Summerquists’ Black neighbors teach their children about the historically Black neighborhood in which they now live. Growing up around other Black folks offers their sons firsthand perspectives on micro-aggressions and insights on racism that Brad and Vickie would not be able to provide from their own experiences.

And while they’re grateful they’ve been able to surround their sons with people who mirror them, Brad and Vickie’s pride is complicated by the knowledge of how the Central District is changing, and how the economics of Seattle continue to impoverish Black people—as well as their own role in these changes.

I love the way Ms Tucker neither absolves nor admonishes the choices we've made as adoptive parents. She just kind of opens the door to discomfort and welcomes us all in to have a seat. I relish this kind of invitation. We bear responsibility for it all. Besides, Paul and I relinquished our right to privacy, our right to comfort and our right to invisibility-as-family, the moment we signed the papers. Now our job is to somehow mitigate the price our children are asked to pay for our decisions. And within that process, mitigate the damage we've caused by participating in a system that rewards Whiteness (see: adoption, housing, employment). 

****

Paul was describing the impact of lack of cultural responsiveness in education on one of our children: "He is unable to perform Whiteness in the same way that his brothers do... and it's killing him and he's exhausted by the constant policing. He's literally stopped being able to take in information because his brain is constantly trying to figure out who is out to get him, real or not".

I thought about this while I was sitting in a workshop and someone who worked in HR shared out at how their audits consistently show the racial disparities in promotions. "Managers usually talk about communication styles as an excuse for non-promotion... and how people are not ready. It's glaring and predictable." 

In Defense of Backtalk

When the powerful and privileged insist on politeness as the prerequisite for listening, they gain two advantages: First, they shift the conversations from the content of an issue — the morality of the subject — to one about the forms being used to advance that conversation. Second, the marginalized don’t decide what tone is too forceful; the tastes of the poor don’t determine what’s profane and what’s acceptable. No, the weak never get to dictate terms to the strong. Our models of appropriateness come from those with power: the educated, the privileged, and those emulating them.

This succinct and biting piece by Miguel Clark Mallet stopped me cold when I read it. It is everything I know and everything I choose to ignore in myself. 

****

I'm working on a change of venue for all of this. It's not ready and I promise that it will not be flashy or face-y (mine). My friends are helping and I hope you'll follow me there when it's ready. It's also March, which means the roses I'm thinking have been cut back, I'm thinking about peas and Track Season Is About to Ruin My Life. So, I'll keep you posted.  

It's Alright To Cry/You Might Feel Better, Baby

Four days after Christmas one of my teeth sheared off at the gum line. I was eating a cinnamon roll I should've left alone and I tried to fish out my crown-with-my-tooth-inside before I swallowed it. The jagged edges of whatever was left began tearing at my tongue immediately. My family was visiting and I was so mad and frustrated. I didn't say anything because I just didn't want to talk about it. A week later I sat in the dentist chair and fought back shame tears while trying to sort out how to stop the hygienist from trying to make me feel better. 

****

"Oh! How many kids do you have?! In the old days you'd lose a tooth with every kid!".

"Well... I mean, I parent 6..."

"See! These things happen."

"Right. I mean. Well, I didn't have... I mean. Never mind."

****

My teeth and I have a complicated relationship. I had my first abscessed molar at overnight camp when I was 11. At 24, my fresh-faced, Mormon dentist pulled two molars and all my wisdom teeth in a single visit. Last Christmas, I went in for a root canal and ended up (three visits later) with a raging infection moving down my neck and another extraction. I'm now left with far fewer teeth than my children, a lengthy "treatment plan", and the sinking feeling that my none of this will improve with time. The dentist tells me my teeth look great. I roll my eyes.

"The remaining ones, I'm assuming?" 

The truth is, I'm embarrassed. I can't seem to prevent my teeth from falling out. Conversely, why do I care about so deeply about something I can't control? Up until this point, the impact has been mostly cosmetic. The first is just wallowing. The second is obviously the classism and respectability politicking that has conditioned my ego to wince. I will get over the first. The second is harder. It bugs me that I'm so eager to replace what's gone. And the replacement will mean sacrifice, which deepens the guilt. We are down to one vehicle and now I commute for the work week. We were hoping to take a trip with the kids. I joke about it.  It doesn't help. 

Vanity. 

Of course, it is not lost on me that it's the same vanity and the same respectability I lord over my boys when I send them out into the world. I am consumed with keeping them safe and making sure that they do not give anyone pause. My children bear the breaking responsibility of something they cannot control and cannot fix. In their case, money cannot buy safety. And respectability poisons their capacity for compassion and empathy. They are policed and corralled, even by their own classmates. I am desperate to not kill their spirits. I yell at them for not brushing their teeth. They look at me with knowing eyes. It's not like they don't see me brushing every day. 

***

When Paul told me to listen to this Brother Ali song, I asked him if I would cry. "In the first 20 seconds", he said. Brother Ali's "Dear Black Son" 

You were a king long before them ships departed
You are not defined by anybody else's crimes
You don't need to answer for what happens in their minds
You are not confined by their imaginary lines
You don't need permission to exist with the divine
In fact, you don't need permission from no one including me

I am surrounded by parenting role models who have married the fierce protection of their children with the abolition of respectability in their homes. I lean on them. Systemic Racism Couldn't Care Less About Your Respectability Politics:

Black love is white supremacy’s greatest fear. Loving the people society has taught us to hate is revolutionary. But that love means nothing without action. We must champion an all-encompassing love for all black people. We should not have to decide who is “worthy” of this radical black love we possess. Rather, we should understand that in order for this love to be revolutionary, it has to identify with black people across the spectrum.

And again... for the people in the way, way back. This is who we are. This is who we've always been. The Heartbeat of Racism is Denial by Ibram X Kendi 

Begin with the eight presidents who held slaves while in the Oval Office. Then consider how Abraham Lincoln urged black people to leave the United States. “Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race,” Lincoln told five black guests at the White House in 1862. So “it is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”

All my Favourite People are Broken

"I hate you. And I'm embarrassed you're my mom."

"I feel you, bud."

"We still have to wash your hair."

****

His insults are genuine and heartfelt. And I twinge. But. The weight of his grief in those words are much heavier than mine will ever be. He's serious. He throws something heavy that I care about. But I have the benefit of remembering the hot rage I felt at my parent's very presence. And the subsequent passing. Hindsight as gift. Hair is a trigger for him and now for me. Cutting it means faster mornings and no arguments. Leaving it means Black Boy Hair Joy and Pride In 'Fro. We will keep the hair and beg the heavens for mercy on the days we need to deep condition. 

****

On Christmas Eve I re-wrapped gifts and listened to the King's Cross Choir and cried.The night before I had come home to a 16 year old runaway in my kitchen and now I was shuffling around gifts and searching in drawers for something he could unwrap in the morning. The child was in crisis and his 6'4" frame hid briefly the emotional and intellectual capacity of someone much, much younger. When he opened a basketball and new socks on Christmas morning he smiled, unsurprised that gifts had shown up for him. Had we bought him shoes, he wondered?! No shoes.The village came through with a PlayStation gift card though. "I am so pumped on this" he said and waved it around in the air as he headed down to the basement to spend it. 

He would be with us for three nights. His social worker was on vacation and could not be reached and there was literally no place (save for a shelter) for them to place him. He left our house for a hotel-- the solution that DHS is relying on in Portland at the moment. I cried and continue to cry knowing that the number of medications he takes during the day will mostly likely turn him into an addict once he is released from the system meant to protect him. I cried because what we did was so small and insignificant, but it is the stuff that a thousand sermon illustrations are parables are made of. And I cried because I knew he could not stay with us-- even as the emergency worker quietly asked us to become certified-- because we are barely keeping our own buffered from the storm. 

****

Truly is turning six this week. She has been singing "We Shall Overcome" and pondering the inaccuracies of skin colour as a category. She screams from her room, "MOM THE PERSON WHO SINGS FERGELICIOUS IS WHITE". Her astonishment is also betrayal. She keeps mumbling about it the rest of the day.The books we read to her when she was three and four have woven their way into her understanding of the world as unfair and unkind and in need of people who listen and try to help. I don't think they are bad lessons for her to learn. I would rather her see joy and hope within despair than rely on fairy dust and magic. This is not lost on her either. She chooses the things with the most glitter, the biggest rainbows, and the deepest purples. Her best friend tells her that she cried today at school. "Don't worry, K. I cried at breakfast, too." 

****

So I'm still reading "Stamped from the Beginning: The History of Racist Thought in America" because I'm having to reread parts and take breaks. My god, read this flipping book. 

I'll be Grand Rapids for the Festival of Faith and Writing in April... Which is another whole story!I do want to recommend the podcast  of past speakers (Zadie Smith, Jennifer Patterson, Frederick Buechner among them) called Rewrite Radio. They are an antidote to the literary interviews that sometimes skew heavily toward the interviewer. Plus they are hosted by my friend, Lisa. So. Nepotism. 

The Body Holds On

In 2007 the adoption section at Powell's was divided into distinct camps: How-To, Parenting the Unattached Child, and Memoirs of Children Adopted in SE Asian Countries. I read what I could find. We had sorted out the "how-to" bit pretty quickly. We were going to be matched with a small child, so we hoped that the attachment would be the manual, loving, labour of holding, rocking and feeding. The memoirs bit was trickier-- still is. These were fully formed adults talking about the weight and trauma of being raised by Other People. I was under no illusions that I was not Other People. 

My writing at that time-- if you can call it that-- was benign and breezy. I reveled in the things I did not know. I knew enough to not worry about the wait for our child. That was selfishness. The rest would take time to know. I was wholly fixated on the racial implications without knowing what the racial implications would be. I felt like we were probably going to make a lot of mistakes. 

Portland was probably going to be our first, big mistake. We know that now. Liberal Meccas are bastions for Polite Racism-- personal and structural. Everyone was going to love on my baby and turn to NextDoor to complain about them when they got old enough to ride their bikes around the block. We were going to bring our precious loves into a system where they would be tokenized, their spirits crushed, and their worth questioned by people who refused to see them as whole persons. 

And. They would also be seen and loved and cherished by people who look like them and who would teach them how to gird their hearts against the specificity of Pacific Northwest Whiteness. They would be encouraged and accepted. We would find our other Family in our friends and neighbors and coaches. We would get the hair thing right. We would be blessed by unearned generosity. 

****

When people say "Portland So White" I sigh and think "Not My Portland". And so in that, we sought to rectify our first mistake. 

****

Go back though. Our first mistake was probably thinking we were good enough to take this on in the first place. That is a wondrous kind of good-hearted arrogance, isn't it? 

****

We tell Augie about his tiny, baby self often. 10 years later it is still funny and strange. "Sam hated the smell of formula. You would be spitting up and farting in our arms and Sam would be gagging and covering his nose sitting next to us." 

10 years. 

"You had thrush... it's a kind of infection and it covered your tongue. The ladies at the hotel told us to rub urine on it. We took you to the pediatrician while dad drove Sam around in the parking lot so we could get you checked out. You were perfect, of course. The thrush cleared up right away. No, you were too tiny to go swimming in the hotel pool."

"We went to the beach one time. The night before we left. We parked in a roundabout and Sam and dad ran out into the sand and I stayed with you on a bench. The sky was pink."  

"Your brothers and your sister were so little. We saw them one time with J. She held you while they did an activity book on the floor. Your sister____ was 12 months old and insisted on filling up everyone's paper cups from the water cooler. You all walked when you were so tiny. I tried really hard not to cry, but I felt sad for J and didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to do either. Mostly she just smiled at you. We didn't know very much about your family. We know a lot more now. You know A LOT more now."

"You were so bummed when we got back to our house, Augs. It was too cold and your tummy hurt and we just held you as much as we could. Your dad had no time off. You did not love to sleep."

He laughs because he still doesn't really love to sleep. 

"The day Sam played with you was right about the time you started scooting around. He gave you a toy and started talking to you in a silly voice. I took approximately 1 million pictures and then I cried." 

At this part he just stares down Sam. "Rude", he says. 

****

October is the month we married, the month we bought our house then years later, sold it. It is the month in college where everything was still golden and I always felt like this was the year I was really going to kill it with my GPA. November is the month we brought both of our babies home, a year a part. This week he blew out candles and opened up new clothes and shoes. He and I both cried at some point but for different reasons. He did not know why he felt so sad. I told him that sometimes the body holds on to things that are hard, even if our minds do not remember them. 

****

I have not spent that much time thinking about Macklemore, but I did really love this article and felt like it described the PNW fairly well. How Macklemore Laid Down His White Burden

He’s done, as he put it, with “preaching to the choir”: rapping politics to the white liberals who compose the majority of his fanbase. Which, for many, comes as a relief. He remains the avatar of white guys trying hard not to be the worst, but he’s also — especially in this new incarnation — a salve for those exhausted with the enduring conundrum of white guilt. His endurance makes sense, but it’s also proof of the fickleness of so many components of white liberalism: When you can put a conversation aside when it ceases to thrill you or feed you, how deep was your investment? Is the ability to stop talking about injustice the greatest white privilege of all?

Nikole Hannah-Jones is getting the recognition she deserves right now. I want everyone I know who has children in public schools; who are landlords and renters and homeowners; who are managers and small business owners to read this short article. And then Just Keep Reading until we are all so wrecked and demoralized that we actually start to push back on what we have* until now, been complicit in. "Schools are segregated because white people want them that way"

People want hope. They want to believe things are getting better for black folks. What I'm arguing, and I think what Ta-Nehisi is arguing, is that things will never be right. An improvement doesn't make things right; it just makes them a little better.

Black people are still fighting for equal citizenship rights. Millions of black children are still in schools that look just as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened. Generations of black people are still trapped in urban ghettoes. The black unemployment rate, in the best of times, is still double that of white Americans. Black people face discrimination in every sector of American life.

So when people want hope, I wonder: Hope for what? To me, until black Americans are treated as full citizens, it's immoral to expect people to be satisfied just because there's forward progress. People want hope and absolution instead of working to destroy a system that still holds black people last in almost everything.

This is our latest YouTube loop from 6th graders (and their teacher) in Milwaukee laying it down to Tee Grizzly's "First Day Out'. 

I am smart/I am strong/My life matters/I'm a Blessing

*Accurate edit suggestion 

The Man Who Walks Among the Stars

 

 

I was going through YouTube videos of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip this week. I drank tea and felt the most Canadian. And then I found this video of him accepting an honour at the Assembly of First Nations in 2016. There is Gord and Justin Trudeau, surrounded by First Nations People. They pray a blessing on him and they both turn and follow the elders' lead. The elders give him a Spirit Name and an Eagle Feather.

 

And then I cried. 

 

****

 

I spend hours at my kids' schools with an open heart and clear eyes and I'm watching staff cause real harm to their Black and Brown co-workers and students. I listen as people whine about their workload and having too much on their plate. I watch their defensive posture and the constant reframing of their own victimhood within our "system". These are the same staff that have spent years in racial equity training. Some of them write articles about social justice and educational equity. And. They've stopped listening, stopped examining their own stuff, and use their fragility as defensive armor. They refuse to examine how their systems create barriers and how their weaknesses are as pronounced as the weaknesses they lament in their students. I look in the mirror and interrogate myself. 

 

"Did you help or hurt today?"

 

"Did you burden someone with your fragility?" 

 

"What price did your children pay for your behaviour?"

 

And then. I participate in beautiful and healing conversations with women relish in exploring their weaknesses. I am able to have a life giving conversation with an educator who knows they aren't seeing what I am seeing and "can you help me see what I'm missing...?". I am delighted and laugh and thank them for holding space for being wrong.

 

I was typing away on FB with friends and people that I admire from a distance about the things we lose when we get defensive. The greatest of these is a chance to grow and learn but equally important are relationships, community, and the practical act of living well. My friend said: "I'm often still operating from a grid of "I'm the expert on me" when there are so many people around me who have a very clear picture of how I come across." I think about my children and the laser focus in which they have me figured out. This sends me reeling. 

 

I have been convinced that once we get on a path that centers race, we will stop settling for incremental change. I believe that it doesn't have to be an either/or: that you can hold _____ and center race in the same hand. You can be a person of deep faith and grow in both your faith and understanding that passive resistance is not resistance at all. You can be committed to socialism and grow in both your understanding of class stratification and the way that race is the undercurrent that determines benefit. You can live in a homogenous place and celebrate your culture and still unpack whiteness by teaching your children about the ways that cultures (of all kinds) normalize values. 

 

My children feel like their world would be much easier if I could just ease up on the screen time restrictions during the week. 

 

****

My dear, sweet child who was our only child when I started writing here, is now one of many. He bears this truth with pride and embarrassment. This family is his greatest teacher and his greatest frustration. I don't know if he understands his proximity to Blackness as a gift. I think he does. I warn him to not use it as shield from doing better than we have done or against pushing people harder than we have pushed. 

 

I need Anti-Racist Heroes to guide him. He will need to pattern his life after greatness, but work hard not to appropriate their message or accept their example wholesale. I watch Gord again-- accepting his gift and his name. He is weeping, and the focus is on the people and voices he sought to elevate-- not on him. And I cried because this is not how we do things in this country. Gord saw it as a gift. So often the helpers overshadow the people we serve to help. Men center themselves in conversations about women. White women center themselves in conversations for Black Women. CIS Het folks center themselves in conversations for Trans people. In my world, educators center themselves in the conversations about the children they are charged to educate. 

 

If I am angry I wonder why you are not.

If I am fine, I assume we are all fine.

We are not all fine. 

 

****

I am reading Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. It is for a book group and I have been reading interviews with Mr. Kendi to try and sort out how to go about discussing the first part of the book. He told Christina Greer:

I would tell my 18-year-old self — and I wish I’d written this book for my 18-year-old self — that the only thing wrong with black people is that we think something is wrong with black people. I spent the better part of my early years thinking that the main problem was black people. And then I switched from that to thinking that the main problem was white people. And, eventually, I realized that the main problem was racist people, was people who were executing these policies out of self-interest. That’s what I would have told myself: that there’s nothing wrong with black people and there’s nothing extraordinary — the only thing extraordinary about white people is that they think something is extraordinary about white people.

 

Gord Downie's Secret Path "This is the best thing I've ever done... nothing else matters to me"

 

 

Pinpointing Racial Discrimination in By Government Officials 20,000 emails, folks. 20,000

The findings appeared to be a striking indication of racial discrimination in seemingly benign and mundane interactions. The tendency to ignore emails sent by African-Americans was particularly pronounced in sheriffs’ offices, but it was also evident in school districts and libraries.

In a clever twist, the authors analyzed whether the replies were polite, counting responses that included either the sender’s name or words like “hi,” “Mr.,” “dear,” “good” (which captures “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “have a good day”) or “thank” (which captures both “thanks” and “thank you”). By this measure, those with apparently African-American names received 8 percent fewer polite responses than those with white names.

And since you might have the tissues at the ready anyway... Lost Together by the Blue Rodeo with Gord Downie earlier this year. 

September Gold

"Let's start by talking about his strengths", she said.

"He's quiet. Kind. On task."

"Quiet, yes." 

****

After a very *crispy* summer, all six of the Framily Children began school this August. The youngest one was declared the Most Ready in The History of Readiness as she marched into Kindergarten unafraid. She's already treating it like some kind of all-inclusive resort where one takes full advantage of the transportation, meal service, leisure, and educational opportunities to get one's money worth. On Saturday night she told us all that the thing she was most excited about is that there is only ONE MORE DAY BEFORE I GET TO GO BACK. 

The eldest three are all in middle school and dealing with the familiar pains now that the new-shoes-new-backpack-new-hair sparkle has worn off. There has been some locker confusion and I wonder if this will be the year they are required to use their planners as tools and not as backpack filler/doodle venues.

I am left on my own during the day for the first time since 2004. Expectations are high. Lunches are long. I have rewritten my resume and made a list of projects to tackle. I have agreed to volunteer in ways I am half dreading and I am cutting back on the coffee. 

****

"Well, it would be good if we could get him out of that period and switch him around. There are a lot of challenging behaviours in the room and I see him getting sucked in."

"I think I could do more for him if he wasn't distracted by overbearing kids." 

"He's drawn to the wrong crowd."

****

I was in an IEP (Individual Educational Plan) Review meeting for one of my kids. His whole team had come and I was looking forward to facing this year with some great strategies and kid-centered accommodations. I am a public school junkie and this is where I bask in its glory: free and appropriate education for all. I marvel that there are laws that guarantee access and we can challenge the manner that these laws are deployed. 

AND. And. Here we are, sitting in a room of wonderful educators who are using coded and deficit language to describe their challenges with classroom management and their weaknesses in delivering instruction. I know this child. He is not quiet-- not by personality nor circumstance. And "quiet" certainly isn't a strength for a child who needs to learn to self-advocate and be fearless in the face of academic challenges. No, the word "quiet" in this case means compliant. And the word "compliant" in this place is code for Whiteness. Who are these "bad" kids he's drawn to. Is it because they clearly hold the power in these rooms? Do we draw close to power in order to survive?

His case manager glances at me. She knows. I suck in my breath and we push forward. 

"He needs to trust you, but he doesn't need to like you. He will learn if he trusts you. Don't confuse the two", I said. 

****

How are you handling the return to school or to education or to routine or to the same thing you do every day? What drives your commitments to yourself, to your village, to your family? How do you manage self care in a time that seems so fraught? 

I bought a small pack of Black History Flash Cards Vol 1 and pulled them out yesterday for Manny's sick day. He picked four to learn: Montgomery Bus Boycott, The 1968 Olympic Protest, The Haitian Revolution and Barak Obama. We had to do some word definition and some major backtracking and even though he knows all about Dr. King, he still somehow thinks he was the first Black President. He's with it though, and wants to pick out four more today when he gets home. 

Racial Consciousness: How White Boys are Deprived Without It (There parts of this that read like poetry, and parts that read like a knife to my heart, and parts that I want to tattoo on my soul. READ THIS PLEASE. It's not long.)

Raising white boys to see their privilege and use their moral compasses to actively interrupt it begins the labor pains of true racial equity. Parents, it will hurt. I'm not white, but I've personally seen white folk stand up, only to lose family, friends, jobs, spouses. Pain is a part of labor. Breathe and push! Not only is racial consciousness vital to the interruption of systemic and personally meditated racism in our schools, jobs, prisons, banks, churches, stores, and places of business,  it's good for the soul of the ones who have always had privilege anyway - the white human boy.  He was put into your arms for you to help him grow into his best life.  Don't let your racial ambivalence rob him of it. Nurture the baby. Privilege is not his birthright. Racial consciousness is.

Here Wee Read-- On the advice of friends I started following Charnaie on Instagram and I'm forwarding her blog to all my teacher-friends and bibliophiles. 

I pre-ordered Devin Allen's A Beautiful Ghetto this summer and it arrived last week. It is beautiful and joyful and heartbreaking. Make space for experiences and feelings that your are not a part of your current reality. 

 

 

Well Appointed Gardens I Have None

March has been unusually cold and wet. Everything is soggy and weedy. We started on the backyard over the weekend, which meant folding tarps and removing the scrap metal. It now looks less like a squat and more like your average mess/work-in-progress. Paul took out a small dogwood The Sisters had planted in the grass. We will plant another on the street side to compensate. Our fence is staked into the ground with tent poles so that it doesn't fall into the alley. There are large dips in the grass and divots where I have been digging out ancient irises, fennel, and diseased rose bushes. The whole thing needs to be leveled. The boys leave their bikes and scooters and basketballs all over the small patch of grass. We've only been here a year and there are already plastic guys buried in the mud. I yell about it. The usual.

Our Saturdays will soon be eaten up by day long track meets.

The front yard is marginally better. The dogs regularly mark their territory on both the budding rose bushes and vigorous daffodils in the parking strip. Woe to those who decide to pick the flowers and take them home. I cut the Japonica back and cleared out its underside and Paul chopped down the early magnolia that had been planted in the middle of the bed. I am contemplating the soggy straw bed we installed last year and trying to reclaim the other three beds from the knot weed. A neighbor posted about the invasive Lesser Celandine and sure enough! There it was, disguising itself as a buttercup, trying to take hold up our front slope. I am avoiding the nurseries as much as possible. Even so, two raspberry bushes and something for the pots made it home with me two weeks ago already.

I walk by our old house four times a day and peek over the fence to see what's blooming, what their dogs have destroyed, and what is taking over. There are renters in there now (something we had hoped to avoid with the offer we accepted) and they shoved some tomatoes in the too-shady raised bed last summer. Their anemic carcasses are still poking out of the dirt. I contemplate coming back at night and digging up bits and pieces I should have taken with me. And weeding. Good, god people, just weed. It's not that hard. No matter. I bought another "Jude the Obscure" to put behind our ornamental maple. I ordered Dahlias from a catalogue and troll through the feeds of English gardeners and their wild and beautiful border gardens and think about how unreasonable and beautiful they are.

We need a fence for the front. It is not about keeping us in or out, but so I can train things up its railings. I'll be honest. I need a landscaper, too. And someone to show me how to work the watering system we still do not know how to use. Devon came over to advise me on the devil of a slope we've put everything on. She tells me the cucumbers will have to stay in buckets. She is correct, of course. I need a lot of money for most of this work.

This kind of gardening is luxury and necessity all rolled into one. I'm happier after being out there than after doing almost anything else. Truly is happy, too, and I think it is work we can do together. I drag a stump out of a friend's yard to build her a fairy house. (Should've moved the stumps from our old house with us.)

****

The summers in between college semesters I worked at a small flower farm in the town where I grew up. I was responsible for: tilling the new beds, transplanting, fertilizing, weeding and eventually harvesting the flower. The owners dried most of what they grew and sold it in preserved arrangements from their property in the fall and during the holidays. I painted signs for the end rows, fed the chickens, picked up after the horse, and dutifully answered (lied about?) the questions asked by the provincial monitor who came to interview me every August so that my employers would receive my wage subsidy. I did not want a career in agriculture and I hated catching the chickens and making sure the greenhouse did not overheat. Every summer I would swear I would not have to go back out, but my college let out after everyone else and by the time I returned home all the non-dirty seasonal work was taken. While we waiting for the rows of gomphrena to come in and the nigella to go to seed, I would head out to the gravel dikes along the river to harvest hundreds of bundles of Yarrow, stripped of the leaves and tied with rubber bands. I waded into the swampy shallows on the edge of the farmland for butterfly bush and wildflowers taller than my head. I would stumble upon a tidy grow-op in the trees and snip bits of the marijuana plant to take home in a bouquet.

They would send me along with their friend's children-- kids who wanted to make a little money and who mostly complained about the heat or the rain. "This was easier than the berry picking I did when I was your age", I would say. 19 years old and already a grump.

****

I ask the boys for help only occasionally. They steal my joy by turning the rakes into weapons and complaining about the dirt (when they are not throwing it at each other). 40 years old and still grumpy. Truly is covered in itchy red welts. I wonder if it's the Daphne by the front steps, as it began blooming before anything else.

****

My friend Blair wrote a beautiful, beautiful book about quilting and using precious fabric. I have a lot of books about quilts and sewing (and gardens) and this is the only kind of book I'm interested in these days: the kind that is written as a love letter to the craft. Blair is a craftsperson and takes that responsibility seriously. Our stories should be woven into the things we make and we should be working to do better, whether we make for money or for love. It is no coincidence that she chose someone we both love, Stephanie Congdon-Barnes, to shoot the photos for the book. Both Blair and Stephanie understand making-as-meditation and that the practice of sewing (or whatever) satisfies something much more important than consumerism. My wedding dress turned quilt is above.

I do not know how my Gardening and Sewing and The Resistance coexist outside of trite and meaningless gestures right now. Skill-building, maybe? Definitely self-care. I do know that I am becoming much more intentional about both acts and where I spend what money we have. There are also people doing the good work of feeding people despite hardship in accessing land, loans, and opportunities: Black Owned Farms and Grocery Stores Oh, and Hey Oregon: you suck at this as usual.

Frida Frida With the Pole Through Her Body

I didn't watch the Oscars the other night. We haven't been to a movie in ages and for once I'm itching to see so many. Storytelling has always been a popular way to deliver content, change minds, and sell crap. There are so many people making movies about hard places and beautiful things to tell stories and change minds. Sign me up to pay a sitter more than we can afford.

After all, blogging at its heart was always about telling our stories. (The selling stuff came later. It always does. Let that not diminish your stake in it though.)

But I've also been thinking a lot about how we hide behind stories hoping that their truths (however insignificant) will shield us from contemplating bigger and more diverse perspectives. Or how a story delivered in teary repose can, in a moment, unseat an opinion buoyed by years of research. I often read about discomfort being the best lever for change and I believe it. But I also believe that we throw all that discomfort into the highly emotive and empathy based story telling basket. "If we would just listen to each other's stories..." People have been telling their stories and we still have a dangerous person for a President, a bigot for an Attorney General, a relatively uneducated person for an Education secretary... We are still complicit in the bombing of far away places and we are anxious about people "stealing our jobs" and buying junk food with food stamps. So. I guess I'm wondering if story telling has run its course in the current discourse? Do we need more than stories?

So what about listening to the facts. Do facts move us?

My kids always want the facts. They care about the stories, but they are highly suspicious of them. In their world a good story is something you use to get out of trouble/bait and switch/make someone spit their water out at the dinner table. So, I've been trying to get better and dialing in the data sets so that they have something to roll out when they get told that "they are making something out of nothing" or that they only believe what they believe because of our political leanings.

****

When Sam was in Kindergarten his teacher did a unit of Frida Kahlo.The kids all painted gorgeous water colour portraits that they captioned on the bottom. It's one of my favourite possessions. Sam was not yet six and yet he described the coming together and pulling apart of Diego and Frida in detail. He was fixated slightly on her physical limitations and the eventual decline in her health. He wondered how she could make art while in pain. I spoke to his teacher about it because I was kind of surprised she covered all of that. She explained that this story resonated deeply with kids in her class. Her class of five and six year-olds. The complicated romantic relationship mirrored the complicated relationships they saw in their own homes. The story of pain was familiar across socio-economic status. I tell this story frequently because I don't think it's typical Kindergarten fodder (and I also love to talk about culturally responsive educational strategies). But mostly I love this story because it illustrates the deep well of empathy our children have when presented with the facts.

Which brings me back to thinking more about Innocence Hoarding and why we do it and why I think it's so harmful for both our white kids and our kids of colour. I think we unwittingly begin this because we want to protect them from the facts and so we also shield them from the stories. Stories like Frida. Or Colonialism. Or Slavery. Or Eugenics. These are big words attached to a lot of facts but they are also attached to a lot of stories. If we get about the business of pulling out these stories for our children when they are young, they'll have the foundation to accept the facts-- and their present reality-- as they get older.

They won't be shocked by the statistics that show us that more black men and women will be incarcerated than white people who are convicted of the same crimes when they understand the basics around the 13th amendment ("If we cannot enslave them, then we must criminalize them.") They will grasp the deep inequalities of educational opportunities in our cities and rural outposts when they know about the Freedom Riders or Ruby Bridges. They won't be so quick to embrace the sports industrial complex when they know the stories behind the Negro League or Jackie Robinson.

I do not know all the stories and I have not figured out how many facts are too many. I am still circling around what I know I should do and what I have the capacity to do in this moment. The days are long and especially so when you get yourself in a cycle of fighting them. Which I do. Which I have. But it's March now (and we've gone over how this is my month) and I am fighting to revel in the promise of Spring. Spring and Facts.

****

Do you have an hour to listen to three incredible Doctors? If you have trouble talking to people about the tangible effects of racism and trauma this is so worth your time. I love science because it turns the battle of the dueling stories (like the one that says "that kid was being defiant" vs "that kid was experiencing stress") on its head. Exploring the Psychological Effects of Racism is a OHSU Grand Rounds Presentation and it's both engaging and approachable. The Q&A at the end is great-- in part because it demonstrates that so often we don't even know the questions to ask. The kids and I talk a lot about their adult and kid behavior because they are often in situations with children who have trauma responses to conflict or fear or transition. Or all three. And to be really honest, they also struggle with this on a personal level. This is a great intro for people interested in Trauma Informed Care and why we need it so desperately in our schools and social service systems. (You may need to scroll down a couple to find it. The best part is that it's split screen so you get to see the slides while the Doctors are doing their presentation.)

America has locked up so many black people it has warped our sense of reality The economy is NOT my Wheelhouse. But I need to get over myself and dig in. It's one of those things that people try to whitesplain/mansplain/oversplain to make sense of their own racism.

"Over the past 40 years, the prison population has quintupled. As a consequence of  disparities in arrests and sentencing, this eruption has disproportionately affected black communities. Black men are imprisoned at six times the rate of white men. In 2003, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that black men have a 1 in 3 chance of going to federal or state prison in their lifetimes. For some high-risk groups, the economic consequences have been staggering. According to Census data from 2014, there are more young black high school dropouts in prison than have jobs."

Watch 13th

 

So Executive. So Orderly.

I do not know how to explain "Mass Deportation" to my children.

I understand that I need to do it.

I am stuck because this is what I know they will ask me: Why are you not stopping this? Why are we not stopping this?

Help me. Please.

****

When I was young we knew the story of Brother Andrew the Bible Smuggler by heart. He spent decades smuggling the banned books into communist countries for illegal Christians. ("But Christians can't be illegal, Woman!" Oh. You don't say.) This passed for a thriller when we were young, and why shouldn't it? This was life and death. Today, there are entire organizations who continue to do this work on a much larger scale. It's illegal. But the laws are bad. Right? Yes.They are terrible.

As I got older I learned about all the people who used cover occupations or flat out lied to become missionaries in "closed" countries. While these governments would deny a visa for a missionary, they may welcome an English teacher or a business man. It is a risky business and some of them have paid dearly for their decisions. Their calling versus willfully disobeying the laws of the countries that they set up in. But.The laws are bad. Right? Yes. Of course they are.

In fourth grade I replayed the scene in Corrie Ten Boom's biography where she flung her papers into the hidden closet and closed up all the Jewish people she was hiding in her attic over and over again in my mind. What would I do? Would I be quick enough to turn the mattresses to the cool side to fool the Nazis? Would I grab my glasses in time? Where we would we put the people in our split level BC Box House? I would shake myself out of this logistical nightmare. This would not happen. My mom asked me why I was rereading The Hiding Place over and over. She was worried that I was too preoccupied with the sections about the concentration camps. I was not. I was obsessing over what led to them.

****

So that's where I'm stuck. The laws are bad and are being made worse. 

"Boys, these children that you love and play with may have their parents taken from them. The government will take and sell their stuff that they worked hard for. We do not know if or when it will happen. They made a difficult decision to come here knowing that it would be hard. Some of their parents have been here since they were children and had no choice in the matter. And this is what I also know: people that you know and maybe even love are applauding this decision, voted for this decision, and will (maybe even unknowingly) pay for this decision. People in your school, on the street, and in our family thought that this would be better for you and me in the long run. They are wrong. It is okay to be angry about it. I am angry about it."

"Having papers is important and we've been trying to help_____ get them and it might not work or come in time. Or it might! We don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry that this is happening. We will hope for the best. Sometimes even when you have papers, they take them away for making mistakes. People have to be careful to be careful and you're right, it's not fair. Not even a little bit."

I will probably ask them if they need a tissue or if they have any questions. I will try to explain how hard people work to gain legal status and how hucksters determined that the best way to get their way was to incite fear with lies. We live in a nation of people inciting fear with lies. I will ask them to show extra kindness and compassion to their classmates and what it looks like to stand up to bullies. I will tell them that we will do what it takes to help, even as we do not know what kind of help people will need.

At this point I will probably be crying.

This will effectively end the conversation because I've already given them too much to think about and MOM IS CRYING.

****

Is this what I tell them?

Or do I hope they will not notice?

Maybe this is the part where we test out the way of seeing in the same way that people tell me that they don't see colour.

****

I was going to list some articles that outline what this new world looks like for undocumented peoples. But those are everywhere, and you all have google. Here is my takeaway: you can be deported if you are accused of a crime. You can be deported if your citizen children take advantage of things like food vouchers or free lunch. You can be deported if you report a crime/are a victim of a crime. You can be deported. And deportation looks like prison for many of our neighbors and friends-- because you are first sent to detention centers. Jails. I guess... I guess I'm just wondering how far are we going to let this go? Does your stock portfolio contain private prisons among its listings? You may be about to become rich. How nice for you. Do you think that this is a punishment that fits the crime? May the gods have mercy on your soul.

When Immigrants are No Longer Considered Americans I need to subscribe to the New Yorker again.

"The history of immigration policy is filled with moments like these, when a group goes from subhuman to superhuman within a few short years, because of political winds beyond their grasp. My grandfather and Korematsu were born a year apart, under different circumstances, and embodying two distinct possibilities of American life. It’s a reminder that the “Creed of Democracy” contains limits—that no amount of assimilation or integration will protect you when an alien requires conjuring; that being a model citizen means little when laws can be enforced arbitrarily, and you no longer qualify as one. Yet many of us still try to live up to such impossible standards."

Ex Neo Nazis Explain What's Driving the Alt-Right Please do not stick your head in the sand and believe that this is not what's driving so much of this. I recognized my first "Nazis-not-Nazis" in our local mall years ago. Days after, I still puzzled over the dissonance between the stereotype and what was in front of my face.

"...when I was part of the movement was to make the unreasonable sound reasonable. So you could take the Nazi ideology and use a different language to make it sound very reasonable. If you put on a shirt and a tie with a suit, and tell people to go to college, don't get tattoos, and go mainstream, it makes white supremacy appear reasonable. I did that during my time in the movement. And it's funny to see it 20 years later, and that's exactly what the whole movement looks like now."

Milo Yiannopoulas and The Church of Winning These were never really my people, but maybe they resemble those who I used to think were my people? I don't know, but either way it doesn't make a difference now. These are not my people. This is unrelated to immigration, but it goes in the same pot as far as I'm concerned.

"White evangelicals voted for Trump by a wide margin; eighty percent supported him, according to exit polls. But the election didn’t resolve the questions; a month into his presidency, Trump supporters are still defending the indefensible."

Take Me To Your River (Part 2)

Every day conversations.

"I'm hungry. What can I have?"

"______"

"Never mind, I'm not that hungry."

Or.

"If they try to talk to you on your own, you need to ask for another adult to be present. Or ask to call me. One of us will come straight over. Don't let them close the door."

"If they ask you what you're doing, let Sam or _____ or_____ do all the talking. Don't interrupt. Don't give them any more information. Call home immediately even if you're close by. If something bad starts happening, someone needs to start running home and you need to start yelling for adults to help. Adults will help. Scream if you have to. Just don't use your hands. Tell them my name. Ask for me."

****

I asked Paul how he knew that his dad was wrong about the world. He was raised by a bigot-- how is he not one? Or, at the very least, how does he move through the world pulling himself out of line? He boiled it down to three things: attending diverse public schools, becoming fanatical about skateboarding, and listening to hardcore music. Diversity in the classroom meant exposure that contradicted his dad's worldview. Skateboarding meant he was a part of a culture that made it forcibly uncool to be racist in any way-- like, you'd get the crap beat of out of you. So, chalk that up to Peer Pressure. Hardcore and punk were similar in that way, but gave language to this pressure by way of Positive Messaging. If he was to add a fourth, it would be raising Black and White children. The fourth means we get to dig in further to the stuff that he started wrestling with as a Kindergartener.  

****

I was in a meeting the other day and we were discussing some of the challenges our school is facing. Poor behavior from students immediately came up as a core issue. Predictably, parents first made a statement absolving themselves from personal responsibility. "I have really high expectations for my kids. They would never even think to pull something like that." This is usually (and was in this case) followed by a statement meant to shift the blame to other caregivers and children. "I'm sure those kids have difficulties at home, but I can't imagine that anyone should be expected to put up with that. They need bigger consequences/to be taught a lesson".

The parents pointing this out are nice people with nice jobs who volunteer and march and wear pink hats.

And yet, some of the kids that they are raising with these high expectations are the same children who taunt and bully and drive those children to harm themselves and others. These kids that toe the line at home are the same kids who roll their eyes at the adults and whisper insults to their classmates under their breath. Don't get me wrong-- I believe this is all typical adolescent behavior. I don't think either type of child should be vilified. The problem becomes when the children who are seen in the first category assume powerful roles over children who are cast into the second category. This power structure starts in elementary school, follows kids through their school careers and into their Real Life Every Day Careers. This doesn't end on the playground or in the principal's office.This stuff sticks. We are literally raising our White Children to assume power over others by not interrupting common narratives around "at-risk" children (or using that phrase at all), poverty, and what White Supremacy can look like in a Lunch Lady. When we don't teach our children to think critically and behave emphatically, we are setting them up to repeat the patterns they've seen modeled.

Those kids are just bad. And they have it coming. If only someone had steered them in the right direction when they were young.

Oh, wait.

I am grateful that I'm having lots of good conversations with parents who want to do this work and model it for their children. One of the hardest things to explain to parents of our particular generation is that there is no sweet children's book, no single self-help tome, and no illustrated rubric to use to guide us or our kids through this work. Dr. Sears did not cover this stuff. Many of us were told to follow our gut when it comes to raising children, that we will know what's best for them. But man-- our guts are wrong when it comes to rooting out bias. Our guts tell us to protect ourselves and our kids at all cost, which means it is imperative to cling to the status quo. Child-centered parenting while parenting a white kid can be flat out dangerous if we do not keep this in mind. This status quo is the one that centers Whiteness as the Expert in Every Room/Theological debate/Board Meeting/Booster Club. It tells your child that the person in his Kindergarten class who has the most power is the kid that performs Whiteness the best. It's all much harder than that, and we have to think and wrestle and talk about these things in order to frame this for our kids. What I said before about modeling remains the same-- YOU HAVE TO MODEL THESE CONVERSATIONS. YOU WILL GET IT WRONG. YOU WILL TRY AGAIN.

Am I shouting? I'm shouting.

People publish really interesting and smart things on the internet for free every day. If we say we do not know where to look, then we are not looking. If you are stuck and need a book, start with Baldwin. If you only read poetry, find Clifton and Giovanni. Read How The Irish Became White. If numbers are your thing, research your district's behavior data and graduation rates. Dig into how public schools exist to serve all children. Ask yourself if kids are being served in your town? Ask yourself why? Don't settle for your own answers. Believe that Black Joy is Real, Black Excellence is Real, Black Achievement is Real, Black Wealth is Real, and make sure your kids know this to be true because they have seen it with their own eyes.

****

We were trying to work through a specific social situation the other day and I explained that situations can shift when you come in numbers. When the boys are out together they come in numbers. This is Positive Peer Pressure. "Set the expectation for inclusion and kindness and if it doesn't happen you all need to walk. Pretend you're a union."

"But what if we don't WANT to leave yet".

"Unions never want to strike, Bud."

"Right. Sometimes they have to." <side eye> "I see what you did there."

****

Our children are impossibly smart and impossibly full of promise. They get it when they are given the space and language to get it. I linked to an article about "opportunity hoarding" in Evanston Public Schools. We've discussed this issue in very real terms in our parent group. I think we also make this very real choice around "innocence hoarding"-- that is (and I'm still trying to work it out)--privilege gives us the opportunity to isolate ourselves and our kids from both experiences and learning about certain experiences. You may never ever have to have a conversation with your child about what to do if they are stopped on the street and asked to show their ID because they probably never will be asked. And if they are asked what they are doing/where are they going, they most likely will not be arrested. And if they were to be arrested, they certainly wouldn't die. And so we hoard all of this innocence hoping that we will not upset our children, meanwhile we expect Black and Brown children to bear the burden of our children's naïvete.

Part One. (I'm not going to quote myself because that's just assy.)

I'm posting this because Police Brutality and Driving While Black is also very real. I cried watching it and you might too. So I watched it again. And I cried again. And I watched it one more time until I could get through it without sobbing because I owe it to my kids to be able to have these conversations frankly and without blubbering. So, let that be fair warning if you're at work. Please show this to your kids: Black Parents Talk to Their Kids about the Police

Black, Latino Two-Parent Families Have Half the Wealth of White Single Parents This is so important. It derails the myth around equating a specific kind of (perceived or real) hardship with another hardship. You can't play the Oppression Olympics when the numbers don't back you up. (If you don't like my source on this, google will give you half a dozen other places you can dig into the numbers.)

"If current economic trends continue, the average black household will need 228 years to accumulate as much wealth as their white counterparts hold today. For the average Latino family, it will take 84 years. Absent significant policy interventions, or a seismic change in the American economy, people of color will never close the gap."

Talking about Racism With White Kids--

"If we’re not talking with our children about how race affects a person’s life in the United States and how racism factors into that, we’re not convincing children that skin color doesn’t matter. We’re telling them to figure it out themselves."

How Today's White Middle Class Was Made Possible By Welfare I think this is an important thing to understand when we feel stuck in inter-generational conversations about race. Many, many people believe that it was just hard work and sacrifice that built wealth. But we know that this is not true. If your family benefited from the GI Bill, race played a part. If your family benefited from low interest loans and loan forgiveness, race has played a part. Etc., etc.

 "Today, the federal government’s role in building and subsidizing the homestead communities—and the larger government programs to subsidize construction of white suburbs across the nation—is all but erased from history. This allows contemporary white Americans to assume they came by home ownership, and the family wealth it produces, through individual hard work. It also sustains their refusal to recognize the ways white privilege—or what W.E.B. Du Bois called “the wages of whiteness”—propelled white workers into middle-class economic stability."