I have written before of the often Keystone Kops-like antics of a school administration scared out of its wits by the prospect of anything Gay-positive on campus.
The general approaches used to oppose such were that there was no need; it was exclusionary of the straight kids; it was militancy plain and simple; it was obviously just politics; and it sought special rights for one class of people at the expense of all others. Apparently with an eight slice pizza there is enough for seven people but if an eighth one enters the room there is no pizza for anyone.
After a time, though, those approaches had proved themselves ever weakening, so a new one was attempted that did not go as was hoped.
This new attack held that Gay people were demanding too much while willing to deny equality to others and treating others as less than in the attempt to gain power, while being exclusionary and insensitive itself toward others.
To the annoyance of another English teacher who forbade the word “stuff” in his students’ writing, I had a table outside my door on which I would place books and other items loosely connected to curriculum that students could peruse as they chose and, if they borrowed something, returned it over which I had hung a light up sign saying, “Learn Stuff”.
Usually what was put on the table was an acknowledgment of which Heritage month it was, and materials related to it such as books, pictures, and sometimes objects. Often the information was what was left out of the textbooks.
I had been fighting with the administrators on campus who had no objection to anything I put out there unless it was Gay-positive, and rather than be the attacker, at one point the principal attempted to play the victim of Gay privilege.
For the record, I do not know who decides which month is the heritage month for which group of people. although Black History Month is an official thing, who got the other months was decided by some nebulous someone and over time was just accepted as the way it was. Teachers like me would have to look up who got what month if we were knew to it.
It was, at least in my time, so informal that when I called the school district’s office on Native Student Affairs to verify that November was Native American History Month and if the district had schedule relevant activities and educational programs since I had read somewhere that was November’s designation, the head of that department had to confess he was not aware that November was Native American History Month and got back later by phone and email to tell me he had checked around and was, along with some other peers, a little embarrassed that they had all been unaware.
For November that year I put a number of books on the Learn Stuff table about Native American history and one that gave the true history of the pilgrims including what had been in Plymouth before them to when it all went wrong with the King Phillip War, an unknown war to many of my Native American students along with the latest, claimed to be definitive biography of Crazy Horse.
The latter was borrowed by a Native American student so she could show it to her great grandfather who had some connection to the great chief. She had asked the next day if it would be okay if she returned it after her grandfather finished reading it, but later had to inform me that her grandfather so loved the book and it had brought back memories and connections, she hated to take it from him. I had found the book at Barnes and Nobles in the really discounted book section where this student eventually also found a copy and replaced the one her grandfather would not give up.
At the end of the first day that I had the Learn Stuff for November on the table, I found a request for a meeting in my mailbox in the teachers’ room. I thought I was in trouble for having included a book on Two Spirit Native American people and was ready to object as I had received no resistance to the contents of this table for any month except during Gay History Month.
The meeting began with a lecture from the principal recounting my presumed desire for dignity and respect for Gay people and the need for sensitivity among the faculty while I willy-nilly made a joke about others which was derogatory, insulting, and insensitive, the very things I hypocritically objected to in the name of Gay.
His evidence for my two-facedness was that he was part Native American and he found it insultingly insensitive to him and his people that I not only followed Gay History Month with Native American Heritage Month, I assumed this was a cooties thing, and that I had cruelly chosen the month that contained the most loathsome day for Native American, Thanksgiving, perpetuating the support of genocide and oppression while demanding not to be subjected to the same.
My heartless choice revealed my hypocritically cold heart, and I should apologize for my sick anti- Native American choice.
Why should people give in to the militant demand for equality and respect, if I, the person fighting for it, was disrespectful and insensitive in such a public way as my choosing to saddle Native Americans with the baggage that was Thanksgiving.
Change the words Native American with Gay in his rant, and he would have gotten the point I had been making about Gay Students.
Obviously, taken aback a little at this, I had to ask if he really thought that, other than Black History Month, the choice of months was up to me and totally arbitrary at that since he thought my choice of November for the Native Americans was either consciously cruel, or at best a snide and underhanded attack on others not like me.
In his mind it was.
His point was that while I was demanding respect for Gay students, I had no problem treating the Native American students as I demanded the Gay ones not be treated.
Who’s the mean one now?
His assistant principal who was in the room strongly expressed his agreement with the principal.
I, for my defense, used my laptop to access my emails among which was the one from the Director of Native Student Affairs not only acknowledging I had been correct in November being Native American History Month but expressing his embarrassment at having not known.
To this I added a view of the page I had consulted on the internet listing the various month designations and another designating specific days confessing that when I apparently chose National Oreo Day I had obviously been insensitive to the other cookies.
The intended reprimand was quietly placed aside.
The following November at the principal’s direction one of the school’s organizations put up a huge Native American Heritage Month display in the huge display case at the top landing of a well-used flight of stairs.
Knowing full well what I would not see, I inspected the display for any reference in word or picture of Two Spirit Native Americans, but there was none.
I pointed this out to the principal as it not only excluded members of the students body who could be two Spirit or knew and loved someone who was, but it also redacted part of the Heritage the month was supposed to educate the students about.
He acknowledged to omission. Nothing was done.
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