After years of working the same, sometimes degrading, often tedious job, I've always thought I should write a book about what I've gone through. I'll tell stories of being regularly humiliated and insulted. Write of being spoken to as if I'm an emotionless thing, not an actual person. Complicating everything? Never being able to say how I really feel, for fear of swift retribution by those in charge. But, there is one saving grace. Over the years, I've been able to summon strength and press on by turning to a few like-minded individuals who think, talk and for the most part, look like me.
Turns out, this story has already been told.
The Help isn't about teaching middle-school English in the inner city, but in a bizarro way, it could be. In fact, it could basically be about any group of hard-working individuals subjugated by not only their oppressive employers, but also by circumstance. But what makes this story (arguably?) matter more, is its one key variable: Race.
Definitely white, but only possibly middle class, I can't (and would never) speak to the struggles African Americans have gone through in this country. But, I'm not completely clueless. Day after day, year after year, I attempt to educate kids, mostly African American (and Latino) about doing right in the face of overwhelming adversity. Sure, many of them are at a hopeless age where learning (and for the love of God, reading) is the last thing on their mind, but far too often, as I've repeatedly seen firsthand, they don't grow out of it. As the years pass, I've been able to get them to read less and less. More often than not, I use video clips and short films to successfully deliver concepts, disheartening as that may be.
Turns out, this story has already been told.
Definitely white, but only possibly middle class, I can't (and would never) speak to the struggles African Americans have gone through in this country. But, I'm not completely clueless. Day after day, year after year, I attempt to educate kids, mostly African American (and Latino) about doing right in the face of overwhelming adversity. Sure, many of them are at a hopeless age where learning (and for the love of God, reading) is the last thing on their mind, but far too often, as I've repeatedly seen firsthand, they don't grow out of it. As the years pass, I've been able to get them to read less and less. More often than not, I use video clips and short films to successfully deliver concepts, disheartening as that may be.
