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! 

Feeding Two Birds From One Feeder: How Our Language Reveals Us

Have you ever scrutinized someone’s words? Did you ever pour over a text message or email wondering if the message was intended sarcastically? Were you ever bothered by the way someone said something or their particular word choices? 

Our language matters. The words we choose and the way we communicate them reveal a great deal about our thoughts, feelings, and intentions. How we speak, the way we organize our thoughts, and the tone that accompanies them are as much a part of our message as the semantic meanings of the words themselves. 

One of the most famous examples of this is the quotation from the late President Regan: “Mistakes were made.” The statement neither takes responsibility for these mistakes nor tells us who made them. The statement is in the passive voice; the action is not with the speaker. It is a perfect statement for a politician. The president doesn’t say, “I made mistakes.” The president doesn’t make any judgment about the mistakes. They were just made – by someone, somehow. 

Many years ago, my school was looking for a new administrator, and focus groups were created so different groups could talk about what they wanted in that job. The person in charge of my group said to us, “I want teachers to feel like they are part of the process.” I looked at him and said, “I want to be part of the process.” There is a difference. The person running the meeting looked at me and said, “You know what I mean.” There is a big difference between “feeling like part of the process” and actually having an effect! 

When talking to parents of students, language tells me a great deal. Parents who use “we” when discussing their children’s activities are sending a clear message. We are applying to college. We studied for a test. We are going to practice. The truth is that the parent is not doing any of those things: the child is. 

The tone of parent emails is another place where parents reveal, intentionally or unintentionally, their relationships with their children and their children’s teachers. A parent whom I have never met or with whom I have no personal relationship should never address me by my first name. I have lost time track of the number of times I have received parent emails that read as if they are ordering products from a store or food from McDonald’s. The tone is one of a customer ordering a salesperson to deliver a product. Do parents sending nasty emails realize how insulting and hurtful they are? When speaking with them on the phone after receiving these emails, I realize that their tone has clearly communicated who they are and what is going on in their home. 

Perhaps the most striking and disturbing example of this is the way some media outlets described the people that Jeffrey Epstein was accused of harming. Was he trafficking in underage women or raping girls? “Underage women” is a euphemism for something far more disturbing – why don’t they write that? 

Similarly, the Civil War was not just a war between the states. Although we say the two sides were the Confederacy and the Union, the Union was the United States Army! People were not killed in the Holocaust, they were murdered. There is a big difference. 

Our language reveals and shapes the way we see the world and ourselves. It communicates far more than just the denotative meanings of the words. The whole is far more powerful than the sum of the syllables. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can shape our thinking. We must carefully consider which words we choose, how we weave them together, and the tone we use when communicating – not to trick or evade or cover – but to honestly, effectively, and clearly communicate. 

Reading for Treasure: What is "Woke?"

Recently, someone asked me if the teachers in my school were woke. I asked him what he meant by “woke.” He struggled to give me any form of answer. Does it just mean liberal? Does it mean Black? Does it mean whatever those in Florida want it to mean? What do they want it to mean? Do they know? 

Those who are banning books, worrying about drag shows, and storming school board meetings know what they are doing. It doesn’t matter what woke means. They have turned it into a weapon against those who coined it. It is an attempt to make schools and society white-centric – again. After accusing liberals of being snowflakes, the battle against woke is an attempt to protect the feelings and power of those who benefit from the status quo and don’t wish to be reminded of it. 

If eliminating any signs of “wokeness” might make some comfortable, it will make others uncomfortable and unsafe. There are some who stand to benefit if “woke” ideas are suppressed and we all go to sleep. But those who have been bullied, beaten, and brutalized also deserve to have their voices heard. Their history is our history, it is American history. We must face it because it is painful and difficult. 

The issues of our past do not go away because we wish they never happened. If we ignore health issues, things don’t get better because we pretend we are well when we know there is cause for concern. We must have the courage and fortitude to confront the issues that the anti-woke people are trying to silence. We can’t move forward until we deal with our past and present. 

With that in mind, here are some other voices that helped shape my view and may give more context to this issue:  

Clarence Page’s editorial in the Chicago Tribune, “What is ‘woke’? More than a joke.” 

NewsOne’s article, “Fox News Host Whitesplains Why Conservatives Can’t Define ‘Woke,’ Says It’s Just A ‘Feeling.’” 

Two articles from The Atlantic: “Woke Is Just Another Word for Liberal” and  “Wokeness Has Replaced Socialism as the Great Conservative Bogeyman.”

Michael Harriott, writing in The Grio, looks at how the word “woke” and other terms have been twisted into new definitions and speculates on what other words might suffer the same fate, “After white people redefined ‘woke’ and ‘critical race theory,’ these 6 words or phrases might be next.” 

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction.

I am currently reading The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Tone of Gesture

Did anyone in your family watch the old PBS children’s show, Barney- the show with the purple dinosaur who said he loved you and you loved him? Whatever you thought of the costumed title character, few people fondly remember the children on the show. There is a good reason. They were horrible over-actors. Their behavior was exaggerated and overblown. If my children brought a friend home who acted like these children, I would have been extremely concerned about their wellbeing. When I taught theatre class, I used these Barney children as examples of overacting. 

However, in the past three years, we have all become overacting Barney kids. When I am on Zoom, I find that I am often moving my arms and head to complement my words. When I speak, I gesture even more than I normally do (and I am a very expressive and physical speaker). I use Zoom backgrounds to communicate as well. Similarly, when I am wearing a mask, I compensate with the rest of my body. I work hard to “smize” and use my eyes to convey my emotions. Again, I find that I am using broad and exaggerated arm and hand gestures. My entire body tries to complement my eyes and communicate more than the semantic definitions of my words but their emotional meaning. 

While the pandemic has not turned many of us into over-emoters like those kids on children’s television, it has also given us insight into their motives. I have been placed in this tiny box and all you can see is a piece of me. Half my face is covered and you don’t know if I am being sarcastic, simple, or mean. So I need to supplement my language with large gestures. 

Our tone of voice often communicates a layer of meaning that our words alone cannot express. A mask muffles and obscures this. Zoom shrinks this. Thus, we need physical gestures to make sure that the most important meanings, the ones that are more powerful than mere denotation, to make it through these COVID-created barriers. 

Has this turned us all into cheerleaders, spelling out each affirmation and encouragement? Not quite. Has this made us more aware of the limits of language and how easy it is to misinterpret and confuse? Certainly! 

I’ll bet that most of us aren’t even aware that we are compensating this way. Like players of Charades, we are acting out the words and ideas in order to leap the linguistic, technological, and safety barriers. We want to be understood – really understood – in a way we took for granted just a few years ago.  

Bring understood means clearly communicating through not only what we say, but also how we say it. We all know that people can say things that are complementary and positive if we read them, but can be brutal and cruel when spoken in a certain tone of voice. The reverse is also true. Some of us struggle to make sense of this kind of sarcasm. Gestures, facial expressions, and vocal tone are the keys to communicating it. 

Communication that is only typed text lacks this context. There is no gesture or voice to a text or email. We add emojis or initialized shortcuts to indicate that we are just kidding (JK), rolling on the floor laughing (ROFL), or shaking our head (SMH). We instinctively know that our written words inadequately communicate important parts of our message and our reader needs help to comprehend all the levels of our meaning. 

This is also why we can find emails or text messages so problematic when the sender fails to recognize their tone and context. People take offense at texts that the sender thought were merely informational. Emails make the recipient feel horrible when the sender thought they were just being factual. 

How we communicate is at the very least as important as what we communicate –probably it is more important. We cannot help but embed our emotions as we connect with each other, even if it is accidentally. 

I do not like wearing a mask. I prefer to share a room IRL (in real life) with people rather than be placed in a Brady Bunch box on the screen. However, over the past three years, COVID has forced us to be more thoughtful about our communication, hone our nonverbal skills, and heightened our awareness of the meanings behind the words: the tone created by the intersection of our words and the physical gestures that accompany them. 

When This Is Over...

When This is Over…

We will breathe, dance, run, prance,

And laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh

Physical distance won’t rule the way

We will connect, high-five, shake,

And the space between us will fill with friendship

We will embrace our neighbors, strangers, children,

And move without worry

We will touch, recover, hug each other

We will gaze together under the slightly larger asteroid from space,

And cry

We will wake with new vision, light, love, and faith

Within and without and between and about,

And the lights that have gone out

We still won’t like poetry

We will realize the line between need and want

How much we have,

And mourn

When the noise is gone,

And the lights have faded, the air has calmed

What will we have learned?

We will think twice before canceling plans to stay at home

We will learn to be fearless in the face of fear

Because our love for each other is stronger

We will be inclusive, joyful, and grateful

We will understand that a person’s worth is more than a paycheck or title

That everyone deserves health care and more than minimum

That retirement funds don’t trump well-being

Our planet will be graced with healing

Will we be who we were before?

Will we carry this experience for more than a moment?

Will we help the many people still hurting?

Will we take each other for granted?

Will we be happy with less, and willing to share?

Will we be ready to do this again?

Will we be still?

We will gather in restaurants and feed each other

Drink deeply, have date night, and get our hair done

Anybody want a peanut?

We will remember fear, sadness, strength, and peace

Meals with our families, Zooming together

Missing our teachers and students, learning at a distance,

And the power of art

We will get married,

And something else starts

We will remember when people asked us to share the first

Blue picture on our phones

We will no longer compare, divide, judge, and separate

We will take up the “vorpal sword” and fight the “slithy toves”

We will show some spine and shine

We will be political, civil, and responsible,

And we will admit when we were wrong,

And do better

We will all know how to wash our hands

The right way

We will have moments of life renewing change

We will have learned to savor the simple things

There will be a new normal

We will be proud of our choices and say, “This I did, this we did”

We will honor the heroes and be grateful

And see the world anew

  

Thank you to the poets who contributed to this piece: Chip Anderson, Matthew Aaron, Susan Adamo Baliles, Matt Barinholtz, Emily Anne, Hannah Benson, Eileen Berman, Christine Blevins, Sherri Bresn, Shenach Cameron, Roberta Cohen, Helen Crowley,  Marla Davis, Paul Degen, Allan Dorfman, Jessica Lensch Falk, Joel Finkle, Patricia Fragen, Abby Forman Gagerman, Susan Schaumberg Gorman, Audris Griffith,  Gerald Guglielmo, Leora Hatchwell, David Hirsch, Bevin Horn, Scott Horwitz, Debbie Hymen, Tracy Jacobson, Andrea Haynes Johnson, Maralyn Kolze, Audrey Cohn Levy, Eli Lovejoy, Susan Meredith, Suz Alaine, Ben Nick, Besflores Nievera Jr, Mary Vanderbeck Parker, Phil Patton, Julia Bauchner Roth, Marisa Roubik, Frances Salvato, Allison Grockis Schlender, Randy Schultz, Sheila Sebor, Jim Shepard, Danette Sills, Steven H Silver, Harry Steindler, Ryan Wiczer-Leist, and Marcy Wingard.

The story of this poem: Like our work to “flatten the curve,” this poem was a group project. It started as a post on Facebook. I asked my Facebook friends to write a list poem with me. I gave them the start, “When this is over…”  and they wrote beautifully!

All of their words form the word cloud image that accompanies the poem here. I took their words, found themes and repetitions, feelings and thoughts, and created this version of the poem. While not every phrase or sentence from every poet is included, I tried to include something from each poet’s contribution. I apologize if I have not done this as completely as some of the poets would want.

This poem does not have to be finished. Feel free to keep writing it – as a group, on your own, or any way that has meaning for you. It is not over.

Mixed Up Lines

A few years ago, when my daughter came home from school, she stormed over to me and said, “I am so angry with you!” This didn’t happen often, so I was concerned. “You have ruined me!” she told me.

She explained that in class someone had said, “You can lead a horse to water…” and my daughter had added, “but you can’t make it swim.” The room broke out in laughter and she didn’t understand why.

I did. You probably do. I understood why she was upset with me.  Oops.

Similarly, if I accidentally rhyme in class, I say that “I’m a poet and I’m not consciously aware of that fact.” This wouldn’t get my daughter in trouble – I think.

I love to play with words, phrases, letters, and language. I don’t say the proverb the regular way; I mess around with it. I can’t remember the last time I talked about that horse drinking. My daughter had only heard my riff on the original. Now she knows.

I am constantly mixing up language in class. My speech is peppered with spoonerisms. Spoonerisms are the mixing up of the initial constant sounds of a phrase or sentence. My students know exactly what I want them to do if I tell them to go sack to your beats. Taking a cue from the wonderful lirty dies of Capitol Steps, I often address them as Jadies and Lentleman. My Freshman English students play the Punday Suzzle, and homeroom says the ledge of pallegiance every day. 

One year, my Senior English class surprised me with a special gift at the end of the year. It was a long, large, and flat wrapped package. When I opened it, I couldn’t contain my laughter. It was a pair of pruning cutters. Yes, it was a gift of shears. "Gifting shears" is my frequent transition statement – another spoonerism.

Of course, I love puns! I tell kids that I am very impatient: I have a wait problem. I encourage them to imitate Shakespeare and punish each other by being bad to the bard. As we open our computers (or notebooks) to journal or start an essay, I tell students to “do the write thing!” If they don’t start fast enough, I tell them to “write away” or to do it “write now!” Yes, sometimes my puns get a groan. That is second place to a laugh, but I’ll take it.

Of course, there are always students who finish the writing too quickly. They set aside their pens or machines and look at me and say that they are done. I shake my head and tell them that they are still rare, maybe medium rare or medium, but they are certainly not done, and I want their work to be well done!

Then one will ask if it is okay that they finish anyway. I have perfected the art of saying “no” but shaking my head up and down. As you would expect, this is confusing. My non-verbal communication is saying one thing and my voice is saying the opposite. “Which is it?” They ask. Yes, that is the question.

When discussing certain literary elements, I always pretend that I am the percussionist at the back of the band and have crashed my two big pieces of metal together.  When we start to decode those eyes in Gatsby or the sea in A Tale of Two Cities, students also get the pun cymbal and symbol.

My former student Aaron (and several others) reminded me that, when I would check for understanding, I would ask in my very very bad Italian: “Catfish?” Similarly, Lucas reminded me that my French is as poor as my Italian. While we may say, “please” in English, I frequently thank students with “mercy buckets.”

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Language is not static. I encourage kids to play with language. As we write and speak, we must think about not just what we are saying, but the words we use. Language forms the foundation of our thought. Changing our words can change our perception. Language matters. Words matters. I hope my mixed up word playfulness gives kids permission to play along!  

Defining Our Terms

Given the nature and content of our public conversations, I thought it might be helpful to define some of the words that we use so often. The following definitions are from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Honor:

·    good name or public esteem : reputation

·      a showing of usually merited respect : recognition 

·      privilege 

·      a person of superior standing —now used especially as a title for a holder of high office 

·      one whose worth brings respect or fame : credit 

·    an evidence or symbol of distinction: such as an exalted title or rank

·    an award in a contest or field of competition

·    archaic : a gesture of deference : bow

·      chastity, purity

·      a keen sense of ethical conduct : integrity 

·      one's word given as a guarantee of performance 

Moral:

·    of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ethical 

·      expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior 

·      conforming to a standard of right behavior 

·      sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment 

·      capable of right and wrong action 

Responsible:

·    liable to be called on to answer

·      liable to be called to account as the primary cause, motive, or agent 

·      being the cause or explanation 

·    liable to legal review or in case of fault to penalties

·    able to answer for one's conduct and obligations : trustworthy

·    able to choose for oneself between right and wrong

·      marked by or involving responsibility or accountability 

·    politically answerable; especially : required to submit to the electorate if defeated by the legislature —used especially of the British cabinet

Trust:

·    assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something

·    one in which confidence is placed

·    dependence on something future or contingent : hope

·      reliance on future payment for property (such as merchandise) delivered : credit 

·    a property interest held by one person for the benefit of another

·    a combination of firms or corporations formed by a legal agreement; especially : one that reduces or threatens to reduce competition

·      care, custody 

·    a charge or duty imposed in faith or confidence or as a condition of some relationship 

·    something committed or entrusted to one to be used or cared for in the interest of another

·    responsible charge or office

·    archaic : trustworthiness

Justice:

·    the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments 

·      the administration of law 

·      especially : the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity 

·      the quality of being just, impartial, or fair 

·    the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action 

·      conformity to this principle or ideal : righteousness 

·    the quality of conforming to law

·      conformity to truth, fact, or reason : correctness

Loyal:

·    unswerving in allegiance: such as faithful in allegiance to one's lawful sovereign or government 

·      faithful to a private person to whom faithfulness is due 

·      faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution, or product 

·    obsolete : lawful, legitimate