What we teach our children, and ourselves

When I was halfway through my first pregnancy, I found myself startled to realize that I would be giving birth to a white male. After all the time I had spent teaching about race, gender and class privilege, I wondered how I could ensure that my son wouldn’t grow up feeling entitled.

Last spring, as his fourth grade year was ending, I thought about the students I’d had ten-plus years earlier and wondered what they had learned from me and my attempts to get them to think about their complex roles in society.

The topic wasn’t much in the news in May, but it has always been on my mind. When I was thinking about submitting essays for a blog conference contest and one of the topics was about something you feel passionate about, I worked on a piece I had been drafting for a long time and submitted the essay about white privilege.

In early June, it was chosen as one of the winning BlogU “Term Papers.” As I wrote earlier, I got positive feedback from people who heard me read and told me the piece had made them think.

And then a lot of things in the news the following month made a lot of people think.

Before the piece was published earlier today on the Huffington Post, this summer’s tragedies sparked renewed conversation about the role of racism in American culture and the responsibility of white people to confront their privilege and take initiative toward dismantling inequitable power structures.

Whether or not the topic is trending, it’s important.

And it’s there whether or not it’s being covered in the media or discussed in school.

Today I spoke to a neighbor who is Lakota. I’d seen there was an American Indian festival this weekend and wondered if she was familiar with it and could vouch for whether it would be a good educational opportunity or something that might, well, be a little surface-level and perhaps not teach what I wanted my kids to learn.

She hadn’t heard of the festival and said there were so many good actual Pow Wows, I might be better off taking my kids to one of those. Or, she said, talk to them about resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

My son had noticed her kids’ recent sidewalk chalk message to defeat the pipeline. I’d told him the little I knew about the issue, that native peoples objected to the building of the pipeline because if anything went wrong, it would threaten their access to clean water, which we agreed was a pretty big deal. I’m not a fan of any oil pipelines, but it soon became clear how clueless I was about this issue and its many problems.

My neighbor told me about the 4,000 peaceful protesters who have been amassing at Standing Rock since April, trying to protect sacred native lands.

She described how bulldozers had already decimated sacred burial grounds.

She described how the vicious attack dogs brought by the oil company had been unleashed on the Standing Rock protesters, biting several children.

She shared about the youth who had run 500 miles in a spiritual run called Run for Your Life from Cannonball, North Dakota to the United States Army Corps of Engineers district office in Omaha, Nebraska
She talked about taking her children earlier this week to a protest at the White House to get the attention of a president spoke to their community two years ago and told them that yes, they did deserve clean water and air but who has not taken a stand on this pipeline.

She explained that environmental surveys hadn’t been done and that going through tribal land went against long-established treaties.

She told me that Bernie Sanders is holding a rally on Tuesday at Lafayette Square to protest the building of the pipeline.

She shared how upset she is about the problem but how inspired she’s been about the way different tribes and non-native allies, including the Nation of Islam and Black Lives Matter, have come together on the issue.

This is history being made, she said.

I had no idea.

I do know how hard it has been for my neighbor to live here in the land of the Washington football team. She’s previously told me how sick she is of teaching people why their mascot is offensive and demeaning and how it negatively affects her children’s sense of identity. I get it. I can’t understand how people who otherwise would not put up with epithets can sport gear emblazoned with that name and mascot.

I didn’t want her to feel like she had to school me, to yet again be in the position of educating a white person about what she has the privilege to not know about. But she was passionate and generous, and I’m grateful that she did take the time to share with me what I’ve not been hearing or seeing in the news.

She told me to check out Rezpect Our Water to learn more and sign a petition against the pipeline. I did and started following Standing Rock Kids on Twitter and Rezpect our Water and other groups on Facebook. I went to the Moms Clean Air Force Facebook page and found this ATTN: Video that leads with: “More people need to know about the violence happening in North Dakota right now” and shows footage of the attack dog violence, drawing parallels to the civil rights fights of the 1960s.

I hope that President Obama will place his feet firmly on the right side of history on this issue. But more importantly, I hope it will start to get more visibility and that more people will learn about what has been going on and the threat to native peoples and their land.

Leonardo DiCaprio has taken a stand against the pipeline, as have many others.

If you are as out of the loop as I was, check out the links above.

Here’s also the September 7 Washington Post article about the movement against the pipeline, and 10 Ways to help the Standing Rock Sioux Fight the Pipeline.

Finally, I’d like to hear about ways to include conversation about this issue in school. Environmental stewardship is part of the core values of my children’s magnet school. It’s important that our children be part of a national conversation, especially when it relates to topics they are studying, like water as a precious natural resource.

Earlier this week, the Moms Clean Air Force blog published an interview with Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools about making climate change part of the school curriculum. Lots of food for thought there.

I’d love to hear more about making environmental and social justice issues — like the Dakota Access Pipeline and its connection to civil rights and human rights — part of school curriculum, even at the elementary level.

My Huffington Post piece about wanting my kids to be confronted by their white privilege is here.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply