Self Policing doesn't work when you're an invisible man

                         I thought the topic of Yale would be over. For those of you who don't know, Yale had a bit of controversy this past Halloween. A multicultural committee at Yale sent an email out to students asking them to be mindful of the costume choices they make this year. In response, the wife of one of the headmasters of a residential college at Yale, upheld a belief in being culturally conscious, but ultimately felt that self policing and honest discussion is the right way to go about achieving that goal. Students of color did not particularly like those comments and therefore demanded her resignation. If you want to know who I think was right and wrong (not like it matters) you can read my other blogpost about the matter. Instead I want to explain why Self-policing simply does not work for minorities.
                      Self-policing is a new entryway for racism to be disguised as pure disagreement. When self-policing becomes the defacto way to handle disagreements around hate crimes and other such transgressions, then anything short of blood (and even then some administrations look the other way) becomes ultimately ignored. One might argue that minorities can protest. But even we understand the concept of trade offs. Why protest that asshole frat boy Blake and his Cinco de Mayo outfit when we're still in arguments with the University over whether a black fraternity can get a house on Frat Row (cough University of Michigan cough). The point is that while these acts of racial insensitivity are damaging, we may not be willing to disrupt our everyday lives to exert the energy to get it to stop.
                 And when we do exert that sort of energy, due to the accumulation of abuse, we are typically met with the same response.
                   "Ok. Ok. Ok. Calm down, we didn't know you were that upset about it," says the unsuspecting public. But here's the thing, we probably have expressed our displeasure with the matter and were written off as either being overly sensitive (i.e. you need to let me have fun at your expense) or given some bullshit apology (e.g. I'm sorry, it's just so funny!). Then you wonder why we erupt randomly over what seems to be trivial but is actually important to us. The issue with self-policing is it puts the entire burden on minority students to create a new movement in order to solve problems that are non-existent in a non-minority student's life. Otherwise the non-,minority student will continue treating you like an invisible man, ignoring for as long as they can the subtle abuses they dish out through their everyday actions.
                When that headmaster's wife implied that self policing should occur, she essentially took away the only form of lifeline minority students had in terms of addressing grievances in a low energy manner. She sided, unknowingly with the students who were willing and ready to be culturally insensitive and instead of discovering through self reflection her mistakes, she remained adamant about not being at fault. Well she's wrong. She was at fault. Administrators are there to maintain peace and equality. They are not supposed to pick sides. Administrators only pick sides where there is a huge power differential (e.g. minority students constantly having to deal with culturally insensitive costumes) and even then they serve as equalizers. By having equal footing throughout the community, true intellectual dialogue can occur. But if you expect minority students to engage in discussion with our wings clipped and legs chained, then you are creating an intellectual dialogue for white men.

When mob justice doesn't work

                  People have an issue with mob justice, but I think the irony behind the criticism is that mob justice often represents the purest form of free speech that exists. In an anarchist society or one with little government intervention, mob justice would be the de facto social check for most behavior. If people don't like your shit, you got to go, or that's at least how many of these situations have been playing out. But one might be surprised to hear that even I have seen a few instances of mob justice where I had to raise my eyebrow. Often my issue is not with the mob (mobs are gonna mob, it's kinda what they do), but the actors responding to the mob. Simply put, when mob justice initially started, corporations were probably taken aback. Scandals have happened before the age of the internet, but now it's so much easier to expose the rampant racist remarks made in the upper echelons of corporate America. Since corporate America had lost its personality several decades ago, these businesses responded to this outrage as if it were a textbook scandal. What corporate America failed to realize was that the internet and all its awesome power can be angry about Africa tweets one minute and bickering about a dress color the next. I mean just ask Kony 2012 how the global movement of young people helped usher in a new change in the child soldier situation in Uganda (update: he still hasn't been caught). And that's ok, it's kinda how the internet has functioned. So why aren't corporations privy to the fickle nature of the internet? There are a few things that would probably help corporations and other domains deal with mob justice in an appropriate manner.


1. Verify before crucify:
          How many times have we seen someone's public image be crucified because they've been accused of a crime that they actually didn't commit?  Mob justice is what would happen if we did not have a legal system and decided to punish without verifying any of the facts. If corporations made it a standard to verify accusations and transgressions before reacting, we would see lynch mobs fizzle out quite quickly. But in order to do that, corporations need to be willing too...

2. Test the resolve of the mob:
       Remember I have no qualms with mob justice because mobs function like dust tornadoes (I hear people call em dust devils elsewhere, well fuck you) they look incredibly terrifying and can definitely be irritating if you're caught in it, but most of them will fizzle out in a few seconds, leaving you pretty much unscathed (except you'll have some dirt all over ya). So many forms of mob justice would fizzle out if a corporation claimed to take the mob seriously, but stood by their own, thorough investigative process. This process would test the mobs resolve and if the mob finds themselves easily distracted by the next bit of juicy internet drama, the corporation can then deal with the issue without the integrity of the penalization process being called into question.
If the mob continues their adherent disgust with the company, letting that disgust materialize in lost customers, etc., well the customer is always right and honestly such pressure is not and should not be illegal. People are allowed to choose with their wallets and if you can't make them happy, then you need to change your business model. But as I said before, this actually rarely happens. Sure the zealots, who scream from the mountaintops might call for a boycott, but these actions are just as effective as the so called boycotts the transphobic community has been launching against Target. Target don't give a fuck.

3. Have a consistent behavior scheme in your company
     Shout out to the Youtuber Destiny who made this awesome video about why the ban of Gross Gore from Twitch, while potentially justified, was ultimately unsettling. He argues that the fact that GrossGore escalated from several warnings to a full permanent ban when there were other intermediary steps that could have been taken, makes it seem like the process is unfair and can be easily manipulated. When there is a clear behavior protocol, then it's hard for mob justice to continue going, unless of course your system is inadequate for the particular instance that occurs. But you still don't cede to mob justice, just change your system to make it responsive. Furthermore, protocols ensure that people within your company or community know exactly what they can and cannot do, actually encouraging more freedom since people aren't afraid of randomly getting in trouble. 


           In short, mobs good, corporations dumb. Mobs can do their mob thing as long as the rest of the world responds to them appropriately. 

Test Prep and Prestige: How I learned to stop worrying and love teaching

                           I wake up at 5:30 in the morning every single day to begin my commute to my school. As a guy I'm blessed with the ability to do a 15 minute turn around and find myself on my way to the train station at 5:50. On a good day the trains run smoothly and I find myself a seat. On a bad day I spit out onto the tracks, my saliva representative of the fatigue of another work day, quietly dreading the eventual behavior disruption that will come on my triple period block with one of my classes. And then when I arrive they're perfect. I mean perfect in the sense that you could make a freedom writers movie using them, of course for that production to be complete you would need a teacher. I remember when I became a teacher, I tried to be a teacher. And it didn't work. So then I tried to be myself. From that point on my kids saw me as their teacher. Often the nerdiness comes through at times where I'm nervous or insecure. I find that your kids will strip you down and let you know when something is wrong. Your insecurities are keys on a piano for them to play. Better get used to hearing the tune. Eventually in your first year you'll find yourself drinking a little too much. Smoking a little too much. Curled up in a ball, crying in the shower with your clothes on, a little too much. And you'll hate it. At that moment no amount of mantra or motto will save you from the existential dread that can only be described as society induced disappointment. People can call you superman, but after a kid tells you to suck their dick, you begin to wonder why you even decided to become a teacher instead of taking that tech writer job in Wisconsin. I'm sure my manager there wouldn't have told me to suck his dick, well...probably. But you learn that forgiveness isn't a virtue, it's a paradigm that you're constantly stuck in. They're just kids isn't enough to forgive. Often times you have to murder pillows and bookcases in order to forgive yourself for taking it. Pictures taped up on your wall do little to comfort you after being berated. Your kids are not monsters, but the struggle will turn them into it. Test Prep means nothing when all you wanted was prestige. A flashy little badge to wear that says "I made it through Teach For America." Often times I find myself folding my students' notes a few times more when I snatch them from their hands. I want to bury their words in an infinitesimal dimension and each fold separates their words from me. Ahh you miserable fool. Why teach if you hate it. But I don't hate it. I love it. There are so many amazing moments where you get to see light bulbs and shattered fluorescent glass. I hope you have a hammer for glass ceilings male teacher because your female students will astound you. I spoke Spanish through my kids and through me they speak English. Our accents are embarrassing, but our rhetoric is eloquent. I can speak Vietnamese too. In fact every modicum of my voice has been crafted by their presence. To see me write is to see me teach. Performance or not, you choose the person you leave behind at the end of the mini-lesson. I used to think that teaching was about lecturing. I tried to lecture. It didn't work. I tried to talk to my kids. Now I am teaching.
         Being an adult is a farce taken to its extreme. No one is an adult until the title has been thrust upon them. Unfortunately teachers are forced to be adults. 22 and 23 year olds who were overgrown children in college attempt to be adults when they enter their classrooms for the first time. We can't afford rent or even a bed frame, but we'll still wear a button down with a tie and khakis to prove that we've moved on from our days of torn jeans and a University of Michigan hoodie. Four months in the hoodie will be donned weekly. You keep the khakis because you want to keep up the illusion of being professional. Your gelled hair will become dry and your pristine tie tossed aside. Such niceties are for show anyways. And teaching isn't a show. It's the show. You're the main attraction till the next body comes in.
       Sometimes I show my students my scars because they will judge me honestly. The irony of their honesty is that it's compassionate. I never understood how they could stand with me in solidarity against my plight. Then one day they showed me their scars and I cringed. My kids noticed my taken aback posture and begin to retreat. Often they'll nonchalantly talk about how they have no bed frame in their house. I guess we can bond over our own impoverished state, except for that fact that I've chosen this life. They are simply victims of fate. To err is to be human, but to be unjustly positioned in life is to be capitalist. I once had a student ask me what was he supposed to do at a funeral? His friend had died due to petty nonsense and he had to miss the long awaited school trip to attend the service. I had never been at a funeral, except for one. But it was for someone I hardly knew with feelings I could hardly understand. Adults are supposed to know the answers to these questions. At that moment I was the adult in his life. I failed. That night I went to a bar and pretended to drink myself into sorrow. Except I didn't go to a bar, I stood in and completed a grad school paper. And I didn't drink myself into sorrow, I stood up all night playing league of legends, raging at an unsuspecting player who did something that was not all too important.
       So why teach? Honestly there is no reason. Teachers are paid too little. The situations we are placed in are rigged. Success comes bundled in large portions of failure. This isn't a half empty- half full situation. It's a perhaps you could get one more drop from the cup situation. My kids are brimming with intelligence that has not been tapped till they got to me. I do not know why. I try to recount how I became intelligent and begin to wonder, am I even intelligent? Does the capacity to think and expound on one's thinking justify the label of intelligence. Meh, I could certainly beat my kids at my middle school self. And that's the issue. I don't remember a teacher specifically teaching me to be smart. I don't remember a teacher telling me I'm the best. I remember everyone around me expecting it. I sit in my chair one day, waiting for one of my kids to come up to me and say, "Mr. Arroyo how much smarter are the kids in Queens." I don't know what answer I'd give. Knowing myself I'd be honest. A lot smarter. They're harder workers. They truly engross themselves in the material and therefore by the time they get to high school and college they'll have developed the skills necessary to do higher level work. It's an uphill battle from here kid. At that point the kid would have ignored me and probably went back to what ever they were doing.
       I have a student who wants to be a lawyer. Dealing with her is night and day. When I saw her I incorrectly stereotyped her as the loud angry black girl. I now know that is a part of who she is. In my class, for the most part, she is a studious and inquisitive student, who is soft spoken when working through material. I understand her in ways she does not realize. I too, enjoy being quiet and studious, but often feel pressured to be loud and boisterous. Hell, I love being loud and boisterous. I do not need to choose. Both states are part of my personality repertoire. When she wrote in ebonics for her first persuasive essay, I did not cringe. I merely told her the truth. I completely understand your work, but the world outside of here will deem it unacceptable. You want to be a lawyer yes? She nods. Then you need to talk the way lawyers talk. And that has unfortunately been dictated by a predominantly white educated society. Talk ebonics to me. Talk however you'd like. But when we're doing academic writing, we both must hide our roots, cloaking them in clever diction and unnecessarily obtuse grammatical schemes. She still struggles with elements of reading comprehension. She will need to work harder to be a lawyer. I should push her harder.
      But that's the catch-22 of a teacher. If you go home feeling your job has been done, then you are incompetent. Of course, do not stress yourself out, but do not accept a 54% passing rate. Do not accept a 55% passing rate. Hell, do not accept a 99% passing rate. These percentages are nothing. Your kids are the ones at stake. I gladly give up my dreams to my kids, knowing that the minutia of my mind may very well be the only thing I have left to give. The rest of it is occupied by lesson plans, observations, grad school, parental expectations and being a 23 year old. I guess adulthood is the trick of losing yourself. That's how you wake up 50 and unhappy. Eventually your true self comes surging back, expecting a vacation and life achievements, when in fact you've been setting yourself up for the point that you could be happy.
     Do not read this as an indictment of teaching. I am just a writer who writes with the lines heavily shaded in. I have always been one to point out the disgustingly ugly, so that way when you get into the profession, the beauty is a nice surprise. I have finally stopped caring about grad school. I have finally stopped caring about dating. I have finally stopped caring about being an adult and test prep and prestige. Instead I care about my kids learning. And once I stopped worrying, I realized I love teaching.