- Sadomasochism: the giving or receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation.
Enabler: a person who enables or supports someone else’s bad or dysfunctional behavior.
In my years of teaching I taught English, Social Studies, Science, and Math in both Regular and Special Education classes in 11 different schools, in 7 towns and cities in 4 states, and in rural and urban locations, even in a one room school house . When I began teaching, Special Education teachers were in demand, and this was my ticket to teach in different places as, being in demand in the earlier years, school districts were desperate for Special Ed. Teachers. Also, having multiple certifications, at the schools at which I taught, when scheduling and class assignments were being put together, my assignment depended on where any of my certifications would make that job easier, and my class assignments, unlike those of other teachers, changed almost annually. During the ten years I taught at one school, my schedule, and the necessary planning for classes was never the same from year to year.
This experience allowed me to work with teachers and administrators who covered the spectrum from great to why-do-they-even-teach, and to be subjected to a variety of school policies that too often reflected the beliefs of the administrators more than what was best for the good of the students or effective education.
While most of the people I worked with were good at what they did, there were those who stood out as not, and, although most administrators had the correct grasp of what their jobs were, there were those who loved the power just an little too much. Sometimes the lovers of power instituted policies and practices that were only to show they had power, like the new principal who decided to change every teacher’s classroom just to show that he, not we, were in charge, an action that in some cases was ridiculous enough that two teachers whose classrooms had been next to each other for years had to switch rooms.
I also dealt with administrators who made school rules that allowed them to punish certain students more easily than others. This pointed approach was wrong.
Hair styles and dress codes were two areas that were the easiest to play with, and it was clear in one school that any hairstyle on a Black student that didn’t have the boys all looking like MLK was a breach of school rules, while mullets on White boys and, actually, anything a White kid did with his hair was perfectly fine. Girls couldn’t wear dresses with spaghetti straps because the indecent exposure would distract the boys in class, but boys could walk the halls wearing basketball shorts with their manhood clearly flopping around in there for all to see.
In spite of teachers’ complaints because the offense was so obvious, some kids when they arrived at the school office having been sent there for discipline, were assigned to that vice-principal who, based on his or her biases, would treat the students differently depending on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. The good teachers knew not to send kids from certain racial groups to certain VPs as their discipline would be harsher than had their race or ethnic group been different. Some administrators devised student rules that allowed that biased treatment to happen, and some of the weak teachers, hoping to stay in the principal’s good graces, eagerly cooperated with this.
It was obvious that this practice simply supplied an excuse to exercise bigotry and supply the targets it could be aimed at.
Teachers objecting to this were often the recipients of disciplinary reprimands for insubordination placed in their professional files.
Looking back over those decades and reading online newspapers or randomly checking out websites of school districts in which I taught often results in reading articles about those administrators finally getting the discipline they deserved for these targeted discipline policies. Unfortunately, they had ruined many lives of many students before this.
When a sheriff is one of the first county sheriffs to sign a contract with ICE when they became available as he had and continues to refer to all undocumented immigrants constantly as “criminal illegal aliens”, although few have committed any criminal act beyond the civil misdemeanor of entering the country improperly, claiming he is protecting the people in his county from “criminal illegal aliens” who are terrorizing the community, even as this is apparently done so discretely that no one, not even local law enforcement notices, and have been living on the taxpayers’ dime even though most ICE raids are on workplaces like factories and food processing plants, his eagerness to have a government agency place these people in his charge, questions should be asked about his motivations.
While the Bristol County House of Corrections is supposed to rehabilitate, “correct”, people, it is becoming more and more obvious that what really happens is punishment. Even though it is housed on the campus of the House of Corrections, the purpose of the ICE detention center has nothing to do with theoretical correction, if only in name, but is for punishment in the form of deportation.
Oddly, as he claims he is protecting the county from its own “criminal illegal aliens”, his arrangement with ICE, which brings him money he sloppily keeps records on, has him retaining people from beyond the county and state. He brings what he considers a threat into the community.
Either they are not really the threat he presents them as, or he is betraying his commitment to keep us safe.
The sheriff, Thomas Hodgson, has gone beyond his irrational claims about immigrants here and is involved heavily with anti-immigration groups around the country, being on the board of at least one, the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform which was founded by a white supremacist, and gives speeches at white supremacist groups while spreading his bigotry on far-right media outlets nationally.
This is a man who, obviously from his words, has only hatred for these people and should not be in a position of authority over them. He has found a convenient way to exercise his deep-seated bigotry. He does not have to hunt and gather them or abuse them publicly and questionably, but has undocumented immigrants delivered to him where he can explain away his actions as just doing his job.
In one week, three reports were released that showed the extent of his disdain and lack of concern for the well being and civil rights of those people in his care, and, unable to defend what he does, his only defense is to claim that criticism of him is all political and anti-Trump.
These reports deal with legalities and job performance, but none looks into the motivation for how he treats his charges. This too is important for the complete picture. If a person speaks so derogatorily about a community of people, publicly eliminating their humanity with catchy, loaded terms to name them, describing them as guilty of the most heinous fictitious crimes, and taking such actions as secretly informing the White House of pamphlets available at his church that give helpful advice to all immigrants in a location with a large immigrant community, this person’s being in a position of power over them should be evaluated to ascertain his motivations and whether or not his interest is in doing the right thing, or exercising power over people he loathes.
Even if not in his facility his official public pronouncements and encouragement of people to distrust their immigrant neighbors has a chilling effect on people. Why, other than instilling fear, would he enter his ICE supplied raid vehicles in an annual parade that celebrates a city’s immigrant history and culture that takes place in that section of the city where it is assumed most of the unadjudicated “criminal illegal aliens” live if not to noticeably terrorize the residents.
The sheriff has an obsession with rounding immigrants up and placing them in his detention center whose recent riot was found to have been a result of his consistent mistreatment of detainees, with his defense of his actions at that moment consisting mostly in repeating his anti-immigrant tropes.
His obsession needs to be examined as it might be therapeutic for him to abuse immigrants when he can, but these people are not his therapy.
