December 27, 2004
Kwanzaa Day 2: Kujichagulia
...which is defined as self-determination: defining ourselves, believing in ourselves, naming ourselves, taking responsibility for ourselves.
But first, a Chia-Bart update!
The seeds were sufficiently soaked. The planter was sufficiently wet. The seeds went on the planter in approximately the planned locations. (A few stray seeds ended up on his bulbous eyes, "accidently.") No child ate any of the seeds, or at least not that I can tell. The whole project took less than 15 minutes, and of course now we must wait a few days to begin seeing any results. But the children are happy, and that's all that matters.
Now, back to self-determination. My daughters had no problem understanding my explanation of this principle. "It's like," said one, "when someone wants you to play princess but you don't feel like playing princess right now and they want you to but you say no and play something else."
Well done.
We read "Martin's Big Words," with me taking some editorial liberties. (Example: I left off the page that simply read "He died." Not sure why, but it may have something to do with my reaction to them bursting out into tears when they saw a Sportcenter story this morning about the death of Reggie White when their t-voed "Aritocrats" movie cut off and it switched to live TV while I was in the shower...)
After the book we talked about things that are fair and things that are not fair, and how it is important to stand up for yourself when you think that things around you are not fair--just like Martin did. They then provided many testimonials to this: the time a schoolmate was not given her two turns with a popular toy and one of my daughters let the teacher know; the time one daughter was talking and another child interrupted her; the time I said they could go outside and play in the snow, but then I changed my mind and said we wouldn't be hoing outside afterall...
This last one was interesting. I did not provide further explanation of or justification for my actions. I did not talk about sometimes moms and dads have to make decisions about what is best for kids, even if that means sometimes doing or saying something that seems unfair. I did not talk about sometimes moms and dads make a mistake, thinking because it's sunny that it must not be too cold outside but only finding out later that it is, in fact, negative 2 degrees...
But would that explanation have been enough? I know that adults being responsible parents and not letting their kids do just anything isn't oppression, but just good--necessary--parenting. But it is an interesting dialectic, isn't it? Where exactly is the line between being responsible for someone in a good way and infringing on their capacity for kujichagulia?
A story may illustrate this.
After my kids had been going to their new school for a few weeks, we were walking to the car at release time at the end of the day. They were proudly displaying to me their "old-handness" at this whole new school thing: That's the tree where we put our backpacks while waiting to go home. Over there is the place where the older kids go to get "special help" with their work. And so on. And then, pointing to the row of yellow school buses waiting at the curb, one of my daughters said, "And that's the bus for the Chinese people."
Well, this was my teachable moment. I explained that, no, the buses were for any children who needed a ride back to their homes. And besides, they had been learning about continents and knew how many countries there were in Asia. Then we went over all their friends and where they or their parents were from in Asia: one child from Japan, one from Malaysia, and yes one of their best buddies from their old school from China. And we talked about the recently passed Hmong New Year that they celebrated at their new school, and how many of their Asian friends were Hmong and not Chinese.
I felt very proud of myself. Until we walked alongside the bus and I noticed that yes, in fact, every child on that particular bus did appear to be Asian. My daughter's point was not so much about correct nomenclature as it was about segregation: Asian, Chinese, Hmong, whatever. On this bus, it was all them.
Well, this school is a magnet school, drawing kids from all over Saint Paul. And the administration does work at maintaining a "diverse ethnic balance." But my daughters had already noticed what no amount of intentional diversification could undo: Children in this school are clumped together along racial and ethnic lines, and nowhere is this clumping more noticible than at 3:30 when the buses come to take all this wonderful "diversity" back to its largely un-diverse neighborhoods.
I definitely exerted my parent-ly power that day. I definitely quashed a very astute and accurate observation in favor of a nice, but inaccurate fiction. I may have planted a seed of doubt in my daughters about trusting what they see and know to be true.
All I can hope for is that these two moments--the school bus observation with my discussion about buses being for all children and the reading of the MLK book with our discussion of buses and stores and neighborhoods and friendship being for all children--will hang together in my daughters' memories, so that at some future day when they are older they might think about the injustices that may bridge these two historical times, still existing despite what some people (even Mommy) may sometimes say.
Posted by perry032 at December 27, 2004 04:07 PM | TrackBack| Printer-friendly version