Racism
The human brain is an amazing thing. It organizes information without consciously doing so. It sorts, finds patterns, predicts and reacts all without your aware self knowing what is going on.
This is what leads to stereotyping and then acting on those stereotypes, which is what leads to all discrimination - including racism.
I battle this impulse my brain engages in every day. Every time I am shocked when a Filipino student talks back. Every time I expect the girls in hijabs to be polite and express surprise when I hear one of them straddled and pummeled another student in the hallway. When I am surprised that teenage boys turned in the marijuana they found.
I work really hard to quell this impulse I have (we all have) and check the unbidden thoughts that enter in my head. Without vigilance in this arena, it is way too easy to fall into a subtle racism that bases expectations of people's behavior on their culture.
Yesterday McLean's published an article that really takes Winnipeg to task. It accuses this city of being the most racist in Canada. It points out that we have had some horrific incidents of violence, neglect and abuse towards Indigenous people here in the past few years. And it's not wrong. Those things all happened. It's also not wrong that racism IS an issue here. It is. It's real. It happens every day. I am not naive.
That article really pissed me off, though, because it only told the most horrible side. It only talked about the citizens of Winnipeg doing things that no one should be proud of. It didn't mention the outrage Winnipeg felt at each of the featured incidents. It didn't mention the multitudes of efforts Winnipegers undergo every day to battle racism in themselves and in others. It also didn't mention the fact that Winnipeg (and Saskatoon, and Regina) are on the front lines of healing the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada; a relationship that has been deliberately damaged time and time again by the Federal Government.
Yesterday at school we watched The Gladys Cook Story, which I had never seen. It is powerful. Heart-breaking, depressing, hopeful and powerful. Afterwards we had a sharing circle and the responses of our staff were emotional. They came from the deepest part of everyone.
I couldn't get a particular student out of my head. She is smart, beautiful, clever, responsible, insightful, thoughtful, mature, and up against SO MUCH, that talking to her is often the best and worst parts of my day, simultaneously. She is a permanent ward of child protective services and as such, there isn't a lot of hope for her in terms of finding a permanent supportive place to live. She manages on her own, going to her foster placement to eat and get clean clothes after several days bouncing between friends' houses. She's been asking for the documentation she needs to get a job. She is trying to go to school and do well in class, but the shit going on in her life outside school takes over her brain-power and she doesn't have anything left for figuring out math problems. She stops by my room every day or every other day. I give her juice boxes and dried mangos, and we chat. I don't know how to help her. I want to, desperately. For now, I listen, feed her, laugh at her jokes, and try to get a smile from her now and then.
The chain of events that led to the circumstances this student is in started 150 years ago when the Government bargained in bad faith with aboriginal leaders for treaties 1 through 6. And it makes me SO ANGRY, I don't have words.
This is the worst and best part of my job.
This is what leads to stereotyping and then acting on those stereotypes, which is what leads to all discrimination - including racism.
I battle this impulse my brain engages in every day. Every time I am shocked when a Filipino student talks back. Every time I expect the girls in hijabs to be polite and express surprise when I hear one of them straddled and pummeled another student in the hallway. When I am surprised that teenage boys turned in the marijuana they found.
I work really hard to quell this impulse I have (we all have) and check the unbidden thoughts that enter in my head. Without vigilance in this arena, it is way too easy to fall into a subtle racism that bases expectations of people's behavior on their culture.
Yesterday McLean's published an article that really takes Winnipeg to task. It accuses this city of being the most racist in Canada. It points out that we have had some horrific incidents of violence, neglect and abuse towards Indigenous people here in the past few years. And it's not wrong. Those things all happened. It's also not wrong that racism IS an issue here. It is. It's real. It happens every day. I am not naive.
That article really pissed me off, though, because it only told the most horrible side. It only talked about the citizens of Winnipeg doing things that no one should be proud of. It didn't mention the outrage Winnipeg felt at each of the featured incidents. It didn't mention the multitudes of efforts Winnipegers undergo every day to battle racism in themselves and in others. It also didn't mention the fact that Winnipeg (and Saskatoon, and Regina) are on the front lines of healing the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada; a relationship that has been deliberately damaged time and time again by the Federal Government.
Yesterday at school we watched The Gladys Cook Story, which I had never seen. It is powerful. Heart-breaking, depressing, hopeful and powerful. Afterwards we had a sharing circle and the responses of our staff were emotional. They came from the deepest part of everyone.
I couldn't get a particular student out of my head. She is smart, beautiful, clever, responsible, insightful, thoughtful, mature, and up against SO MUCH, that talking to her is often the best and worst parts of my day, simultaneously. She is a permanent ward of child protective services and as such, there isn't a lot of hope for her in terms of finding a permanent supportive place to live. She manages on her own, going to her foster placement to eat and get clean clothes after several days bouncing between friends' houses. She's been asking for the documentation she needs to get a job. She is trying to go to school and do well in class, but the shit going on in her life outside school takes over her brain-power and she doesn't have anything left for figuring out math problems. She stops by my room every day or every other day. I give her juice boxes and dried mangos, and we chat. I don't know how to help her. I want to, desperately. For now, I listen, feed her, laugh at her jokes, and try to get a smile from her now and then.
The chain of events that led to the circumstances this student is in started 150 years ago when the Government bargained in bad faith with aboriginal leaders for treaties 1 through 6. And it makes me SO ANGRY, I don't have words.
This is the worst and best part of my job.
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