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Month: October 2018

Filipino American History Month (October 2018 #3)

Adding to this month’s theme of identity awareness, guest blogger Nicole Magtoto reflects on the skin she is in – in the context of her relationship with the San Francisco Unified School District.  In addition to graduating from and currently working in SFUSD, Nicole is SF-CESS’ Board President and, as she puts it, “an SF-CESS Kid”.

 

October is Filipino American History Month. As it closes, I’ve been reflecting on my complicated relationship with being a Filipina educator and product of San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD).

I am an almost model minority. This is a refrain I often use when sharing my own experience as a student from the late 1980s through 2001. As a third generation, native San Franciscan of mixed-race background, I experienced nearly every type of schooling one could that our public school system has to offer – alternative dual-spanish immersion, traditional public and public charter.

But, I also entered those experiences with the added bonus of carrying generational expectations as someone who was Filipina, Chicana and to a lesser degree Irish and Afro-Portuguese. Lesser, because in our larger context I could not pass as either, lesser because I did not experience the privileges of being white or white-passing, nor did I encounter the systemic racism of being black or passing for black.

“Almost model minority,” because my parents never fully enforced stereotypical Asian American values on me, all the while speaking Spanish and being visually read as Latina. This meant that I simultaneously lived up to societal expectations when I got straight A’s but also, consciously avoided getting involved in our systemically built sorting systems for brown folk like the gang affiliations that caught up some of my Latinx peers – San Francisco in the early 90s was an interesting time to say the least.

“Almost,” because even as a teenager, I had a complicated relationship with being Filipino – not quite Asian, not quite Pacific Islander, certainly not like other Latinx diasporas but still colonized by the Spanish. All things that I’ve spent years reckoning with.

As I reflect however, as we recently lost a pioneer in Filipino American studies, Bay Area native and local professor Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon – I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be a young Pinay (Filipina) in our schools now, in 2018.

I’m not the only Filipino who has a complicated history with being Filipino. Yes, being mixed certainly adds to it, but we as a people have had an ancestry that involves a lot of negotiation. Our history is one that’s been dotted with migration and influence from all over the world – our indigenous traditions poking through Malay and Chinese influences, Japanese and Spanish wars and U.S. military installation.

But here, in the Bay Area, we have found a second home. Since World War II brought so many of our grandfathers, uncles and family members to San Francisco (and the west coast of the U.S. in general) our families have easily (and not so easily) settled in the area and we have staked our claim. Like many other diasporic communities, we spent years trying to assimilate and simultaneously hold on to whatever cultural traditions we brought here with us.

In SFUSD, this manifested in the opening of the Filipino Education Center in accordance with the Lau Action plan in 1977 and a push to recruit and hire Filipino teachers, something that though diversity and inclusion have continued to be important, there has not been a specific focus on recruiting Filipinos.

I was in late middle school/early high school during the late 1990s when we saw a shift in how local Filipinos both saw ourselves and wanted to be seen by others. A push to recognize that there was no F in our native tongues (of which there are at least 185 languages) and a movement to spell Filipino with a P began in local higher education circles. We started to embrace the terms Pinoy/Pinay to describe ourselves – a term that could be likened to Mexican Americans calling themselves Chicano/a.

In the academic world – and in the spaces where young college students supported youth empowerment of Filipino young people (my own entree into the community beyond my family) there was also important dialogue about Filipino’s relationship to Asian America. Were we Asian? No. We did not experience the privileges that our brethren from mainland Asia did. We were darker, had complex histories as a colonized people, had indigenous roots that more similarly reflected the Pacific Islanders we were around. But, we still didn’t quite fit there. Our indigenous background had been – in comparison to our cousins in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia – watered down or hidden publically by years of territorial rule. For a time, it made sense that we were potentially grouped with them, or alongside them.

I don’t believe 2018 is much different, and I have cause to think that maybe, for Filipino young folks it might be just as complex if not more so.

We’ve set a priority in SFUSD, to focus on closing the achievement gap for African American students, which, regardless of being an SFUSD employee and alum, is something I fundamentally believe will change ALL of our students futures. If we can find ways to do right by our African American students, all students will benefit.

But, the reality is that while that’s a district priority, and we are still wrestling with what that looks like, the experiences of other students are rising to the surface and people are calling for action.

Earlier this spring, the SFUSD Board of Education passed a resolution in support of better serving Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) students. Though this group may be statistically small in our landscape of SFUSD, they are deeply underserved – their community is concentrated in the same areas of the city as our Black families and students, and though there is no basis for direct comparison, these students and families are disproportionately impacted by academic neglect, health issues and unemployment like their neighbors. Though the resolution was initiated by a collaborative between different City and County stakeholders in San Francisco, from a variety of backgrounds, the efforts are specifically targeting students whose lineages trace to Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia – which when considering that the resolution aims to increase graduation rates and post-secondary success, commit to collaborative partnerships with community-based NHPI Organizations that support our young people and hire more NHPI staff – this request is necessary it is also innocuous to our district priority of closing the achievement gap for African American students.

It is impossible, in that sense to not get behind this initiative. Yet I have a sticky feeling about it. I have a slight unease. There’s a nuance to the experiences of our most marginalized communities, that requires that we not begin to play some twisted version of the oppression olympics, that by calling out what communities need, we cannot also create a hierarchy of trauma – at least not when we are trying to serve entire communities of young people who inherited that trauma from all of us adults.

Statistically speaking, Filipinos are doing fine academically – fine relative to their other POC peers. Statistically speaking, the chronic health issues our community may experience are not disproportionate to our population size. Except for one thing that’s become more and more transparent. The 2017 survey results from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey have indicated that  Filipino middle school aged students in San Francisco Unified may be experiencing disproportionate rates of suicide ideation. While 19.4% of the 1,627 middle school aged students who took the survey overall indicated they experienced feelings of suicide ideation, 32.4% of the Filipino students had seriously thought about it. In a time when anxiety across the board is clearly at an all time high for people living and breathing in the United States, this particular data point has stuck out with community members in San Francisco and many are partnering to destigmatize mental health supports and dialogue in the Filipino community. Does that mean then, that this issue should somehow qualify them for their own inclusion in NHPI supports, should it somehow be compared to the needs of our island kapit-bahay (translation: neighbors)? Absolutely not. It’s merely worth noting.

So, when I consider my own experiences navigating among my kababayan (translation: countrymen), the stances, beliefs and customs I have inherited and, at times, distanced myself from – I can’t help but wonder, what world do we now have to create to better support these young folks? How do we create spaces where young people, of any background can inherit the truly best parts of our communities and arrive authentically in their own skin? Can we disinherit them from the trauma, the racial hierarchies we’ve created, and give them a space to know themselves and support each other?

As the movements for Black Lives have expanded over the last few years, there has been a small and quiet contingent of Asian/Pacific Islanders for Black Lives. To me, what this has demonstrated was that there is a possibility – in 2018 America where breathing as a young person of color is a risk factor- to dismantle the either/or paradigms which we are so enmeshed in.  There is a space for both/and, and it’s imperative we cultivate it for, and with our young people.

This is how I begin every day, in the work and in life – arriving everywhere as authentically as I can, carrying with me the layered experiences of being in the skin I am in – Filipina, Chicana, Irish, Cape Verdean, Native San Franciscan, Woman, Spanish speaker. Though I graduated from our school system 17 years ago, I recognize that our young people today, are similarly intersectional, similarly complex and know that it’s my duty to investigate and create educational spaces and conditions that allow them to discover their authentic selves.  Perhaps I can reach to this goal today by posing the following to you:

  • In the skin you are in, when have you experienced the complexities of conflicting identity politics?
  • In the skin you are in, how are you cultivating conditions for young people to authentically be who they are?
  • In the skin you are in, how are you showing up for those across difference, who may be experiencing disproportionate challenges, even when your own community’s needs are heightened?

 

Monthly Musing (October 2018 #2)

Back in 2013, I wrote a Monthly Musing calling into question the use of others’ cultures in the name of Halloween costumes.  The reflection was filtered through my professional lens as a teacher, administrator and coach.  In the past five years, a lot has changed – professionally, socially and personally. As a result, I am revisiting this topic through a slightly wider lens.  A little over a year ago, my partner and I expanded our family with a beautiful, 7-year old son across race from foster care who we hope to adopt this coming year.  For those keeping track, that is a family with one Mexican dad (Gary), one white dad (me) and one black son (D), (and a one Pekinese dog, Mimi). While my stance on the appropriateness of appropriating others’ cultures – in general and in particular on Halloween – has not changed (don’t do it), D has pushed us to think even more deeply and critically at our reasons why and how those reasons are relative to the skin we are in.  

A few months ago, while the family was swimming, D looked at my pale legs and said, “I wish I had white skin”.  Even our breaking hearts could not delay our responses to reinforce his incredible and unique and incomparable beauty and value – in the skin he is in.  We also sought to understand, so we questioned him, “Why would you want white skin?” He calmly responded with a tone of obviousness and seeming simplicity, “because its better.”  The conversation that followed included a call to our black family members who have committed to being a force of black excellence in D’s life.

As this conversation has evolved, D’s vocalized desire for white skin only surfaced one more time – a few weeks ago when we asked, “What do you want to be for Halloween?”  

Without a thought, D responded, “A white person!”  

The ensuing conversation clarified that this time D was not wishing to be white, but rather saw the opportunity to be white perhaps similarly to others who wish to appropriate cultural artifacts of others to perpetuate distorted caricatures of our most biased stereotypes.  Our first thought was to question what artifacts did this 7-year old associate with being white?!? (What came to mind for you just now?)  Was his idea rooted in aspiring whiteness, stereotyping whites or just telling his truth?   The whole situation reminds me of two recent stories.

A Tulare, CA high school, required by the state to change its mascot from “The Redskins” renamed their new mascot “The Tribe” (I’ll wait), continued and still continue to use images of Native Americans and Native American Costumes in their promotions and sports events arguing that the Redskin mascot is part of their tradition.  Around this same time, Frederick Joseph, an African American business owner in New York City, in trying to expose the hypocrisy of a similar conflict at the national level with the NFL’s Washington Redskins, wore a “Caucasians” mascot t-shirt.  The response from white people was quick and clear with one person calling him disrespectful even though she felt differently about the Redskins image because it was the team’s logo… it was owned by the team. Additionally, many on social media responded to Joseph aggressively including making multiple death threats.  Clearly It was difficult for those in positional and systemic power to understand that making a people the mascot for other people was dehumanizing – until it happened to them.

Whether it be simply donning the cultural garb (from sombreros to saris to kimonos to serapes to Native American headdresses amongst many) or actually using kits to take on physical and stereotypical features of specific cultures (i.e. Chinese, Jewish or even gay), there is no shortage of consumables in our Halloween or popular online stores.  After our conversation with D, a quick search at local and national sellers resulted in no comparable outfits or kits for those who might want to dress as a white person. While they may exist, searching for them does not come with the same ease or in the same saturation of results. But, why would it? Whose culture is for sale – and who has the right to benefit from others’ cultures is based on systemic power… and therefore, race.  

So obviously, our conversation with D was complicated by the tension between the brilliance in his vision for flipping the script and the risk in actualizing it in the skin he is in.  

This time, we decided to spare the 7-year old of the conversation WE wanted to have.  Instead we explored other costume ideas. And D, this little black boy in 2018 U.S. decided he wanted to be… a cop.  Ever since D joined our family, his love of the police has been explicit and intense. We don’t want to squash that – we push him to talk to and say hi to peace officers whenever he sees them.  We also know we have a responsibility to educate him on the reality of the relationship between the police and black males in this country. As part of that education, we decided to take a slight left turn this time.  We agreed to D being a police officer – and the family members, including Mimi, would go as the rest of the Village People. (See that?) Oh, and none of us will be going as the Native American member.

And yet, the story expands.  This weekend, visiting friends asked D what he was going to be for Halloween.  He replied, “A white police officer!”  As Gary and I did a double take, he continued to tell the story of how he wants to see others’ reactions when a white police officer tells them they are under arrest.  The next day, before we could revisit the conversation with D, his social worker came for her regular visit and asked D what he wants to be for Halloween. He replies, “A white supremacist police officer.”  My own mind exploded with questions.   

Where did he pick up the language? Us? School?  How is his image of the police changing? How is that safe?  How is it limiting? What does he now think about white people in general?  What does he think about the white people in his life? What does he think about me in his life?

We asked D to expand his thinking.  We learned that D does not have an exact definition for white supremacy or white supremacists but believes they are white “like ghosts” and as a result can go and be anywhere, “scaring off people like ghosts… Boo!  Boo!!!” We still are interrogating where and how D is learning these concepts (we don’t object, just wish to be informed supporters). But as importantly, D is pushing us to inquire, interrogate and expand our beliefs about appropriation – especially in today’s context.  

I cannot escape that my reactions and feelings when D said he wanted to dress as a white person, while still intense, were very different than my feelings when a white person wants to dress as a person of color.  (What are your feelings and reactions in either of these situations?)

On the one hand, interactions with D push me to recognize that we all want to be seen and heard as valued and valuable beings – not to be dehumanized.  On the other hand, I cannot forget that there are realities – and emotions – associated with these different experiences based on our histories and the power structures attached to them.  I do think it is different when a person from an historically, marginalized community seeks to objectify the identity of those who systemically oppress them. I am not saying it is right (or wrong), just different than when those who are backed by the longevity of systemic and unearned power and privilege seek to objectify the identity of those whose identity they are pathologizing for the sake of maintaining unearned power and privilege. For example, what it must feel like for our Mexican and Mexican American (or Muslim or LGBYTQ or Jewish or female or….) brothers and sisters to experience the daily deluge of false and invalidating statements, images and attacks on their identity only to witness some of those same people using their very same identity to profit either monetarily or experientially?  Seriously.

I move into this Halloween season, challenged by the innate wisdom of a 7-year old to make connections AND to differentiate.  I am reminded to hold with complexity the paradox that we all want to be treated with humanity… and how given our histories, dehumanizing acts are not experienced equally.  

In seeking humanity for all, those of us with historically and systemically unearned privilege and power have unequal responsibility to embrace and understand our own narratives while not weaponizing them to invalidate the narratives of those who are not like us.

 

  • In the skin you are in, what are your feelings about the appropriateness of appropriation?
  • In the skin you are in, how do your feelings differ depending on who is appropriating whose culture?  
  • In the skin you are in, when have you taken from others’ cultures?  For what purpose? How do you feel when others take from yours – in the skin you are in?  

 

Educational DNA (October 2018 #1)

What Is Your Educational DNA?

With a new school year underway, I am thinking about new beginnings.  It is not unusual for our educators, students and families to consider this time as an opportunity for fresh starts – a reasonable and hope-filled thought of wiping a slate clean of past incidents, behaviors or patterns.  With this thinking also comes a risk of over simplification that erases the impact of our history. I believe history should be respected – even painful or challenging history. Specific to our work as educators, I contend it is impossible to consider how schools reproduce biases and inequities for our current youth without considering how the institution that is school has played out in our own lives.  Psychologist Carl Jung suggests, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Specifically, as we consider our histories, I push us to consider our educational history – or more complexly, our educational DNA or the educational values, beliefs and expectations espoused and modeled by our families, tribes and cultures (informed by their own educational experiences) and the educational messages and practices we actually have experienced in our own schooling.  The work of exploring our educational DNA is constant and continuous identity work that pushes us to explore and interrogate our individual and collective histories to better understand our schemas and cultures, values and biases as they show up with and around us each day – consciously and unconsciously. Towards the goal of making the unconscious conscious (or the invisible visible), we at SF-CESS ask our partners to name “the skin they are in” as well as to unpack their equity and leadership stance in any given situation.  As participant facilitators, we constantly ask the same of ourselves.

So, this “new year” I wish to make transparent my own reflection of my educational DNA and equity stance – in the skin I am in.  I offer this – not only to challenge you to do the same, but also (hopefully_ to Illustrate how constant and continuous personal identity work (as it relates to our professional work) requires imperfection, incompletion and vulnerability – conditions that continue to be counterintuitive in our school and leadership models.  While this reflection comes on top of years of exploration and interrogation, it looked very different when I first started and is sure to look different in the future after additional the mistakes, successes and reflection I have yet to have.

 

On My Educational DNA… An Incomplete and Ongoing Reflection

I am a product of public schools.  As a product of public schools, I both have been overtly a benefactor of the racism and sexism historically and systemically embedded within our educational system’s design, and simultaneously a target of its inherent, complex and regenerative classism and homophobia.  My experiences growing up as a working poor, gay, Lebanese/ Italian student in white male skin has served to construct and instruct my perspective of the work in which I now find myself.

White and male, I heard explicit and implicit messages that conveyed expectations for me to succeed in school (e.g. “You’ll make a great doctor,” lawyer, etc.).  Yet gay and closeted (and despite well-established statistical evidence that suggests at least one LBGT student can be assumed to be in any class of 30 students), I heard the consistent message in classrooms, cafeterias, schoolyards, and halls that school was not a safe place for people like me – and therefore, not a place for me.  My “dual” identity gave me the privilege of being in the room, unknowingly undercover, as those around me discussed their intentional hatred for and fear of a group of people that included me.

My parents wanted me to excel in school even though they struggled to find their own access to my formal education in a system that had not always served them.  My mother earned her GED, and thanks to the GI Bill, my father attended night school for his Associates Degree – but never left his role as a factory worker.

I attended a college-prep high school that predominantly served wealthier students from the East Side of Providence, RI.  The assumption and expectation was that my family, from the west side, would be the primary support for my journey to college. I was to be the first in my family to attend a four-year college right from high school.  

After repeatedly trying to meet with my counselor to begin my college application process, I finally caught her in passing.  She told me she did not have time for me; “Besides,” she reasoned, “your family cannot afford college.” That year, I had scored in the top 10-20% of standardized tests.  

Finally, after years of hearing and rebelling against the message that school was not for me, I listened.  I cut 80 days of school in my Senior year. No one seemed to know. No one checked on me. No one called my family. No one failed me.  Invisible, ignored and de-humanized, I heard that my education did not matter; I learned that I did not matter.

My family’s message about the importance of education was consistent.  Their messages about school were different, as they saw education coming from not only school, but also home.  While they recognized that the two did not always align (school was for book knowledge and home was for life lessons), they did expect us to be respectful and obedient in both places.

As my education advanced and my social skills matured, assumptions about my background perpetuated.  Simply by looking at my skin color and hearing me talk, those around tended to be quick to assume my history – including the assumption that I came from a family more affluent and formally educated than was true.  It was less frequent that these assumptions were checked, and as a result, I once again found myself amidst people who discussed my life (welfare/ food stamps, working class values, multiple-language families, worthiness to have certain privileges such as recreation, transportation and food) without actually realizing I was in the room.  

So much of our Educational DNA is determined by the skin we live in.  In America, the skin we live in is defined first and foremost by race; it also is so much more.  It has been my experience that unexamined, the skin I am in can be baggage weighing me down; examined, the skin I am in serves as a source of great pride and strength – of liberation.   Exploring the skin I am in both excites and frightens me. That is the first thing I need to remember.

The skin I am in is so much more than the skin you see, and yet the skin you see is so much of who I am.  Even in all my complexity, the institution that is public education automatically and inequitably favors me as a white man.  Furthermore, I purport, that regardless of my espoused and sincere values and beliefs, I always have the option to discount my less visible target status by embracing and taking advantage of my skin privilege. Absent intentionality, I ultimately will.  Thus, I must commit to the continuous self-examination and consistent work towards serving as an ally, agent and accomplice across difference.

My professional stance has evolved from a culmination of experiences – my own, my family’s and those of the people with and for whom I work.  Beyond my own formative years as a child and student, my professional identity is challenged and transformed by the stories of my students, colleagues, and families.  These experiences influence my decisions, results and reflections. I carry them with me whenever I walk in a room.

What I know today is that I am committed to the equitable education of youth – specifically and first for the benefit of those who are not provided equitable access & opportunity (most often our black, brown & poor students). Growing up in a working poor family taught me the value of humility as an essential leadership trait. AND ALSO, given the repetitive & predictive data in our schools & communities across difference, I believe I need to build on and from my actual experience & knowledge gained over nearly 30 years of service, study and results.

Thus I, in the skin I am in as a queer, white man, bring to my work a tension of recognizing that I always will know less than I need to know – particularly in service of communities to which I do not belong – especially across race, language & gender, AND ALSO that, I feel urgency to use what I do know to vigorously & unapologetically interrupt & transform inequities when they are in front of me and constantly work with and for others to create conditions for them to do the same. 

So, what is your educational DNA?