Home.

In an effort to bond with my kids and for us to get to know eachother, another teacher and myself decided to take them bowling! Last week we took the girls and we had a blast! Yesterday I took my Grade 6 boys bowling and that too was a success. I really wanted to crush all of them, but my weak bowling skills prevented me from doing so. On our way to the bowling alley, H asked me, "Lesley, why do Black Americans want to be called African Americans?" We were surrounded by a few Danes and my first impulse was to panic. I mean, these are the very conversations I love, but was unsure about how I felt about conducting it under the gaze.
I focused on my students and proceeded as though I was in my classroom. "Well, where is it that all Black Americans can trace their ancestry to?" S, a contemplative biracial boy responds, "Africa."
My students love to ask me questions about race and the U.S. The other day I overheard one say the N word (and this time it was not nerd!). This inspired a long, class discussion about the social and historical context of said word. The only relationship many of my students have of the word is what they get through music and film, and I could hear there was a genuine longing to understand which brings me to something that keeps on cropping up in my life again and again, and I guess I need to heed its calling: Mutual Comprehension.
Some of you might recall I once went to a conference in Madrid. It was a conference targeting European International Schools. My old job had a generous professional development budget and I thought it wise to use it. This conference took place in Madrid and it was with much excitement that I took off with some of my colleagues on what would be my first trip to Spain.
What I saw there however, really depressed me. I suddenly realized how NOT International the world I had been in is. While it was one thing to accept the homogeneity of my then job and chuck it up to the fact that we lived in Denmark, I couldn't really justify what I was experiencing, there, in Madrid. Let me make clear that it does not take the careful observer long to realize that International, in our part of the world, is overwhelmingly western. Many of us are aware of this conundrum.
But what I saw at this conference shocked me.
I swear, at a conference for International Schools, I still swam in a sea of white. The delegates were all mostly British or American.
I dared a workshop on Tolerance and of course, was one of the only two people of color present. As the workshop leader spoke about tolerance, I really realized that it was not the majority who needed to practice tolerance, but us, the so-called minorities. We had to constantly tolerate people's ignorance of our existence, our humanity.
To be fair, the word Tolerance inspired a great conversation where several, including myself discussed the problematic of even using the word tolerance as a starting point of investigation. Tolerance connotes a hierarchy.
Afterward, I spoke to the leader of the workshop and asked him if he had ever heard of the concept of mutual comprehension.
He hadn't and so I began to explain to him, what little I knew about it. I had once read that Simon Bolivar had promoted this concept of mutual comprehension, an African concept taught to him by his African wet nurse. It entails learning about each other, respecting the differences and the similarities and always, always, assuming equality. I think this concept really needs to take center change in the global debate of how we, as human beings on this planet, will continue to interact with one another. And as far as I can see, I can think of no better way than to start with my kids. And for that, I am so, super thankful.
farvel for now,
the lab