Y'all knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time. I make a conscious effort to view the world through a racial equity lens, so there was no missing it here. I won't list every time race has shown up here because it would take all day (race would obviously be present even if I weren't the whitest face for a couple hundred islands), so I'll just share one of the interactions that hit me hardest for how glaring it was. At the elementary school, I was in a 4th grade classroom, and there was a class clown in the back very animatedly telling a story that had his classmates rolling. I wanted in on the funny, so I went back and asked him to tell it again in English. After a lot of giggling, this is the story he told: "You see my friend? He used to be handsome. His skin used to be white, but then he fell in the sewer! Hahahahahaha!" All the kids laughed as if that is a perfectly normal conversation to have. I answered back with a pathetic, "that's not how it works. His skin is very handsome..." With situations like this, we have to stop and think about the implications of a group of teachers that are 86% white (almost exactly mirroring the state of public education in the US) visiting and being the only Americans many of these kids have ever met. This is already what many of these students think America looks like (people wanting selfies with me have been telling me I look like a movie star. Now, I have plenty of self love, but my face does not, nor has it ever belonged on any kind of screen. These comments are a clear example of the impact of lack of diversity in Hollywood. It's not just hurting our children America!) I am so happy to be here and to experience the culture and share mine and to be putting smiles on so many faces; I also wish they were meeting Americans that look like them and that look like my students and that look like America. I have some presentations to do about US culture, and diversity (of race, religion, culture, national origin, etc) will be my main focus. If there's one thing I want people to take away from my visit here, it's that the US doesn't just look like Hollywood and it doesn't just look like me. Now, for some pictures of the beautiful people I've met in this country:
