hard work

i was listening to a song the other day that had kids singing the chorus--something along the lines of "if i work hard at it, i can be what i want to be." hearing this song made me think how that message to kids is both harmful and beneficial.
of course i want kids to believe they can be anything. this unwavering belief is one of many benefits, i am sure. there should be more done for this belief to become a reality. i want to focus on that aspect--reality.
i know that not all kids will grow up to become what they want; some kids might fail, but not due necessarily to a lack of hard work. some might fail simply because of the systems in which they are living. it's incredibly disheartening that reality is the harmful part of the message.
let me be specific about what i am really writing about; not a song necessarily, but the false belief in how to achieve the american dream. the belief that a person can be successful and achieve the american dream through hard work alone. that there is nothing that prevents some from achieving and advances others into achievement. this is the PLE (perfectly logical explanation) we tell ourselves (as a country) that some people just don't try hard enough. that some people didn't work hard enough to be successful.

stereotypes of who is (or should be) smart, aggressive, obnoxious, boisterous, disruptive, and a leader begins to separate our culture into the haves and have-nots. the haves truly have it all--looks, race, religion, leadership traits, intelligence...or do they? why do we assume glasses make us look smart? or asians have the answer in math class? or white men are inherently better leaders then...well, anyone? those are stereotypes at their finest. when we apply those stereotypes to individuals, we are making a judgment about them before knowing them. when stereotypes are applied to systems, like laws for example, that is systemic stereotyping. if this stereotyping grants an unearned benefit or opportunity to a group of people, that's privilege. if this stereotyping limits access to opportunities, that's discrimination.
stereotypes are but a mere beginning to systemic privilege and systemic discrimination. such systems are powerful because they are pervasive, cyclical, and commonly viewed as what is right. i don't believe there is anything right with saying one person should be treated better than another. that one person (or a whole darn group of people), based on their social group identity, should be given rights that are beyond the rights of others. i believe these systems and these beliefs are what create gaps--divides that stamp a label of have or have-not.
there are many such divides in america (historically and presently) that manipulate a child's ability to "be what they want to be"--less than equal pay for equal work, digital divide, glass ceiling, school segregation, white flight, racial profiling, redlining, capitalism, slavery, what i will call less-than-human laws, and even (dare i say it) democratic voting.
when the obstacles set out for a child to overcome are laden in the same system that promotes hard work to achieve, there is a problem. there is a problem in this country when we say "go, achieve. be what you want to be" with an asterisk (*) attached.
*if you are poor, a racial minority, in the lgbtq community, not christian, a woman, or are a person with a disability, then try hard, but you are not meant to achieve in this country. we didn't actually mean you.

should children really have to carry with them this asterisked american dream?

hey, it's just a joke.

i recently attended a training for my job as a property manager. the training was three days long for an online based management program i use. the training was held at an apartment complex that houses low income senior citizens. the trainer was kind of a strange fella. he kept making jokes that i felt were somewhat strange for someone who worked in property management and who was hired as a trainer.
during the second day, things got entirely out of control. as we were sitting during the break, a group of residents who lived at the complex walked through open room where the training was being held. the residents were speaking in loud voices, unaware of our training, and also speaking in korean, their native tongues. the property manager of the building asked the residents, politely, to please step out because we were in the middle of a training. they happily obliged. however, the trainer, found the need to make a snide remark. he said that the manager should have spoken to them in their native tongue, moo goo gai pan and kung pao chicken. i looked at him with shock and disgust. to justify his remark, he used a perfectly logical explanation (PLE). he said that he was an equal opportunity picker, he says that kind of stuff about everyone, so it is perfectly alright to make the remark that he did. i wanted to scream. i gave him one of the dirtiest looks ever and tried to make him feel terrible for his remark with my dirty looks. after a few moments, he came up to me and apologized for if he said anything that offended me. i did not accept his apology, because i felt his PLE was a cop out for someone, who says they are not racist, to justify their racist remarks.

so many times i have had to sit back and listen to people make stereotypical, snide, rude, racist remarks about other ethnicities, in supposedly good fun. and i feel like the person who is offended is often made to feel bad if the person making the remark apologizes for what they say. an apology doesn't make it right. understanding that such a comment is wrong, in bad taste, and terribly offensive to all kinds of people. and no one should have to stand for that.

the training continued for the rest of the time. i refused to awkwardly laugh at the trainer's jokes during awkward moments. i think that something small like that can make a difference. i don't know if it will make a difference to the trainer, if he will be conscious of what he says. but maybe, it will make him think twice before he says something like that to someone else.

i won't let that PLE stand anymore. because it isn't right and it should not be used as a justification anymore. we'll see how that works out.

religious privilege

i often do diversity trainings and use social justice as the foundation of my trainings. a few weeks ago, i led a training on religious privilege. it was only an hour long session; aimed at getting people to talk about how religious privilege affects and impacts all our lives.
the group was certainly slow to talk with one another and i attempted to roll at their pace. talking about religion over lunch is, afterall, a little unusual and potentially scary. i gave that to them. so i am nearing the 45 minute mark--we still needed to verbalize concrete examples of religious privilege. i pulled out my old stand-by, the academic year vacation schedule. christmas break and easter break, now of course, politically corrected to be winter and spring break respectively. from no where i expected came an absurd PLE! our vacation schedule is based on the farming season. that's why we have winter break. logical, perfectly. accurate, debatable.
first, i was blown out of the water and stumped with this response. it made me a little disappointed; disappointed for a few reasons actually. i was disappointed in myself because i wasn't prepared for this answer. i was disappointed in the answer itself because it blocked that person and the rest of the group from having a dialogue about religious privilege. and, i was disappointed because at the end when i asked the group for something new they took from the session, the first few answers were that our vacation breaks were based on the farming season.
why is it that what people who came took away something that wasn't even about the topic? this PLE totally took center stage to the potential learning and exploring that could have happened.
i do want to say that yes, we still farm in this country. however, we are an industrialized, technology-driven country and society. we have been for a long time. if our vacations were in fact determined from farming, why isn't farming a greater part of our current culture? i still believe that religion is the greater determinant of why we center our annual vacation breaks around december 25 and easter sunday.

when i was younger, the holidays i celebrated were not given as school holidays. that continues to be the case even now with the changed language of what our vacations are called. i always had christmas and easter off, including the week around each of those holidays. in order to take the two holidays celebrated in my non-christian religion, my mom had to lie. taking holidays that were not christian, and therefore not already blocked out in the academic year, was unacceptable. how is it that to practice religion in a country that grants freedom of religion is unacceptable? all i knew as a kid was that my holiday, my religion was not valid enough for the school system. being "sick" was valid, even without a cough, headache, illness, or symptoms of illness. so, on holidays--just two days in the whole year, i was called in sick. yet, no one had to be sick to get christmas off.

that PLE just took away my experience...i think that's why it took me by such surprise.