The more people seem different from me, be it their nationality, their skin coloring, their sex, viewpoints, religion, or location – the more I see we are the same, once we really get to know each other.
Also, because in the United States we’re still in “Black History Month”, (a separation from plain old “American history” that I think is ridiculous, but that’s a subject for another post), I want to leave you with this one civilization-altering photo taken from Life magazine in 1968:
During the Olympic Games in Mexico City, U.S. athlete Tommie Smith won the 200 metre race in a then-world-record time, with Australia’s Peter Norman second, and U.S.’s John Carlos in third place. After the race was completed, the three went to collect their medals at the podium, where during the U.S. National Anthem, Smith and Carlos raised their fists in a “Black Power” salute to protest the human rights violations in their country, the United States of America.
This took place in October of 1968, just a little over forty years ago. They did this because, in their country, the United States of America, just a little over forty years ago, Americans whose ancestors came from Africa, or the West Indies, or anywhere else in the world nearer the equator where the Creator covered people with darker skin to protect them from the extra sunrays they’d be exposed to, were, by virtue of having that darker skin, judged as “lesser” by other Americans.
So the “inalienable rights” of their Constitution were not extended to them. They couldn’t even drink from the same public water fountains as their lighter-skinned American counterparts, because who knew whether or not dark skin might be catching? (Leaving the ludicrousness of that, as well as Coppertone and tanning salons aside for another post, too.)
The backlash for Mr. Carlos and Mr. Smith, their sports careers, their families, and even to Mr. Norman, the Australian up there with them, who supported them by wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, was staggering. I won’t detail what repercussions they all suffered – you can read many of them here
But now Smith and Carlos are in their sixties, and when asked recently if they would make the same sign again, in the same place and time, both answered, “Absolutely.”
Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos realise what they did for the Civil Rights Movement, clearly.
But I wonder if they realise that their one gesture in Mexico City led to the first Black American President, who will shortly begin withdrawal of United States troops from a country which, (in my opinion) we should never have invaded in the first place?
Maybe, at this time, a white Democrat president would do the same, but that’s the not the point, really. The point is that forty years ago, when Smith and Carlos made their decision to stand up and stand out, non-violently,for civil rights, and when they then bravely bore the personal fall-out of that decision, they in essence became the salvation of thousands of young American men and women who will not be deployed to Iraq to fight and die there, and thousands of Iraqi civilians who, as a result, will not die at American hands.
When viewed in that light, the ramifications of Carlos and Smith holding their fists high and still in the air that day, are much more far-reaching than they would ever have imagined standing on that podium in their youth. Something done by two men in Mexico City forty years ago, engendered thousands of lives rescued today in a country where neither have ever been. It makes one wonder how differently history would have turned out if they decided against making their statement, had just taken their gold and bronze medals and gone home.
Everything we do in life, and everything we don’t, has a corollary effect far greater than we can possibly imagine on the entire planet, even if we are not Olympic champions. For example, thanks to some reconnections I’ve made on Facebook recently, I learned that what I said or didn’t say as a teacher in my classroom thirty years ago, still affects some of my former pupils today.
So, what about you? What gestures have you made or not made, what life-transforming thing have you done, said, or written, or not done, not said, not written, that can have had either miraculous or catastrophic results?
For better or worse, all that is done or not done by each of us, reaches far more of us than we could ever dream.
And with that last thought, I say, “Good bye and all good wishes to all of you.”
Patricia Volonakis Davis
February 2009
Look Harder
“Look harder.”
Gee…did I just hear you say that again? You’re an English teacher. Surely you must know that one can’t look “harder” at written words on a page.
One can look “longer,” delve more deeply into the meaning of those words, if one can read them, that is, but one can’t look “harder.”
Yet, at least once a week, with distaste and fury layered through your voice, you say it to one of your first-year (seventh grade) pupils.
A girl today, I see.
A twelve-year old girl, whose life is already a misery. On the edge of puberty, her breasts feel sore all the time and, much to her constant mortification, one is growing faster than the other. No matter what blouse she wears to school, this is noticeable. The boys in her class often point to her chest, whispering and laughing behind her back. She hears them and wants to die. She feels she has nothing to balance this physical “anomaly” because to her mind, the other girls in her class are so pretty and sophisticated compared to her. The other girls in her class know how to flirt, while she just gets tongue-tied. And while the other girls in her class still maintain that smooth, soft complexion of their baby years, her face is already always breaking out.
Apart from her uneven breasts and pimples, her feelings of social ineptitude, she’s “stupid,” she’s been told.
By her older brother, when she can’t read the ingredients on their box of breakfast cereal, or when, in a rush of shyness, she’s struck mute when his friends come over to visit. “Don’t pay any attention to my sister. She’s stupid,” is his way of explaining her silence to them.
Her mother agrees. Oh, not that her mother actually says the word out loud, she just looks at her daughter pityingly when shown her marks. “Well, honey,” mother sighs, “I guess not everybody can be good at school.”
But, this young girl is not “stupid.” She has dyslexia.
When you, her teacher, place this before her:
This is what she sees:
Yet, all throughout her seven years of schooling so far, not one person in her life has noticed. Her brother, being a child, couldn’t notice. Her mother, not having had much education herself, might not notice. But you – her teacher? Why didn’t you notice?
I know why. You really didn’t want to be a teacher, did you? You wanted to be…hmmm…let me guess…a writer? …An actor, maybe?
And because the agents didn’t knock down your door in their enthusiasm, because the studios didn’t shower you with movie contracts, you “fell back” on teaching, didn’t you? Someone, some career counsellor somewhere, or even another teacher perhaps, advised you, “You can use your M.A degree. You just need to take a few education courses. It has great benefits and you get your summers off,” didn’t they?
And you thought about it. You thought that the salary wasn’t too bad, especially for the amount of effort you were planning to put into it. Better than being a waiter, anyway. You also realised that the teaching day, ending at 3 p.m., would give you just enough time to play at your real interests. And on a subconscious level, you knew that if you didn’t succeed at them then, you could always blame it on the fact that you, “had no time, you had to teach.”
Then the years went by, faster than you could have believed. You never got that publishing contract and Johnny Depp got all your good roles. So your disgust with Johnny, with Random House and with yourself, grew.
Eventually that disgust manifested itself into an abiding revulsion for your pupils. In particular, this little girl in front of you now, who is flushed through with agonized humiliation because, on top of everything else she thinks she should be and isn’t, she can’t read Charles Dickens and she knows you loathe her for it.
In your loathing, you’ll go one step further. You will make sure all her classmates detest her for it, too:
“I can’t believe this. Are you just going to sit there? Read it. We’re all waiting for you to say something.”
I understand you believe you should be able to express what you feel, at the very least. At least, here – in a classroom full of twelve-year-olds, you are in charge. You can say whatever you want and no one can stop you, because you have tenure, another job perk of your insufferable ‘career.’ So the worst that can happen is that you’ll get a lecture from the headmaster if any one of your pupils, or their parents has the temerity to complain. Which they hardly ever do.
Last week, it was a boy. You really outdid yourself there. You managed to make him cry. In a room full of other boys his age, he cried, because of you.
And now his life at school is effectively over. He’d already been having trouble. He’s the smallest male in his class and he can’t hit, pitch, kick or dunk a ball. However, he was managing to get through with his wry sense of humour and his ability to run pretty damn fast. Now he’ll never fit in, thanks to your public, verbal flogging.
There’s good news, though. For you, anyway. You know how you so wanted to make a social impact with your literary and/or theatrical endeavours? You have. Your words and your performances will never be forgotten. You are immortalised in the minds of your pupils.
This little girl today, for instance. She’ll will always remember and be affected by you. The first time she meets someone who calls her “friend,” she’ll be so surprised and grateful, that she’ll probably be misused. Her first job promotion, she’ll feel a clenching in her stomach, as she wonders if she’s really capable of handling it. When a man tells her he loves her, there’ll always be doubt whispering in her mind, that he can’t possible mean it. And if she becomes a mother, she’ll worry far more than most, that she’s making a mess of it.
As for that boy, if he has a supportive family, he’ll make it through the next five years of school, though they’ll be hell for him. The girls will always roll their eyes when they see him coming and sidle away. He might come to hate women because of it and himself, too. And if he doesn’t have a loving family, he might decide life is not worth it and take himself out, along with some of his classmates and teachers, probably. Possibly you.
All because you and so many others like you, couldn’t respect yourself, or your pupils or the job you were hired to do. It’s a job you’ll always despise, yet one from which no one will ever be able to pull you away. And every day you’re in it, you make my job harder for me.
Haven’t you figured out who I am?
Well, maybe you should look harder, too.
I’m the English teacher across the hall. And I hear you every day.
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credits – excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, photo from ‘foversouls’ on Flickr- “First Day of School”
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