My Letter to the Editor of the Garden City News: On Marginalization

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to respond to Katie Roland’s October 28th letter and to the situations that prompted it. Like Katie, I grew up in Garden City. My teachers were inspirational and I often say that I learned more (academically) in Sra. Pantin’s Spanish classes toward my initial degree in Romance Languages than I did at the prestigious college I attended. Mr. DeFina lit in me a love for ancient history and Mrs. McCavitt inspired me to see the past as a series of intertwined stories about people. Anna Lea Smith (who wrote a powerful response to Katie’s letter) encouraged families to celebrate both our shared culture and our own traditions. Now in my 26th year of teaching, I think about them and so many others, every day, with gratitude.

 However, I also experienced some quiet horrors growing up in the public schools of Garden City. A social studies teacher at the middle school once dropped a penny on the floor and told me to “Pick it up, you Jew.” In an attempt to be culturally sensitive, another teacher told the class “Emily is Jewish, so she knows a lot about the Holocaust. Why don’t you go ahead and teach the class about it so we can check the topic off.” This is apart from all the classmates who would bop me on the head to see if my thick hair (they called it a “‘fro”) protected me from being hurt. This is also apart from the math book thrown down the staircase onto my head by a football player who then shouted “Take that, you smarty!” or my pocketbook being emptied out and filled with flour while I was doing my Home Ec demonstration on how to make Kasha Varnishkes.

This was normal in the 80s. I was encouraged to smile and keep on going. That’s just what I did, and I became a teacher who looks out for everyone. I believe that when there is cruelty (and there is), it is due to a lack of empathy. Empathy can be fostered through conversation, through role modeling, and through caring contact with people who have had different experiences than you.

We all have memories of being left out, of being denied entry, of being hurt. That’s part of humanity. The degree of marginalization or rejection may differ, and our stories may differ. But I have never met a person who spent every moment of their life feeling 100% included.

We also all have varying degrees of access. I’m a short, chubby female. This might have made me an easy target years ago, but now it is an asset.  I do not look threatening. Children are comfortable with me. Nobody crosses to the other side of the street when I walk by. I can’t say that about all of my friends. I speak many languages (in part due to my Jewish culture), and that gives me access to intimate worlds that others might not have.

It’s crucial that we step outside of the politicized language and the emotionally charged words about theories most of us have not read. Instead, we need to look at one another and see what we share in common.

I have been on the outside. It has hurt. So have you.

I have been on the inside. It can be empowering. So have you.

How can we take our hurts and our power to help one another? And, above all, how can we take our collective hurts and our shared power to make a better, kinder, more connected world for our town today and for  future generations everywhere?