Again, I am amazed by the opportunity to learn and grow as I spend time at the Chemawa Indian Boarding School. I tutor on Mondays this semester, setting the tone for the rest of the week and allowing me to reflect on my experience as I attend class and take care of other responsibilities. I didn't do a single math problem this week--kind of a nice change of pace--but I had the chance to do some mentoring and encourage a student to self-reflect and really engage with his assignment. Aaron had a difficult reading comprehension assignment; he was to read a rather lengthy article and respond to a series of 30 questions dealing directly with the article and also forcing him to think about issues raised within the piece. Simple enough, right?
Well, his teacher had assigned a news article about the Matthew Shepard murder and court case from the late 1990s. I can't find the exact article Aaron was reading, but the Wikipedia entry gives the basic details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
I was quickly intrigued and also nervous because I remember hearing about this story, and it is referenced regularly in popular culture and discussion. The details were fuzzy for me but I knew that there would be difficult issues raised. I let Aaron get started on his own and came to check in after about 20 minutes. When I returned, he had answered two of the 30 questions, the first being "What is a hate crime?" His answer wasn't quite coherent, and I could see he had tried to directly copy a sentence from the article. So, I asked him what he had gotten so far from the article. What's it about? Who is Matthew Shepard? What are your first impressions? He said something like,
"It's about a gay faggot guy that did drugs."
"Okay," I said. "What else do you know? Why is this story special enough to write about?"
He said, "Cuz he got what was coming to him."
My eyes immediately welled up with tears, and all I could muster was
"I think we're coming from different places. I have a different take on the story, but let's see if we can work through the questions out loud."
I went to the restroom and came back. "What is a hate crime? Aside from the article, what do you think of when you hear the words 'hate crime?'"
There were two other young men at the table, both giggling a little bit while they listened to our conversation. Aaron read me his answer, something about how Matthew was killed because of drugs and a robbery, not because he was gay. We weren't getting anywhere, so I asked
"How do you feel about murder? Do you think murder is ever warranted, or deserved?"
Aaron piped up with an enthusiastic, "YES!"
I said, "Okay. When? What's an example of when murder is deserved?"
He said that if a family member got killed, or if somebody killed somebody else, they deserve to be murdered. I asked if he could think of time when murder wasn't warranted. More specifically, does a person deserve to be killed because they are gay? We expanded the conversation to other identities, like being Native or a Jew.
He agreed with me, I think, on principle. He agreed that JUST because a person is gay they shouldn't be murdered. He was quick to argue that Shepard probably did something else and "definitely had it coming." I asked,
"Did he murder someone?"
"No."
"Why did he have it coming?"
"I dunno."
I then gave him my basic explanation of a hate crime, not limiting it to murder, but expanding on another question on the worksheet about name calling. We went through the process of internalizing a belief, saying it out loud, and eventually excusing murder or other kinds of verbal and physical violence because of an internalized hate.
"Yeah. I could see how that would happen."
I asked, "What about in your own life? When do you see name calling, and how does that relate?"
He talked a lot about racial slurs, I asked about gender slurs, and then I challenged him about using "fag" and "gay." He looked down at the floor for a minute. The other men at the table laughed and muttered, and Aaron eventually looked up and said,
"Nah, that's not the same. That shit's just funny."
I left feeling defeated, but glad I had come back to the table and made my first effort with him.
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2 comments:
Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for going back to that table. Thank you for giving me the energy to push myself further.
Sometimes we have more of an impact than we realize. I'm certain the time you spent with your student was not wasted, even if the message didn't appear to get through.
I too, recently, have been perplexed by my students'--good, decent kids in many respects--capacity for cruelty. I struggle to understand it and to keep it from making me jaded and discouraged.
Thanks for sharing. You're doing great work, I can tell.
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