Guts

Today I wrote a book about Martin Luther King Jr.  It is not a great book.  It belongs to a category of books known as "social stories."  These stories are actually designed to be unimaginative and involve as little actual creativity as possible.  Why would I torture my precious monsters with such a book?

Because race and civil rights are too important for me to mystify the central issues with fluff. 

And people, fluff is often all you get with books dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr.  They tell the story of his life (which, trust me, the kids don't care about or remember in the detail the books provide), or paint this beautiful picture of how race isn't an issue anymore thanks to the good Dr. and his freedom fighters. Well, friends, I live in realityville.  And in realityville, I can read studies which show that racism is actually an evolutionary mechanism of the mind which can be turned to some pretty sick purposes by our modern societies.  You don't get rid of an evolutionary mechanism by keeping quiet about it and pretending no one is experiencing it (in fact, good luck getting rid of it at all- it's at least 1/2 biology).  You ameliorate the negative affects of it by the social processes of education and discussion.



People get squeamish about a lot of stuff- there are topics they simply do. not. want. to discuss with their young.  I get that- such discussions make me nervous, too.  Sex, gender, death, etc.- they all come up (during bad weeks, on a rotating daily basis). I am highly trained to approach these conversations without adding censure (not actually all that hard, if all you do is ask open-ended questions like, "How does that make you feel?" and "What do you think about XYZ?").  That does not mean that I am even a little bit sure of my ability to handle such a loaded issue well.  However, I'm stepping up to the plate, willing to at least try.



So, here is a synopsis of my book:

(Caveat: These aren't the actual words- it's saved on my school computer.)


Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who lived not too long ago.  He lived at a time when some white people were mean to some black people.  He helped black and white people realize this wasn't fair- he talked to a lot of people about kindness and fairness, and a lot of people listened to his words and worked together to try to fix things.  Now that he is dead, we like to think about how he helps us to be friendly even now.


(Pretty boring and basic, right?  And, importantly, talking about the Big Damn Issues.  Four-year-olds can certainly grasp the concept of a bus boycott- but since they won't be engaging in one within the next few years, why not help them tackle something they deal with every day, like interracial relations?)



The next page is a bunch of photographs of all types of people and the words, "Why do you think we call some people black people and some people white people?  How are these people different?  How are they the same?"


Then a page with browns of varying colors (I'll have paint samples for passing around the actual day of)- "What color is your skin?"


And then the summary page- "Can you remember a time when someone was mean to you about how you looked?  How did it make you feel?  Have you ever been mean to someone?  Why were you mean to them?  What can you say if someone is being mean to someone else around you?"


Anyway, I'm hoping the discussion will be a lot more useful to my monsters than the "we're all the same on the inside" drivel I was fed in school.  Uh, no.  First of all, I thought they were talking about my physical guts, which made the next part of the speech really confusing.  And secondly, Jonny and I do not now, nor have we ever, had the same reactions, interests, or motivating life experiences.  We are different people, from different backgrounds.  It's kind of what makes us interesting. 



(Also, I just read an article that praised the MLK Jr. Day teaching practice of making white children feel guilty so that they would lose their race superiority.  Guilty for shit they didn't even do.  I almost threw up a little, because yes, please, let's make those tentative forays into building relationships a little more difficult, could we please?)