Student of the Week

I remember that Adam got it three times because he always picked cherries as the snack for the class. I hate cherries. Adam. Chris. Elizabeth. Chelsea. David. Monica. Daniel. Kelly. Caitlin. Timothy. Christina. Lynn. Brian. Brandon. Every single one of them got the chance to be Student of the Week at least once. The student of the week had very important responsibilities. They got to lead show and tell. They would get to choose which books would be read to the class during story time. And most importantly, they would get to pick the snacks that the class would have that week. Only one name was never picked: Raka. The student of the week, I came to learn, was not chosen based on merit, but simply whomever the teacher favored that week.

As the only student of color in my small Kentucky elementary school, it was not unusual for me to hear questions about how I got so tan and whether it was because I never showered, as if years of dirt had permanently changed the look of my skin.  When I tried to explain to my peers that I was Indian, they almost always asked, “what tribe?” None of these people were inherently bad. It is hard to argue that an entire elementary school could have ill intentions. So, although most would characterize my experience as one rooted in racism, I would argue that it was instead rooted in…well, something else. Ignorance, maybe. Later, I wondered what type of sociological rift and geographical isolation allowed for an entire school to act so racially ignorant. There had to be more to it than that.

I cried to my dad before the last day of school about never getting my opportunity to be Student of the Week. He had some words with my teacher. I was Student of the Week for that last day, but only in name, because I was unable to make any of the important decisions that came with the job, like choosing the snack we would eat or what book we would read. It came as no surprise that my parents moved us back to the colorful state of Colorado.

 By fourth grade, my struggles had reversed. My psychiatrist mother had done her research and chosen the school with the most diversity, in the hopes that it would undo the psychological damage caused by my time in Kentucky. However, when she attended parent teacher conferences at Knight Academy, she quickly realized it wasn’t the right fit. Although the teachers said I was bright and likely to succeed, success was defined as my ability to avoid early pregnancy. One teacher worried that I was growing very close to a boy named Leo, so he had his doubts that I would succeed even in that.

As it turned out, Knight Academy was a behavioral school. I did not finish fourth grade there. But now I cannot help but look back and wonder: what happened to those students? Was separating them into their own school really the right solution? The teachers had neither the time nor resources to understand the students, their backgrounds, or the roots of their behavioral problems. I noticed, again, the same theme here as I had in Kentucky: good people behaving badly. I wondered how the groups to which we are assigned by others change our outlook on the world. Why were there disproportionately more children of color in the behavioral school? If this pattern held throughout the country, what were the implications?

The racial whiplash I experienced created a curiosity that has been a guiding factor in my life since. Stepping from a white world to a black one with so many questions and so few answers moved me to search for answers myself. It has driven me down my educational path and deepened my thirst to understand the forces behind what I experienced. In every introductory sociology class, you learn C. Wright Mill’s concept of the sociological imagination as the link between personal troubles and public issues. These personal experiences and the immense curiosity they have incited are at the heart of my sociological imagination.

I spent my undergraduate years reading the works of many great sociologists, both old and new. The American poet John Godfrey Saxe wrote one of my favorite childhood poems, which tells the tale of six learned men who are blindfolded as they describe attributes of an object in front of them. Each describes it differently, saying it is very much like a wall, a snake, a spear, a tree, a fan or even a rope. In the end they realize they were all touching different parts of the same object: an elephant. Even though they were all right, in a sense, they were also all wrong. Every sociologist, to me, is one of the six blind men. Marx looks at society and sees social class, Durkheim sees solidarity, Weber sees religion, Toqueville sees politics, Compte sees positivism and Simmel sees social interaction. Together these six sociological thinkers are simply trying to piece together the mysterious elephant that is society. Each of these thinkers is trying to help us understand society through a scope of their choosing, in order to make sense of the otherwise unintelligible.

I am dissatisfied with the answers I have found thus far; having the tail in hand does not necessarily imply that I am looking into the eyes of the animal in front of me. I am trying to circle back to the answers I seek in the attempt to make sense of my experiences in Kentucky and Colorado. These experiences are minute examples of a worldwide phenomenon. As the recent election cycle has shown, we are quick to assume that blue-collar and poor white people are ideological racists, but hesitate to look deeper than those blanket generalizations. I wonder how many of my peers from Kentucky voted for President-elect Trump and, simultaneously, how many of my peers from Colorado made it to high school. My experiences, past and current, make me want to study and understand these public troubles, and I believe my personal struggles have given me the right drive and mentality to do so effectively, and with passion.