“The rich get richer and the poor take less
The American Dream was an American nightmare
You kept my people down and refuse to fight fair
The Klu Klux Klan tried to keep us out
With signs reading and stating “No Blacks Allowed”
With intimidation and segregation, we’re still waiting for our freedom
But now were impatient”
2Pac – Panther Power
Separation and segregation are the the ingredients of alienation and evil.
This week’s shootings of black men and of police officers have led me to contemplate where we are and how we got here. I’ve cried, screamed, argued, and run for hours all the while searching for answers and next steps. In my search I’ve continued to wonder why we are so quick to compromise each other’s humanity and that of our brothers and sisters of other races. We’ve seen these last two days that we all bleed, we all cry, we all feel pain, and unfortunately we all pull triggers. This led me to reflect on segregation and how it has bred and contributed to many of the injustices we are coping with. Below are some of my thoughts…
I remember being in elementary school and driving to a school performance with my mom and some family friends including my boy who was half Jamaican and half Nicaraguan. As we drove through the working class black neighborhood that my school was located in, he looked around and remarked at how “dirty and ghetto ‘these’ people” were. Even in my youth it always stung to hear racist and classist remarks. I snapped like a trap on a mouse and went off on him about how: a. he was perpetuating self hatred (he was a dark skinned young man) and buying into the system that was built to oppress him (in my 10 year old voice and vocabulary of course) and b. he didn’t know anyone who lived in that neighborhood, but I did. They were my friends, my classmates, my teammates, my girlfriends and if he didn’t like them then he didn’t like me and we could end our friendship right then and there. My mom let out a “damnnnnnnnnn” and my boy apologized but I remember sitting there for the remainder of the ride wondering how my friend could have such an ignorant, misguided, and hateful perception of people he didn’t even know. Although we were both boys of color, we lived in a predominantly Latino neighborhood and our ethno-national pride had ingrained in us that we were somehow “better” than “those” people. I had the great fortune of going to an amazing school in this neighborhood and built relationships with people that challenged the stereotypes society and the dominant culture were trying to impress on me. Although I was by no means fully immune to the indoctrination of our upbringing, it was harder for me to see a “them” because it felt like an “us.” After all, when someone in my class fell on the playground, they bled red. When we had a test, we studied and complained together. When it was lunch time, we ate together. When we had school dances, we danced salsa, merengue, bad pop (N’Sync was big at the time), the cha cha slide, and hip hop together. Most importantly, we grew up together.
I remember raising chickens in my backyard when I was a kid. We bought them as chicks at the flea market and raised them as pets. We started with six little ones and cried when an iguana ate two of them. We fortified their coop and kept a close eye on any potential predators. When a classic Miami tropical storm flooded our backyard, we ran out to rescue our chickens who had drowned. I kid you not when I say that my grandmother (not by blood but by upbringing) gave the chickens mouth to mouth (or beak I guess) and CPR to bring them back to life. We used a lamp and hot water to nurse them back to health. Three of the four chickens survived the ordeal and grew to a pretty decent size. A few months after the storm, a neighbor reported our hood backyard coop and we got a letter stating that we had to get rid of the chickens. At this point we had two options: eat them or give them away. Those of you who know me, know that I love chicken wings (it’s my favorite food and I get them at least once a week). Even though I love chicken wings I found myself unable to bear the thought of eating my backyard friends. I had seen them grow, protected them from the elements and nursed them back to health. Our shared experiences had developed a compassion and empathy that was new to my cold carnivorous heart. In the end we were unable to bring ourselves to eat the chickens and ended up giving them away.
I don’t share the story above to dehumanize any racial groups and compare them to animals, but rather to show that we can develop empathy and compassion even across species when we live and grow together. If we can do this with animals we should be able to do it with human beings. The problem, as I see it, stems from the fact that across the country we live in hyper segregated communities where entire groups of people are segregated based on class and race. Even members of the same racial groups (like my friend) can be indoctrinated to look down upon those of a different social class. I’ve had more than one family member try to argue with me about the “lazy” Latinos and how they give “us hardworking” Latinos a bad name. Marxist theory suggests that capitalist systems must always allow for a few members from the bottom to rise to the top in order to put on the appearance of hope and possibility. These folks become convinced that their success is purely a result of their hard work and often times buy into the oppressive system that keeps their brothers and sisters down. The rise of these lucky few also keeps the bottom from revolting and rebelling. I live constantly wondering how my success and my escape from poverty feeds into this notion. I now choose to live in the predominantly Latino neighborhood where I work but many folks of my ethno-national background don’t have the same agency, the same “choice.” As such, they’re forced to live in segregated communities and send their children to segregated schools.
One realm of segregation that we supposedly addressed Constitutionally through Brown v Board of Ed is education. Sadly, research shows that school segregation is on the rise and rivals the levels of segregation before 1954. In my first two years teaching, I taught one white student. My school was 99% black and Latino and 99.9% free and reduced lunch. Today, I work at an intentionally diverse charter school that brings students from different socioeconomic and ethno-racial groups together. Our students come from four distinct communities and we try to create an equitable environment that levels the academic playing field. Even so, the surrounding communities have not responded well to our diverse student body. Part of this might be a result of us being a charter school but a more concerning and disgusting part is the racism that elected officials and administrators in these communities exhibit when talking about the students from my particular city. Last year, our Commissioner of Education, Ken Wagner, proposed the idea of having open enrollment for schools across our state. I’ve heard whispers and second hand accounts about how legislators and district administrators talked behind closed doors about not wanting “those kids” in their schools, not wanting their tax dollars to fund the education of “those kids” and how “those kids needs” are a burden to their kids and too great for them to support. More importantly, I saw first hand a few years back how the surrounding communities (including one much like ours) turned their back on a transfer student simply because of the community she was from (she’s now killing it in high school with high marks and well above grade level in various subjects). Today, the conversation on open enrollment has stalled.
In the smallest state in the Union, I’m blown away but how alienated, cold, racist, and classist we can be. I believe this is rooted in the segregation we experience in our day to day lives. In my experiences talking to people about Central Falls I’m blown away by how ignorant their reactions are to my living here. They always ask “how bad is it?” “how do you deal with all the crime?” and “aren’t there drugs everywhere?” What is more surprising is that most of them have never stepped foot in the city that is located not far from where they live. While the intentionally diverse school I serve in now is a hopeful move in the right direction, it is a cunt hair’s length of the road we must travel to truly desegregate our society and dismantle the alienation we feel and express towards each other in America. Until we live, eat, learn, grow, and suffer together we will continue to be alienated from each other and from our humanity. Hasta la revolucion siempre.