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AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS | APRIL 8, 2020
‘You’ve had something meaningful taken from you’ Desert Vista High School U.S. and Arizona government teacher Tom Bristol last week wrote this letter to the Class of 2020. He also is co-chair of the school’s Community Counts program, which enables students to mentor kids at Wilson Elementary School in Phoenix. I’ve spent the last several hours with you all on my mind. To be honest, you are always on my mind, but more so now. I wanted to come up with something to say to you that might help provide some perspective or comfort when so much has been taken from you and all so suddenly. However, this is incredibly difficult. You all know by now that I call things as I see them and I’m not about to change that part of me now. The bottom line is that this entire situation isn’t fair. Life rarely is, but there are things we can count on happening as a matter of routine – like senior prom, high school graduation, etc. Except for now when
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understood – rules of behavior and access for both blacks and whites that separated blacks from whites after Emancipation and through the Civil Rights Movement. While the real reason for the racial segregation arguably was to prevent the racial intermingling and intimacies between newly freed black men and white women, the rules were persistent and illogical: Separate black and white hospitals, separate black and white waiting rooms, separate black and white cemeteries; separate black and white water fountains; separate black and white transportation sections; separate black and white schools. The list goes on and on, and across all of these United States.
they won’t. While I know in my mind that this is the cautious and correct decision for the health and safety of everyone, my heart can’t help but feel that you’ve had something very meaningful taken from you. Acknowledging this doesn’t take away the sting of what is being lost. It is healthy for us to acknowledge this loss. Whatever the future holds for all of us is a mystery that will be revealed to us in its own season. We can neither predict nor script the future. Attempting to do so is for the foolish. Rather than focus on the future, I want to focus on what I do know now. I am always here for you – today, tomorrow, next week, next month or even next year or several years from now. Reach out. I always love to hear from you – what you’re up to, questions you have, etc. In the short term, we still have more weeks of this “new normal” or online learning as we are now calling it. Please stay engaged, ask questions and we will learn as best as we can together moving forward. I have lots of reIt’s the actual visual aesthetic of the Jim Crow era that is not lost on me as I see folks in my not-terribly-racially/ ethnically-integrated neighborhood walk “social/ physical distancing” by staying away from each other, especially moving away from me and others by stepping off the sidewalks and even moving to another side of the street. These movements once upon a time signaled racial separation and its irrationality. Philosopher WEB DuBois, in his short story “On Being Crazy” (1907), describes a white man walking along a road who moves to the other side of a street when a black person is approaching him, allegedly because the black person is black and black is “dirty.” The irony of this incident is that the white man walks in wet mud on the other side of the street to avoid the black
sources and a little bit of work posted in Schoology for you to tackle after you’ve taken some time to process everything. Join for Google Meet office hours on Tuesday or Thursday or send me an email any time. There might be hiccups in this process (like Schoology crashing today...go figure) but know that we’ll figure it out together. And finally, please always know that you all have such a tremendous potential to shape this country and the world moving forward. YOU MATTER. You are inheriting a country and a world that is always in desperate need of those who choose to remain engaged and who want to make a difference. Look for the good in things, keep an open mind and heart, engage that healthy skepticism and spirited optimism. Find your place in the world. On the surface, the goal of this class is to teach you about concrete things such as the words of the Constitution and what they mean. Yet more importantly, my goal is to help you find a path of understanding man. Interestingly, a couple of years ago, a white woman alone chose not to sit next to me at a theater show even though the empty seat on the front row was available in a crowded auditorium. Instead, she squeezed herself into a makeshift space farther back from the stage alongside two other white people. In this covid-19 health crisis, racism is indeed manifested in the same way that we see sexism, ageism, homophobia, classism and other normalized institutional systems of oppression: they are blatant deniers of individual humanity. The irony of this coronavirus scare is that the virus itself is not discriminating as it infects blacks, whites, old, young, rich, poor, women and men, celebrities and common everyday folks. However, we see xenophobic and rac-
that your unique role in our experiment with self-government is the most important role we have in our Republic. It is more influential than the President of the United States, more powerful than leaders of the House and Senate and more important than state Governors and legislatures across the country. Your voice and the collective voices of those around you is one of the most powerful forces on this Earth. Of course, this country and the world is not perfect. As James Madison wrote into the Preamble to the Constitution more than 230 years ago, our goal is to create “a more perfect union.” We aren’t perfect rather we strive for “more” perfect. To borrow from Abraham Lincoln, our “Government of the People, By the People and For the People” depends on YOU. Use your voice, be involved and work for a better world in all you do. You have the power to do so much. All my best to you, Class of 2020, both now and in the future. With gratitude, Mr. Bristol
ist responses to it when it is problematically named the “Chinese virus” and violent attacks and other insults are directed at Asians, and as the April 2, 2020 PBS News Hour story affirms, “COVID-19 May Not Discriminate Based on Race—But US Health Care Does.” Still, I can’t help noticing distant parallels when I see my mostly non-black neighbors moving away from me on my morning walks and me away from them. Now, at least I know that their particular movement away from me is not necessarily because they are avoiding me or are afraid of me solely because I am a black male in 21st century America. Ahwatukee resident Neal A. Lester, PhD, is Foundation Professor of English and founding director of Project Humanities at Arizona State University.
Share Your Thoughts: Send your letters on local issues to: pmaryniak@timespublications.com