LH--

We all know that it's a bad idea to make what would be called at its most bald, "nigger jokes." And I think we all know that racism starts so early that by the time one has words to express it with, it's gotten in very, very deep.

One of the reasons for racism is that it keeps people divided against one another who would otherwise band together around their other obvious commonalities. If they did band together, they might create social change that threatens the business world's status quo.

Schools in general have a vested interest in keeping everyone caught up in them, including teachers and administrators, firmly in place. Ask a teacher how it feels from their side, and you see pretty fast that in the building, there is actually no one who can be blamed for the bad things that happen. But happen they do, even in schools that are actually trying with all their might to be good places for people to be.

Schools are essentially hierarchies, with many layers that include not only the employees, or the employees at one level and students at another... they are intricate networks of pecking orders with a place for each individual, and this is how the top stays on top-- each one is willing to keep the next lower one in place, so the ones at the top only have a layer or two to concern themselves with. Enforcement of the pecking order is best carried out from within, at the grassroots level-- most efficient. Any oppressed group knows this full well.

So there has to be some group to pick on, or some members of the larger group who can be targeted, or classroom management could not be carried out effectively-- the students would band together and overthrow the system.

But racism is not the only thing that is used for this purpose, at the personal, daily-life, invisible level of passing on oppressions. In all-one-color schools, short boys, fat kids, newcomers, kids with disabilities-- the pecking order soon emerges, based on a dehumanization of the people at the lower end. Or it can be the members of the majority group who are "Too black," "too Jewish," "Too This" or "Too That."

By the time we are old enough to go to school, we have all the word-weapons we need to join this old, old battle, and few tools to do anything else. This is handy for the place schools hold in keeping people from thinking TOO much or becoming TOO effective in changing the world. And then we blame kids for being so mean-- they act mean, but they didn't get born that way, and they are doing it to avoid unbearable hurt themselves.

When you are in one of the easily targeted groups, there is a strong pull to join one of the groups that picks on another one. You get to keep your place in the pecking order if you are willing to put others lower on it than you are willing to be. And if you take the time to get to know an unthinkingly oppressive and offensive person, what you find very quickly is how they got hurt in order to act that way.

So, LH, I can't find it in my heart to blame you for being so colossally dumb. I'd have to assume there's a reason you don't see my smile sitting across the table when you write these things. And as far as Max goes, I can only imagine the guy-to-guy pressures at the age he describes, and how silly it would be to expect someone to actually speak against what he described.

But you know even though I see how this stuff works, I suddenly have no desire to sit across table from you again, LH. This is in the way now. I think that sucks. I also think it sucks that people don't have a real good way, usually, of proceeding past this sort of stuff. I blame you, you get defensive and blame me back for being too sensitive... others join in... that's part of how it works, you see.

I know you to be a thinking person, LH. How about you just think on it a bit, just because someone you have treated as a sensible person suggests it to you.

~Susan