Anonymous
I’m a teacher in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. ICE has been fiercely targeting my school community. It is terrifying and heartbreaking. Please consider my thoughts. They have resonated deeply with many local teachers. Thank you for reading.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how one of the somewhat unique features of being a teacher in a diverse school is the lack of opportunity to be hoodwinked by the general “othering” that occurs in the rhetoric surrounding our marginalized communities here in the United States. They aren’t names or statistics or headlines. They are humans, children I have the privilege of knowing, children who may not be my own babies, but who are “my kids” nonetheless. The dismissive comments and utter disregard for our fellow humans run counter to my 20 years of classroom experience.
A few snapshots of this dissonance (I’ve changed their names):
Trans people as predators? Surely you can’t mean Ash from my 5th hour. That goofy kid who drove me absolutely bonkers and loved Reddit a little too much? Who dreamt of serving her country? The one whose diploma from West Point was accompanied by an honorable discharge on the day of her graduation due to her gender identity?
Black males as violent threats? Clearly, you’ve never met Raymond or Billy, who got so into Macbeth during their senior year that they spent the rest of the second semester calling out, “Prithee, peace!” to each other.
Immigrants, documented and undocumented, as rapists and criminals? Well, that’s not dear, dear Carlos, the petite boy with the heart and voice of a poet, who came to this country not knowing any English, but who worked so hard and learned so much that he gave the commencement address at our high school graduation. Or Bianca, who brought me peanut butter cookies from the gas station every morning while I was pregnant with my first child. She’s now an adult and eight months pregnant herself, and doesn’t know whether or not it is safe to have her husband or her parents with her in the hospital when she gives birth. Or what about Enchilu? Brilliant, driven, and kind, he loves soccer and his family. These are real, flesh-and-blood, embodied humans who are being terrorized.
They are not the ones breaking the laws of this country right now.
There is so much justified fear in the community right now. Just this week, a black student whose family has been here for generations came to class afraid, eyes full of tears, asking, “Why do they hate us just because of our skin color?” Or her classmate, an American girl whose parents immigrated from Somalia, who overheard this conversation and stated, “The president called my community trash. I’m an American. Why does he say stuff like that?” Or the girl who is adopted from Korea, whose white mother is too afraid to let her take the bus anymore, since there have been reports of ICE following school buses.
Let that sink in for a second. School buses. There are no violent criminals on school buses, and I certainly don’t need armed, poorly trained men with complete immunity following my kindergartener to school.
If you have been able to ignore what is happening, then I beg you to please tune in. This is not normal. This is not how our system is supposed to work. Speak up. Donate money, food, and supplies to humans who are hiding from their own government out of fear for their lives. At the very least, show some compassion, grace, and mercy.
If you and your community are being personally targeted, then I am so sorry. My heart is with you, and I want so desperately for this to not be your reality. What I can do, I will.
I keep telling my students that this, too, shall pass. What I don’t say out loud are the questions that then run through my mind: Yes, but how? And when? And at what cost?
Stay safe, and take care.