Fluid ImaginationFrom Why I Capitalize “White”:
As long as White people do not ever have to interrogate what Whiteness is, where it comes from, how it operates, or what it does, they can maintain the fiction that race is other people’s problem, that they are mere observers in a centuries-long stage play in which they have, in fact, been the producers, directors, and central actors.
The 2019-2020 school year marked my tenth year of teaching. I taught at the college level for the first two years. The next two years were at both the college and high-school levels. The next four years were at the middle-school, high-school, and college levels, and the last two years were at the elementary-, middle-, and high-school levels.
All of which is to say that I approach middle schoolers in completely the wrong way — I expect them to be college students before I expect them to be themselves.
My understanding of middle schoolers doesn’t get much beyond the idea that all the middle-school brain cares about is the social dimension. Regardless of whether you ask them to parse a sentence or divide a fraction, all their brain will focus on is what they believe everyone else around them thinks about them.
The progressive response to this reality suggests taking middle-school kids out into the world and letting them explore: bring them to museums, theaters, natural wonders, local haunts, places of work, places of worship, places of celebration, places of mourning, carnivals, recycling factories, beaches, forges, bridges, trollies, ferries, abandoned warehouses, hospitals, sawmills, canning factories, coffee shops, activist headquarters, state houses, volunteer fire departments, parks, science labs, concerts, car garages, wood shops, architects’ offices, etc,
The key to the middle-school brain is exposure. If they focus on how they relate to their various peer groups (what this person thinks about that person, what those people think about them, etc.), let them focus on those things while being surrounded by a wide variety of opportunities. If their brain coincidentally blinks into focusing on something other than the social dimension for a moment, we want to make sure they have something interesting to focus on.
If that’s what their brain is going to do regardless of what adults might want it to do, the question becomes: how do adults help them do it in a healthy way?
First we have to recognize what it means for a middle-school brain to act healthy. In a lot of the education-focused literature I’ve read, the problem comes from the difference between the adult’s expectation of what a middle-school brain ought to be doing and what a middle school brain naturally does. Advice usually revolves around a foci of engagement and excitement, anything that will distract the students from being distracted by their peers.
Instead, I say let them be distracted. Social skills are way more important than math and reading, so adults ought to focus attention there. While we shouldn’t stymie any middle-school child from diving into a book or working on a numerical problem, we don’t want to push too hard in those areas either. We need to work to build an honest and trusting relationship so that the middle schooler is willing to take our healthy advice on how to approach their social challenges. If a teacher struggles to get a student to comply with a homework assignment, how much more will they struggle to get the student to share their hopes and fears?
So, after six years of working with middle school students, I guess that’s my advice: offer them opportunities to explore the wider world and earn their trust so they will believe you when you tell them the only thing they can do to solve their problem is have a difficult talk with the person they most don’t want to talk to.
Oh, and PS: get rid of their fucking cell-phone. You’re handing them a crack pipe, and while it can make a parent’s life so much easier in the short term, it’s doing untold damage to their brains that you (and they) will pay for later.
[This post was written by request. For a $5 donation to the Bail Project, you can assign me to write a 500-word [minimum] blog post on any topic of your choosing. For more details, read Writing for Bail Money.]
On July 18th, 1861, roughly three months after the outbreak of the American Civil War, my daughter’s great-great-great grandfather on her mother’s mother’s side, John Morgan Wages, enlisted in the 6th Regiment of the Arkansas Cavalry at the age of 16 years old to fight on the side of the Confederacy.
According to his enlistment papers, Morgan was 5’6” tall with fair complexion, blue eyes, and light hair, and prior to enlisting, he worked as a farmer.
Just a year prior, his father, Lemuel Wages, purchased “forty-six acres and twenty four-hundredths of an acre” of public land in Arkansas from the Federal government. While I haven’t found any record of Lemuel or his father, William, owning slaves, I did find a record in the 1810 U.S. Federal Census that Morgan’s great-grandfather, Dawson Wages, owned four slaves back when the family lived in Richland County, South Carolina.
I don’t know if Morgan fought for the Confederacy because he believed in white supremacy, or if he was “defending” his family’s land, or if he was “defending” his family’s property (i.e., slaves), but I do know he served as part of the Company G (the Ouachita Cavalry) and fought “for the Confederacy east of the Mississippi River.” After fighting for a year, he reenlisted in July 1862.
Three months later, in October 1862, at the Battle of Corinth, a critical rail junction in northern Mississippi, Morgan was either “severely” or “slightly” wounded in the head (a handwritten note says “severely,” but a typed note of the list of casualties from the battle says “wounded slightly”). Morgan is listed as “Absent” on the next two company musters and disappears from the Confederate record after December 1862.
However, his name shows up again in the military record on November 25, 1863, when he enlists in Lewisburg, Arkansas, for a three-year stint as a private with Company B of the 3rd Regiment Arkansas Cavalry, fighting on behalf of the Union. Interestingly enough, the first time his name appears in the record for signing with the Union cavalry, there’s a note that reads, “Have no horse.”
I don’t know why Morgan switched sides, but many went where the wages were (no pun intended). Morgan would stay with the Union regiment for the next year and a half, fighting as part of the Camden Expedition, which was the final campaign against the Confederate Army in Arkansas (and it was wildly unsuccessful).
In the June of 1865, there’s a remark on Morgan’s record that reads:
Stop for ordinance retained $8.00 + in confinement awaiting sentence of court martial since May 13, 1865.
I could not find any more information on why he was courtmartialed, but he was mustered out of the regiment on June 30th, 1865. I’m assuming he wasn’t dishonorably discharged because he would collect a pension until his death, and his widow, Alcesta Wages (formerly Brazil), would continue to collect until her death in 1917.
After the war, Morgan made his living as a farmer in the Behestian or Red Hill townships in Ouachita County (according to the 1880 Census, anyway). He and Alcesta would get married in 1870 in Camden, Arkansas, and go on to have nine children (six boys and three girls [two of the latter died before the age of 1]).
I lose track of Morgan after the 1880 Census. Other family-tree researchers have his death listed as April 19th, 1892 in Edmond, West Virginia.
His wife’s grave can be found in the Scotland Presbyterian Cemetery in Scotland, Arkansas, but she’s buried with their son’s wife, not with her husband, so I don’t yet have a reliable record of his death.
All of which is to say that I have proof that my daughter directly owes her life, at least in part, to the slave economy and the fight for white supremacy.
His heart attack comes at an appropriate age. Everyone is sad; no one is surprised — least of all of him. He sees a flash, like a squiggle across his vision, like a tuner coming untuned, and then he’s floating, facing a ceiling of lights and moving beneath it, feet first, floating on his back through a people-mover-tunnel like under the airports he used to frequent when he was alive.
He rights himself like Peter Gabriel did in the music video and floats into an indoor-mall plaza with an all-glass spinning globe ceiling casting shadows on his eyes like a ceiling fan, and dancers, decked in neon greens and blues, kicking and shuffling along a second floor balcony.
He’s not the only one gawking.
The lights shift into dark purples and reds and direct his eye to a dark door beneath a misty sign promising karaoke and cocktails from the Orient, pineapples and shellfish and fried chicken bits, colorful tiny umbrellas and a soft mist behind the bar.
Music pours out of the door. The bass riptides behind his hips and propels him towards the dance floor. He goes with it, raises his half-closed fists in front of him, bites his lip, and starts to sway his hips in time. Floating high above the dance floor now, he’s never felt this free.
A flash, and he’s outside it all now, walking alone through empty city streets. Traffic lights cast long shadows in the night. In the middle distance, an empty elevated rail-car passes over the street. He turns at the next block, propelled by something he can’t remember. He’s sure he’ll find it somewhere, if only…maybe it’s this way. He staggers and stumbles, but keeps his feet. He looks back over his shoulder. What did he trip on?
Sirens or someone shouting echoes in the distance, not close enough to scare him, but too close to ignore. He stiffens his collar against the night, puts his head down, keeps walking.
He’ll find it somewhere.
A flash of lighting, a crack of thunder, and it’s raining. The water pours down the glass buildings, puddles beside the curbs, mixes with the mess in the street. He lifts his coat over his head and hurries his pace. The sirens or shouts in the distance don’t let up, but they don’t come closer either.
He’ll find it somewhere.
Maybe…there.
The entryway is narrow and long, painted black with black flowing curtains draped along it. Dim floor lights fight against the curtains for dominance, and with every step he takes, every shoulder brush against the curtains, the lights lose. The sticky floor rumbles beneath his feet from the bassline, but his eyes, as he comes out of the entryway, are attracted to the pink lights dancing across the ceiling of the long, wide…
He sits on a couch beneath a streetlight. Behind him, around him, beneath him, the greenest grass, the softest gentlest rollingest hills; above him, above it all, fat white clouds lounging in a sky blue sky. He stands, and everything flickers, just once, but enough to convince him it isn’t real. He reaches down and rips up several pixels of grass. Where the blades broke, sparks of electricity flicker like fingers reaching in desperation for their mother.
He sits back down on the couch and kicks his feet up. It has to be here somewhere. He reaches off to his side, finds the remote, and couch-surfs into oblivion.
[This post was written by request. For a $5 donation to the Bail Project, you can assign me to write a 500-word [minimum] blog post on any topic of your choosing. For more details, read Writing for Bail Money.]
Today marked the first day of my two-week summer break. So what did I do?
I fucking terrified myself.
I watched the long-form videos and read the long-form articles and scrolled through the lengthy and well-sourced tweet threads. I read Gorsuch’s bullshit undergraduate-essay of a Supreme Court decision (“Webster’s dictionary defines ‘frozen trucker‘ as…”), which thankfully came out on the only logical side of history in spite of the 11th fucking Circuit’s retreat to a previously invalidated precedent. And I discussed with my wife our various opinions and perspectives on various local and global events.
In short, I tried to catch up.
One of the articles I read today (thanks to a link shared by a white colleague) made the observation “When black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs.” Tomorrow, my white wife and her white colleagues will gather for a meeting of their summer book club, the first assignment of which they’ve dedicated to issues of race.
Written by Tre Johnson, the article (which is fantastic) offers a clear critique and alternative:
[W]hen things get real — really murderous, really tragic, really violent or aggressive — my white, liberal, educated friends already know what to do. What they do is read. And talk about their reading. What they do is listen. And talk about how they listened.
What they do is never enough. This isn’t the time to circle up with other white people and discuss black pain in the abstract; it’s the time to acknowledge and examine the pain they’ve personally caused.
He continues:
The right acknowledgment of black justice, humanity, freedom and happiness won’t be found in your book clubs, protest signs, chalk talks or organizational statements. It will be found in your earnest willingness to dismantle systems that stand in our way — be they at your job, in your social network, your neighborhood associations, your family or your home.
So here I sat, in rural Vermont, a super white village in a super white state in a super white region of a super white-supremacist country, and I was being tasked with dismantling systems that stand in the way of black justice, humanity, freedom, and happiness.
I wracked my brain about what to do.
A white friend of mine recently attempted to be the fastest known woman to complete an unsupported run across Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness. She asked people to pledge $1 per mile to one of three organizations that “support BIPOC folks in the outdoors and sports [including ultimate frisbee]”. She “hiked/ran/stumbled-through around 57 miles, unsupported, with 10,000 ft. of elevation gain in 25 hours” before a knee/IT band injury forced her from the trail.
That’s something I could do — not run (I can’t do that) — but a pledge drive! I can do a pledge drive.
My friend is a runner. I fancy myself a writer.
Maybe I can get people to pledge money to a worthy, relevant cause by writing something.
First, I needed the cause, a place where 100% of the money would go directly to the front lines of black justice, where and when it is needed the most.
I chose The Bail Project.
The Bail Project works like a Kiva micro-loan, where the money doesn’t come back to you, but “back” to another person in need:
We pay bail for people in need, reuniting families and restoring the presumption of innocence. Because bail is returned at the end of a case, donations to The Bail Project™ National Revolving Bail Fund can be recycled and reused to pay bail two to three times per year, maximizing the impact of every dollar.
The question then became, what to do as a writer to drive pledges?
Well, who better to ask than you? For a donation of $5 to the Bail Project, you get to tell me what to write about. It can be on any topic you choose, but not any thesis; you don’t get to make me write an essay denying the Holocaust, for example, but you can make me write an essay about the topic of Holocaust denial.
I know this isn’t much (as one of my friend’s sarcastically said when I suggested the idea, “The opportunity of a lifetime!”), and I know this plays directly into Tre Johnson’s critique of his white, liberal, educated friends who “read [and] talk about their reading,” but writing is the labor my body does best, and this is the only way I can think of to put its product to use on the front lines.
So please, pledge at least $5 to the front lines, and then get a kick by having me write about whatever you think is fun, important, educational, stupid, arcane, fantastic, deep, idiotic, meaningful, controversial, ridiculous, etc. And remember, part of the fun is not just reading the result — it’s also getting me to spend significant time researching and formulating thoughts on whatever it is you want.
For example, the first person who donated to this campaign asked for “a critical appraisal of the vaporwave genre of music.” The assignment came with a 22-minute YouTube documentary to get me started on my research. For comparison’s sake, I watched a two-hour documentary on Miles Davis last night. And now I have to watch one on “the vaporwave genre.” I am not looking forward to this.
But thankfully I’m free enough to do it. With your donations to the Bail Project, other people can be free as well. So please don’t $5 to the Bail Project and then influence the writing that shows up in this space.
(After making your donation, just leave a comment on this post with your topic idea).
PS: This project that will as long as The Bail Project is needed, so if you’re stumbling on this post through some random Google search three years in the future, and the Bail Project is still running, then yes, you can still make a donation and still force me to write on whatever topic you choose.
The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker.
Anonymous, Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop
I sat in the backyard opposite my wife. We had very consciously put our phones away and were enjoying the strong June winds, my feet on her chair and her using my shins as a leg rest. Our daughter came out of the back door with a paper cup in one hand and a stick in the other. Wrapped around the stick was a worm.
I don’t 100% know what her plan was. I know it involved babysitting the worm overnight, and I think she planned on putting it in the cup with some grass and some water.
She had found the worm with a friend, and somehow, they agreed my daughter would be the one responsible for it, at least for that first night. As I sat in the backyard talking with my wife, I heard her little feet running down the sidewalk from her friend’s house, and she was yelling something over her shoulder, something about promising to not let it get too much sun, as if her friend (whose parents are both biologists and who definitely knows more than my daughter about how to take care of a worm) was calling down the sidewalk, giving her advice.
My wife and I didn’t want the worm in the house, so we tried to guilt her into not traumatizing another living creature by imprisoning it against its will. We suggested she either return it to her friend’s yard, where it would have a chance of finding its family again, or release it into the boxed garden in our yard, where she could keep it contained and visit it while also giving it plenty of what it loves (while also surreptitiously working for us, since worms are good for gardens).
She agreed to put it in the garden, but then realized she’d have to dig each day just to find it, and wouldn’t all that digging hurt the garden?
I remembered the terrarium kit one of my colleagues generously made for her, which still sat unused on our back porch. I suggested we try that. She’d be able to provide the worm some nice soil, surround it with some plant life, and give it some light and water; plus, she wouldn’t have to dig it up each day.
And just like that, we forgot about not wanting to imprison another creature.
My daughter and I followed my colleague’s nicely printed out instructions on how to build a healthy terrarium. After pouring in the charcoal starter and soil, establishing the hardscape, positioning the moss, sticks, rocks, and (just so) the chestnut shell, my daughter gave the moss some nice cool water. She checked to see if the worm, which she recently imprisoned on a pile of ripped up grass under an upside-down paper-cup, was still alive. Find it so, she carefully picked it up and placed it in the terrarium, giving it both a gentle ride and a smooth landing.
My wife brought dinner from the house, and we ate at the picnic table. Later, my daughter carried the worm and its terrarium up to her bedroom, then ran off and played with her friend some more. I walked down the street and brought her home as the sun set. She took a shower. As she dried off and dressed, I read to her the last pages of The Wild Robot. She made sure she put on the right underwear, and when she couldn’t find it in the drawer, she chose a very specific different pair to wear instead (her reasoning? they were the same color as the right pair).
She stood in front of her bureau and looked into the terrarium. I was reading to her a scene where a mother (the wild robot) has to say goodbye to her son (a goose) and set off alone on a new adventure.
“Hey dad,” she whispered, “I think it’s dead.”