Education

            This summer I went with my parents to Vancouver to celebrate my brother’s college graduation. One day, we decided to go to Vancouver Island and have lunch outside of the Farmer’s Market. It was a sunny day and there were children playing and running around the tables where people were devouring salmon, crab, lobster, turkey, and any of a variety of vibrant, fully juicy fruits. The indoor market had been rumbling with bargains- trying to persuade vendors that their grown produce, hand-crafted lotions, clothing, and jewelry was not worth what they had been asking. That their time, sweat, energy of crafting their land into purchasable goods were not were the price they were asking.

We have been analyzing the impact of our high school experiences a lot in class and it has only affirmed my pride and hesitation towards discussing charter school education.  While I acknowledge not all charter schools allocate their money in a way that is beneficial to students I would push everyone

“I don’t know what to write about” - A

“You could write about that” - N

I really just didn’t know what to write about today. I sit here writing and I am aware that I’m sort of forcing myself to dig through a list of potential things I could write about but nothing that I have to or want to talk about. I don’t want to force any connection making especially in this class where we’re asked to really represent our true selves.

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i wasn't on time for this posting ...  because this thought process only came to me this morning and it took me an entire day to put these words together. so here it is! 

This week I wanted to focus on the ways I use the media, which I will use to describe music, television and art, to give myself a break from the conversations we havein class and life. Not to say that the media I surround myself with doesnt work under the themes of race and navigating one's existence, but there is an immersive component to consuming art that doesnt happen in the classroom. In the classroom I can listen to the same conversation around theory, but never get down from the meta discusssion to reflect on the impact it has on our current relationships. The media I surround myself with gives my mind the break it needs to think outside of textbook theory and process in the "real world".

I'm thinking about social media. 

I guess all media can, to some extent, be tailored to what we want to see, but social media especially can create an isolated, insulated sphere of informaton and vew points. Even the ads are matched to our Google searches and 'liked' pages. You hear about the same films, the same people, and often the same politics. 

i've been on twitter for a long time. i've gone through a lot of phases. i wrote poetry about boys who kissed me in beach houses and the backs of cars. i preached feminism 101 when those boys didn't text me back. i learned that the feminism white women promoted didn't work for me and that demanding cunnilingus wasn't going to save me (or anybody). i made valuable connections with other black teens who were thinking about the stuff i was. twitter is where i first became publicly political; it handed me feminism and helped me to learn it, engage in conversation about it, and develop my own ideas about what it was and what it should be. 

Solange is a singer, actress, businesswoman, speaker of truth, my hero, and honestly my definition of a care free black girl. Recently, she wrote an essay about an experience she had at a concert, that she attended with her son and husband. As she was dancing and singing along to the music, a woman behind her began to yell out at her and through trash on her. You can read the essay here, it's beautifully written. http://saintheron.com/featured/and-do-you-belong-i-do/ 

The last few lines stood out to me the most. They read:

We belong. We belong. We belong. 

We built this. 

I am reading a lot of very important things right now, parcing through the texts I collected this summer and steeping in their greatness again. Here are some excerpts from two essays that touch on representation... Frank B. Wilderson is a black writer and film theorist, teaching at UC Irvine. Saidiya Hartman is a black historian, teaching at Columbia; both work extensively in afro-pessimist thought-- a school of thought I, too, subscribe to/wrestle with.

these are conversations I so desperately wish  to have in class, ideas that keep me quiet and restless during our classes.

My friends tease me a lot about my taste in TV shows, because most of the ones I watch are from the 20th century. While I don't mind the teasing, I am aware that the shows are problematic for several reasons, including the lack of racial diversity in the cast. Despite being concerned about this, my white privilege (and, to a certain extent, the knowledge that most newer shows haven't done much better) has allowed me to shrug my shoulders and keep on watching.