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I read Shweta Narayan's post at http://shweta-narayan.livejournal.com/95168.html, and it woke uncomfortable childhood memories.
I had a pretty normal childhood, from what I remember, up through first grade. I went to the school my parents picked for me, and made friends, and, so far as I can remember, was just one of the students, neither special nor pariah.
Then, I switched schools between first and second grade. Unlike when my daughter switched school at third grade, and went to a school that had no first and second grade, so everybody was new, this meant I was coming in to the school as an outsider.
Worse, I admitted I liked school. I scored well on tests. I read all the time. I didn't bitch about my mother not hemming my uniform skirt to exactly the popular length. Oh--and my first teacher at that school was a woman who harassed me because I already knew cursive handwriting, who thought I was arrogant or something for using a skill my first grade teacher had given me--required of me--and punished me for it.
The kids took their cues from the teacher. I was harassed and teased and ostracized. I remember hiding behind a couch, crying, wishing I'd never been born, or would die (soon) of some deadly disease. Later teachers were more friendly, but that didn't help me get along with the other kids--quite the opposite.
Eventually, my family moved. Just across town, but a new school. A new start. I hoped, maybe, things would be different. But they weren't. Once again I was a new kid coming into an established system, but this time I started with a handicap--the me who existed then was afraid that any kid my age who deigned to speak with me was planning to harass me. I also lacked social skills due to being ostracized at the previous school. And I suspect there were other factors--as an adult I've come to realize that most people recognize and remember faces much, much better than I do. And it really doesn't help if you can't remember the person you met yesterday.
I became "Martian Murphy Beep Beep".
Happily, I don't spend a lot of time reliving my childhood. I don't talk about it much. I'm much happier as an adult.
So why am I telling you about it now?
I think I'm talking about this because the kids in my childhood didn't need me to have a different skin color or a different religion or a foreign accent to decide to make my life miserable. Simply having gone to a different school and having learned things the kids at the new school didn't know yet was enough to start a cascade that ended in me being identified as alien, and given an imagined ethnicity.
I'm not sure how much of what I suffered was due to human nature, and how much was due to American (or perhaps western) culture. But I do know you can't blame institutionalized racism for it.
And I wish I knew how to go from the knowledge of what happened to me, and what happened to people like Shweta Narayan, and create a world where no grade school kid is ever again hounded into wishing she (or he) had never been born.
I had a pretty normal childhood, from what I remember, up through first grade. I went to the school my parents picked for me, and made friends, and, so far as I can remember, was just one of the students, neither special nor pariah.
Then, I switched schools between first and second grade. Unlike when my daughter switched school at third grade, and went to a school that had no first and second grade, so everybody was new, this meant I was coming in to the school as an outsider.
Worse, I admitted I liked school. I scored well on tests. I read all the time. I didn't bitch about my mother not hemming my uniform skirt to exactly the popular length. Oh--and my first teacher at that school was a woman who harassed me because I already knew cursive handwriting, who thought I was arrogant or something for using a skill my first grade teacher had given me--required of me--and punished me for it.
The kids took their cues from the teacher. I was harassed and teased and ostracized. I remember hiding behind a couch, crying, wishing I'd never been born, or would die (soon) of some deadly disease. Later teachers were more friendly, but that didn't help me get along with the other kids--quite the opposite.
Eventually, my family moved. Just across town, but a new school. A new start. I hoped, maybe, things would be different. But they weren't. Once again I was a new kid coming into an established system, but this time I started with a handicap--the me who existed then was afraid that any kid my age who deigned to speak with me was planning to harass me. I also lacked social skills due to being ostracized at the previous school. And I suspect there were other factors--as an adult I've come to realize that most people recognize and remember faces much, much better than I do. And it really doesn't help if you can't remember the person you met yesterday.
I became "Martian Murphy Beep Beep".
Happily, I don't spend a lot of time reliving my childhood. I don't talk about it much. I'm much happier as an adult.
So why am I telling you about it now?
I think I'm talking about this because the kids in my childhood didn't need me to have a different skin color or a different religion or a foreign accent to decide to make my life miserable. Simply having gone to a different school and having learned things the kids at the new school didn't know yet was enough to start a cascade that ended in me being identified as alien, and given an imagined ethnicity.
I'm not sure how much of what I suffered was due to human nature, and how much was due to American (or perhaps western) culture. But I do know you can't blame institutionalized racism for it.
And I wish I knew how to go from the knowledge of what happened to me, and what happened to people like Shweta Narayan, and create a world where no grade school kid is ever again hounded into wishing she (or he) had never been born.
