11th GRADE SUMMER READING -- 2017

Welcome to 11th grade! We’re excited to teach you next year. The attached eight readings focus on race and identity, as our first unit questions the way individuals evolve in their search for self.

ASSIGNMENT 1 - Exploring Identity A. Annotation - Making notes and comments - NOT highlighting. Choose four of the articles and annotate for the following items. Your annotations may be done on the printed articles, or by using the comment function in Google Docs:

● Author’s claim● Author’s tone toward the subject of the article● Audience● Occasion ● Rhetorical strategies to support the claim● Specific diction to create an effect

B. ParagraphSelect the article that had the greatest impact on you and use the template below to create a two-paragraph response.

The general argument made by author X in her/his work, ____________, is that _____________________. More specifically, X argues that __________________. S/he writes, “____________.” In this passage, X suggests that __________________. Ultimately, X’s belief is that ____________________. In my view, X is (wrong/right/only partially right) because ____________. More specifically, [I believe that] _______________. For example, ___________. Although author X might object that _______________, [I maintain that] _________________. Therefore, [I conclude that] ______________________.

ASSIGNMENT 2 - Independent Reading (Novel)Choose a book to read that is a young adult novel or adult fiction/nonfiction. Please make sure your novel is at a high school reading level. If you start reading a book and don’t like it, please don’t trudge through—choose a different book! If your book has a movie adaptation (i.e. The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Help, etc.), part of your Book Chat and written notes may also address comparisons between the book and the movie (see #9).

Prepare a 60 second Book Chat. On a separate sheet of paper you must include the following:1. Book title & author.2. Genre (historical fiction, mystery, fantasy, memoir, etc.).3. Setting (where & when is your book set?).4. Narration (1st/3rd person, anything unusual like two different narrators, etc.?).5. Main character's name (& age/gender/race if important)6. Main character's main challenge (the conflict of the book) [DO NOT GIVE AWAY THE END!!]7. Three character traits of your main character.8. What you liked best about your book and why.9. Comparison between book & movie if applicable.10. A short passage, no longer than eight lines, to share and discuss with the class. Include a citation

(page number).

Both assignments are due the second day of school.

How Diversity Makes Us SmarterBeing around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working

October 1, 2014By Katherine W. Phillips - Professor of Leadership and Ethics and senior vice dean at Columbia Business School.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

IN BRIEFDecades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers show that socially diverse groups (that is, those with a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) are more innovative than homogeneous groups.

It seems obvious that a group of people with diverse individual expertise would be better than a homogeneous group at solving complex, non-routine problems. It is less obvious that social diversity should work in the same way—yet the science shows that it does.

This is not only because people with different backgrounds bring new information. Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching consensus will take effort.

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The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult. In the U.S., where the dialogue of inclusion is relatively advanced, even the mention of the word “diversity” can lead to anxiety and conflict. Supreme Court justices disagree on the virtues of diversity and the means for achieving it. Corporations spend billions of dollars to attract and manage diversity both internally and externally, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male.

It is reasonable to ask what good diversity does us. Diversity of expertise confers benefits that are obvious—you would not think of building a new car without engineers, designers and quality-control experts—but what about social diversity? What good comes from diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation? Research has shown that social diversity in a group can cause discomfort, rougher interactions, a lack of trust, greater perceived interpersonal conflict, lower communication, less cohesion, more concern about disrespect, and other problems. So what is the upside?

The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think. This is not just wishful thinking: it is the conclusion I draw from decades of research from organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers.

Information and InnovationThe key to understanding the positive influence of diversity is the concept of informational diversity. When people are brought together to solve problems in groups, they bring different information, opinions and perspectives. This makes obvious sense when we talk about diversity of disciplinary backgrounds—think again of the interdisciplinary team building a car. The same logic applies to social

diversity. People who are different from one another in race, gender and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences to bear on the task at hand. A male and a female engineer might have perspectives as different from one another as an engineer and a physicist—and that is a good thing.

Research on large, innovative organizations has shown repeatedly that this is the case. For example, business professors Cristian Deszö of the University of Maryland and David Ross of Columbia University studied the effect of gender diversity on the top firms in Standard & Poor's Composite 1500 list, a group designed to reflect the overall U.S. equity market. First, they examined the size and gender composition of firms' top management teams from 1992 through 2006. Then they looked at the financial performance of the firms. In their words, they found that, on average, “female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.” They also measured the firms' “innovation intensity” through the ratio of research and development expenses to assets. They found that companies that prioritized innovation saw greater financial gains when women were part of the top leadership ranks.

Racial diversity can deliver the same kinds of benefits. In a study conducted in 2003, Orlando Richard, a professor of management at the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues surveyed executives at 177 national banks in the U.S., then put together a database comparing financial performance, racial diversity and the emphasis the bank presidents put on innovation. For innovation-focused banks, increases in racial diversity were clearly related to enhanced financial performance.

Evidence for the benefits of diversity can be found well beyond the U.S. In August 2012 a team of researchers at the Credit Suisse Research Institute issued a report in which they examined 2,360 companies globally from 2005 to 2011, looking for a relationship between gender diversity on corporate management boards and financial performance. Sure enough, the researchers found that companies with one or more women on the board delivered higher average returns on equity, lower gearing (that is, net debt to equity) and better average growth.

How Diversity Provokes ThoughtLarge data-set studies have an obvious limitation: they only show that diversity is correlated with better performance, not that it causes better performance. Research on racial diversity in small groups, however, makes it possible to draw some causal conclusions. Again, the findings are clear: for groups that value innovation and new ideas, diversity helps.

In 2006 Margaret Neale of Stanford University, Gregory Northcraft of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and I set out to examine the impact of racial diversity on small decision-making groups in an experiment where sharing information was a requirement for success. Our subjects were undergraduate students taking business courses at the University of Illinois. We put together three-person groups—some consisting of all white members, others with two whites and one non-white member—and had them perform a murder mystery exercise. We made sure that all group members shared a common set of information, but we also gave each member important clues that only he or she knew. To find out who committed the murder, the group members would have to share all the information they collectively possessed during discussion. The groups with racial diversity significantly outperformed the groups with no racial diversity. Being with similar others leads us to think we all hold the same information and share the same perspective. This perspective, which stopped the all-white groups from effectively processing the information, is what hinders creativity and innovation.

Other researchers have found similar results. In 2004 Anthony Lising Antonio, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, collaborated with five colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, and other institutions to examine the influence of racial and opinion composition in small group discussions. More than 350 students from three universities participated in the study. Group members were asked to discuss a prevailing social issue (either child labor practices or the death penalty) for 15 minutes. The researchers wrote dissenting opinions and had both black and white

members deliver them to their groups. When a black person presented a dissenting perspective to a group of whites, the perspective was perceived as more novel and led to broader thinking and consideration of alternatives than when a white person introduced that same dissenting perspective. The lesson: when we hear dissent from someone who is different from us, it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks like us.

This effect is not limited to race. For example, last year professors of management Denise Lewin Loyd of the University of Illinois, Cynthia Wang of Oklahoma State University, Robert B. Lount, Jr., of Ohio State University and I asked 186 people whether they identified as a Democrat or a Republican, then had them read a murder mystery and decide who they thought committed the crime. Next, we asked the subjects to prepare for a meeting with another group member by writing an essay communicating their perspective. More important, in all cases, we told the participants that their partner disagreed with their opinion but that they would need to come to an agreement with the other person. Everyone was told to prepare to convince their meeting partner to come around to their side; half of the subjects, however, were told to prepare to make their case to a member of the opposing political party, and half were told to make their case to a member of their own party.

The result: Democrats who were told that a fellow Democrat disagreed with them prepared less well for the discussion than Democrats who were told that a Republican disagreed with them. Republicans showed the same pattern. When disagreement comes from a socially different person, we are prompted to work harder. Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.

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The Power of AnticipationDiversity is not only about bringing different perspectives to the table. Simply adding social diversity to a group makes people believe that differences of perspective might exist among them and that belief makes people change their behavior.

Members of a homogeneous group rest somewhat assured that they will agree with one another; that they will understand one another's perspectives and beliefs; that they will be able to easily come to a consensus. But when members of a group notice that they are socially different from one another, they change their expectations. They anticipate differences of opinion and perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity: people work harder in diverse environments both cognitively and socially. They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.

In a 2006 study of jury decision making, social psychologist Samuel Sommers of Tufts University found that racially diverse groups exchanged a wider range of information during deliberation about a sexual assault case than all-white groups did. In collaboration with judges and jury administrators in a Michigan courtroom, Sommers conducted mock jury trials with a group of real selected jurors. Although the participants knew the mock jury was a court-sponsored experiment, they did not know that the true purpose of the research was to study the impact of racial diversity on jury decision making.

Sommers composed the six-person juries with either all white jurors or four white and two black jurors. As you might expect, the diverse juries were better at considering case facts, made fewer errors recalling relevant information and displayed a greater openness to discussing the role of race in the case. These improvements did not necessarily happen because the black jurors brought new information to the group—they happened because white jurors changed their behavior in the presence of the black jurors. In the presence of diversity, they were more diligent and open-minded.

Group Exercise

Consider the following scenario: You are writing up a section of a paper for presentation at an upcoming conference. You are anticipating some disagreement and potential difficulty communicating because your collaborator is American and you are Chinese. Because of one social distinction, you may focus on other differences between yourself and that person, such as her or his culture, upbringing and experiences—differences that you would not expect from another Chinese collaborator. How do you prepare for the meeting? In all likelihood, you will work harder on explaining your rationale and anticipating alternatives than you would have otherwise.

This is how diversity works: by promoting hard work and creativity; by encouraging the consideration of alternatives even before any interpersonal interaction takes place. The pain associated with diversity can be thought of as the pain of exercise. You have to push yourself to grow your muscles. The pain, as the old saw goes, produces the gain. In just the same way, we need diversity—in teams, organizations and society as a whole—if we are to change, grow and innovate.

'It’s What We Do More Than What We Say': Obama on Race, Identity, and the Way ForwardIn “My President Was Black,” The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates examined Barack Obama’s tenure in office, and his legacy. The story was built, in part, around a series of conversations he had with the president. This is a transcript of the third of those four encounters, which took place on October 28, 2016, aboard Air Force One. You can find the other interviews, as well as responses to the story and to these conversations, here.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: I’m going to put out a perception I’ve always had of you, and if I’m wrong you can riff off it. You being born in Hawaii, and the ancestry that you’ve had, and beyond that you having a cosmopolitan experience very early on living elsewhere—this is a blunt way to say it, but it occurs to me you had an opportunity to just check out. I never perceived myself as having much choice about being black, and I’ve always wondered why you’ve made the choice. And I don’t know if you perceived it as a choice—maybe you felt the same way, like you didn’t have one. But it seemed like you could have been anybody. You could have been one of these rootless cosmopolitans working on some other issues.

Barack Obama: Right.

Coates: I wonder how you came to think of yourself as black and why.

Obama: Well, part of my understanding of race is that it’s more of a social construct than a biological reality. And in that sense, if you are perceived as African American, then you’re African American. Now, you can—that can mean a whole lot of things. And one of the things I cured myself of fairly early on, and I think the African American community has moved away from, is this notion that there’s one way to be black. And so you are right that I could have been an African American who worked for an international organization and was not engaged in the day-to-day struggles, politically or culturally, that the African American community faces. There are a lot of African Americans who may make those decisions, and they’re still African American, but they’re just living their lives in a different way.

I think for me, first and foremost, I always felt as if being black was cool. That it was not something to run away from, but something to embrace. Why that is, I think, is complicated. Part of it is, I think, that my mother thought black folks were cool, and if your mother loves you and is praising you—and says you look good, are smart—as you are, then you don’t kind of think in terms of How can I avoid this? You feel pretty good about it. By the time I was cognizant of race, American culture had gone through enough changes that as a child, I wasn’t just receiving constant negative messages about being black. It is true that I did not have the role models that Malia and Sasha have, but I could look at a Dr. J, or a Marvin Gaye, or a Thurgood Marshall and feel as if the embrace of African American culture was not going to hold me back but rather propel me forward, that it was exciting to be part of a group that had struggles but also had a huge potential.

I think it was not until I was in high school that I started seeing complications around it, and I started to think about it explicitly. I wrote about this in my first book, but even when I started perceiving discrimination, or racism, or just the disadvantages of being a minority, that felt more like a challenge than something to fear. I think probably the final element of this is, when I moved to the mainland, that was the first time where I confronted what at that time, and to some degree to this day, was the segregation of communities. And I did have to make, I think, a conscious choice to root myself physically and professionally in the African American community. And, again, this is something I’ve written about. I never wanted to be somebody who looked like I was avoiding who I saw in the mirror. I never thought

that it would be a healthy thing. And disconnected from race, and more connected to the nature of me growing up, I didn’t like the idea of being rootless.

Coates: You didn’t like the idea of being rootless.

Obama: Michelle and I always joke—but it’s not really a joke, I think it’s an insight—that, in some ways, we saw in each other elements that we hadn’t had growing up. In Michelle I saw roots. I saw a nuclear family, neighborhood, community, continuity. In me she saw adventure, cosmopolitanism. And so the fact that I had not grown up with a stable family, that I hadn’t grown up with a father in the house or a community of which I was a part on a continuing basis—I had great friends, I had loving family members, but I didn’t have a place—that, I think, warned me off of the kind of life you described of just floating around and enjoying life but never being fully invested in it. That element, I think, is not simply a racial decision. You can imagine me as an Irishman deciding to want to live in a neighborhood with some Irish folks and embracing that side of myself.

Coates: That’s interesting. As somebody who began to travel relatively later, I had this moment when I was at this town in Switzerland and had to switch trains to get to a larger town. And I had started my life and thought in that moment I could get on a train and go anywhere. Nobody would know me. I’m free.

Obama: It’s liberating but it’s also—that can get old. In some ways I saw that in my mother, as somebody who had lived an expatriate life. She loved Indonesia—really found meaningful work there, made great friends—but at the end of the day didn’t have a place that was solidly hers. And I think there were elements of that I saw as a kid as being lonely or a loss. There are always trade-offs in life.

Coates: Right. You know, certainly not the majority of the African American community, but certainly a privileged few of us are now raising children who are growing up—I’m thinking of my own son—with all these different experiences—

Obama: And options.

Coates: And options.

Obama: They’re unconstrained.

Coates: Unconstrained. Is that need for home still there? Is that still important in the same way?

Obama: I think it is. It’s interesting watching Malia and Sasha, who have obviously lived in as strange and unreal an environment as any kids do. They feel very strongly about their African American roots. They don’t feel that they have to choose. And that, I think, is a great gift to bequeath them, where they know they’ve got a home, they know they’ve got a base, they know who they are. But they don’t think that in any way constrains them. And certainly they are not burdened by the sorts of doubts that previous generations—and even our generation—might have felt in what it means to be black. They think being black and being free are not contradictory. It’s interesting, when we went to visit the museum, Smithsonian [National Museum of African American History and Culture], just watching them soak it in. And they’re well-informed young people, so they knew most of the history, and I forget which one of them just said, “I can’t wait to bring my friends here.” And I think she was not just referring to African American friends but her white friends. She said, “Because face it, our stuff’s cool.” We’ve got Michael Jordan, Beyoncé, Dr. King. What you got?

So there’s a confidence that they project, which doesn’t mean they’re not mindful that there’re still struggles. You hear them talking about what black women have to go through with hair and they’ll go on a long rant—just the inconvenience and expense that they still feel is forced upon them, not just by the white community but the black community. They’ll still notice a certain obliviousness of even their best

friends on certain issues. But they don’t feel trapped by that. They don’t feel as if that’s determinative of their possibilities. And I think they would say that the upsides really outweigh the downsides. They really like who we are. They like the community.

Coates: Do you recall the first time you were aware of folks saying, “Barack, you’re not really black”?

Obama: You know, it’s interesting. When I look back—and I kept journals during this time, I was really in my own head—but from the age of, say, 18 to 25, when I first moved from Hawaii and I’m living in L.A. and New York and ultimately Chicago, what strikes me is less the lack of acceptance and more just my own self-consciousness. That one of the wonderful things, I believe, about the African American community is the degree to which we embrace whoever it is that we’re with. So, socially, I never experienced being rebuffed. The friends I made in my first year in college who were African American, there was never that “You’re not black enough. You’re from Hawaii. Your mom is white.” There just wasn’t any of that. There were times where you’d feel it in terms of friendships and groups, right? Because you went to Howard, you’re in an all-black environment, that doesn’t come up.

I think I felt some tensions around: You’ve got your white friends, or you’ve got black friends, and they don’t necessarily hang together in the same ways. So you’re kind of doing shuttle diplomacy sometimes. Which is why I think some of my closest friends during those early years in college were Pakistani, or French, or people who themselves didn’t neatly fit in categories. But by the time I get to Chicago—and I’m still a young man at that point, I’m 25 years old—and I’m in the middle of the South Side of Chicago, there was a degree of familiarity, and love, and comfort that I guess in retrospect you might be puzzled by it. But it just fit.

Now, there were times as an organizer, and certainly when I ran for office, where that stuff got brought in tactically or strategically by folks who I was dealing with. So you got some pastor, some alderman, who didn’t like what we were trying to do, who says, “You know what? That guy, he’s got Jewish backing,” or “He’s working with this Catholic church,” or “He’s from Hawaii.” When I ran against Bobby Rush: “He’s got that Harvard degree, and he’s from Hyde Park.” And so those themes would arise. But I always experienced those as just tactics being deployed by somebody who was pushing back on something I was trying to do.

Coates: Were you hurt, though? Personally hurt? Did it bother you on any level?

Obama: Again, it didn’t. Because of the experiences I had had in the neighborhoods, and communities, and with regular folks. Because that’s not how regular black folks think. They’re not sort of measuring on a day-to-day basis, Okay, is what you’re doing a white thing, or is it a black thing? Folks weren’t doing stuff like that. And in fact, among working-class black folks, you doing things that weren’t typical oftentimes was a source of pride. So I remember my first job out of college was working for this business magazine—subscription magazine—and I was the only African American there who wasn’t a delivery man or some tech-support guy. Most of the African Americans in the office were secretaries and, you know, they were proud that I was walking in there and working. So I think that gave me a base and a sense of confidence. So if somebody was playing a game later on, I know that Well, they’re not speaking for, quote-unquote, “the authentic black experiences,” because I live with folks who are at least as authentic as you. Sometimes it’s like these rappers who grew up in the suburbs and suddenly they’re all—

Coates: Gangsta.

Obama: Gangsta. It’s like, “Come on, man, I know you. I know who you are. Don’t pretend.”

Coates: I talked to quite a few people who knew you after that Bobby Rush race, and there were people who—Valerie [Jarrett] told me this—did not want you to run for the Senate. How personally—maybe

you weren’t, I don’t know, maybe this doesn’t get to you—were you personally injured after that? Was it just like, Oh my God, I don’t know if I can—

Obama: No. I was upset about losing as bad as I did in that congressional race, and there’s no doubt it shook my confidence. But it wasn’t because of race. I remember campaigning in the congressional race, and it was a shoestring operation. I’d go meet people and I’d knock on doors and stuff, and some of the grandmothers who were the folks I’d been organizing and working with doing community stuff, they weren’t parroting back some notion of “You’re too Harvard,” or “You’re too Hyde Park,” or what have you. They’d say, “You’re a wonderful young man, you’re going to do great things. You just have to be patient.” So I didn’t feel the loss as a rejection by black people. I felt the loss as “politics anywhere is tough.” Politics in Chicago is especially tough. And being able to break through in the African American community is difficult because of the enormous loyalty that people feel towards anybody who has been around a while. Look at Marion Barry in D.C.—or you can come up with all kinds of stories. Generally, we are pretty loyal voters.

And so I think that the loss made me question my career choice not because of racial issues, but rather because it made me question whether, in fact, there was a path for me to be able to break through and have a platform to get the kind of things done that I wanted to get done. Or was I destined to just slog away in the state legislature until I’m 55, and then some congressional race comes up, and now I’m a backbencher in Congress—and is that how I wanted to spend the next 20 years? So those were the kinds of questions that I was asking myself.

“I never wanted to be somebody who looked like I was avoiding who I saw in the mirror.”

Coates: One of the things you’ve done, that you do very, very successfully—one thing I don’t think I’ve seen anybody really do—is speak about your roots, your ancestry, your family, and speak about your blackness without a sense of rejection of any of it: “I’m an African American and my grandfather was this and my mother was this,” and you’d be very clear about it. Is that a story you always told yourself? Did you decide, I have to figure out something and—

Obama: No. By the time I was running for office, I think, I was sort of formed. That stretch that I described—maybe you want to stretch it out from the age of 18 to 27, when I go to law school—I was wrestling with myself and trying to game this out, and to figure this out, and it wasn’t a smooth passage. When I look back at journal entries, when I read biographies of me that talk about that stretch, I’m full of confusion and turmoil and doubts. The degree to which my organizing work in Chicago, I think, solved a puzzle for me, I can’t overstate.

And I’ve said this before: I didn’t set the world on fire when I was doing that work. We had some small victories, and a whole lot of failures. The people I worked with and the communities I was serving gave so much more to me than I think I gave to them. It’s hard to think how I could repay them. I still think about them in the Oval Office. It was a great gift they gave me, understanding who I was, or at least who I aspired to be. So that by the time I’m off to law school, I’m pretty formed at that point.

Coates: What was it that it gave you? What is the relationship between that and sorting out who you were? What happens there?

Obama: For me, and this may be different for other people, part of becoming an adult is linking your personal ambitions and striving to something bigger. And when I started doing that work, my story merges with a larger story. That happens naturally for a John Lewis. That happens more naturally for you. It was less obvious to me. How do I pull all these different strains together: Kenya and Hawaii and Kansas, and white and black and Asian—how does that fit? And through action, through work, I suddenly see myself as part of the bigger process for, yes, delivering justice for the [African American community], and specifically the South Side community, and low-income people—justice on behalf of

the African American community. But also thereby promoting my ideas of justice and equality and empathy that my mother taught me were universal.

So I’m in a position to understand those essential parts of me not as separate and apart from any particular community but connected to every community. And I can fit the African American struggle for freedom and justice in the context of the universal aspiration for freedom and justice.

Which is why I’ve always said, and I continue to believe that, the struggle for racial equality in America has been the essential catalyst for America’s growth and development. As painful as it is, as ugly as that history has often been, as hard as it’s been on black folks themselves, it’s the driver of the expanded moral commitment. And it continues. And because of it, we better understand other struggles. It helps stretch our moral imaginations to embrace the Latino farmworker, or the LGBT kid who is feeling ostracized, or the woman who is hitting the glass ceiling. So the work helped me form an integrated vision of the world and my place in it in a way that would not have happened if I had been a professor reading about it or writing about it, but they would just be intellectual exercises.

Coates: Did your mother ever get to see you working in Chicago?

Obama: She never went along with me. She was doing her own thing. When we visited it was typically in Hawaii. That stretch of time when I was organizing was a particularly busy time for her. So she always expressed pride about the work, and interestingly, it wasn’t all that different from some of the work she was doing. She was out in poor villages trying to help people leverage microloans into a better life. Probably the moment where things most intersected in a way that she sees it is at our wedding, which is why I end the book at the wedding. Because I’ve got some South Side folks there, I’ve got my boys from Hawaii there, I’ve got Pakistani friends there, I’ve got my Kenyan family there. And to see my mom talking to my mother-in-law, or my Kenyan sister; to have some folks from Altgeld come up to my mother and say, “You should be so proud of your son”; to see my grandmother, a little old Kansas white lady, interacting with some of Michelle’s older relatives, little old black ladies, and they basically had the same tastes and attitudes—it was, I think, a moment where, in a very personal way, everything I talked about was made manifest. We still have the old video from our wedding, and when I watch it, it reminds me of how lucky I’ve been.

Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White PersonBy Gina Crosley-Corcoran, author and advocate behind TheFeministBreeder.comPosted: 05/08/2014 12:57 pm EDT Updated: 09/03/2014 11:59 am EDThttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-crosleycorcoran/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-person_b_5269255.html

Years ago some feminist on the Internet told me I was "privileged." "THE F&CK!?!?" I said.

I came from the kind of poor that people don't want to believe still exists in this country. Have you ever spent a frigid northern-Illinois winter without heat or running water? I have. At 12 years old were you making ramen noodles in a coffee maker with water you fetched from a public bathroom? I was. Have you ever lived in a camper year-round and used a random relative's apartment as your mailing address? We did. Did you attend so many different elementary schools that you can only remember a quarter of their names? Welcome to my childhood.

This is actually a much nicer trailer setup than the one I grew up in.

So when that feminist told me I had "white privilege," I told her that my white skin didn't do shit to prevent me from experiencing poverty. Then, like any good, educated feminist would, she directed me to Peggy McIntosh's now-famous 1988 piece "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."

After one reads McIntosh's powerful essay, it's impossible to deny that being born with white skin in America affords people certain unearned privileges in life that people of other skin colors simply are not afforded. For example:

"I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."

"When I am told about our national heritage or about 'civilization,' I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."

"If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race."

"I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time."

If you read through the rest of the list, you can see how white people and people of color experience the world in very different ways. But listen: This is not said to make white people feel guilty about their privilege. It's not your fault that you were born with white skin and experience these privileges. But whether you realize it or not, you do benefit from it, and it is your fault if you don't maintain awareness of that fact.

I do understand that McIntosh's essay may rub some people the wrong way. There are several points on the list that I felt spoke more to the author's status as a middle-class person than to her status as a white person. For example:

"If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area, which I can afford and in which I would want to live."

"I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me." "I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or Harassed."

"If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege."

And there are so many more points in the essay where the word "class" could be substituted for the word "race," which would ultimately paint a very different picture. That is why I had such a hard time identifying with this essay for so long. When I first wrote about white privilege years ago, I demanded to know why this white woman felt that my experiences were the same as hers when, no, my family most certainly could not rent housing "in an area which we could afford and want to live," and no, I couldn't go shopping without fear in our low-income neighborhoods.

The idea that any ol' white person can find a publisher for a piece is most certainly a symptom of class privilege. Having come from a family of people who didn't even graduate from high school, who knew not a single academic or intellectual person, it would never occur to me to assume that I could be published. It is absolutely a freak anomaly that I'm in graduate school, considering that not one person on either side of my family has a college degree. And it took me until my 30s to ever believe that someone from my stock could achieve such a thing. Poverty colors nearly everything about your perspective on opportunities for advancement in life. Middle-class, educated people assume that anyone can achieve their goals if they work hard enough. Folks steeped in poverty rarely see a life past working at the gas station, making the rent on their trailer, and self-medicating with cigarettes and prescription drugs until they die of a heart attack. (I've just described one whole side of my family and the life I assumed I'd be living before I lucked out of it.)

I, maybe more than most people, can completely understand why broke white folks get pissed when the word "privilege" is thrown around. As a child I was constantly discriminated against because of my poverty, and those wounds still run very deep. But luckily my college education introduced me to a more nuanced concept of privilege: the term "intersectionality." The concept of intersectionality recognizes that people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not privileged in others. There are many

different types of privilege, not just skin-color privilege, that impact the way people can move through the world or are discriminated against. These are all things you are born into, not things you earned, that afford you opportunities that others may not have. For example:

Citizenship: Simply being born in this country affords you certain privileges that non-citizens will never access.

Class: Being born into a financially stable family can help guarantee your health, happiness, safety, education, intelligence, and future opportunities.

Sexual orientation: If you were born straight, every state in this country affords you privileges that non-straight folks have to fight the Supreme Court for.

Sex: If you were born male, you can assume that you can walk through a parking garage without worrying that you'll be raped and then have to deal with a defense attorney blaming it on what you were wearing.

Ability: If you were born able-bodied, you probably don't have to plan your life around handicap access, braille, or other special needs.

Gender identity: If you were born cisgender (that is, your gender identity matches the sex you were assigned at birth), you don't have to worry that using the restroom or locker room will invoke public outrage.

As you can see, belonging to one or more category of privilege, especially being a straight, white, middle-class, able-bodied male, can be like winning a lottery you didn't even know you were playing. But this is not to imply that any form of privilege is exactly the same as another, or that people lacking in one area of privilege understand what it's like to be lacking in other areas. Race discrimination is not equal to sex discrimination and so forth.

And listen: Recognizing privilege doesn't mean suffering guilt or shame for your lot in life.

Nobody's saying that straight, white, middle-class, able-bodied males are all a bunch of assholes who don't work hard for what they have. Recognizing privilege simply means being aware that some people have to work much harder just to experience the things you take for granted (if they ever can experience them at all).

I know now that I am privileged in many ways. I am privileged as a natural-born white citizen. I am privileged as a cisgender woman. I am privileged as an able-bodied person. I am privileged that my first language is also our national language, and that I was born with an intellect and ambition that pulled me out of the poverty that I was otherwise destined for. I was privileged to be able to marry my way "up" by partnering with a privileged, middle-class, educated male who fully expected me to earn a college degree.

There are a million ways I experience privilege, and some that I certainly don't. But thankfully, intersectionality allows us to examine these varying dimensions and degrees of discrimination while raising awareness of the results of multiple systems of oppression at work.

Tell me: Are you a white person who's felt uncomfortable with the term "white privilege"? Does a more nuanced approach help you see your own privilege more clearly?

What Is A Chicano?By: Cheech MarinPosted: 05/03/2012 7:44 am EDT Updated: 07/03/2012 5:12 am EDThttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/cheech-marin/what-is-a-chicano_b_1472227.html

Who the hell knows?To me, you have to declare yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano. That makes a Chicano a

Mexican-American with a defiant political attitude that centers on his or her right to self- definition. I'm a Chicano because I say I am.

But no Chicano will agree with me because one of the characteristics of being Chicano is you don't agree with anybody, or anything. And certainly not another Chicano. We are the only tribe that has all chiefs and no Indians. But don't ever insult a Chicano about being a Chicano because then all the other Chicanos will be on you with a vengeance. They will even fight each other to be first in line to support you.

It's not a category that appears on any U.S. Census survey. You can check White, African- American, Native-American, Asian, Pacific Islander and even Hispanic (which Chicanos hate). But there is no little box you can check that says Chicano. However, you can get a Ph.D. in Chicano Studies from Harvard and a multitude of other universities. You can cash retirement checks from those same prestigious universities after having taught Chicano Studies for 20 years, but there’s still no official recognition from the government.

No wonder Chicanos are confused.So where did the word Chicano come from? Again, no two Chicanos can agree, so here is

my definition what I think. In true Chicano fashion, this should be the official version.The word "Chicano" was originally a derisive term from Mexicans to other Mexicans living in

the United States. The concept was that those Mexicans living in the U.S. were no longer truly Mexicanos because they had given up their country by living in Houston, Los Angeles, "Guada La Habra," or some other city. They were now something else and something less. Little satellite Mexicans living in a foreign country. They were something small. They were chicos. They were now Chicanos.

If you lived near the U.S.-Mexican border, the term was more or less an insult, but always some kind of insult. In the early days, the connotation of calling someone a Chicano was that they were poor, illiterate, destitute people living in tin shacks along the border. As soon as they could get a car loan and could move farther away from the border, the term became less of an insult over the years. But the resentment still lingered.

Some ask "Why can't you people just all be Hispanic?" Same reason that all white people can't just be called English. Just because you speak English or Spanish does not mean that you are one group. Hispanic is a census term that some dildo in a government office made up to include all Spanish-speaking brown people. It is especially annoying to Chicanos because it is a catch-all term that includes the Spanish conqueror. By definition, it favors European cultural invasion, not indigenous roots. It also includes all Latino groups, which brings us together because Hispanic annoys all Latino groups.

Why? Because they're Latino and it's part of their nature. (Aren't you glad you asked?)So what is a "Latino?" (It's like opening Pandora's box, huh?) "Latino" refers to all Spanish-

speaking people in the "New World" - South Americans, Central Americans, Mexicans, and Brazilians (even though they speak Portuguese). All those groups and their descendents living in the United States want to be called Latinos to recognize their Indian roots.

Mexicans call it having the "Nopal" in their face, that prickly pear cactus with big flat leaves that Mexicans eat, revere, and think they look like. When you go to Mexico and walk down the street in Mexico City, it's like walking through a Nopal cactus garden. Nopal is everywhere.

For Latinos who don't want to be so "Nopalese," there's always "Mexican-American." Or the dreaded "Hispanic" that should only be used when faced with complete befuddlement from the person asking what you are.

Because I am the only official version of what being Chicano is, I say Mexican-American is the politically correct middle ground between Hispanic and Chicano. Like in the song I wrote to be sung by a Chicano trying to be P.C. "Mexican-Americans; don't like to just get into gang fights; they like flowers and music; and white girls named Debbie too."

All those names made it confusing for me growing up. I lived in an all-black neighborhood, followed by an all-white one, and other kids in the always called me Mexican in both neighborhoods.

It never bothered me until one day I thought to myself "Hey, wait a minute, I'm not Mexican." I've never even been to Mexico and I don't speak Spanish. Sure, I eat Mexican food at family gatherings where all of the adults speak Spanish, but I eat Cheerios and pizza and hamburgers more. No, I'm definitely not a "Mexican." Maybe I was "Mexican-ish," just like some people were "Jew-ish."

These thoughts all ran through my mind when I chased down an alley by five young African- American kids. "Yo, Messican!" they called out in their patois. I stopped in my tracks and spun around. "I'm not a Mexican!" I shouted defiantly. They stopped too, then stared at me. The leader spoke, "Fool! What you talking 'bout? You Mexican as a taco. Look at you."

"No," I said. "To be a Mexican, you have to be from Mexico. You're African-American. Are you from Africa?"

"N--. You crazy. I'm from South-Central, just like you.""That's exactly what I'm talking about!" I said. "Did anybody knock on your door and ask you

did you want to be African-American?""Hell no! The social workers don't even knock on our door, they too scared," he said, cracking

everyone up."Then why you letting people call you whatever they want? What do you want to be called?" I

asked.He looked at the others, thought about it for a few seconds and then said proudly, "I'm a

Blood." "Ooo-kay," I said making it up as I went along. "Then you're a Blood-American."That seemed to go over well. They all nodded. "Yeah, we Blood-American.""Well, then go out and be the best Blood-Americans that you can be. Peace, brothers, I got to

blow." I walked away and so did they. Self-identification saved the day. Yet, I still was dissatisfied with what I wanted to call myself.

When I got home, there was a party going on. A bunch of relatives had come over for dinner and everybody was sitting around gabbing and drinking beer. My Uncle Rudy was in the middle of a story: "So, I took the car into the dealer and he said, 'Yeah, the repairs gonna run you about $250.' Two-fifty? Estas loco? Hell, just give me a pair of pliers and some tin foil. I'll fix it - I'm a Chicano mechanic. Two-fifty, mis nalgas."

And that was the defining epiphany. A Chicano was someone who could do anything. A Chicano was someone who wasn't going to get ripped off. He was Uncle Rudy. He was industrious, inventive, and he wants another beer. So I got my Uncle Rudy another beer because, on that day, he showed me that I was a Chicano. Hispanic my ass, I've been a Chicano ever since.

‘What Are You?’ Reflections on Asian American and Hapa Identity05/30/2013 10:44 am ET | Updated Jul 30, 2013Rev. Vicki Flippin - Pastor, The Church of the Villagehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-vicki-flippin/what-are-you-reflections-on-asian-american-and-hapa-identity_b_3351770.html

YouTube link to the skit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWynJkN5HbQ

There is a YouTube video making its way around this month. In it, a white man begins making small talk with an Asian American woman, and says to her, “Where are you from? Your English is perfect!” Annoyed, the woman responds, “San Diego. We speak English there.”

This leads to a downward spiral of questioning, and — once the man gets the woman to admit that “her people” are “from” Seoul — he proceeds to bow to her and talk about Korean barbeque and kimchi. When she asks him where he is from, he answers that he’s “just a regular American.” Finally, he gets it and admits that his ancestors are in fact English. The punch line is that she then begins to imitate all of the English stereotypes she can think of, including repeating phrases like “Top a the mornin’ to ya!” and complimenting “his people’s” fish and chips.

Many of my Asian American friends have been passing this video around because it is so true to experiences we have all had. People often ask us, “Where are you from?” And it is always slightly infuriating. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why I have such a negative reaction to this question. We all know that what people are really asking is, “What is your ethnic heritage?” And really, I don’t mind talking about my ethnic heritage. In fact, I enjoy sharing this kind of information with other people. It’s one of the things I love best about me.

I think what is so infuriating, then, about this question is that it is always asked by someone who has just met me. So all they really know about me is what I look like. And if they immediately ask me where I am

from, it is evident to me that they looked at me and immediately got distracted by the fact that I look different from them. At least that’s how it feels. Me looking like this means that there is something foreign about me, and so “where I am from” must be the most profound and interesting thing about me.

There is another question that is similar but even less delicate: the infamous “What are you?” It’s something that multiracial people get asked a lot. “What are you?” is perhaps a more sophisticated version of “Where are you from?” because it recognizes that Asian Americans can be “from” the same places that non-Asian-Americans can be “from”: San Diego, Missouri, Chicago, Midtown. “What are you?” seeks to get past someone’s place right to the heart of their identity. And the heart of one’s identity is obviously one’s ethnic make-up (unless they’re white, of course).

There is an artist named Kip Fulbeck who has created a photography series called The Hapa Project. Hapa is a Hawaiian term that has come to refer to people who are multiracial, with one part of their heritage being Asian or Pacific Islander. In The Hapa Project, Kip Fulbeck photographs Hapa people, and asks them to handwrite below their photograph an answer to the so common question, “What are you?”

Many of the subjects do write something about their ethnicity. For example, a future comedian child writes below his photo, “I am part Chinese and part Danish. I don’t usually tell people I am Danish though, because they think I’m a pastry.” Others write statements that push back on the identity question. A young woman writes, “I am a person of color. I am not half-‘white’. I am not half-‘Asian’. I am a whole ‘other’.” Others challenge the idea that the most important part of their identity is their ethnic heritage. These people write things like, “I am a mom, an architect, a pacifist, an American.”

What is so liberating about the way Kip Fulbeck asks “What are you?” is that he is not assuming that the ethnic heritage of people of color is what is most fundamental and important about their identity. Instead, he lets them decide who they are. He turns “What are you?” into a genuine, curious and liberating question.

And he encourages me to wonder what I would write if Kip Fulbeck photographed me. If I could only write a few lines, what would be the most important things I would want to express about my identity? Maybe I would say, “I am Chinese and Hillbilly.” Or maybe I would say, “I am a pastor, a wife, a daughter, a cat-mom, and a pursuer of social justice.” Or — and this is what I hope matters most — maybe I would just say, “I am a beloved child of God.”

I invite you to think today about what you would say if someone really asked you the question, “What are you?”

For inspiration, here is one of God’s responses.

...Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” She said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations. (Exodus 3:13-15)

So...What are you?

Political Correctness: The Effects on Our Generation04/04/2016 03:23 pm ET | Updated Apr 08, 2016

By Kai Sherwin - Junior at a high school in Connecticut

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kai-sherwin/political-correctness-the_b_9600916.html

According to Listverse, a school in California sent five students home after they refused to remove their American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo, the day that marks Mexico’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla. An Xbox player who put his homeplace, Fort Gay, West Virginia, on his Xbox Live profile was banned by Microsoft because it was “inappropriate in any context”. Santa Clauses in Australia were forced to stop saying the traditional phrase of “ho ho ho” because it could “frighten children” and be “derogatory to women”.

George Washington once said, “If the freedom of speech is taken away then the dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to slaughter.” Our contemporary society has no defined limitations on free speech, however, there is an undertow threatening to erode this sacred principle: political correctness.To comprehend how political correctness is shaping the privilege of free speech, one must first understand several major aspects of this concept. The basic premise is that if intellectuals and pundits can influence how individuals think and act, then they can also influence what is socially ‘acceptable’ language. By imposing their political views on some subjects, they create a pressure to conform to these standards. But generally, a person does not want to be labeled as an objector of popular opinion, thereby forcing them to subject their own ideas to the prevailing ideology.

In addition, political correctness encourages the pursuit of conformity. Through social intimidation, a diverse body of ideas and expressions no longer flourishes in the diminishing world of American free speech. A growing aspect of societal multiculturalism only further contributes to this problem. Proponents of political correctness obsess over their belief that language should not be injurious to any ethnicity, race, gender, religion or other social group. They attempt to eliminate what they consider to be offensive remarks and actions and replace them with harmless substitutes that come at the expense of free expression.

Several institutions have come under fire for issues relating to political correctness. One of the more recent controversies has been about Amherst College’s decision to drop “Lord Jeff” as their mascot. Many of the college’s students viewed Lord Jeff as a racist and oppressive white symbol. The institution was “encouraged to cut its ties with Lord Jeff, who came to be seen as an inappropriate symbol and offensive to many members of the student body”, as per the New York Times. The Lord Jeffery Inn, a local campus hotel, is also going to be renamed. However, there has been an understandable backlash stemming from current students and alumni. The opposition criticized the incident because of how it affronted the legacy of Lord Jeffery, who was a respected war general, as well as the college itself. William H. Scott, a member of the class of 1979, said, “We sterilize history by eliminating the mascot...It’s...censorship.”

Declaring that some thoughts, phrases, and actions are “correct” while others are not is creating an ever-tightening noose around the freedom of speech and expression. No matter how uncomfortable we are with inflammatory language or actions, it’s crucial to recognize that this is a small price to pay to maintain a democratic system that promotes free expression as a basic pillar of society.

Maligned and Misunderstood: Muslim Students Speak OutBY CINDY LONG JUNE 9, 2016 http://neatoday.org/2016/06/09/muslim-students-u-s/

Seventeen-year-old Entsar Mohamed is proud to be Muslim, but she admits it isn’t easy.

“Being a Muslim in America today is getting harder and I am worried that it will get worse,” says the senior at Mission High School in San Francisco, Calif. “Because of ISIS, Muslims are seen as bad and violent people.”

Anti-Islamic rhetoric has reached a fever pitch in America, spouting not only

from presidential candidates and governors, but even from school board members, like one in Philadelphia who posted that she is “officially against Muslim

s” and “We don’t want them in America” on her Facebook page.

In New York, Chicago, and in Mohamed’s hometown of San Francisco, city bus ads paid for by millionaire Pamela Geller showed pictures of ISIS atrocities and proclaimed, “It’s not Islamophobia. It’s Islamorealism.”

For Muslims who ride city buses—including hundreds of school kids—the message was loud and clear: “Muslims are terrorists and must be feared.”

“It’s scary, unfair, and weird how we are in the year 2016 and people are allowed to be so openly biased and hateful,” says Mohamed Omar, 18, a senior at San Francisco’s Raul Wallenberg High School. “People look at us in a damning way, they have this image of us that’s hard to change, and it bothers me that Pamela Geller can have freedom of speech, but where is my freedom of religion?”

Islamophobia at SchoolNot surprisingly, Islamophobia from the larger society filters down into our schools. More than half of California’s Muslim students have experienced religion-based bullying, a rate double that

of their non-Muslim peers nationally, according to a study of the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Fakhra Shah, a teacher at Mission High School, knows first-hand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of anti-Muslim slurs and stereotyping. A Muslim who grew up in the Bay Area, she’s experienced them her whole life. One of her goals as an educator is to prevent bullying by teaching tolerance, which she does by demonstrating it, accepting perspectives, and creating a warm environment where all students feel loved and accepted.

“Growing up, I remember having to constantly start conversations with people about how ‘not all Muslims are…’ That’s a pretty terrible way to get to know people or make friends,” she says. “I still remember having to defend myself to my seventh-grade social science teacher who wanted

to embarrass my religion and background in front of the entire class. I definitely stood up for myself but was completely shut down by her and had no place to turn. I would never want any of my students to have to be humiliated or disgraced in that way.”

Fakhra Shah

Shattering MisconceptionsShah teaches a unit on Islamophobia in her Social Change and Critical Thinking class and starts with a personal anecdote to illustrate how easily misconceptions arise.

The anecdote is about one of her students proudly offering Shah a taste of her lunch, which was pork and a staple of her Filipino culture. Shah thanked the student but said she doesn’t eat pork.

Surprised, the student asked, “What kind of people don’t eat pork?”

Shah explained that most Muslims around the world do not eat pork, to which the student responded. “You’re Muslim? But you don’t look like a Muslim!” She thought Muslim women wore a hijab or dressed from head to toe in black burkas.

“I use that story to introduce the following facts,” says Shah.

• There are over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. With 7 billion people in the world, that means about 23 percent of the world’s population are Muslims.

• Muslims are diverse as people and in their practices. Some of us cover, and some of us do not. Some of us pray five times a day, others might not practice or offer prayers as regularly.

• What’s most important here is that not all of us are Arab. I am not Arab, my parents came to the U.S. in the 1970s from Pakistan. I was born here, so I am an American Muslim.

Shah shares her Islamophobia lesson plan online and also suggests that educators tackle the topic of religious extremism by promoting religious literacy. Her lesson explains what it means to be Arab, Muslim, and Sikh, and why Arabs and Muslims are not the same thing.

She also leads discussions, with openings such as “Not all Muslims are….”

She says she finds that students can identify with that phrase, especially when they talk about other groups, like “Not all Black people are….”The lesson not only raises awareness, but allows all her students to feel more acceptance and understanding.

Educators have an immense role in helping youth feel safe and accepted,” Shah says. “We can make or break their experiences. We have a huge responsibility, and the number one part of that responsibility is compassion. None of us is perfect, neither educators nor our students, but all of the students want to feel safe and accepted and we can definitely work hard to give them that much.”

A Maryland Muslim High School Senior’s Reflection: How Rising Anti-Muslim Bigotry in U.S. Has Affected My LifeHannah Sharim, Age 17

It’s 6:45 a.m. I wake up at the sound of my alarm, which I snoozed for the fourth time today. I brush my teeth, pin my hijab in place, and rush downstairs to go to school. Almost out the door, my parents wished me goodbye with what has become the norm: “Be careful of your surroundings.” I stopped getting the “Have a good day sweetie” a while ago. Now I just have to be careful, because I could be attacked. Because I could be the target of hate speech. Because anti-Muslim bigotry is my reality.

BREAKING NEWS: Republican presidential candidate and party front-runner Donald Trump is calling for a complete and total shutdown on all Muslims from entering the United States. This was the breaking point. I always felt that prejudice existed towards Muslims in America. As a young woman who wears the hijab, how could I avoid it? I feel the insolent stares I get in the streets. I feel the snarky remarks made under strangers’ breath. I feel the isolation. But I would have never projected such intolerance to reach this extent. I never expected this feeling to overcome me. So I decided to investigate where it came from.

I am part of the Ulysses program at Northwest High School in Germantown, Md., where students in a smaller-learning community pursue independent research projects over the course of their four years. We are required to complete a final research project our senior year, and with my understanding of the current perception of Muslims, I studied the media’s propagation of Islamophobia in American society.

There were three components to my research: interviews, surveys, and case studies. I found that the media’s terminology in reference to Islam and the Muslim populace holds tremendous effect on how they are perceived. When atrocities occur in the name of Islam, the media is quick to call it an act of terrorism, which reflects poorly on Muslims. But when atrocities occur from white supremacists and far-right thinkers, excuses are made for them and less vivid language is used to describe their crimes. After presenting my findings to a class full of students and staff, the room stood in pure bewilderment. Everyone who approached me afterward had the same thing to say: “I didn’t know.” They were shocked that words like “terrorist” and “jihadi” had a broader impact on Islam than just personifying proclaimed Muslims who commit acts of terror. But why is it so difficult for a distinction to be made between the acts of extremists and the rest

of the peaceful Muslim population? The answer lies in the xenophobic rhetoric exhibited by Donald Trump.

There is no worse feeling than feeling unwelcome in your own home. But despite the false perceptions and unfounded stereotypes I face every day, I refuse to be out casted. America is my home; in fact it’s all I’ve ever known. I was born here. I was raised here. I celebrate the Fourth of July. I sing the national anthem with insurmountable pride. I hang the American flag outside of my front door. And, I plan on staying here for generations to come. I love this country, my country, because I love what it stands for.

I was blessed with the opportunity to live in a land that was founded on the basis of freedom in all forms. A land that embraces freedom for every race, religion, and gender. Donald Trump’s proposition is not only unconstitutional, but also un-American. His bigotry goes against every fiber of the American fabric. It extends beyond Muslims; it challenges the fundamental principles that make America great.

The issue here is not a singular Donald Trump, but rather the American citizens rejoicing at his deranged dogma. This poison infiltrating the minds of American citizens is administered by Trump-like characters and solidified by an underlying layer of ignorance. To eradicate it, we must refuse to hold an entire faith liable for politically motivated acts. To eradicate it, we must allow American Muslims to feel welcome in our home, America. As an American, I will not stand to see the rancorous poison called fear extend any further, and neither should you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/opinion/sunday/the-man-behind-the-metal-detector.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

The Man Behind the Metal DetectorBy ADAM STUMACHERAPRIL 29, 2017

Credit Pierre Seinturier

BOSTON — Every morning, I stand behind the metal detectors, searching bags as students enter the school. They come clutching iced coffee and bags of chips, their faces burned by the wind. Sometimes they raise a hand in greeting, but mostly they look off into the distance, bobbing their heads to the music in their earbuds. I am an administrator at a public high school in Boston, serving almost entirely low-income black and Latino students, and that means every morning I am the white guy at the metal detector telling them they are suspected of a crime as they walk into their school.

I’ve been an educator in urban schools for over a decade. There are mornings when I imagine a different life, one where I take the train downtown and sit at a desk, actually sit, for 15 minutes over the course of a day. But it is just a passing thought. I keep on going to school because I believe in the work, which is another way of saying I believe in the kids. And then I arrive, and I see their faces framed by metal detectors.

There are metal detectors at the entrance of nearly every public high school in Boston — I imagine it’s the same in most major cities. Last year, when I started working at this school as part of a new administration, we were determined not to use them. We made it until October, when a student brought a knife to school. He was a gentle kid, a ninth grader, and he said he’d brought the knife only because some guys in his neighborhood were harassing him on the way to school and he

needed to protect himself. But our first job is to keep the school safe, and so we asked the district for metal detectors, which arrived before 7 the next morning. I had never seen anything arrive so promptly from the district. Textbook orders take months.

At first we didn’t know how to use them, but we figured it out through trial and error. Set them up too close to the door and the kids have to wait outside in the rain. You need a table for their bags, but if you put it too close to the detectors, the alarm will keep going off. You need people to check the bags, people to run the wand over students who set off the alarm, people to ask kids to empty their pockets, and then to ask them to try again. People like me.

As a student in rural New Hampshire, I never had to enter my high school through metal detectors. It was a concrete monolith with a vocational center and auto shop in one wing, where everyone was white, only a handful of kids were on the college track, and nobody was made to feel like a criminal.

The reality for my students is different. They have been followed through stores, had people roll up their car windows or cross the street when they approach. So perhaps they are unsurprised by the metal detectors.

I try to tell myself none of this is within my control. I think of our school’s work to design courses around diverse texts, hire teachers who reflect our students’ cultures and connect kids with opportunities like internships — how we welcome all students with the promise that we will not rest until they achieve their potential.

But I see how their body language shifts when they walk through metal detectors, some wrapping their arms around themselves and others throwing their heads back in defiance. I see how they fixate on their phone screens or scarves, anything to avoid meeting my gaze. In that moment, there is no denying I am part of the machine.

Still, the only way my kids will make their way through this world is armed with an education, which means they have to enter the building. Which means every morning, I try to disrupt the narrative the only way I know how: by greeting them by name, asking about last night’s game, about their families, their plans for next weekend and for college.

Sometimes, when I’m searching through bags, I see a book and ask a student how she likes it, what else she reads, and then maybe I recommend an author to check out. Sometimes she says thanks. But I wonder what she is really thinking as I zip the bag back up, hand it back and try to catch her eye as I say good morning, welcome to school. I’m glad you’re here.

Adam Stumacher is the director of instruction at the Henderson Inclusion School in Boston and is working on a novel drawing on his experience as an educator in urban schools.