In a Basic Writing class, we read part of Gloria Anzaldua's "How To Tame a Wild Tongue" last week, and the assignment was to blog and respond on it. Seldom does a student take such an assignment seriously - they usually do a brief (and I'm not going to lie - usually lame) summary paragraph themselves and then add some one-liners in response to their peers (like "I really agree with what you said..." or "I think you did a great job summarizing the article..."). This time, however, Anzaldua's ideas seemed to strike a nerve in at least one student.
I don't feel comfortable offering direct quotes from her blog, but, apparently, having grown up here in Pueblo's multicultural environment, she actually felt like a part of a minority as a white person, and she stated that she believed the Mexican culture here precluded any expression of culture for her family. But, more importantly, she was feeling the weight of whiteness on her back. I understand - being called names and constantly feeling as though you have to justify yourself in the face of the choices of your ancestors can be like wearing a heavy chain attached to something you can't see or free yourself from. And, we cannot. As Paulo Freire said in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
"As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized...It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors" (56) - who don't even know who or what they are.
We become so caught up in the white experience of being dominant, "any other situation...seems like oppression" (57) - or, at the very least, like "reverse discrimination." It is frightening and frustrating - and, yes, oppressive - confronting the sins of our fathers. My husband grew up in a poor area of Houston; he went to a middle school that was "mostly Hispanic," and a high school that was "mostly black." He got beat up - a lot - because he was white, and when confronted by issues of anti-racism, he gets angry. "I didn't do anything - it wasn't my fault - why were they beating up on me? How does that make them any better than the white people who discriminated against them?"
He doesn't want to deal with questions of history and habitus and the fact that the very reason those children beat on him was, ironically, the same reason he feels the way he does now - anger at injustice, injustice perpetrated by his own ancestors (both literal and figurative - his Texas family is unapologetically racist).
I understand, more than I maybe want to admit, my husband's - and my student's - fear and frustration. I grew up in Pueblo too, and I too have felt my white skin like a badge of shame, but I am coming to see it is the least we can do. We cannot give back the lives, or even the dignity lost to so many years of genocidal discrimination - we may, someday, be able to give back land, offer real opportunity for education, but not now. Now, we have nothing of value to offer by way of even smallest compensation but our shame and anger at those who came before us, and our solidarity with those who struggle today.
"thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world" (77)
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