In their place, put the same sort of memories that you have in a real photo album. This is crazy! So let’s do a purge of the photo album in our head. There are surprisingly few photos in that album of happy moments.
There you find so many snapshots of insulting arguments, many pictures of the times when you were so badly let down, and several montages of the occasions where you were treated cruelly. In that album, we include so many negative photographs. Yet there is another photo album that we keep in our heads called our memory. No one that I know has a picture of their divorce in their album, nor one of them in a hospital bed terribly sick, nor stuck in busy traffic on the way to work on a Monday morning! Such depressing shots never find their way into anyone’s photo album. Missing is any photo of you studying hard late into the night for your exams. Absent is the photo of you outside the principal’s office at school. But you will never find in your album any photographs of miserable moments of your life. There will be many shots of their wedding that captures their love at one of its highest points. There may be the picture with their proud parents at their graduation ceremony. There may be a photo of them playing by the beach when they were very young. In it they keep memories of the happiest of times. Your Photo Album Many people have a photo album. There’s nothing inspirational about that.ĩ. And if you are exceptional by the standards put forth by white supremacist patriarchy, and you are lucky, you will most likely just barely get by.
But we live in a society where if you are a person of color, a disabled person, a single mother, or an LGBT person you have to be exceptional. I have been exceptional, and I shouldn’t have to be exceptional to be just barely getting by. We should not have a society where the value of marginalized people is determined by how well they can scale often impossible obstacles that others will never know. I think about every black and brown person, every queer person, every disabled person, who could be in the room with me, but isn’t, and I’m not proud. From there would only be expulsions or juvenile detention. I think about my friend who became disillusioned with a budding teaching career, when she worked at the alternative school and found that it was almost entirely populated with black and brown kids who had been sent away from the general school population for minor infractions.
#FINITE STATE AUTOMATA QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SKIN#
I think about the boys and girls playing at recess who were dragged to the principal’s office because their dark skin made their play look like fight. I think about my brother and wonder how many black boys were similarly labeled as “trouble” and were unable to claw out of the dark abyss that my brother had spent so many years in. Surely there were more than two, me and the brown boy who sat next to me in the hall each day.
And when I look at what I’ve fought so hard to accomplish next to those who will never know that struggle I wonder, “How many were left behind?” I think about my first-grade class and wonder how many black and brown kids weren’t identified as “talented” because their parents were too busy trying to pay bills to pester the school the way my mom did. I’m still the only black woman in the room. I’m angry, because when I look around, I’m still alone. He whispered into my hair, "It was worth it." - The Unbecoming Of Mara DyerĪnd I am proud, but mostly, I’m angry. The bell rang and I looked at Noah as he leaned in and brushed his lips against my ear. He placed his good hand on the small of my back and my legs threatened to dissolve. Noah ignored him and walked over to me, inordinately calm. A teacher parted the throng and called out, "Principals office NOW, Shaw." "You broke my nose!" Blood streamed down Kents shirt and a crowd formed a small circle around the three of us. I'm barely above kicking the shit out of you on the ground. When he started to get up, Noah said, "I wouldn't. Kent was on the concrete, his hands clutching his nose. Noah whirled around and I heard the unmistakable impact of knuckles meeting face. "Get fucked, Kent," Noah said as he turned away. Noah's eyes narrowed, but apon hearing my voice, he released Kent who straightened his shirt and brushed the front of his khakis. "I should injure you considerably," he said in a low voice He had Kent from algebra pinned against the car. Noah was no longer at my side when I turned.
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