Depictions & Predictions

I saw a social media post this week that frustrated me and left me heart broken. Some community based organization will be going into a jail to do “educational programming,” and the individual posting was bragging about how in-tune he is with incarcerated populations, so he was doing professional development with people he referred to as “teachers” (aka volunteers) so that they would know what to expect. The pictures he posted were of him in an orange shirt and pants, with the pants rolled up so that his socks were visible and he was wearing slides. In each picture, he was a) picking his teeth, b) baring his teeth, c) taking an aggressive in-your-face stance with a volunteer, and the most deplorable d) jumping in the air flashing gang signs with what looks like a fake grill in his mouth.

What the actual heck?

I also was on a video call a while back with people who want to be involved in reentry efforts, but throughout their presentation they used terms like “ex-convicts” and “former offenders”

Is this the 1990’s??? Both of these depictions are examples that I haven’t seen in over a decade, except in places where prison reform needs to happen like yesterday.

For those of you in the public school arena, do you still hear people refer to “bad kids?”

One of my favorites (she says facetiously) is the term “hug-a-thug.”

Again. What the actual heck?

If you can’t start from a space of non-judgement and no name-calling, then you have no business working with a population of individuals that are at-risk, trying to better themselves, and are vulnerable. Get the heck out and find yourself a job elsewhere. I don’t know where you should be, but get out of spaces where you cause further harm.

Students, grown and otherwise, live up to the expectations we set for them. If we expect a bad kid, we’ll no doubt get one. If we expect a “thug” (whatever that is), we won’t be disappointed. If we keep calling people by their worst mistake, then we’ll get more.

On the flip side, I’ve personally witnessed children and grown folk find the best of themselves because someone believed in them, or better yet, did NOT believe in the worst of them. At a recent event, a former student said about me, “she thought I was smart,” and it was a moment of realization that it never occurred to me he wasn’t smart. But it had definitely occurred to him. I’ve worked side-by-side with former students in the real world without a problem (once I was a barista, and two of my coworkers had been students when I was their Assistant Principal. One of the most fun jobs I’ve ever had!). I have business partners now who are “former-offenders.” It just blows my mind, for real, that we like to use terms in this country like “he did his time” or “she’s doing time,” when the reality is, there’s no such thing since the “time” never seems to end. We bar folks from jobs, from housing, from college, all after they’ve “done their time.”

Labels matter. Words matter. Pictures matter. Expectations matter.

I raise my coffee cup to the people who throw their heads back and plow right past the negative labels to succeed, and to the kids who persevere through being “bad” and live beautiful lives, and to the groups and individuals who go into carceral spaces and schools knowing that they’re the luckiest people alive to get to work with smart, kind, and ambitious students.

I’m also raising my mug to you for making it through this Sunday morning rant. :) Wow. You’re a really good sport.

Cheers! I wish you an uplifting, happy, and productive week.