by Lena Potts
A student once told me how excited he was, on the first day of his investment banking internship, when he stepped into the elevator to see everyone dressed in suits. He said “they all seemed like Superman”. He said he had never seen people with “real careers” like these.
He, like many of my students, is the child of immigrants. His parents and family work. His community works. They have jobs that support our local, national, and international economies, and that support their families to whatever extent they can.
But he thinks something about what his parents do is less “real” than investment banking.
We’ve all seen the movie: the main character that leaves their small hometown for the big city, and find that New York or San Francisco or Chicago have cabs, busy streets, homosexuality, and publishing jobs, enabling them to “get out of” those small town places, the ones no one gets out of. It’s Sweet Home Alabama, Coyote Ugly, Big Fish, the entire plot of Friday Night Lights (movie and show), and approximately 30% of Rom Coms. The character trashes their hometown as backwards and limited, and they leave to the city for their newer, shinier life.
A lot of discourse around communities of color and low-income communities focuses on what they lack, and, obviously, it is incredibly important to do so. Communities of color, particularly Black and Latino communities, are at a disproportionate socioeconomic disadvantage. These communities face far higher rates of incarceration, do not have equal access to educational opportunities, and are perceived with dangerous and deadly bias.
But we must take care when we speak, particularly to young people, that our rhetoric of “raising up” communities of color does not disparage those very communities. It is vital that we do not give the impression that any misalignment they may have with the prevailing value system is due to any inherent truth. The prevailing value system is not so because it’s objectively better, or more right. It prevails because it was put in place by people with power.
Respectability politics is the idea that marginalized communities are forced to fold into the values systems of the dominant community, oftentimes, the structures and rules set up by straight, cis, White men. For example, our “American” value and moral systems are also pretty Christian, regardless of whether individuals living here are. Our current power structure has placed prestige on certain careers, educations, family structures, living situations, etc., that do not represent the wealth of positivity found in other ways of living. That the present hegemonic systems and respectability politics have placed higher value on these paths does not make them objectively right. The other value systems, cultures, and ways of doing things that are not presently validated often get overlooked or implicitly told that they are wrong in processes of assimilation and acculturation. They are the backward small town, and in the cases of low-income communities of color, “the hood”, you try to get out of.
Back to that movie: after the main character spends some time in whatever metro, they almost always come to learn that while Anytown, USA may only have one Starbucks and seemingly limited opportunity, it is special- the people, the values, and the spirit are irreplaceable. Something about their prestigious new life has an emptiness- it’s missing a level of heart that is hard to define but very real to their former communities. Those stories redeem “home”, often for the White, middle-America they represent. How do we redeem home for our low-income youth of color?
In my career in education, I have always worked with such youth, either in my hometown or demographically similar cities, in enrichment programs, college access, and school support.
I’ve had four students ask me, upon hearing that I did undergrad at Stanford, “why do you work here, then? You could have a way better job.”
They feel like someone with my education, a B.A. from a school with a big name, is above working with them. That’s how they see themselves. It’s the saddest thing I’ve heard students say.
This is a reflection of the images and narratives that exist about them. How can we hope to create more equity when we paint communities, cultures, religions, etc., as backward and inherently less than others? They don’t know how valuable their parents and their work are, and they believe investment bankers are superheroes. They don’t know that investment bankers are just people, as real as them and their parents, no better and no worse at the core.
While we absolutely want under-served, under-represented communities to have greater and more equitable access, we do not want narratives that erase their value as they currently exist.
Instead, we should bring out the best in these communities and applaud those values and traits. We have a responsibility to teach youth not only how to access the most opportunity, but also that the system through which they must access it is flawed, and that it does not necessarily reflect on their character. We have to provide them with the basics and nuances of cycles of poverty, insight into the complexities of inequality, and of why their families and communities may not be achieving what some believe they should be.
We need to praise their parents for raising intelligent and capable children in the face of institutional and historical injustice, one of the hardest tasks in the world. We have to celebrate the strength in uprooting oneself from their homeland to create what is hopefully a more fruitful life for the future of their family, and the incredible burden of persisting through a system that is not made for you. We have to tell them that their language is beautiful, as is their hair, skin, and eyes. That there is nothing more remarkable and valuable than the toughness of a Black mother or the pride of an Abuela watching her grandkids grow up. There are few things more fulfilling than the sounds of riotous joy from a Tongan church, or the warmth and closeness of an Asian-American family party. They have to know these things are perfect the way they are, and it’s our responsibility to tell them.
We must purposely build a smarter and more considerate rhetoric, so that we may, as educators, parents, community members, and friends, be the ones who redeem home for our kids.
Image credits:
http://finspi.com/photo/just-039cause-i-talk-slow-sweet-home-alabam-2789686
