Category: Life Lessons

Tell the Truth and Then You Die

Screen Shot 2014-12-22 at 10.33.28 AMThe year is winding down. Classes are finished, my grades are completed, and the kids are out of school. We are able to dodge the manic holiday pace of North American in our desert retreat.

Before we make the trip home for a few weeks, to sling around wet sludge, pretending it’s snow, the slower pace means movies. Going to the movies. Renting movies. Movies on the plane (if the kids manage two hours of sleep when I am also awake).

Running counter to the holiday cheer are the dystopian films. We began with Snowpiercer, a post-apocalyptic look at the world’s problems encapsulated in a train. Sounds like a bad version of the Keanu Reeves’ Speed but between Chris Evans’ steely blue gaze and a super charged plot are riveting. My laptop on my knees and eyes glued to screen: I was horrified by the exploration of class issues central to the film. Which person would I be on that train is the thought you can’t avoid. Sort of like when you hear about the Titanic for the first time.

We managed to sneak away for two hours to get in a screening of Kill the Messenger. The title should have been the first warning that this was a downer. Hollywood did not flinch from the truth: Garry Webb, a California based reporter, writes a series about the CIA’s use of cocaine to raise funds for to support the Contras in Nicaragua, is fired, discredited, and found dead seven years later, with two shots to the head. His death was ruled as suicide.

The film brings back the shocking story, not only of Webb’s allegations, but of the mass media refusing to investigate his story. Webb himself became the story.

As a writer this true story has stayed with me in the days since we saw the film. We tend to think whistle blowers or truth tellers are rewarded in the end. Yes, they struggle, and like all three Act plots, their lowest point comes at the end of Act II. They eventually rebound.

But there was no rebound for Garry. His story ended in unemployment and death. Erasure seems to be the price of telling the truth.

Are some stories, as the Michael Sheen character says in the film, too true to tell?

 

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How to Talk about Race

You’ve probably been in the room when someone starts off with “I don’t want to sound racist BUT —”

The speaker goes on to expand on a stereotype that is likely to make the other listeners uncomfortable.

Or, you’re at the dinner table a friend’s house and without any warning, someone drops the N bomb in casual conversation.

“They like him, for a nigger,” a man said, standing in my friend’s mother’s kitchen.

Lucky for him, and me, and them, my hosts, his Southern accent muffled what I heard, and we moved on.

I grew up in the UnitENGL 103 Privilege Bingoed States as an the child of Indian immigrants. Race was everywhere around me, in how people reacted to what I brought to school to eat to what they said to me about dating.

“Oh, I don’t think of you as black,” was an often repeated phrase, intended as a compliment.

But I’m not white either I would think. So what am I? Who am I in relation to you?

I didn’t have ways to talk about race when I was teenager. The prevalent idea then was that we didn’t have to: the Civil Rights movement had solved all our problems.

Post 9/11 anti-Islamism and recent cases of police brutality show us that race and ethnicity are still very much divisive forces.

We have to talk about them and in ways that are useful, that go beyond excusing ourselves for holding on to stereotypes.

We can begin simply by questioning our assumptions.

A friend, who teaches anthropology gives an exercise which goes like this: everyone in the room anonymously writes down racial stereotypes and passes them in. She reads them out. “Pakistanis smell,” read one card. She keeps going until anyone is so uncomfortable that they call out “Stop.”

Another friend, teaching a class on migrant labor, had all the students play Privilege Bingo. I heard someone present about this at a conference. You restructure the game of Bingo to make all the categories related to positions of privilege: access to education, living within city limits, specific religions, etc. When someone calls out Bingo, thinking they’ve won, you explain the categories.

You can give everyone in the room a ball (or a piece of paper to crumple up) and ask them to toss into the same basket.

On and on. Students seem an easy group to begin this type of dialogue. Talking about race is our collective responsibility.

Have you had any uncomfortable or productive talks about race?

 

Give the Gift They Don't Have

Want to save yourself the stress of finding a unique gift for that person or child who had everything?

Get him/her a book in a subject they’re already passionate about. Someone gave our son The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Years later, here’s the result. We hadn’t practiced him reading during the Qatar-Brazil festival. In fact, he was begging me to leave before he spied this book on the shelf.

The other option is to make a donation in their honor and give an ornament or a magnet to commemorate. I started doing that in high school for my best friend, and now my grown up Christmas tree is littered with ornaments from an almost 20 year old tradition.