So this post was going to be about the trials and tribulations I have had over the last month with getting ready to go back to school- things like having to purchase 66 kids all their school supplies and all my classroom supplies, not getting paid and having to wait until mid-september and worrying if my lessons will be engaging enough to make my 6th grade babies love me. But it all seems so selfish when an unarmed 18-year old gets gunned down in the street and a 9 year old gets shot after innocently running out of the house. I am filled with an anxiety and urgency for my students to want to do better than all us adults are doing. They must do better......
I waited. I waited in my ignorant bubble that maybe they didn't shoot an unarmed boy. I waited. I waited for the Sunday morning news shows to have on their roundtable guests and help me understand. And then, I got angry. Angry that an unarmed boy walking down the street was shot, REGARDLESS of what he had done or was doing. Angry that if my brother who was mischievous at 18, was walking down the middle of the street he would be asked to move to the sidewalk. Angry that no one told Michael Brown how to act when he gets into an altercation with a police officer, particularly, white, and even more angry that that conversation HAS TO HAPPEN. I feel helpless that as a 43 year old white woman I haven't done enough, and embarrassed that I joke with some of my best friends that are black that "they forget I am white" because, I will never bear the burden they do. The burden for their children's safety, especially their sons. Not only on the streets but in the classroom too. A close friend is moving her son out of the school he was at because even as an educator, she can do nothing about a teacher that "just hates little black boys."
It is too easy to not discuss, or to say it is "their" problem when you stick you head in a hole and don't understand what is happening. A 9 year-old was shot after running out of his house because his mommy wouldn't give him cake. He was just being a kid. Shots rang out at the Bud Billiken day parade. Homicides for children under 18 are up and the life of a black or brown child is basically a crap shoot if they live in the "wrong" part of town.
So now the blame game begins. The cops. The Mayor. The gangs. And every time we take the time to place blame, we are not appropriating our time to working to make things better. Our children can DO better than this and DESERVE better than this!
I get crap all the time from friends and family, that "I need to be careful" where I work, how I talk to the gang bangers outside my house, what I say at police CAP meetings but WTF? I have a voice that I am choosing to use to attempt to make things better. Our kids do not run our streets without the adults allowing them to do so! They do not grow up hating another race unless they see it modeled at home and in their lives. I understanding wanting to live somewhere your kids can play outside without the fear of gun violence but why do my nephews who are the loves of my life, deserve it anymore than Antonio Murry???
Children are so impressionable, and observe everything. Today, an old student from Al Raby helped me move into my classroom and assemble some items. He was talking about a million different things at one time, as kids/young adults do, when he blurted out, " I mean, I wish there was more diversity where I went to school and grew up." It stopped me cold. I asked him, "what do you mean?" To which he replied, "I mean like more white kids and latino kids...."
Another student from last year texted me today. We went back and forth a bit as I answered some questions about high school which he is starting in 2 weeks. His last text was, "how is Noah doing? Is he still sick?" Noah, is my 3-year old nephew. He wanted to know how he was. I got choked up. He had met him once, on my way back from the aquarium, and I stopped at school on a saturday when he was there.
Both these young men are smart, kind, respectful, funny and black. How are they any different than kids in Lake Forest or Wilmette? Besides having less money? Why are they so innocent and honest that they have not been scarred or pulled into the fray? Good parents? Teachers? Mentors?
I am moving next year and will be moving south. I am looking in the community where I teach. I am aware of the controversy it will bring with my family and love them all for loving me and will love them through their ignorance. But I am hopeful that I will chip away as they see the life I live and the joy living in a community I am an active participant in brings me.
We cannot begin to conquer the issues Chicago has until we acknowledge the color and see the beauty in it- black, white, brown, whatever color it may be, and work together to believe all children deserve and require the same love, respect and discipline. Period. Your baby isn't your friend, the kid down the street isn't "lil man" and you don't let him smoke with you. Your child isn't going to get mugged walking down the street in North Lawndale, and crossing the street when your perception of "hoodlums" is walking towards you IS offensive. Really. Please teach all our children better. And if you aren't up for the challenge. Please, Please choose not to have children and fulfill your need for something to love you another way. Help us let ALL kids be kids again. Celebrate the Jackie Robinson West Little Leaguers, and the Louder than a Bomb poetry slam winners and acknowledge the good.
RIP Antonio Murry
