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I talked to the dude about stuff like suicide and psychosis. All of a sudden, this white nigga prescribing me with antidepressants.” “Did they work?”
Ray Gunn started telling me about his ninth semester at Millsaps when a teacher suggested he see a psychiatrist. “I was feeling like you look... I talked to the dude about stuff like suicide and psychosis. All of a sudden, this white nigga prescribing me with antidepressants.
“Did they work?”
“That shit had me feeling so white, blaster. Not too high. Not too low. You know when blasters say ‘I don’t give a fuck’? Nobody who say ‘I don’t give a fuck’ has ever been on antidepressants. Antidepressants make you give nan fuck about nothing. I felt so white. If you go, don’t go to a psychiatrist. Go to a psychologist. The difference is one will listen to you, and try to blame your mama, and maybe your daddy, and one will give you pills to make yo big ass feel white.”
When I told you where I slept, you said in order to embody black excellence, especially at a place white northerners deemed elite, I must
When I told you where I slept, you said in order to embody black excellence, especially at a place white northerners deemed elite, I must maintain healthy distance from my colleagues and never let them see me “disheveled.” I heard, that first week, from more white colleagues than I could count how lucky I was to be at Vassar. When you were my age, you’d been teaching at Jackson State for two years. I was six years old. I wondered if your black colleagues, who were your professors a few years earlier, called you lucky to be back teaching at Jackson State.
I realized that first week of teaching I had far more in common with my students than my colleagues, most of whom were white and older than Grandmama. Even though I was the youngest professor at the college, I dressed that first day like the excellent, disciplined, elegant black man you wanted me to be.
By the end of the first week of classes, the suit was gone. If I wore a blazer, I wore it on top of a T-shirt and jeans. Being comfortable around my students made too much sense.
By my third semester at Vassar, I learned it was fashionable to call Cole’s predicament “privilege” and not “power.”
"By my third semester at Vassar, I learned it was fashionable to call Cole’s predicament 'privilege' and not 'power.' ... Cole had the power to never be poor and never be a felon, the power to always have his failures treated as success no matter how mediocre he was. Cole’s power necessitated he literally was too white, too masculine, too rich to fail. George Bush was president because of Cole’s power. An even richer, more mediocre white man could be president next because of Cole’s power. Even progressive presidents would bow to Cole’s power. Grandmama, the smartest, most responsible human being I knew, cut open chicken bellies and washed the shit out of white folks’ dirty underwear because of Cole’s power. She could never be president. And she never wanted to be because she knew that the job necessitated moral mediocrity. My job, I learned that first year, was to dutifully teach Cole to use this power less abusively. I was supposed to encourage Cole to understand his power brought down buildings, destroyed countries, created prisons, and lathered itself in blood and suffering. But if used for good, his power could lay the foundation for liberation and some greater semblance of justice in our country, and possibly the world."
Cole had the power to never be poor and never be a felon, the power to always have his failures treated as success no matter how mediocre he was. Cole’s power necessitated he literally was too white, too masculine, too rich to fail. George Bush was president because of Cole’s power. An even richer, more mediocre white man could be president next because of Cole’s power. Even progressive presidents would bow to Cole’s power.
She could never be president. And she never wanted to be because she knew that the job necessitated moral mediocrity.
My job, I learned that first year, was to dutifully teach Cole to use this power less abusively.
to encourage Cole to understand his power brought down buildings, destroyed countries, created prisons, and lathered itself in blood and suffering. But if used for good, his power could lay the foundation for liberation and some great...
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I understood the first week of school it was impossible to teach any student you despised.
"I loved my job, and I understood the first week of school it was impossible to teach any student you despised. A teacher’s job was to responsibly love the students in front of them. If I was doing my job, I had to find a way to love the wealthy white boys I taught with the same integrity with which I loved my black students, even if the constitution of that love differed. This wasn’t easy because no matter how conscientious, radically curious, or politically active I encouraged Cole to be, teaching wealthy white boys like him meant I was being paid to really fortify Cole’s power. In return for this care, I’d get a monthly check, some semblance of security, and moral certainty we were helping white folk be better at being human. This was new to me, but it was old black work, and this old black work, in ways you warned me about, was more than selling out; this old black work was morally side hustling backward."
teaching wealthy white boys like him meant I was being paid to really fortify Cole’s power.
In return for this care, I’d get a monthly check, some semblance of security, and moral certainty we were helping white folk be better at being human.