An April Homework Assignent Gone Awry

My younger child has become quite the word puzzle person. He is a master of anagrams, does Wordle and Spelling Bee daily, and is becoming a crossword aficionado.  It wasn’t always the case – and his love of words is strongly connected to today. 

When he was in first grade, his teacher sent home a kind of word jumble exercise. It was a list of letters and a kind of triangle of squares. Students were to use the letters to make a two-letter word, a three-letter word, a four-letter word, and so on until they used all of the letters listed. It was very frustrating for my child. 

My solution was to put the letters on index cards so he could manipulate them like Scrabble tiles. Side note: I now cannot solve Wordle without using Scrabble tiles, so perhaps this technique was as much for me as for him. 

It was easier to be able to move the letters around on the table and not just in his head. I would sit next to him and encourage him. I would never give him answers, but I might help with spelling or pull out a dictionary. 

One of these puzzles was particularly challenging. He got all the smaller words, but when it came to using all the letters, he was very frustrated. He had the building blocks of the smaller words, but they didn’t connect to make a natural word or phrase. 

His father was also frustrated. I did not have my own set of manipulatives, so I was trying to unjumble the letters in my head. I came up with what I thought was the solution before my child. However, I was baffled. We knew this teacher well. She had been my elder child’s teacher as well. The answer was bizarre and unlike any of the other earlier solutions. This was the end of April and we had a good sense of these weekly word puzzles – or so we thought. 

With some gentle support and an occasional hint, my son arrived at the same answer I had come to earlier. He knew the phrase because we frequently played a musical version of H.G. Wells’ War of the World at home. The big phrase, which used all the words was death ray. Or so we thought. 

My child didn’t think much of the solution. Rather, he was delighted to be done with his homework. I was confused, but a little happy that the teacher was using a science fiction reference, even if it was obscure and odd. 

You already know where this is going, I am sure. 

He took his homework to school the next morning, the morning of April 22. When he came home, we got a big lesson in anagrams. The solution was not death ray, although that did work with the letters. Who knew that a perfect anagram for death ray was Earth Day? 

Earth Day and death ray and this story of a clever word exercise are now forever linked in my family. 

Happy Death Ray – I mean Earth Day!  

Fear of Saying (or Writing) the Wrong Thing

The wrong thing. There, I wrote the wrong thing. 

White family and friends, is it possible to get past the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing during this struggle for racial justice? Can we move forward and take action rather than perseverating on eggshells? 

Robin DiAngelo called White Fragility the idea that any mention of racism will cause White people, even White people who call themselves anti-racist, to become defensive, self-focused, angry, and/or deny feedback from people of color. If you haven’t heard Dr. DeAngelo speak about this concept, please watch one of her many video interviews. 

We say to ourselves, “If I am not going to be afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, then why do so many people challenge me when I do something that is anti-racist and helps the cause? It feels like even when I try to do the right thing, I am wrong!” 

The truth is that we will get it wrong sometimes. While our intentions may be good, we may not yet have the skills, knowledge, or context to do what really needs to be done. We must take feedback, learn how to do better, and then try again. 

White people sometimes deflect feedback from others instead of addressing the substance of the feedback. This is a “I know what you are saying is correct, but couldn’t you say it in a nicer way?” Thus white people don’t have to address their attitudes and choices because the feedback wasn’t presented in a pretty enough box. Nope! 

“But I meant well! Don’t I get credit for that? My intentions were good. I am still learning!” Welcome to the road to hell. Intentions are intangible, but impact is real. The focus on intentions is also a deflection. The effect of our choices is the real measure of their power. No one intends to make an error. The intention is minor, the result matters. We must own those effects, regardless of our intentions. 

As we learn how to be strong, thoughtful, and reflective anti-racist proponents, we will fall down – a lot. Rather than rationalizing our mistakes and dancing around the embarrassing moments when our ignorance or racism slips out, we must take another approach. 

DiAngelo talks about asking people of color, “What would it be like if you could just give white people feedback when we showed our inevitable and often unaware racist assumptions and patterns and had us receive that feedback with grace, reflect, and seek to change our behavior? What would that be like? And I’ll never forget this man of color raising his hand and saying, ‘It would be revolutionary.’” 

Think about the power of this concept: instead of the tap dance of deflect, defend, and deny, we instead say, “Thank you, you’re right. I am going to think about this and do better next time.” Of course, saying this means nothing without real action. 

Think about the power of this kind of dialogue: focusing on the core issue, taking our ego offline, accepting and acknowledging someone else’s point of view, giving their words serious thought, and then altering our choices.  

DiAngelo is right: it might be a revolution!