Driving Without a Map: How Kendrick Lamar's 'This Is Bigger Than Music' is a Location

I. Exposition

In the late 1980s, I disconnected from television, turning it off. Literally. My husband still watched his beloved Giants, on Sundays, but beyond that, our lone TV stood quiet in the corner. Yes, we flirted with Twin Peaks sometime in the early 90s, but it wouldn’t be until 2015 when Rob so sick from stage 4 lung cancer ‘discovered’ The West Wing and we momentarily engaged with TV again. We binged as Rob grew sicker and Donald Trump, that brass New Yorker, entered what seemed then an improbable race. So seeing myself watch and rewatch Kendrick Lamar’s 13-minute halftime show stunner this past week was a bit of a surprise. 

I spent Sunday evening as I do most Sundays talking books, politics, and life with a group of dear friends in a book club. The Super Bowl and its halftime show were not on my radar.  But the next morning, I read a post by a former colleague. She wrote how her daughter (who I truly hope to vote for someday) had sent her a completed lesson plan for her to use with high school students based on Lamar's Super Bowl performance. "Mommy you have to." 

So after hearing a lot of buzz about Lamar's performance, an artist frankly I knew only by name, I figured 15 minutes on the treadmill watching the show would work well. An hour later I was still walking, and rewatching. 

II. Subject

Last week, I read a small snippet on Dr. Victoria Williamson's blog about the cognitive importance of listening to new music as we age. It fascinated me. She writes,

“Listening to new music as we age provides the brain with a cognitive challenge that activates multiple, simultaneous neural systems. The benefits of music listening will never compare to the enchantments we get from actively performing music, but, nevertheless, new music listening activates areas of the brain from root to tip, from early auditory processing centres through to the outer reaches of our context.”

Listening to new music is good for us—that is, anyone beyond their teenage years. We tend as we age to deeply appreciate (regardless of quality) the music of our adolescence and early 20s. Neural nostalgia. The music of our youth is tightly bound with experiences. We tend to favor the familiar, such as that beloved song played and replayed on the way to and from school. Or in my youth, that one song my girlfriends and I waited to hear on a cheap AM transistor on the beach. We screamed each time it came on as if we had wished it into existence. Or that evening in Central Park when the concert we waited so long for got rained out, and we made a mad dash to the subway singing too loudly the songs we came to hear. Or maybe for you, it's the prom song, or the songs that followed you to college, or like me, the music that played at the first funeral of a too-young friend who had died. All it takes are the first few notes and memories flood us. The familiar is a comfort. But sometimes the familiar is also too comfortable.

I was thinking about how listening to new music breaks patterns and increases perspective. But doing that requires a modicum of discomfort. After watching the halftime show several times, I wanted to know more as there were holes in my understanding. I wanted a map that could locate what I was hearing with what I knew. But to understand also required a bridge. Whereas I grasped bits and pieces of what Lamar was rapping, and appreciated the choreography, lighting, and symbolism of America built on and by Black bodies, I wanted the full gestalt. So I read a few reviews a details became clearer. No longer was this performance an outline, but rather a map of our history.  Lamar's pronouncement, "40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music" connects the performance with Black history which is US history--and perhaps it is there in that slim space that some discomfort arises for some of the 133+ million people who watched. Yes, this is bigger than music. This is our collective history. 

III. Countersubject

Online opinions of the performance seemed to fall into two distinct camps that we might label, Blue and Red. (We are nothing if we are not tragically consistent.) For many, myself included, this performance was thought-provoking, re-affirming art.  For others, it was culturally affirming. We are here. Our history will not be erased.  Some commented on how it was storytelling, protest, playful, and necessary.

In a NJ newspaper, the reviewer, Bobby Olivier, wrote this: 

“… While Lamar is certainly one of hip-hop’s great minds and typically a blistering performer, the 37-year-old emcee came up small here: serviceable at best, pedestrian at worst…What I would’ve given for some older jams like “m.A.A.d City,” “Swimming Pools,” or “Alright.”

Bobby wanted nostaligia. Like Bobby, many wanted the remembered experiences they had at other halftime shows. The familiar. An America that was less truthful. That was not entertaining, became an ironic refame from many. 

For others, the commentary was less dressed up and I directly quote from several posted reactions:  “It was boring and offensive, a waste of time, DEI halftime show, This makes no sense, Zero diversity.”

Dr. Williamson explains that 

"Listening to new music is a challenge. It is like driving in a new area without a map – our attention is all over the place, faced with unfamiliar input, and we struggle to appreciate our surroundings when faced with the challenge of constantly unfolding novelty. It can be overwhelming to our brain since it cannot rely on memory."

Are some of the more negative experiences with the halftime show about driving without a map? For those and all of us who acknowledge that we all have moments when it might feel easier to turn away than engage, how do we collectively move from the too-quick response and dismissal to dwelling?

IV. Answer

With what bridge do we build that might join land and landscape be?  All the vitriol and hate speech that floods our days have ramifications, as does the targeting by our President of vulnerable populations.  Such hate speech has already resulted in deaths. 

Martin Heidegger in a powerful essay, "Building Dwelling Thinking" writes, "But only something that is itself a location can make space for a site."  

Be a location. Not the location, but a location.

Our practice, like Lamar's art, cannot simply be about using our energy to return to a place we have been. The mythology of making America great again is predicated on that belief. Such desire amplifies the separation we feel and leaves too many of us hungry, frustrated, and unforgiving.

How brave Kendrick Lamar was last Sunday to trust us to look beyond the spectacle of entertainment and the chiding voice of Uncle Sam warning of failure, of "too much ghetto" so that we could feel, think, and witness. This was an aesthetic that required our response. 

Let us learn to hear beyond the nostalgia and familiar tune.

#SOL17: Talking Race

The Whiteness of America (M.A. Reilly, March 7, 2012)

I.

Last week I sat opposite my nearly 18-year-old son and we talked race at a neighborhood restaurant. Dylann Roof's sentencing was the catalyst of our conversation. My son strongly supported the sentencing decision, while I did not. The jury who found the 22-year-old guilty a month ago, spent three hours that day in deliberation before handing down the decision that Roof should be sentenced to death. Although Roof's hateful crimes are more than reprehensible, I still do not support the death penalty.

I asked Devon what he thought might have allowed so young a white man to go into a church and murder 9 African American people. What prompted such an action?

His environment. What he learned at home. From his community. 

What would we think if someone came into this very restaurant and killed based on race? 

Devon looked at me and said, Well most likely I'd be the only one killed. 

What? 

Look around. Everyone here is white. 

I do look around the restaurant and see he is correct. I hadn't notice. I hadn't had to notice. 

I'm the only one who's not, he adds. If anyone is going to get killed? It's me. 

He must see the alarm that crosses my face and then adds, Look, I know there are good people who are white. Not saying there aren't. But, as a group, white people here in the US? They're the meanest.

I have seen this meanness firsthand. I'd like to think that I would have understood white privilege in the same way as I do now had I not been Devon's mom, but I don't think that's true. The sense of privilege that is inherently provided to and only for white people here in the US is insipid and largely goes unnoticed by many white people. I may have been aware, but I know I would not have known it as heartfelt, as heartsick as I do now. Being Devon's mom has altered how I know, how I name, how I feel.

And as I looked across the table at my beautiful son, I thought, he's right. White people, especially those with unchecked power who hide behind the cloak of their religion, are the meanest.


II.

Neither Dev nor I come from the United States. We are immigrants. He is Korean and I am Irish and after the rhetoric of this last election we know welcome when we hear it and not. We used to kid that only Rob was home-grown as he was born in Brooklyn and now our one link to the States is gone. For me, the United States is home. For my son, it is not.

During this last week Devon has told me he is determined to find a pathway to leave the United States and live elsewhere--Switzerland, Japan--places where he has friends and is privy, in some small way, to how well they live. He will leave the States I suspect. He will leave when he is well educated and I imagine he will find or make a career pathway that allows himself more options than just remaining here. This is how Rob and I raised our son. He is independent in the most important ways.

I try to quell the panic that rises each time I hear him talk about leaving. We have lost so much this year already and more losses seem impossible to hold. But I understand why he wants to go. Why he feels not welcomed here.

My friend, Jane, explains this weight that Devon carries so clearly. She refers to W.E.B. DuBois's notion of double-consciousness. In the first chapter of DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903), he writes:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (from here)

Here, in New Jersey--30 miles outside of Manhattan, we live in a town that is 92% white. My son has never just been a kid or teenager, here. Rather, he has always had to be Korean (other) and American.  

And frankly, we are all the worse for it.


III.

Tonight, I am thinking that the beliefs we harbor, unchecked, can grow into truths that become foundational. These homemade certitudes allow us to think that we are acting justly when we share our poison. The stupid racial jokes we hear and our silence affirms the racial insensitivity that accompanies the punchline. Our silence affirms the belief that otherness is radically different from us.

Years ago, in a classroom at Columbia University, a fellow doc student threw a hissy fit when she heard that Rob and I were adopting a child. She told the small group assembled that we were in a mixed marriage. She was offended by us and that we were going to be adopting a child--a child from another race--offended her even more. I had little idea what she was speaking about until she explained (unprompted by either of us) that because I was Roman Catholic and Rob was Jewish, we should never have married. Now add to that strange mix, a Korean child, and well she was unable to stop herself from speaking aloud.

Even within the bastions of so liberal a university, these foundational ways of marking difference and antipathy rise. Not far from Columbia my mom grew up. Her father, I am told, would have abhorred my marriage to Rob. A thick-headed Irishmen if ever there was, my mom would say about her father--a man she knew to be racist. I never met my grandfather as he died decades before I was born. Fortunately for me his intolerance, his stupidity did not become truths my mother taught me. She knew a fool when she saw one, even one she loved. When I first met my husband's family and some of their extended friends, I too learned the uncomfortableness of other. My being Catholic was not appreciated. I can remember one Thanksgiving when the differences were so magnified. I learned that night that because I was not Jewish, I would remain situated as other.  My mother-in-law would be quick to tell her son that she would never welcome me as a daughter. And so she didn't. Rob and I went on to live well, to love deeply, and to raise a most wonderful son. There is a loss to this and sometimes these losses bear weight.

I think these beliefs that pit "us against them" represent nothing more than a cowardly way to live. Racists are fundamentally cowards. Frightened souls who find comfort in a crowd of like minds. They insulate their ignorance with a tired dogma and try to sell it as something novel.  It is not novel, just, or clever. Just tired. Just wrong. Just banal.

Friends, we can do so much better.  We can live so much better. We need to be willing.


IV.

As I listened to President Obama's Farewell Address, I was struck by his comment that our racial differences represent a threat to our democracy. President Obama said,

There’s a second threat to our democracy – one as old as our nation itself.  After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America.  Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic.  For race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society... All of us have more work to do.  After all, if every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hard-working white middle class and undeserving minorities, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves.  If we decline to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don’t look like us, we diminish the prospects of our own children – because those brown kids will represent a larger share of America’s workforce.  

Some days the talk of racial differences, the us-and-them tensions, the "they don't look like me" nonsense leaves me feeling worn and tired and older than the decades say I should feel. The false belief that being white is akin to some god-given greatness is destroying the very republic we profess to love, while harming the psyches and bodies of young people, like my son and perhaps yours as well.

Can we do better?

I think it begins with a self-inventory and a naming aloud of our public commitments to one another. I think it begins by understanding racism not merely as an interpersonal affront, but also as a deep institutional presence.

I want us to be better than our history suggests we are. I want my son and your children too to live in a place where each is not seen first as other. I want whiteness, that festering illness, to be put down. I want us to become other(wise).

UPDATED: 28 Contemporary Speeches about Human Rights and History

Below find 28 important speeches and talks delivered during the last 50 years that focus on human rights. These speeches address issues of race, representation, and justice. I have included links to the transcript of each speech and when available video or audio of the speeches.

President Barack Obama, Farewell Address. (January 10, 2017)
Transcript



Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addressed the class of 2015 at Wellesley’s 137th Commencement (May 29, 2015)
Transcript


Remarks by the First Lady at Topeka School District Senior Recognition Day (2014)
Transcript


Malala Yousafzai, Address to UN (July 12, 2013)
Transcript


Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We should all be feminists (April 12, 2013)
Transcript


Leymah Gbowee, Unlock the intelligence, passion, greatness of girls (March 2012)
Transcript

Julia Gillard, ‘The Misogyny Speech’ (2012)
Transcript


Representative Maureen Walsh Remarks on ESSB 6239 (2012)
Transcript


Aaron Huey: America's native prisoners of war (2010)
Transcript

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The danger of a single story, (July, 2009)
Transcript


Barack Obama's Speech on Race  - A More Perfect Union (March 18, 2008)
Transcript: Barack Obama's Speech on Race 

Al Gore, The Nobel Peace Prize Speech(December 10, 2007)
Transcript


Elie Wiesel, The Perils of Indifference, (April 12, 1999, Washington, D.C)
Transcript


Nora Ephron, ‘Commencement Address To Wellesley Class Of 1996’ (1996)
Transcript


Hillary Clinton, ‘Women’s Rights Are Human Rights’ (1995)
Transcript



Maya Angelou, ‘On the Pulse of Morning’ (1993)


Mario Cuomo, 1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, (July 16, 1984)
Transcript


Ursula K. Le Guin A Left-Handed Commencement Address (May 22, 1983)
Transcript

Audre Lorde, "There is no Hierarchy of Oppressions" (1983)
Transcript


Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, “I Am For the Equal Rights Amendment.” (August 10, 1970)
Transcript

Robert F. Kennedy, Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr - Eulogy (April 3 1968, Indianapolis, IN)
Transcript


Cesar E. Chavez, The Mexican-American and the Church (March 10, 1968)
Transcript

Martin Luther King, Jr. A Time to Break Silence (April 3, 1967)
Transcript and Audio


Lyndon B. Johnson,  Speech Before Congress on Voting Rights (March 15, 1965)
Transcript


Nelson Mandela Nelson Mandela: ‘I am prepared to die’  (April 20, 1964)
Transcript


Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” (April 3, 1964)
Transcript


Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have A Dream (August 28, 1963)
Transcript and Audio


John F. Kennedy's Civil Right Address (June 11, 1963)
Transcript and Video

SOL#16: Imagination and Murder: A Terrifying New Era Approaching

 

Birds Lifting (Original black and white image and citrasolved papers, M.A. Reilly, 2016)

“It is on the day that we can conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles and our suffering and that we decide that these are unbearable” - Jean-Paul Sartre, 1956, pp. 434-435.

I.

Matt de la  Peña in his Newbery Medal acceptance speech wrote about self-definition and grace. He talked about the tangle of ethnicity and race that underscores the tenuousness of belonging and not. He opened and closed his speech quoting Denis Johnson, author of Jesus' Son: Stories who ended this collection of short stories with the voice of a recovering drunk and dope addict--the narrator of "Beverly Home"--who tells us boldly, “I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us" (p. 133).

I think about that line--the idea of belonging, about  being a "people like us" and its relationship to the power of the imagination. What we can imagine can be.  But how do we imagine that which we have not experienced?  That which is beyond the scope of our present selves?  Maxine Greene has so eloquently written about the need for us to become (other)wise and how engagements with literature and the arts helps us to do so. de la  Peña credits reading basketball magazines and later novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others with becoming an author. He tells us even when he was reading Basketball Digest, he was "in it for the narrative."

The narrative.

Now think about all that nonsense about text type percentages school children must read that David Coleman, the Common Core architect, foisted on United States schools.  (You remember the set of standards that were going to save the world).  For de la  Peña, like so many others,  it was narrative that resonated.  Narrative that informed and inspired, alongside later reading works by authors with whom he shared a common heritage. Seeing ourselves in the stories we read helps us to open windows and peer at lives we don't know as well. Reading literature helps us to develop our imaginations.

Narrative always matters and perhaps these days when Black men are being killed at the hands of some police and the murder of police is increasing--our need to understand, even appreciate other has never been so necessary.

Engaging with literature and the arts opens us to seeing not only what we are and presently are not, but also such engagements inspire us to more generously map what we are becoming and might become. Other stands apart until we have language to name and isn't this the role of the arts to help us name Other and to find a foothold in what might first feel unfamiliar? It was Greene who wrote, "The arts, it has been said, cannot change the world, but they may change human beings who might change the world."

Hold on to that thought for a moment.

II.

I'm mulling all this over as I read de la Peña's speech miles away from my home. It is late in Paris and the news of two more deaths of young black men at the hands of White police officers--this time in Minnesota and Baton Rouge and the deaths of five white Dallas police officers at the hand of a single African American male shooter who we are told wanted kill white people have been splashed across the French daily newspapers. All of these deaths and aggressions have me thinking more and more about home and race and the almost mythical narrative that resurges each and every time there is a death that is labeled, race-driven. The narrative offered says, we are a nation divided as if white and black represented the totality of definitions of selves in the US and that we neatly divide by those imposed racial lines. We are far more complicated than white and black. Such thinking locks us into situating the world as a duality. Choose X and you cannot choose Y.

That is the first myth and a dangerous one for it situates Other as being something permanent. I think that's what de la Peña is getting at in his speech.  Other is malleable, changing. He tell us,

When I sat down to write the text of Last Stop on Market Street, this troubling mindset was rattling around in my brain. Nana, the wise grandma in the book, is urging CJ to see the beauty of his surroundings, yes, but she’s also steering him toward something much more fundamental. She’s teaching CJ to see himself as beautiful. To see himself as worthy. “Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt, CJ, you’re a better witness for what’s beautiful.”

I love that language--the "steering him toward something much more fundamental" especially these days after more deaths have rocked what we may have mistaken as a foundation. We need not be built on the social constructs of race. We can be better than such narrow definitions of self and other. These divisions are fueled by fear and ignorance.  These murders show a crumbling facade. But it is not the permanency of race at odds here, but rather the shifting stance of Other that we need to understand and embrace. Some police officers, like others in the country, when confronting young Black men and women read these entanglements with 'Other' as a threat.  The lone shooter who executed five police officers read whiteness and police as threats.

History tells us that there has always been an Other and there will always be someone cast as other. How we define and attend to Other matters--as does our willingness and capacity to become (other)wise. I believe nothing is as important as this ongoing commitment to developing ourselves. I want to suggest here that engagements with literature and the arts represent a central way to understand and even embrace Other. These initial steps can help us to identify the institutionalize nature of racism that (in)forms all of these grotesque acts of violence and motivate us to take the necessary steps to reduce and end systematic racism. Privilege is so hard to recognize when it is what normal most feels like.  It hard to see privilege as a negative force when you benefit from what those privileges afford.  But let's not mistake the connections between racial privilege and racial violence. These acts of violence are rarely limited to personal matters, but rather are fueled by what is systematically learned.  If the only way Other is known is through media portrayals, racist ideologies and ignorance--then killings will continue at this alarming rate. Black children, men and women will continue to be murdered by the very people sworn to protect. Retaliation for these deaths by killing police officers will continue, if not, increase. The divisions will grow deeper, more permanent and become a truth we think is rational.

We must want for more and act--not on racial lines, but as a people invested in love.

III.

We have new narratives to learn--narratives like the one that powered de la Peña's journey from a "[a] half-Mexican hoop head" to imagining himself an honored author.  His work as author tells us that he did imagine "that there might be a place for people like us." He imagined this and made it so. To conjure what we don't know or feel we can't have requires us to exercise individual and collective imaginations in order to reshape the stories we have been taught that are so very wrong. We must first say out loud that these stories are not our truth.

African American people are not threats.
White police officers are not murderers.

Yes, in every set there is the exception, but it is not the exception that we need to use as definition. This just keeps us isolated, not talking, not putting our hands and hearts together to solve these matters of the greatest importance. These murders cannot continue. Black men, women, and children must be able to walk about their lives without the threat of death. Police must be honored, loved even, and respected. When we step into the shoes of other, we are afforded the rare opportunity to re-see the world and this so often fuels our desire to act with love--a force far greater than hate and ignorance.

IV.

Seeing Other shifts the world and during such shifts, we may feel terror and want to abort this work of routing out racism from our institutions--from the very narratives we teach ourselves and our children. I'm reminded of an image that happens at the beginning of "Beverly Home." Johnson's main character observes,

"And sometimes a dust storm would stand off in the desert, towering so high it was like another city— a terrifying new era approaching, blurring our dreams" (pp. 137-138). 

I think about this image and how it resonates--how the terror of what is new, unnamed and unfamiliar can be unsettling and alarming. It can scare us and make us want to turn away and blindly continue to blame someone else for all that this makes us feel. I think here about the dreams we have been taught to honor and know we need new dreams. We must learn how to name Other as human, as sacred friend, as most precious being we would lay our lives down to save. We must see what privilege costs and be willing to equalize opportunity and income.  We have so much to gain.

The thing I have most learned from grieving this last year, is that grief is an equalizer par none. Rob's death has taught me the power of love in ways I know to be true. My capacity to love is without limit--just like you. It also has taught me that grief is no stranger. Grief recognizes all and does not tiptoe around others based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or income. Grief strips us bear and without our finery perhaps it is easier to recognize ourselves as kin.

We all matter.  We are lovable and deserve to be loved, respected, and safe-guarded.  I know that the grief in the ensuing months and years that these survivors of those murdered must now live with will be the most apt expression of what it means to be human. We are all frail and strong in the face of death.

But we need not experience such awful loss in order to act. To act just takes our will to rebut the crappy and dangerous narratives that are already multiplying that recast Other as evil, as wrong, as non-human.

Let's tell new stories. Let's tell them loud especially in the presence of lies.  Let's tell these stories consistently and with great care. We can do this.

Borders & Ordinary People: Can Democracy Survive?

(M.A. Reilly)

"Almost all borders have been imposed and maintained by violence, and are quite arbitrary," writes Noam Chomsky in the article, Who Owns the Earth?

I.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

It's hard not to think about borders these days as we wind our way to the end of summer 2014--a summer that is steeped in blood, difference, and distance.  I spent the summer making collages (here and here) each day based on the reported news, most often as found in the New York Times. 

I can barely bring myself to read that paper these days. Most days now, I do not.

Tonight I'm thinking about the women of Gaza and Israel and wondering whether love can ever be strong enough to heal such pain, such wrongness.  The mother of one of the Israeli teens who was killed last June, Rachel Fraenkel, spoke out  against some of the violence that has been committed in the name of vengeance for her son:

Even in the abyss of mourning for Gil-Ad, Eyal and Naftali, it is difficult for me to describe how distressed we are by the outrage committed in Jerusalem – the shedding of innocent blood in defiance of all morality, of the Torah, of the foundation of the lives of our boys and of all of us in this country. 

Only the murderers of our sons, along with those who sent them and those who helped them and incited them to murder – and not innocent people – will be brought to justice: by the army, the police, and the judiciary; not by vigilantes. 

No mother or father should ever have to go through what we are going through, and we share the pain of Mohammed’s parents. The legacy of Naftali, Gil-Ad and Eyal is one of love, of humanity, of national unity, and of integrity. (From here)

I wonder what she thinks now, months later given the death toll in Gaza and the arrest of the six boys from the racist soccer team, La Familia, who are suspects in the 'revenge' murder of 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khudair, a Palestinian child who was beaten and set on fire by the Israeli youths.  

These are borders we make that break us.


II.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Tonight I am thinking about US women and the social and personal borders the Supreme Court has erected in their ongoing decisions to limit women's rights as well as a story that ran in the Times at mid-summer about the hundred of thousands of rape kits that are collected and left unprocessed--stored in warehouses unbeknown to the victims as their rapists go free to commit more and more rapes. More crimes against women. What borders are being erected between women and the police and prosecutors who are protecting rapists by not processing rape kits? What borders are made between women and their independence by the Supreme Court's latest decisions? The costs associated with processing rape kits apparently is too great.

What price is this border crossing and can you afford not to pay it?  

III.

From Ladue, MO to Freguson, MO. 12.8 miles.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Tonight, I'm remembering Ferguson, MO where people are still protesting, still being arrested as I write this. Ferguson is a little less than 13 miles from Ladue, MO--but the true distance between is best not represented as miles. The residents of Ladue enjoy one of the highest median incomes for any city in the United States.  They are #32.

The good people of Ferguson do not enjoy such riches.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

I think of this as I recall reading in a local newspaper this week that here in NJ, the percentage of people living in poverty rose again (figures for 2012).  Nearly one-third of NJ residents live in poverty. 

That's 2.7 million people. 

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Imagine those 2.7 million reside not too far from the land of hedge-funders and 1 percenters who live in Saddle River, Milburn, Alpine, Rumson, Harding Township, Essex Fells, Bernardsville and so on.  These people live with comforts beyond our very ordinary dreams.

These are the borders that our politicians protect in ways they fail to protect us.

IV. 

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Tonight, I reread Umair Haque's words, Can Democracy Survive? and think that each trip from what we know as home allows us to understand, often in new ways, how the geo-political (in)forms our personal worlds.  Haque writes:

from Can Democracy Survive? - Umair Haque

Beneath each clash are gross economic and power differences: Palestine and Israel, women and all the powers that suppress them, African Americans and police, 1 percenters and the poor.  

These are borders that need to fall.

Curated Bibliography on Whiteness, Silence and Teaching

Whiteness (M.A Reilly, 2012)

Curated Bibliography on Whiteness, Silence and Teaching

Carter, Stephanie Power. (2007). “Reading All that White Crazy Stuff:” Black Young Women Unpacking Whiteness in a High School British Literature Classroom.  Journal of Classroom Interaction, 41 (2),  42 - 54.

Abstract: The article uses sociolinguistic and ethnographic methods and Black feminist theory to explore the classroom interactions of Pam and Natonya, two Black young females, during one event in a required high school British literature classroom. The event is presented as a telling case to explore gendered and racial complexities facing young Black female students in a British literature class, dominated by literature written from a Eurocentric perspective, primarily by White males. The telling case was analyzed to explore how Whiteness functioned within the British literature curriculum and classroom interactions and how the two Black young women were negatively positioned as a result of classroom interactions around the curriculum. The analysis made visible how Pam and Natonya were constantly negotiating whiteness within the British Literature curriculum. Their experiences are important as they afford educators and educational researchers the opportunity to see some of the challenges faced by historically underrepresented students who may have been marginalized by Whiteness within the curriculum.

Castagno, Angelina E. (2008). “I Don’t Want to Hear That!”: Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools. Anthropology & Education, 39 (3), 314-333.

Abstract: In this article, I examine the ways in which silences around race contribute to the maintenance and legitimation of Whiteness. Drawing on ethnographic data from two demographically different schools, I highlight patterns of racially coded language, teacher silence, silencing students’ race talk, and the conflating of culture with race, equality with equity, and difference with deficit. These silences and acts of silencing create and perpetuate an educational culture in which inequities are ignored, the status quo is maintained, and Whiteness is both protected and entrenched

Cochran-Smith, Marilyn. (2003). The Multiple Meanings of Multicultural Teacher Education: A Conceptual Framework. Teacher Education Quarterly, 7-26.

DeBlase, Gina. (2000). Missing Stories, Missing Lives: Urban Girls (Re)Constructing Race and Gender in the Literacy Classroom.  Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA, April 24-28, 2000).

Abstract: This study examined the ways in which eighth grade girls in an urban middle school constructed social identities through their experiences with literary texts. It focused on what sociocultural representations about female identity and gendered expectations emerged in the transactions in the literacy events these girls experienced in English class. It also examined what meanings girls made from these gendered representations and how girls from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds took up and/or resisted the messages. Finally, the study investigated how the girls' transactions with literacy events in English class linked to their perceptions, insights, and understandings of the larger social order. Data were collected via observations, interviews with students and teachers, and collection of classroom artifacts. The seven study findings focused on ideologies of control, power, and cultural uniformity; new criticism and unexamined standpoints of social identity; constructing literature as removed from the lived social experience of girls' lives; silencing, sameness, and missed opportunities for dialogue; girls' lived experiences influencing their transactions with literature; literacy as a tool for socializing girls into culturally mainstream society; and fractured identities and colliding ideologies. Four implications for pedagogy and teacher education are listed.

García, Eugene; Arias, M. Beatriz, Harris, Nancy J. Murri and Carolina Serna. (2010). Developing Responsive Teachers: A Challenge for a Demographic Reality. Journal of Teacher Education 61(1-2) 132–142.

Abstract: In this article, the authors reflect on the preparation of teachers for English learners (ELs) and articulate the importance of enhancing teacher knowledge through contact and collaboration with diverse ethnolinguistic communities. The authors build on recent research on the preparation of teachers for cultural responsiveness and linguistic diversity and recommend a situated preparation within EL communities that fosters the development of teacher knowledge of the dynamics of language in children’s lives and communities. The authors begin their review by summarizing recent demographic developments for ELs. This section is followed by a brief review of the context of education for ELs. The authors summarize the most recent research on culturally and linguistically responsive teacher preparation and focus on a framework that includes developing teacher knowledge through contact, collaboration, and community.

Hayes, Cleveland, Juárez, Brenda & Veronica Escoffrey-Runnels. (2014). We Were There Too: Learning from Black Male Teachers in Mississippi about Successful Teaching of Black Students. Democracy & Education, 22 (1), Article 3.

from Yellow Umbrella

Abstract: Applying culturally relevant and social justice–oriented notions of teaching and learning and a critical race theory (CRT) analysis of teacher preparation in the United States, this study examines the oral life histories of two Black male teachers recognized for their successful teaching of Black students. These histories provide us with a venue for identifying thematic patterns across the two teachers' educational philosophies and pedagogical practices and for analyzing how these teachers' respective personal and professional experiences have influenced their individual and collective approaches to teaching and learning.

Hayes, Cleveland and Brenda Juárez. (2012). There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here: A Critical Race Perspective.  Democracy & Education, 20 (1), 1-14.

Abstract: In this article, we are concerned with White racial domination as a process that occurs in teacher education and the ways it operates to hinder the preparation of teachers to effectively teach all students. Our purpose is to identify and highlight moments within processes of White racial domination when individuals and groups have and make choices to support rather than to challenge White supremacy. By highlighting and critically examining moments when White racial domination has been instantiated and recreated within our own experiences, we attempt to open up a venue for imagining and re-creating teacher education in ways that are not grounded in and dedicated to perpetuating White supremacy.

hooks, bell. (1991). Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination. Cultural Studies, 338-346.

Hytten, Kathy and Amee Adkins. (2001). Thinking through a Pedagogy of Whiteness. Educational Theory, 51 (4) 433-450.

Kincheloe, Joe L. (1999). The Struggle to Define and Reinvent Whiteness: A Pedagogical Analysis. College Literature 26. 162-194.

Kincheloe, Joe and Shirley Steinberg. (1998) Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Reconfiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of Whiteness. In White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America. J. Kincheloe, S. Steinberg, N. Rodriguez, and R. Chennault, eds. pp. 3–30. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). Yes, but how do we do it? In J. Landsman, & C. W. Lewis (Eds).
White teachers, diverse classrooms (pp. 29-42). Sterling: Stylus.

Leonardo, Zeus. (2002). The Souls of White Folk: critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, and
globalization discourse.  Race Ethnicity and Education, (5) 1, 29-50.

Abstract: At the turn of the 1900s, W. E. B. Du Bois argued that the problem of the color line was the twentieth century’s main challenge. The article argues that critical pedagogy beneŽfits from an intersectional understanding of whiteness studies and globalization discourse. Following Du Bois, it suggests that the problem of the twenty-Žfirst century is the global color line. As capitalism stretches across nations, its partnership with race relations also evolves into a formidable force. Appropriating concepts from globalization, the author deŽfines a global approach to race, and in particular whiteness, in order to argue that the problem of white racial privilege transcends the nation state. Using concepts such as multinationalism, fragmentation, and  flexibility, a critical pedagogy of whiteness promotes an expanded notion of race that includes global anti-racist struggles. Finally, the article concludes by suggesting that educators consider seriously the insights of the neo-abolitionist movement.

McIntosh, Peggy. (1988).  White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack.

Rogers, Rebecca & Melissa Mosley. (2006). Racial literacy in a second-grade classroom: Critical race theory, whiteness studies, and literacy research. Reading Research Quarterly, 41 (4), 462-495.

Abstract: There is a pervasive silence in literacy research around matters of race, especially with both young people and white people. In this article we illustrate that young white children can and do talk about race, racism, and anti-racism within the context of the literacy curriculum. Using a reconstructed framework for analyzing "white talk," one that relies on literature in whiteness studies and critical race theory and draws on critical discourse analytic frameworks, we illustrate what talk around race sounds like for white second-grade students and their teachers. This research makes several contributions to the literature. We provide a detailed method for coding interactional data using critical discourse analysis and a lens from critical race theory and whiteness studies. We also illustrate the instability of racial-identity formation and the implications for teachers and students when race is addressed in primary classrooms. Ultimately, we argue that racial-literacy development, like other literate process in the classroom, must be guided.

Rothman, Joshua. (2014). The Origins of “Privilege”. The New Yorker.

Said, Edward. (1978). “Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental.” In Orientalism, 49-72. New York: Vintage.

Villegas, Ana María Villegas and Tamara Lucas. (2002). Preparing Culturally Responsive Teachers: Rethinking the Curriculum. Journal of Teacher Education, 53 (1), 20-32.

Abstract: To successfully move the field of teacher education beyond the fragmented and superficial treatment of diversity that currently prevails, teacher educators must articulate a vision of teaching and learning in a diverse society and use that vision to systematically guide the infusion of multicultural issues throughout the preservice curriculum. A vision is offered of culturally responsive teachers that can serve as the starting point for conversations among teacher educators in this process. In this vision, culturally responsive teachers (a) are socioculturally conscious, (b) have affirming views of students from diverse backgrounds, (c) see themselves as responsible for and capable of bringing about change to make schools more equitable, (d) understand how learners construct knowledge and are capable of promoting knowledge construction, (e) know about the lives of their students, and (f) design instruction that builds on what their students already know while stretching them beyond the familiar.

Weilbacher, Gary. (2012). Standardization and Whiteness: One and the Same? Democracy & Education, 20 (2), 1-6.

Abstract: The article “There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here: A Critical Race Perspective” by Cleveland Hayes and Brenda C. Juarez suggests that the current focus on meeting standards incorporates limited thoughtful discussions related to complex notions of diversity. Our response suggests a strong link between standardization and White dominance and that a focus on standards has helped to make White dominance and the discussion of race, class, gender, and language virtually invisible in teacher preparation.

The Sheer Geography of Your Bones: Thinking About Diverse Books & the Power to Heal

We Need Answers (M.A Reilly, Collage #85 from Collage Journal, 2014)

“Or perhaps it is that time doesn’t heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones—the angle of your head, the jutting of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile—has collapsed under the weight of your griefs.” ― Thrity Umrigar, The Space Between Us

I.


For the last week it's been encouraging to see teachers and administrators making commitments to be open to and/or take the lead in discussing with (not at) students about what is happening in Ferguson, MO specifically and maters of race, race relations, and economic justice generally. These are, of course, very important conversations to have. Some suggestions/guidelines about how to discuss race and race relations can be found here, here, here. Some posts by educators that specifically explore discussion with students about institutional racism and the murder of Mike Brown can be found here, here, here.

In thinking about these potential conversations, I also recognized that meaning is ascribed by what we do and don't do, it is not given. So it's not the discussion about race, race relations, or the one about Mike Brown that you hold in class or school that most matters, but rather it's how you and I live inside classrooms and schools each day and the dignity through action that we afford others. In this post I want to advocate for an often overlooked method that can help us to better ensure broad representation in the classroom/school.

II.

As some may have noticed I post often about diverse books. I am deeply committed to issues of representation via the texts we select and fail to select in classrooms. Text selection is no small matter. It's why during chats, such as #TitleTalk, #engchat, #Litchat and others--I have the tendency to tweet about diverse texts.  The plethora of book recommendations I see most often in twitter chats, in professional education books, and on book shelves in classrooms reflect the people teaching who are most often white, middle class women. The stories that get passed along closely reflect what is known by this majority.

I understand how this happens. The familiar is comfortable because it is known and if you're part of the group that is overly represented, then matters of representation may feel less urgent, less noticeable. But as adults we can see past our own particulars to see other.  For there is a failure when only some children get to see themselves in the texts they compose as readers and writers across 13 years of school, while others are sorely absent. We communicate worth and the absence of worth by the books and texts we privilege. Talk all we want in the aftermath of a murder, but the day to day work in or classrooms and schools shows what we value far more than our talk on a given day might do.

In 2012, Kate Hart blogged about representation on YA book covers in Uncovering YA Covers in 2011. 90% of the covers of YA books published in 2011 featured white girls (and 20% of those did not include the entire girl).  

from here

How Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, David Ritcheson, Jordan Davis, James Byrd, Jr., Stephen Lawrence, Christopher Newsome, and Matthew Shepard were seen and not seen by self and peers throughout 13 years of classroom experiences may well have influenced why they were beaten, raped, sodomized, and/or murdered. Our capacity to see and name other as beautiful is faulty, distorted, and often missing when our vista of potential people is full of wholes. I can't help but recall my son's first week of public school. On the third day he came home and asked if he could wear his red winter coat. As it was September and he was 6, I asked why. He told me he wanted to zip his coat up over his face so that the big boys on the bus wouldn't call him angry names, like Chink. The white boys on the bus thought my son was Chinese as I suppose "all Asians look alike."  The boys found it permissible (as did some of their parents) to bully a young child because he looked different than they did. Throughout elementary and middle school, there were few if any books that my son encountered at school that featured Korean boys. A woman down the street once told me, "Well it's almost like he's white."

We must do better.

In Ellen Oh's post, Why The Pretty White Girl YA Book Cover Trend Needs to End, she writes:

Asians have long been the silent minority in this country. It's gotten so bad that when someone makes a racist remark toward Asians, they just shrug it off and make it seem like you're the one making a big deal about nothing. Or they think it's funny. Like a couple of white guys who think they are being clever by opening up a restaurant called "Roundeye Noodle shop" in Philadelphia. And then they are surprised when people get offended? The roots of that racist remark stem from Asians being called slanty-eyed chinks.  If anyone thinks "Roundeye" is not racist, you should come explain that to my youngest daughter who had the singular pleasure of being told by two boys in her class that her "small Chinese eyes" were ugly compared to her friend's "blue round-eyes." She was in kindergarten and only 5 years old. She cried for days. Words can scar you for life.

Ellen Oh is correct. Words can scar. And we know all too well when we think of Mike Brown that bullets can kill. Our vision of what is valued and beautiful remains distorted by absence--be it racial, economic, gender, sexual orientation, and/or religious.  We can bridge these differences in small, consistent ways in our classrooms--ways that can culminate into powerful narratives about beauty and worth. We must begin by being mindful of what texts we produce and consume at school, what texts we purchase, and who has the agency to do so.

III. 

So I urge you to reconsider reading aloud yet another Cynthia Rylant book or pressing into the hands of your students copies of text exemplars from the CCSS which largely privilege whiteness and wealth.  In “Laying Bare of Questions Which Have Been Hidden by Answers”: The English Language Arts Standards of the Common Core, K-5, which Jane Gangi and I authored, we write:

When we leave out children of color and the poor, in addition to reducing their ability to make the connections they need to make to become proficient readers, we are telling them they do not matter. The CCSS ELA standards’ text exemplars privilege class. Less than 7% of the exemplars represent working class people and the poor—at a time when the majority of children are working class or poor (Gangi, 2010); the Annie E. Casey foundation (2011) finds that 22% of children in America are poor. This translates to about 16.5 million children, with poverty being defined as a family of four living on less than $22,000 a year. 

We can do better. We can be more inclusive in our classrooms and schools and in doing so broaden our rather narrow beliefs about worth, beauty, difference, and love.


IV. A Few Resources

I'd recommend you follow the blog: We Need Diverse Books.


Publishers

Here's a modest list of recommended book publishers whose books are beautiful, aesthetic, inclusive, and enjoyable. Groundwood Books and Lee & Low Books are my go to book publishers for a long time.

1. Annick Press
2. Arte Público Press and Piñata Books
3. Boyds Mills Press
4. Chronicle Books
5. Cinco Puntos Press
6. Enchanted Lion Book
7. Fitzhenry & Whiteside
8. Front Street (part of Boyds Mills Press)
9. Groundwood Books
10. Just World Books
11. Kids Can Press
12. Lee & Low Books
13. Orca Book Publishers
14. Shen Books
15. Tara Books
16. Tilbury House
17. Tradewind Books
18. Tu Books (part of Lee & Low Books)
19. Tundra Books
20. Wings Press

A Few Influential Articles/Posts

1. Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors - Rudine Sims Bishop
2. Paul Laurence Who? Invisibility andMisrepresentation in Children's Literature and
3. Language Arts Textbooks  -Mary Jackson Scroggins & Jane Gangi
4. African American Literature: Books to Stoke Dreams - Jane Gangi & Aimee Ferguson
5. The All-White World of Children's Books - Nancy Larrick
6. The Importance of  Diversity in Library Programs and Material Collections for Children - ALA
7. Why Hasn’t the Number of Multicultural Books Increased In Eighteen Years? (Lee & Low Blog)
8. Recommendations for YA Blogs & Literature - Kate Hart

External Posts Recommending Diverse Literature
CRAJ: Children's Literature Resources - Global/International Literature and Diverse Perspectives (Jane Gangi)

Here are a 30 blog posts where I recommend books.

1. 250+ Children's Books Featuring Black Boys and Men
2. Raising Activists: 100+ Books to Read in K-12
3. Children's Books Focusing on Special/Exceptional Needs, Strengths and Graces
4. Children's Books about the Middle East
5. K-3 Global Multicultural Poetry for Shared, Choral, Paired, & Echo Reading
6. Global Multicultural K-8 Books Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and His Legacy
7. New Global Picture Books
8. 97 Page Book of Primary Grade Comprehension Lessons With an Emphasis on Multicultural Books
9. Forget the Stop Watch and Tune into Literature: Recommended Global Multicultural Texts for Developing Fluency (and a Love for Reading)
10. Global Multicultural Books for Comprehension Instruction in Kindergarten
11. Poetry Books for Grades 3-5
12. Global Books for the First Grade
13. Sensational Second Grade Books
14. Global Multicultural Picture Books: Teaching Reading Comprehension in Grade 3
15. Global Books for Grade 4
16. Fabulous Global Books for Fifth Grade
17. Books for Grade 7
18. Books to Teach Writer's Craft with in Middle School
19. Global, Multicultural Poetry Texts (Print and NonPrint) for Grades 7 - 12
20. Reading Memoir in Grades 8-12
21. Recommended Nonfiction for Middle School Learners
22. Exploring LGBT Books for Children & Teens
23. Cultural Characters: Or Why My Color Doesn't Wash Off -  Book & Instruction Suggestions
24. 30 Children's Books about Standing Up and Making Change
25. Latino/a Books for Elementary Children, Part I
26. Latino/a Books for Elementary Children, Part II
27. Latino/a Books for Elementary Children, Part III
28. Books about Labor and Unions for 4th -12th Graders
29. Selecting Read Aloud Books in K-5
30. Updated 2014 Global Back to School Books

A Few Posts about Representation

1. Troubling the Narratives
2. Guest Blog: Children of Color and the Poor Left Way Behind in the National Governors Association and State Education Chiefs Common Core State Standards Initiative: “Text Exemplars” for Kindergarten through 5th Grade
3. White Privilege, Classroom Discourse, and Being Other