el día 20 de febrero de 2018

I’ve been reading a lot about teachers of color and how many of them have internalized feelings of inferiority due to the insane amounts of discrimination they have endured. Like, a lot of researchers are stating that Black teachers often feel inferior about their culture and have fucked up views of it...and LGBTQ teachers can sometimes be homphobic and harmful to students from the LGBTQ community...So, all this got me to thinking about my internalized feelings of inferiority...like, do I think less of myself because I’m Black? Gay? How do I regard my students of color and LGBTQ students?...and I just don’t remember ever having those feelings of inferiority. There was no shame about being gay. I definitely knew that other people had a problem with it, but that was their issue. I felt cool with it. In fact, I was just telling my therapist last month how beautiful it is to be gay today. I said that it was liberating because I didn’t have to conform to dominant heteronormative standards on masculinity. For example, I didn’t have to ‘act masculine’, pretend to like sports, and I could wear tight clothing..if I wanted. I’m not saying that because I’m gay I can’t like sports or must love tight clothing, but I’m saying that I feel much more free to do so.. I do not identify as heterosexual, so I don’t have to play that role. Yea, I know there are some folks in the community who have internalized homophobia and so they reject folks who are “too fem”, but that was never really an issue for me. I like gay men, so I don’t care if my man likes Beyoncé..she’s the queen. I don’t care if he wears skinny jeans. However, I wonder how far I would go??? How would i feel dating someone who dressed in drag? Hmmmm...that’s the deeper question..it’s never happened so I’m not sure..

With regard to being Black, i def never felt inferior because of it. I always thought that my Blackness gave me soul and an additional way of looking at the world...I could see things that non-Black folks couldn’t. I could see oppression. I could see discrimination. Almost like a sixth sense..maybe cuz I was raised in a Black house in a Black family that was always super proud of who they were. Some of my mother’s favorite phrases were “ you think I don’t got it when I do” and “ where you think you got it from, baby”..like she was so proud of her culture..she embraced herself, so I learned to embrace it, too. So on the surface I don’t feel like i’ve internalized those negative perceptions of my social identities, but I’m sure if I dig deeper, I’ll find some remnants of the discrimination I’ve endured. I love us for real