Induction: Day 1, 2, and 3

4/5/2013

I am at JCSU. Johnson C Smith University. We are informed that it is the only HBCU (Historically Black College/University) in Charlotte. It is not as nice as Maryland, OSU, Capital, Bergensis, or UofT. It has all the trappings, though: the sports fields, dining hall, dorms, fraternity garden (which looks like a cemetery for Greek letters), and International Walk. This latter has two flags and enormous plaques beside them representing Trinidad-Tobego and the Dominican Republic.

This is the least rarified intellectual atmosphere in which I have ever moved. It’s elitist in another way, though. Never before have I sat in a room with so much energy towards world-perfectionism. The way people talk, the assumptions they make about what’s important, buoy me up. Inevitably, this also causes a lot of fluff. They can dismiss buzzwords all they want—they’ll simply create new ones. The people that normally I would dismiss as least able to keep up with me, the ones I impatiently wait upon to finish reading a selection so we can discuss it, are the ones miles ahead of me, the ones who already know what the classrooms we’re about to step into look like. The humility with which I look to them for guidance is tempered by my natural arrogance. I’m hoping it overtakes the arrogance.

We told our stories in small groups. One man talked about his struggle as a child in a poor family with a sick mother; one woman about coping with poverty in the suburbs. I kept my personal story out of it: at my turn, I told them how Norway made me own my Americanism and want to teach, and made them laugh a little in between the heart-wrenching inspiration.

One woman spoke about her decision to move from an HBCU to a PWI. A what? we white girls asked. A Predominantly White Institution, of course. I must drop my discourse of dosim and datlash, utlender and etnisk norsk, and move to this new lingo, teasing out nuance and negative valence. And become comfortable with myself as White Other.

There is a man here at JCSU who is, to put it lightly, extraordinary. I don’t know his name, only that on the first day he pulled me aside by my elbow, shoved me into his office, and ordered me to write down everything I could think of about kashrut. Four hours later he dragged me out of a session and into the kitchen, jogging in his enthusiasm (I was all-out running to keep up). He swung open a fridge door. Inside, a jumble of white plastic bags stood. He’d been to Glieberman’s kosher deli. From the bags emerged stacks of deli, packs of double-wrapped microwavable lasagna, cheese and breads and frozen veggies. He even spoke to his staff in a language they could understand, explaining that nothing could be subject to cross-contamination.

“You just come back here, and open this fridge, and take whatever you need,” he told me.

I was flabbergasted, and speechless in my thanks.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate this…”

“I’m just doing my job,” he told me, and with a thunderous clap on the shoulder sent me back to my session. So now I have something to eat besides salad this week.

4/6/13

This afternoon, we split into the same groups with which we’d shared our personal stories the day before to discuss anti-racism and privilege. Our group started out with a privilege walk, in which everyone stands in a line, shoulders touching, and takes a step forward every time a statement about disadvantage is true for them, and a step back every time a statement about privilege is true for them. I stepped back because I can find band aids in my skin color, because I never had to move because we couldn’t pay rent, because I was never violently attacked for my race or hungry or left out of a curriculum or knew someone who’s been incarcerated (as I reflect, this last is untrue, but I was primed to ignore everything but my privilege—a problem with the exercise). As the gap between the three black women and the four white people widened and widened, with a young Asian woman in the middle looking increasingly uncomfortable, I found myself wringing my hands. We stopped and stared across the field at the metaphorical gulf between our experiences. I felt very far away, so I waved at my roommate, across the grass, and she smiled and waved back.

Upon returning to the classroom, we had a good long talk about seeing our privilege and disadvantage so clearly mapped out. The points I thought best:

-The girl who’d been farthest ahead in the privilege walk pointed out that she’s never actually felt poor, that growing up she had a great life with a lot of love in it, and that certain conditions may have been hard, but overall she felt happy. Focus on the positive.

-The one guy asked the three black women if it had felt good to step forward together. The answer was yes, but the joy was in his thinking to ask the question.

-One of the black women asked how the white people felt to be so far behind. Our answer was good: not guilt, but responsibility. Looking forward, not back.

The woman who’d been farthest ahead turned to me at one point and asked if I felt different because I’m Jewish. I answered that it had indeed been on my mind. It makes me different, but it doesn’t diminish my privilege. In fact, I’ve been exceedingly conscious of my Judaism this week. Not only because every meal is a hassle, but because this week our main topic has been identity. Judaism is the most salient part of my identity, and yet it doesn’t fit at all into the matrix of class and race that forms the TFA discussion. I don’t want to intrude something irrelevant into the discussion, and yet I can’t be completely honest in the discussions and function as more of an observer than a contributor because I am keeping the main part of myself back. I feel a slight cramp in my personhood. As everyone shares their deepest personal selves, I keep mine back.

At the dinner at a local school Tuesday night, I went to make good on their promise of kosher food. Slightly skeptical anyways, I was utterly shocked when, after patiently waiting at the end of the line, I was told someone else had claimed the kosher meal. Nobody else here keeps kosher! I exclaimed. Anyhow, when they told me they’d prepared it in the school, I told them it was just as well; nobody else here does keep kosher, and that food wasn’t kosher. I pulled a plate of salad with a rueful smile.

That evening, while I was walking around campus talking on the phone, a police car pulled over beside me. “Careful,” he advised. “Even on campus, people get attacked. This isn’t a good neighborhood.” I headed back to the dorms, chewing over the fact that had I been a tall black man instead of a well-dressed white woman, he might have addressed me very differently. 

5/6/2013

Wednesday morning we all headed on city buses to different organizations in the city. Mine was the Latin American Coalition, where we role-played the frustrations of applying for documentation and discussed how to help our undocumented students. The kitchen staff had packed us bag lunches, and had ever so helpfully pre-assembled mine out of the materials left in my kosher bags in the fridge. There was bread, lettuce, turkey, tomato… and a slice of cheese. Laughing at their idea that simply assembling kosher food makes it all kosher, I gave the sandwich away and unpacked the food I’d brought from Columbus. Getting better at assuming that promises of kosher food will end in hunger.

We had a session on TFA’s diversity. As we read the statement about the power of role models who look like their students, I cringed. The woman (of color) beside me reflected on the statement, agreeing with it. I nodded. I agree, I told her. I just don’t know what I’m doing here, then. She made a brilliant point: it’s important for students to see someone who looks like them in positions of power. But it’s also important for them to see people who don’t look like them, who care, and help, and believe in them. A solid answer.

That afternoon we met the principals in a session of quick speed-date interviews. It’s really hard to get a feel for a school based on one person. My first interview was awkward. The principal asked how I stand out from the rest of the TFAers, and I told him: “They’re awesome! I’ve spent the last week so impressed by them.” Then I realized I was meant to be selling myself. Whoops. I connected better with others. Still, neither of us has anywhere near as much control over the process as the TFA staff. I don’t find out my placement until July.

One thing that’s been bothering me the whole time I’ve been down here is the way I speak. It’s so different from most of the other TFA corps. Verrry different from the way my students will probably communicate. I hoard up the phrases and terms: “y’all,” “side-eye,” “fresh,” etc. But I have decided not to adapt my speech, only to adopt bits with deliberation. Much as my speech has become a hodgepodge of Israeli stams, Norwegian flinks, and Canadian ehs over the past three years, it has remained my own personal idiolect, and I will not slur that simply to be understood. Of course I will clarify for my students. But I won’t change.

I thought about not posting the things in this blog that reek of arrogance. But it’s a real part of me, that I’m working on, and being stumped by it at moments doesn’t magically cure me. So I’m going to share it, and hope that by the time I end up in the classroom, you’ll be able to read a strong evolution of humility. Now for bed. Tomorrow’s another day.