Sometimes in life, it’s time to come home. In this ever changing world with fast paced technology, airplanes that connect distant countries, emails that defy space and telephones that travel lightly wherever we go – it is easy to forget that there is no place like home.
What does home mean to me? Home is a tone of voice that brings back a memory, a smell that makes me instantly hungry, a sense of being found after getting lost. Home is finding a book that speaks your own words, a cup of coffee with melted cheese, an argument with the absolute certainty that things will eventually be okay. Home is all at once the safest place to be and the scariest place especially when you are not at peace. Home is sitting in silence knowing that time will help heal old wounds. Home transforms time, a parent becomes child, child becomes parent, parent becomes child. Home is in each person that endures a life time’s journey. How many withstand the passage of time? How many have the capacity to hold, reinvent, rebuild, negotiate, do therapy, rediscover, come back or set free, forgive but not forget, get close, closer and closer yet? How many are home to me?
Reconnecting with a person from home is a scary thing. It feels like a roller coaster that you have rode on before. While you remember the excitement, fun and surprise of the ride (each time, every time) you also remember the anxiety, fear, agony (a good roller coaster, I refer to, you know, like the Cyclone at Coney Island?) The loud, crackling wooden tracks, the rumble and seemingly unstable beams (the “don’t make them like they used to” frames) peeling paint, can’t see the top, the peak, how steep is this really? You know the kind? Every turn slams your hip into the side of the tiny old car, the metal bar grabbing at your whitened knuckles, red. You scream and wonder, was that me? Where is that coming from? You are a child again. Your own free will dissolves and you are held hostage by the ride. Thrilling, passionate, rocket energy. Many beginnings, many ends. Each time!
Coming home with another person is when two people have gone on every other ride in the amusement park (or so it seems). The carousel, the bumper cars, the flume, the swings… And somehow, the rumble in the background grows louder and louder until both of you decide that it’s time. Time to take another ride. Because even though the damn thing is so overwhelmingly scary, it is the only ride, that from way up there, you get a chance to feel and experience the whole thing. The whole thing.
Malcolm X was silenced for 90 days by the Nation of Islam because of his “chickens come home to roost” speech in response to Kennedy’s assassination. There is something about coming home that is threatening. It is only at home that ourselves we must face. And for those of you out there that have already begun the journey, you know that home can be ugly. But, while I often prefer to close my eyes so as not to face the worst parts of me-- with my eyes closed, I also lose the chance to see my unique beauty.
So, join me, this Spring. Come home with some body. And, for those of you who are seriously considering – Here are a few friendly words of advice from a gal who has gotten on many times. Don’t forget to hold on. Enjoy the ride. And lastly, remember - there are very few roller coasters out there, with those “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” wooden frames – so, choose your partner wisely. Happy Homecoming!
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Perspective Taking: Friend or Foe?
Dedicated to my Mar y Sol.
After one text message, three emails and several irate minute-and-a-half long messages left on my sister’s phone, we both decided it was time to hash out our differences face to face. We met at a mid-town bar, two thirty-something year old women trying to renegotiate a relationship that started in early childhood. A glass of wine and half way down a mojito later, I got up to go because frankly, I couldn’t get past the countless interruptions and eye rolling that told me that perhaps there was never going to be real dialogue. She glared at me and demanded to know where I was going. I replied that I was exhausted and that there was really no sense. And then she said something that in its bare simplicity and wisdom known only to the youngest in a family got me to stop and rethink. It was something like this: After all this time, we are finally talking face to face and you are going to walk away? Sit down, relax, make yourself comfortable because apparently we’re going to be here a while. I meekly replied that I couldn’t possibly take one more second of her dismissing my voice, not listening to the injustice I faced, knowing that no matter how much we talked we would never, ever see things the same! Then she innocently explained that eye rolling was not equivalent to not listening. Really? I cried. Really! She lied. And what about you arguing about every point I’ve made? How is it possible that we have two completely different memories? OH! She giggled and began to explain how she was exactly like Dori. Dori? Yes, Dori of Finding Nemo. My memory is just same!
Needless to say my sister and I did stay and we continued on hashing through our differences. While it took us several hours, it basically boiled down to one premise. She wanted to move on and look at the new and I needed to put to rest some of the old. The problem was we couldn’t agree on what really happened in the past and so moving on felt impossible for me. How can I move on to the future without making peace with the past and how can we make peace with the past when both of us seem to have experienced things differently? In fact, our perspectives were so different that we both began to wonder about the faults and follies of memory itself! If a person is a victim of injustice, do they have to consider the possibility that it was just a perceived injustice in order to engage in a dialogue? Simply: Does one have to consider the possibility that “it” really didn’t happen in order to make peace?
Alexander Cockburn criticizes Obama for being too careful by quoting an excerpt from his landmark speech on race in America. In excluding Wright from the national conversation, Obama said: The remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know what is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam (Cockburn, The Nation, 4/14/2008). Cockburn argues that a “perceived injustice” isn’t really injustice at all. It’s a figment of paranoid black imagination. The delicate balance that Obama has had to maintain through out his campaign between being just a “worthy candidate” and being the “candidate of race” is faulty, if not impossible to obtain. However, Cockburn makes a salient point that underscores the complexities of dialogue, diplomacy and the resulting displays of war and peace. Is Obama suggesting that blacks did not face injustice? Does linking the word perceived to injustice negate the possibility that there is in fact a part of our history that is indeed fact and unjust and therefore indisputable? Or, does linking the word perceived to injustice suggest that perceptions of history, both past and present are malleable, controversial and subjective and that true dialogue is to open a critical inquiry into the nature of these? Is Israel stalwart? Is the siege of Gaza a perceived injustice? Do the victims of injustice have to consider the possibility that injustice did not occur in order to engage in a dialogue?
While my sister wanted to move on to a better and brighter future, I needed to make peace with a not so bright past. Like the many African American and Latino students in my graduate course on Social Identity and Literacy at Manhattanville College last summer, I couldn’t move on unless I heard acknowledgement that my anger and pain was not a result of a figment of my imagination but was a result of real events that happened – that my voice needed to be heard and listened to in order for real healing to begin. And like many of the white students attending my class, my sister was tired of focusing on the past or as Obama suggests – elevating what is wrong above all that we know is right.
Perspective taking is about recognizing multiple points of view -- each as being valuable, each as being essential to making sense of the whole. However, how can we encourage perspective taking while not losing the facts? How can we piece together a collective memory inclusive of all of our voices without forgetting the purpose of one voice, one story that in itself has the power to change the world? And while my sister admitted with so much courage (and pizzazz) that her memory is often just like Dori’s, I couldn’t help wonder why people sometimes need to forget in order to move on.
After one text message, three emails and several irate minute-and-a-half long messages left on my sister’s phone, we both decided it was time to hash out our differences face to face. We met at a mid-town bar, two thirty-something year old women trying to renegotiate a relationship that started in early childhood. A glass of wine and half way down a mojito later, I got up to go because frankly, I couldn’t get past the countless interruptions and eye rolling that told me that perhaps there was never going to be real dialogue. She glared at me and demanded to know where I was going. I replied that I was exhausted and that there was really no sense. And then she said something that in its bare simplicity and wisdom known only to the youngest in a family got me to stop and rethink. It was something like this: After all this time, we are finally talking face to face and you are going to walk away? Sit down, relax, make yourself comfortable because apparently we’re going to be here a while. I meekly replied that I couldn’t possibly take one more second of her dismissing my voice, not listening to the injustice I faced, knowing that no matter how much we talked we would never, ever see things the same! Then she innocently explained that eye rolling was not equivalent to not listening. Really? I cried. Really! She lied. And what about you arguing about every point I’ve made? How is it possible that we have two completely different memories? OH! She giggled and began to explain how she was exactly like Dori. Dori? Yes, Dori of Finding Nemo. My memory is just same!
Needless to say my sister and I did stay and we continued on hashing through our differences. While it took us several hours, it basically boiled down to one premise. She wanted to move on and look at the new and I needed to put to rest some of the old. The problem was we couldn’t agree on what really happened in the past and so moving on felt impossible for me. How can I move on to the future without making peace with the past and how can we make peace with the past when both of us seem to have experienced things differently? In fact, our perspectives were so different that we both began to wonder about the faults and follies of memory itself! If a person is a victim of injustice, do they have to consider the possibility that it was just a perceived injustice in order to engage in a dialogue? Simply: Does one have to consider the possibility that “it” really didn’t happen in order to make peace?
Alexander Cockburn criticizes Obama for being too careful by quoting an excerpt from his landmark speech on race in America. In excluding Wright from the national conversation, Obama said: The remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know what is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam (Cockburn, The Nation, 4/14/2008). Cockburn argues that a “perceived injustice” isn’t really injustice at all. It’s a figment of paranoid black imagination. The delicate balance that Obama has had to maintain through out his campaign between being just a “worthy candidate” and being the “candidate of race” is faulty, if not impossible to obtain. However, Cockburn makes a salient point that underscores the complexities of dialogue, diplomacy and the resulting displays of war and peace. Is Obama suggesting that blacks did not face injustice? Does linking the word perceived to injustice negate the possibility that there is in fact a part of our history that is indeed fact and unjust and therefore indisputable? Or, does linking the word perceived to injustice suggest that perceptions of history, both past and present are malleable, controversial and subjective and that true dialogue is to open a critical inquiry into the nature of these? Is Israel stalwart? Is the siege of Gaza a perceived injustice? Do the victims of injustice have to consider the possibility that injustice did not occur in order to engage in a dialogue?
While my sister wanted to move on to a better and brighter future, I needed to make peace with a not so bright past. Like the many African American and Latino students in my graduate course on Social Identity and Literacy at Manhattanville College last summer, I couldn’t move on unless I heard acknowledgement that my anger and pain was not a result of a figment of my imagination but was a result of real events that happened – that my voice needed to be heard and listened to in order for real healing to begin. And like many of the white students attending my class, my sister was tired of focusing on the past or as Obama suggests – elevating what is wrong above all that we know is right.
Perspective taking is about recognizing multiple points of view -- each as being valuable, each as being essential to making sense of the whole. However, how can we encourage perspective taking while not losing the facts? How can we piece together a collective memory inclusive of all of our voices without forgetting the purpose of one voice, one story that in itself has the power to change the world? And while my sister admitted with so much courage (and pizzazz) that her memory is often just like Dori’s, I couldn’t help wonder why people sometimes need to forget in order to move on.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
The Pressure Cooker Effect: On The Seduction of Common Sense
In the life of a free agent, there are significantly more opportunities to be in more than one place at a time. The resulting juxtaposition of events that inevitably becomes the backdrop of a free agent’s life also becomes the meat and potatoes of agency. The ability to link seemingly unrelated events in order to understand the bigger picture, to strategically present these events in a coherent way so that others who are limited to the inputs of only one context – can also begin to see that everything, yes everything is ultimately part of a whole. Unfortunately, we are often forced to live in tiny boxes, specializing in one field or another, traveling sometimes to and from these subjects but never really stop to understand how one is fundamentally interrelated and interdependent on the other. There is one pot, and it ain’t a melting pot, folks. New York is more like a pressure cooker, and all of us are in it. Quite frankly, I have been fascinated with the role of the relief valve.
Noam Chomsky, amongst others (hooks, Zinn, Macedo) often refer to the notion that in every society, especially one that purports democratic values needs to allow a space for educated citizens to contest the status quo. Within this space, there is an active and sometimes proactive dialogue that critically challenges the fundamental inequities that pervade our society – many of which neatly fall under the umbrellas of discussion labeled race, class, LGTB, religion, gender and so forth. All of these discussions center around identity politics, which suggest that some groups have greater or less access to resources. This is the space in which groups (most of whom have shared experiences of oppression) can debate the reasons why there is inequality, study how inequality behaves and propose strategies to fight for justice. However, while attending a book tour event where Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D. spoke eloquently about “The Seduction of Common Sense” on how the Right has framed the debate on America’s schools, I realized that I had found myself in the middle of the relief valve that I had so much read about in scholarly texts. And, when discussant Gary Anderson, Ph.D. spoke about this “exciting new time” in which education scholarship is evolving to include not only discussions of the role identity and culture play in the schools but are beginning to include the role of politics as a significant variable in the education debate – a wave of incredulity swept over me. An “exciting new time?” A “new scholarship?” As I looked around the room and found others representative of my generation X, but many more in generation Y – I began to wonder if part of maintaining the status quo is making sure that those who participate in relief valve politics believe that the current issues that drive research and education today are in fact new and exciting. How is it possible for any educational scholar to believe that linking a political agenda to identity politics in America’s schools is a new and exciting endeavor? If we all live in a pressure cooker where the relief valve is necessary in order to prevent an explosion, how do you convince just enough people in each generation (in each ethnic group, in each class, in each sector) that their voice is unique even though in every generation there have been certain individuals who have been paid to say the same thing?
Further down town at City Hall this week, was a hearing on the rezoning of 125th street. According to Tony Avello, there were an equal number of supporters and opponents to the proposed plan in attendance. I couldn’t help focus on the people who were overwhelmingly alarmed by the fact that while there have been numerous meetings and committees set up at the local level in order to include the voice of the community – many community members did not feel that the community voice was being heard at all. There were three significant points raised that are worth mentioning. One was timing. How can the community feel involved in the development plans for 125th street when they were not at the table at the initial stages but several years later at modification hearings? Second was representation. Are the community board members whose job it is to be part of the decision making process actually representative of the community? And third, history. If we look at history, how can the community not be alarmed at what is going on when gentrification has always been a threat to indigenous communities in the United States?
Whether it be uptown on 125th street, downtown at City Hall or somewhere in the village in the heart of a powerful university, I can’t help think that inside the pressure cooker, alongside the meat and potatoes, is me. I am floating around and tasting the sauce, but when I look up, there is this extremely tight metal lid fastened firmly on all sides. I feel the heat beneath me and notice several bubbles bubbling over. And somewhere in the corner, I see a teeny tiny hole, that I know, when things get too hot, will release a stream of hot air into the air. The valve will begin to turn, slow at first and then faster and faster blowing a whistle of steam. Flowing outside, I see Kevin Kumashiro and Inez Dickens. I see those that vote for and those that vote against their own best interests. And then there is me. My first gut response is to aim for that hole. God, I want to be out there and fly and be free! But, then I stop to think about the pressure cooker that binds me. It is not new and it is not always exciting. It has been around since the beginning of time. I know this because it is our history. So while I want to feel unique and special and target the hole, I ask: Do I always have to work under such pressure? Will there always be just enough space for a selected few to find a way out, be free? How can I stop aiming for the hole and consider aiming for the
W-H-O-L-E?
Noam Chomsky, amongst others (hooks, Zinn, Macedo) often refer to the notion that in every society, especially one that purports democratic values needs to allow a space for educated citizens to contest the status quo. Within this space, there is an active and sometimes proactive dialogue that critically challenges the fundamental inequities that pervade our society – many of which neatly fall under the umbrellas of discussion labeled race, class, LGTB, religion, gender and so forth. All of these discussions center around identity politics, which suggest that some groups have greater or less access to resources. This is the space in which groups (most of whom have shared experiences of oppression) can debate the reasons why there is inequality, study how inequality behaves and propose strategies to fight for justice. However, while attending a book tour event where Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D. spoke eloquently about “The Seduction of Common Sense” on how the Right has framed the debate on America’s schools, I realized that I had found myself in the middle of the relief valve that I had so much read about in scholarly texts. And, when discussant Gary Anderson, Ph.D. spoke about this “exciting new time” in which education scholarship is evolving to include not only discussions of the role identity and culture play in the schools but are beginning to include the role of politics as a significant variable in the education debate – a wave of incredulity swept over me. An “exciting new time?” A “new scholarship?” As I looked around the room and found others representative of my generation X, but many more in generation Y – I began to wonder if part of maintaining the status quo is making sure that those who participate in relief valve politics believe that the current issues that drive research and education today are in fact new and exciting. How is it possible for any educational scholar to believe that linking a political agenda to identity politics in America’s schools is a new and exciting endeavor? If we all live in a pressure cooker where the relief valve is necessary in order to prevent an explosion, how do you convince just enough people in each generation (in each ethnic group, in each class, in each sector) that their voice is unique even though in every generation there have been certain individuals who have been paid to say the same thing?
Further down town at City Hall this week, was a hearing on the rezoning of 125th street. According to Tony Avello, there were an equal number of supporters and opponents to the proposed plan in attendance. I couldn’t help focus on the people who were overwhelmingly alarmed by the fact that while there have been numerous meetings and committees set up at the local level in order to include the voice of the community – many community members did not feel that the community voice was being heard at all. There were three significant points raised that are worth mentioning. One was timing. How can the community feel involved in the development plans for 125th street when they were not at the table at the initial stages but several years later at modification hearings? Second was representation. Are the community board members whose job it is to be part of the decision making process actually representative of the community? And third, history. If we look at history, how can the community not be alarmed at what is going on when gentrification has always been a threat to indigenous communities in the United States?
Whether it be uptown on 125th street, downtown at City Hall or somewhere in the village in the heart of a powerful university, I can’t help think that inside the pressure cooker, alongside the meat and potatoes, is me. I am floating around and tasting the sauce, but when I look up, there is this extremely tight metal lid fastened firmly on all sides. I feel the heat beneath me and notice several bubbles bubbling over. And somewhere in the corner, I see a teeny tiny hole, that I know, when things get too hot, will release a stream of hot air into the air. The valve will begin to turn, slow at first and then faster and faster blowing a whistle of steam. Flowing outside, I see Kevin Kumashiro and Inez Dickens. I see those that vote for and those that vote against their own best interests. And then there is me. My first gut response is to aim for that hole. God, I want to be out there and fly and be free! But, then I stop to think about the pressure cooker that binds me. It is not new and it is not always exciting. It has been around since the beginning of time. I know this because it is our history. So while I want to feel unique and special and target the hole, I ask: Do I always have to work under such pressure? Will there always be just enough space for a selected few to find a way out, be free? How can I stop aiming for the hole and consider aiming for the
W-H-O-L-E?
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