Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Graffiti: A badge of honor


CHINESE BITCH. Skinny crooked letters, all caps, scrawled in pencil on the PTA conference sign-in sheet on my door over a decade ago, in my second year of teaching. The sting was intense. A million thoughts entered my mind: Who wrote this? Why would they take the risk of defacing my door on a night when many families came to school? Did one of my students write it? Was it a prankster looking for mischief who happened to scribble the first thing that popped into their head? Was it someone parroting phrases that they had heard at home? Was it an adult?

At the time, I taught seventh and eighth grade in an urban K-8 school where the student body was 33% Black, 5% Asian, 26% Hispanic/Latino, and 36% white. My school certainly reflected the racial, cultural, and socio-economic richness of a city I so loved, a stark contrast to the middle to upper-middle class white suburban town of 7,000 in Connecticut where I lived from ages 10-17.

My family moved to the suburbs of Connecticut by way of New York City, where we spent our first summer after emigrating from Hong Kong. In my first night in the countryside, an unfamiliar and surprisingly loud end-of-summer cricket symphony kept me up. When I started school that fall, my new friends and their parents referred to me as the “Oriental girl.” There were three Chinese families and one Black family in the entire town. By the time I came up with my zinger, “Oriental vases and rugs—Asian humans,” I was in college. These days my lag time for coming up with zingers is closer to minutes when I’m sharp. Hours or days when I’m not. Someday I’d like the superpower of instant zingers.

The night my PTA conference sign-in sheet was defaced, I reported the incident to the main office. No response. I made the executive decision to leave the graffiti untouched and hold conferences as planned. Taking the graffiti down would have meant sweeping the issue under the rug. Instead, I chose to shine a floodlight on racism and the power of words. Chinese and proud. And that’s “Ms. bitch” to you.

7 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh, I loved your story and couldn't wait to find out how you handled it! What courage it took to leave it up! And what a great way to not ignore it or show that it bothered you. Kudos to you!

    http://instructionalcoachmusings.blogspot.com/2016/03/engaging-with-breakout-edusol16-day-2.html

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  2. OMG. I am pretty sure the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I read the first two words of this entry. And the wondering about who did it is such an endless circle, but one that is replayed time and again. I'm sorry this happened to you. I am not surprised the school didn't do anything. My favorite part of this? The instant zingers and your response. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.

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  3. Yes - leaving the note up was important, but my heart hurts that someone wrote it. Great story!!

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  4. My goodness, Ms. Li. Experiences like these are hurtful and wound us. Stylistically, your piece was well written. I started the piece feeling hurt and by the end your zing was sharp and forceful! I agree: cleaning up the graffiti would delete an opportunity for an important and needed learning opportunity. It is upsetting that the school did not respond in a more constructive way. I know it was not easy to go back and write about this experience. Thank you for sharing.

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  5. Oh, how I wish I had the superpower of the Instant Zing. You are brilliant. If you ever figure out how to make and market that, you will be a millionaire. On a more serious note, it took courage to go back to this memory and write about it. You did so with eloquence and grace.

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  6. What a powerful opening line!! I love your decision to still use the defaced sign-in sheet. The best instant zing you could give.

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  7. I don't know that I have much to add that isn't simply parroting comments above, but I love this Slice because of your graceful writing. Resilient and witty.

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