THANKFUL THURSDAY

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Sunday marked the 99 year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. You can find information on the Tulsa Race Massacre here and here and I am sure there are many other resources out there. It is often referred to as the Tulsa Race Riot, but really the events that took place in June of 1921 was a massacre. White men completely destroyed a prosperous and thriving black community. If you click on one of those links, you’ll see pictures in which thirty five blocks were left in charred ruins. A town was left in charred ruins with, what historians now believe, 300 people dead. This event is considered to be one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the U.S. and it was not even mentioned in any of my school lessons. Not even in Oklahoma history. I grew up in the Tulsa area and had no idea that this had happened until I was probably in my late twenties or early thirties. At the time I learned about the massacre, I had someone tell me that “the blacks instigated it.” Implying that it was all their fault. It was up to me to research this topic thoroughly to find the truth because not for a minute did I believe that the black community was responsible for the destruction of their own town. I can see why white people would like to sweep this bit of history under a rug because the why and the what happened in Greenwood that day shows the ugliest side of white people and the destruction of their racism. It is shameful. But that’s what white people do, re-write history to make it look so our actions are justified.

When I found out about the Tulsa Race Massacre, I started asking myself “What else don’t I know?” I learned about George Washington Carver in middle school. The history books told us he was a peanut farmer, not an agricultural scientist and the developer of crop rotation as well as numerous other inventions. George Washington Carver was a scientist. Yet another tidbit of information that the school system did not teach me. What about Henrietta Lacks? How long had I worked with HeLa cells before discovering that I was working with a cell line taken without permission? Too long. But I read about the injustice towards the Lacks family and I educated myself. That is my responsibility, to stay curios, to stay informed and to use my knowledge to stand up against racism and injustice.

I follow number of African American women in social media. I am not saying that as a brag. I would follow and support these women no matter their color because they post beautiful and inspiring content. This week many of those women have shared their stories and reading material. They have done this for their white followers who have been asking “what can we do? how can we educate ourselves?” As a scientist I know how exhausting it can be to have to explain science to non-science people, but I am sure it is no where near as exhausting as having to explain privilege to white people. Yet these women, while having to deal with all of this shit on a daily basis, have indulged us and provided us with resources. To all of those women, I want you to know that I know it is my responsibility to educate myself and to not lean on you. You need to be able to lean on me. To those women, I want you to know how grateful I am for the stories and reading material that you have shared and that you continue to share.

I see you. I hear you. I stand with you. I stand beside you as a pillar to be leaned on in times of need. I will willingly lift burdens from your shoulders. Not for just this week, but for always.

AN EDUCATION

Tulsa

8 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Tulsa"

When I was in high school, there was a brief discussion about possibly sending me to Cascia Hall Preparatory School, an expensive private school in Tulsa. The biggest draw for me was their orchestra. It meant that I could play my cello all the time in a real orchestra. Collinsville High School could barely afford a band, let alone an orchestra with stringed instruments. Stringed instruments where instruments of the rich. This discussion of attending Cascia Hall was brief for a couple of reasons: the price of tuition and being held back a year. Cascia Hall would have automatically put me a year behind. My parents really were not sure how they were even going to pay for my college education if I didn't get scholarships. They would have found a way to make it work if I had really wanted to go there, but it would have been a strain on all of us.

I stayed with public education and played my cello in a youth orchestra once a week. When I started my senior year in high school, I took classes at the local junior college to give me a leg up when I started college. The education I received at Collinsville did not prepare for college. Don't get me wrong. It was a good enough education. My teachers (most of them) did their best to teach us with the resources they had available to them. My sophomore history book was my sister's sophomore history book. I know this because she'd written her name inside it. She was five years older than me and the book had not been new when she was a sophomore. The students at Collinsville were used to books with torn covers, a missing page or two, and even a bit of mold growing on the inside. It was not uncommon to not have enough books to check out to all of the students. Meaning, you only got to use the book when you were in class. There was never enough money for new books, band instruments, choir uniforms or even for building renovations. Many of my teachers had second jobs. There was never a time when I was not hawking something for band or choir. We would not have had any of our arts programs without our fundraising efforts. 

This has not changed in almost twenty five years. Many teachers who teach in Oklahoma schools have second jobs in order to make ends meet. They are still teaching with books that are torn and moldy and out-dated. They are still teaching in buildings that are in desperate need of renovation. The teachers of Oklahoma are still doing the best job they can with the resources available to them. The protests are not just about a more than well deserved pay raise. It is about finally making the state of Oklahoma actually value an education for their children. I am a success story of the Oklahoma education system only because I had teachers who pushed me to take those college classes and attend biology camps. When they could not provide me with information and resources that I needed, they found programs outside of the school that could. This does not make Oklahoma teachers unique or special...because they are teachers. This is what teachers do and it is not an easy job. 

You will never be able to convince me that education is not one of the most important parts to our infrastructure. It deserves more funding than our prison systems and our military. This is why I stand by Oklahoma Teachers. 

WE DON'T DESERVE NICE THING

Prints

"Prints"

I started listening to The Problem We All Live With on This American Life recently. I haven't been able to listen to the whole thing and there's two parts to it, but it's about education and desegregation. The first story focuses on Normandy High School. Normandy is part of the school district where Michael Brown went to school in Ferguson MO. They started the show with a clip from one of the news affiliates taken on the day of Michael Brown's death. In that clip you can hear Michael's mother, Lesley McSpadden, screaming at the police, telling them that her son had just graduated from high school. "Do you know how hard it was for me to get him to finish high school?"  You can hear everything, all of it, in her voice and all I want to do is put my arms around that woman and just hold her in hopes that she finds some little tiny bit of comfort. Because how could she ever be comforted? How can she ever not have a constant ache from losing her child? But that's not the point of the story.

The story is about poor education in poor neighborhoods. It's about a high school doing so poorly, it loses it's accreditation which gives those students the option to bus to a better school district. The Normandy District chose a school thirty miles away when they had a perfectly good high school in Clayton county, five miles away. The reason is simple. Make it harder to get to the better school and students will opt to stay at Normandy High. A thousand students took their chances with the school thirty miles away, Francis Howell. When the court ruling came that these children would be bused to Francis Howell, that community (85% white) held a public forum. The local NPR station recorded that forum and as they played back excerpts of the people voicing their concerns about Normandy students being bused in, I felt my stomach turn. One woman said her concerns had nothing to do with race even while she listed stereotypical fears.  Busing in these black children would be the equivalent to busing in criminals. What was going to keep their children safe from guns and drugs? 

I could not believe how these people were speaking about children who just wanted a better education. I could not believe how short sighted these people were being, how a better education is a start to ending the poverty/crime circle. God! Even terrorists know this. It's why they target schools all the time. It's naive to think that segregation ended in 1954 with Brown vs Board of Education. America's public schools are segregated by race and poverty. In fact about 48% of public school children in this country are poor.  But again...poverty is a whole other hot mess. We have a serious racial divide in this country that has many of us beating our heads against the wall on how to bridge that divide. Yes...a better education is one way. All of the children in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are deserving of a good education.  But also, white kids need to be in school with non white kids and vice versa. This is how you teach kids the beauty of diversity. Make them interact with each other. How else are they going to learn to interact with each other as adults? 

Some might say that I have no right to say anything about how kids should and should not be educated. I do not have children of my own in those schools systems. I don't know what it's like. Blah blah blah. As a tax paying citizen I have every right to question the lack of education we are providing for our future tax paying citizens, our future voting tax paying citizens.  Many studies have shown a direct correlation between education attainment and incarceration rates. More than half of state inmates failed to complete high school. We could save the country billions of dollars in crime related costs just by providing kids with a better education and giving them an incentive to get that education. It's called making America the best country in the world as opposed to the mediocre one we have become.