White Teacher
This morning during a boisterous, and somewhat unruly Sandbox Meeting I started telling a Story. I never know where these Stories are headed, they're simply one of my favorite tools for redirection. This Story involved the 3 characters I saw immediately before me; a copper Rooster, his friend Gravy Boat and a Grumpy Bucket. I named him Grumpy Bucket because his lip is bent and looks down-turned to me. Here's the story.
Rooster and Gravy Boat were very happily playing together when Grumpy Bucket announced that he, being silver, only wanted to play with the silver sandbox toys. This made Rooster feel really sad, which made Gravy Boat really mad. Gravy Boat told Grumpy Bucket he didn't want to hear those words, so Grumpy Bucket went off by himself. Grumpy Bucket didn't like being alone and felt sad. He'd only ever felt grumpy before so sad was new to him. He realized sad felt like a big empty in his belly, and he could feel sad in his heart too, and his shoulders and all over his body. He didn't like it. He realized this is how he had made Rooster feel and thought Rooster probably didn't like it either.
They worked through it of course, and I was asked to add two more "chapters" to the Story of Rooster, Gravy Boat and Grumpy Bucket before we ended our Sandbox Meeting. Sometimes allegories are enough to illustrate a point about prejudice; how it's acted out, how it's reacted to, how it's recognized and rectified. But what tools will teach how painful prejudice is when its been integrated into our ideas of who we are? This was one moment, in one day, and I know that challenging racism demands that I tell a never-ending story. A complex, difficult, often heart-breaking never-ending story.
It's late September 2016, and my mind is plagued by the overt racism we are experiencing in the US. It feels like a hungry dragon, growing in intensity and devouring those who stand in its path. And I am afraid of this dragon. I've long known of its existence but lately it is everywhere I look, and I can not stand quiet when I hear its roar. My fear won't stop me from naming the prejudice I see, in the Little People or the Big, though it is simpler to point out racism to children. They are inquisitive about the differences they see in other people, and ask honest questions. And unless they are taught otherwise, they do so without malice.
In her book White Teacher, Vivian Gussin Paley takes an honest look at herself, her role, her responsibility, and writes "Those of us who have been outsiders understand the need to be seen exactly as we are and to be accepted and valued. Our safety lies in schools and societies in which faces with many shapes and colors can feel an equal sense of belonging. Our children must grow up knowing and liking those who look and speak in different ways, or they will live as strangers in a hostile land."
In her book White Teacher, Vivian Gussin Paley takes an honest look at herself, her role, her responsibility, and writes "Those of us who have been outsiders understand the need to be seen exactly as we are and to be accepted and valued. Our safety lies in schools and societies in which faces with many shapes and colors can feel an equal sense of belonging. Our children must grow up knowing and liking those who look and speak in different ways, or they will live as strangers in a hostile land."
Dragon, I hear you. And I hope you can hear me. This is no hostile land!