Wading into the murky waters of race and class in America

I feel like I should be singing some Britney Spears — “Oops, I did it again.”

I’ve written before about the dicey position of writing about race while white.  But when I’ve written characters of color before, the issues they’ve faced around racism have always been an important but tangential detail in the story.  A little like, yes, they are a person of color, and they have to deal with that reality on a daily basis.  But “person of color” is only one of the many things they are, and only one piece of their (much) larger story.

But this time.  Oh, dear.  This time.

This time, I’m working on a story in which clashes of race and class and culture are the very fulcrum around which the narrative turns.  And more than ever, I’m asking myself, “Am I equipped to write this?  *Should* I be writing this?  Am I falling victim to writing in the language of stereotypes and assumptions, and writing a story that I don’t have a right to tell?  Is this whole story a big, self-indulgent gesture of white guilt?”

“Gosh, I hope not,” is all I can say in answer to my own questions.

The story I’m currently writing, which for now has the title of The Redevelopment of Drea and Kasey, (you can take a look at the beta-version opening here) is a love story that grapples with the question of how two people can come together when they’re divided by so many things — race, class, location, lifestyle.  It’s a story about going through a divorce and what that does to a person psychologically, but it’s also a story about gentrification and the thorny issues of race that are inevitably a part of it, along with an exploration of what’s happening in America right now in a pro-Trump era in which it’s suddenly okay to be more explicitly racist, classist, and homophobic.

The rules I’ve set for myself

Ultimately, I write all my stories for *me* first and foremost.  Writing fiction is my therapy, my way of exploring the things that are on my mind and the things that are bothering me.  When I wrote Reverie, for example, I wanted to write about my love-hate relationship with the American South, a place that I both belong to and don’t belong to.  And To Have Loved & Lost was all about contending with my own grief about certain things.  Princess of Dorsa largely came out of the #MeToo movement, and Paradise came out of a personal moral quandary I found myself in.

So in a similar way, as I work on this tale about an African American woman and a white chick who fall for each other, I’m writing to process my own struggles with what we’re supposed to do next to move forward in this modern world — this world that is more xenophobic, outwardly racist, and dangerously inequitable than I’ve ever seen it during my lifetime.  In other words, I’m not writing with the grandiose thought that I’m contributing to some broader national conversation so much as I’m writing to deal with my own heartache around all this stuff.

But I also have rules for myself.

The biggest rule I’ve come to is to only tell a story that is something that has essentially happened before.  In other words, I’m not trying to make up scenarios that might not ever happen in real life; I’m drawing directly from stuff that’s happening right now in the U.S. or that has happened.  And where possible, I’m trying to use the words and voices of the people who are actually going through these situations, so that instead of guessing how an African American person might respond to a racist situation, for example, I’m drawing as much as possible on what people are actually saying and doing in real life.  Taking the guesswork — the WHITE guesswork — out of it as much as possible.

The second rule I have is not to write a political treatise.  It’s a novel, not a sermon.  I don’t want the future Amazon reviews of this book to accuse me of being a bleeding-heart liberal (even though that’s probably exactly what I am).  I don’t want to write a book that is heavy-handed with moralizing and preaching.  I want to write a *story*, a piece of entertainment that nevertheless has the ability to make people think.

It’s still a little iffy, what I’m doing.  I feel like, more than any other book I’ve written, this project has the potential to go really, really wrong, to offend everyone on each side of the political spectrum.  Too much “white guilt apologizing” for liberals, too much “snowflake cries foul” for conservatives.

Well.  What’re ya gonna do, right?  Can’t please everybody.

On the other hand, I also firmly believe that artists have a responsibility.  Joseph Campbell, the great scholar of mythology, equated the stories we tell about ourselves to the soul of a society.  In ancient times, priests and shamans and medicine women were responsible for keeping our collective soul healthy; in modern times, he said, it’s a job that comes down to our artists.  We are the modern spinners of myths.

Sigh.  Didn’t I *just* say I was trying to avoid the grandiose thought that I’m contributing to the national conversation?

I contradict myself.  Just like the last time when I wrote about what it’s like to be a white author tackling issues of race, I find myself ending this post without a clear or satisfying conclusion.  I still find myself on the fence, wondering if writing this story is the right thing to do or not.

I suppose I should take some solace in that, though — maybe the fact that I’m on the fence says that I haven’t yet fallen victim to blind arrogance?

Maybe?

Maybe.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the story, and you can decide for yourself.  And in keeping with my rule of making sure the things I’m writing about are actually happening in real life, I refer you to this article about what’s happening in Michigan right now, just in case someone accuses my story of being “unrealistic.”

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.  Especially these days.  And with that….

— EXCERPT —

Kasey was proud of herself by the end of the school day.  Between her prep period and the documentary on Machu Picchu, she’d managed to get almost every exam graded.  She still had a stack of about twenty to go, but if she woke up before the kids on Saturday morning, she could probably get those done before the day’s first birthday party.

That was what Kasey was thinking about during the PLC meeting after school.  On Fridays, the students got out early, but the teachers didn’t.  The first and third Fridays of the month were for school-wide faculty meetings.  The second and fourth Fridays were for PLC — “professional learning communities” — meeting.

In theory, a PLC represented a group of educators who got together to discuss best teaching practices, struggling students, and how to improve results.

In practice, Burdenski was the social studies department chair, and he ran the PLC much the way Kasey suspected he ran his classroom:  as a boring, droning lecture in which only he was allowed to talk.  It didn’t help that the department met in his classroom, with all the teachers pulling student desks around into a semi-circle around Burdenski’s teacher desk.

Kasey tried to follow what he was saying.  It was something about curriculum and standard changes, which would apply to American history, world history, and civics classes.  A part of Kasey’s brain told her, “This is important.  Pay attention.”  The rest of Kasey’s brain was thinking about how hungry she was, how monotonous Burdenski’s voice was, and whether or not Aiden had eaten all of his lunch.

Then Brenda, who was sitting beside Kasey, interrupted him.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.  “Nuh-uh.  I am not cutting that out of my lessons.  Absolutely not.”

Burdenski pursed his lips, making his mustache shrink to the size of what Kasey thought of as a “Hitler mustache.”

“Ms. Howell,” he said, “we don’t have a choice.  We are all beholden to the school board.  These are changes that they’re making to our curriculum at all the high schools in the district.”

“They can take their curriculum changes and shove it,” Brenda said harshly.

Now Kasey was paying attention.  She wanted to ask, “What curriculum changes?” since she’d obviously missed something important, but doing so would reveal the fact that she hadn’t been listening for several minutes.

“Ms. Howell,” Burdenski said, saying her name as if she was a troublesome student.

“Don’t you ‘Ms. Howell’ me, Richard,” Brenda said.

She glanced at Kasey and the other social studies teacher, Grace Tonelli, probably looking for support.  Kasey nodded automatically, because even though she still wasn’t sure what they were discussing, she knew that if there was a battle of wills between Brenda Howell and Richard Burdenski, she was supporting Brenda.

“This is racism, pure and simple,” Brenda said.  “Am I right?”

Grace’s body language said she was not with Brenda on this topic.  Her arms were crossed against her chest and her legs were crossed beneath the desk, making her look almost like a pretzel.  Her face was tight, with both eyebrows raised — not in an expression of surprise, but in annoyed look just short of an eye roll.

“Brenda’s right,” Kasey said suddenly.

This was where Logan got it from.  Kasey wasn’t even sure what they were arguing about; she only knew that the status quo and traditional authority figures were not for her.

“I’m not going to stop talking about racism in my classroom,” Brenda said, her voice rising.  “I’m not going to stop talking about anti-Semitism, and, at the same time, I’m not going to stop leaving it an open-ended question about whether or not Israel should ever have been created in the first place.”

Grace muttered something under her breath.

“What?” Brenda demanded, whirling to face her.  “Speak up, we didn’t hear you.”

“I said, ‘She had to play the race card, didn’t she?’” Grace said, her eyebrows moving even higher on her forehead.  But she wouldn’t meet Brenda’s eyes when she said it.

Brenda’s face turned deadly.  “Oh, no you didn’t just say that to me.”

“Ladies, ladies,” Burdenski said, his tone both mollifying and patronizing.  “There’s no need for this to become a cat fight.”

Cat fight?  Oh, that was rich.

Brenda opened her mouth — maybe to call Burdenski a sexist pig, which was what Kasey wanted to call him — but Kasey didn’t want to see her only friend at this high school get fired for mouthing off to the department chair, so Kasey interrupted.

“Can we see the new curriculum standards?” Kasey asked.  She held out a hand towards Burdenski, gesturing for the papers on his desk.  “You made copies for us, right?”

Burdenski cleared his throat.  “Yes,” he said, and he handed each of the three teachers neatly stapled packets of papers.

Kasey’s eyes scanned down the page.  They seemed like pretty standard content standards to her.  She wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about.

But that was probably because she’d been focusing more on birthday parties than she’d been on following Burdenski’s lecture.

Brenda turned in her seat to face Kasey and tapped on the content standards.  “You’ve been out of the classroom for, what, five years now?”

Kasey nodded.

“So you might not remember what this used to say,” Brenda said.  “See this right here?”

Kasey read the standard Brenda had tapped.  It was under the grade eleven U.S. History curriculum standards, which was one of the classes Kasey taught.  List the effects of foreign policy and world events upon domestic policy, it read.

“It used to have a list of examples, like talking about blacklisting during the McCarthy era because of the rise of communism, and how protests over the Vietnam War sparked changes in the United States,” Brenda said.  “But that’s been crossed out.  And look at this one.”

She tapped her finger a little further down the page, under the header of Students analyze the rise of the Civil Rights movement — its causes, its leaders, and its impact on American policies and laws.

“They got rid of all the blacks they didn’t like and left the ones who were politically correct,” Brenda said, pointing at the bullet point that said Examine the role of civil rights advocates.  In parentheses was listed Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Rosa Parks.  “Notice any missing names?”

“Well… I can think of a few,” Kasey said.  She looked at the list again.  “Medgar Evers.  And…”  She looked up.  “Where’s Malcolm X?”  She distinctly remembered teaching on Malcolm X from her last time in the classroom.

Brenda nodded.  “Yep, no Malcolm X.  Know who else isn’t there?  The Black Panthers.  They used to be listed in those parentheses, too.”

Grace scoffed.  “The Black Panthers are a domestic terrorist organization,” she snipped.

Brenda looked poised to say something, but then she shook her head firmly, as if she’d decided to let it go.

“Whether they are or aren’t,” Kasey said, keeping her tone diplomatic, “they’re still an important part of twentieth century American history, especially in the context of the Civil Rights movement.”  She looked at Burdenski.  “So with these new content standards…  If it’s not specifically listed or mentioned in the standard, does that mean we’re not allowed to teach it?”

Burdenski hesitated, then nodded slowly.  “Nothing says you can’t teach on it, but that does seem to be the implication, judging from the letter we received from the school board.  I would say, to be on the safe side, you should follow the content standards stringently.”

Kasey scowled.  “And you’re just going to go along with that?  We’re not teaching about McCarthyism anymore?  Or the Vietnam War’s domestic side-effects?  Or Malcolm X?  Those were all key moments in modern U.S. history!”

“There’s been a liberal bias in the public school curriculum for decades,” Grace said testily.  “These new standards are just course corrections.  You’re making a much bigger deal out of it than it really is.”

“Says the woman who’s married to a school board member,” Brenda grumbled.

Kasey looked at Grace.  She hadn’t known her colleague’s husband was a member of the school board.

Kasey tried again, trying to appeal to Grace’s reason.  “Even if that’s true, don’t you think it’s important to at least talk about these subjects?  I mean, even if you don’t agree with the culture wars of the sixties and its outcomes, kids still need to know how it shaped American history.  Right?”

“Then what about discussing how liberalism contributed to the breakdown of traditional values and the devastation of the American family?” Grace countered.  “That was never in the content standards, but I don’t hear you complaining about it.  Don’t you think we should tell our students about that?”

Kasey gaped at her.  There were so many things wrong with what the woman had just said — factually wrong, empirically wrong — that she didn’t even know where to start.

Burdenski spread his hands and put on an indulgent politician’s smile.  “Ms. James, you’ve been teaching long enough to know that curriculum changes come and go with the changing of the seasons.  My advice to you — to everyone here, actually — is to follow the content standards as they are written, because that’s what our job description is as teachers.  And if you don’t like the standards, then exercise your rights as members of a participatory democracy and take your complaints to the ballot box.”

Kasey glanced at Brenda.  Her friend stared down at her desk, head shaking back and forth.  On Kasey’s other side, Grace Tonelli remained a tight pretzel, the foot of her crossed leg bouncing up and down like a piston.  Burdenski turned his sunny smile first on Grace, then on Brenda, but neither would meet his eye.

Finally, he caught Kasey’s eye.  Out of social reflex, she tried to smile back, but it came out more like a wince.