In which I am upset about a good thing

On June 2, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting1 Comment

So the boy got into Hogwarts. Which is what I’ll be calling it from now on.

He actually had to do the preschooler equivalent of an interview today, which was basically just my wife dropping him off for a couple of hours and them making sure he didn’t try to stab anyone. I suspect the actual interview part of the interview was with us, not with him. But at any rate: he’s in. Next year my son will be attending a private school, nay, a private academy, that will cost me $car his first year and $muchnicercar every year after that. And my salary is about to drop. Rather substantially.

I’m conflicted.

On the one hand: like every parent, I want my son to get the best education I can provide him, and I’m willing to work harder to provide him with a better education. On the other hand, I’ve spent almost my entire career in public schools– hell, I’ve spent almost my entire life in public schools– and working in them while refusing to send my son to one seems just a wee bit hypocritical.

The more advantages I can provide him with now, the more likely he is to land on his feet as an adult. On the other hand, the first time he starts acting like he’s more special than the people who don’t get to go to schools like his I’mma slap him.

I’m not looking forward to the day where he finds out he’s one of the poor kids, and I’m even less looking forward to the day where I have to convince him he has no goddamn idea what poverty is.

There are not nearly enough children of color in his classes, and I don’t know that there’s more than one or two people of color on the staff.

They don’t do any standardized testing. Well, okay, there’s one test in middle school. But they pick it themselves and use the data for their own purposes, and it’s not the ISTEP. No IREAD. No second and third grade nearly entirely wasted on testing.

I’m not conflicted enough to even consider not sending him to this place, mind you. We can definitely afford it next year. The year after that… we’ll see. It’ll depend on an awful lot of things.

Until then? I think I probably need to spend more time writing books. And maybe jobhunting. We’ll see.

Ugh.

REBLOG: Color Blindness and the Black Girlfriend: The White Male Superhero’s Ability to Erase Race

On December 13, 2014December 13, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn TelevisionLeave a comment

A great post about one of the more interesting aspects of this year’s best new show.

The Nerds of Color

I’m not gonna lie: I was excited and a little bit warmed-in-the-heart-place when I saw that Barry Allen, aka The Flash, was in love with Iris West, his best friend, on The CW’s new hit superhero series, The Flash.

Because hey, how many times — in life, art, or entertainment — do we see a young White dude who’s honestly, deeply into a fly, well-rounded, educated Black girl? And not just as a sexual conquest or to “explore,” but as an actual love interest? Not often, that’s for sure.

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How to be an idiot on the internet

On June 24, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy17 Comments

In convenient, step-by-step form.

Read an article on the Internet about something that you don’t care about. Like, for example, the fact that Lifetime has cast someone to play Aaliyah in their upcoming biopic about Aaliyah, and that that choice is controversial because the actress in question isn’t “black enough” or something like that. Note that it is critical that you don’t care enough about Aaliyah to know what she looks like.
Look at the picture of the actress they chose at the top of the page and determine that she manages to look like a black woman as far as you can tell.
Google “Aaliyah,” because you don’t know what Aaliyah looks like. Blink a couple of times at sheer disbelief at the nonsense people can get mad about. Spend several minutes comparing pictures and thinking Jesus, this chick looks just like Aaliyah, what the hell are these people complaining about?
After several– several— minutes, decide that maybe the picture of the actress is just the most Aaliyah-ish picture of her they found– maybe already in hair and makeup for the movie?– and Google the actress’ actual name, Zendaya Coleman.
Oooooohhhhhhhh.

Sooner or later, I need to stop procrastinating and actually do some goddamn work.

On how not to say things (by never saying things)

On January 30, 2014January 29, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy13 Comments

6a00e393366a1a8834017616f1e2f9970c This will be my second story this week about someone who did something stupid and fell face first into the Internet as a consequence. Perhaps it’ll become a new thing around here; I dunno. But have you read the bullshit about the yoga idiot yet?

(The article is called “There are No Black People in my Yoga Classes and I’m Suddenly Uncomfortable With It”. No, that’s not a joke. That’s actually what the article is called, and it’s every fucking bit as stupid and clueless as you might be imagining right now.)

The author: a Skinny White Girl. Oh, so skinny, and oh, so white.

The perpetrator: a Non-Skinny Black Woman, who we’re gonna make a whoooooole lot of observations about based on nothing more than making up a bunch of racist nonsense. Read the article, maybe read some of the comments on Gawker, just revel in the stupid because oh my god there is so very much of it.

And lemme tell you a story.

It’s 1998. I have just graduated from college, gone to Israel for a month or two, and then moved to Chicago. I do not start grad school until, God, some unholy late date– September something, maybe, so I manage to find myself a series of temp jobs around the city for something to do and some extra money. 1998, as you may know, involved a horrifying heat wave; my choices were literally go to work or lay around my apartment and sweat all day.

So I got a job. Which meant learning a brand new public transport system in a brand new city, effectively alone, when I’d never actually used public transportation of any kind before.

Something else I’d never done: been a minority. I’d taken some African-American Studies classes at IU, but for some reason those didn’t count, and I was rarely the only white person in the room. Until moving to Chicago, I’d never had the experience of being the only white person I could see unless I was alone.

It took a bit of getting used to.

So, yeah: I’m on a bus. I have no idea where I’m actually going, other than that the bus is eventually going to stop at X street, and that I have to get off there, walk a block, and board a train. Because I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going, I sit in the very front of the bus so that I can a) hear the driver as he calls off stops and b) potentially see road signs in case the driver isn’t actually doing that.

Only white person on the bus, for the entire trip. Cue 25 minutes or so of Rosa Parks white liberal anxiety bullshit. Everybody was looking at me. Only white boy on the bus and he’s sitting up in front. He must think he’s better than us. Fucking asshole white boy. Blah blah blah blah blah. I seriously stressed myself out and felt guilty because I was the only white motherfucker on the bus and I was sitting in front of all the black people.

And then I wrote an essay about how bad I felt on the Internet.

Well, no. What actually happened was that I got the fuck over myself and realized that no other asshole on the bus had even noticed I was there, because amazingly enough my white self was not the center of their collective universes. Was it possible that somebody noticed the slightly nervous-looking white kid at the front of the bus? Yeah, but if they did they were probably making fun of me and not aggravated by my existence. And since nobody actually pays attention to anybody else on the bus– hell, if there’s a more “you don’t want none, there won’t be none” place in the world than a public bus, I can’t imagine what it is (edit: it’s an elevator).

Nobody gave a shit. I was not the center of anyone’s world. I was being an idiot. And I got over it.

Bonus, similarly-themed story: I’ve also been the fat person striding into a fitness center, although I was neither black nor female at the time. I’ve even been the fat person striding into the pool, and wondering what everyone else thought of my fat pale mostly-naked body, them with their muscles and their muscles and their zero fat body percentage and their Speedos and their muscles and oh, how dare you, fat person, sully our temple to our perfect bodies with your fat fatness.

Got over that bullshit too.

Here’s what they were thinking: seven more laps, and then I can get the hell out of here and go have a cheeseburger. Nobody gives a fuck about the fat people at the gym or at the pool. If they do, get a new gym. Ain’t nobody paying attention; you are not the center of other people’s lives unless you’re pissing in the pool or sweating all over the machines and not wiping it up.

Errybody get over themselves.

Pfah.