The Interactive conference is over. I am catastrophically behind on work. Therefore, I did not do anything remotely SXSW-related today. Aside from writing this and a few other blog posts, I mean. I didn’t even leave the house except to go pick up my dog from the boarding place (she was very happy to see me!)
To the awesome folks I met over the past few days, I’ll get around to e-mailing you at some point, really. Hopefully you’ll be around next year, and so will I.
I am part of the Alamo Heights High School Class of 1993. It’s a relatively small school in its own little school district a few miles north of downtown San Antonio, Texas. I got a great education there and had some amazing friends. Overall, I am very glad to have gone to school there, and to be from there. It opened up countless doors to opportunities many others have not had.
I was not always so happy, of course, while I actually went to school there. Alamo Heights is something of a bubble of wealth and privilege, where residents frequently appear in newspaper and magazine “Society” pages, and nearly everyone got a car on their 16th birthday. It is full of good people but it can brim with white racist bullcrap in a predominantly-Hispanic city.
There is very little overt racism, but anyone who actually understands racism knows that you do not have to physically harass or assault members of a different race to be racist. Racism is also not simply a matter of not liking members of another race. I have come to be a strong believer in the “privilege + power” definition, which holds that racism consists of both disdain for another race and the power to do something about it. I did not always understand that, but I am also a white male, so I have no experience whatsoever of what it is to be on the receiving end of racism, sexism, or pretty much any other kind of systemic oppression. All I can say for certain is that I get that I do not get it.
I had planned a more in-depth post to further explore issues like this. Really, the bottom line is that I do not have much of value to say about race, because I have no lived experience of it (same goes for gender, sexual orientation, even religion for most of my life). All I can really do is listen to others as they share their experiences, and reflect on what I may have done in the past and what I can do differently.
That is really all there is to say (by me) on the matter.
Of course, my high school had to go and spur me to action, so I’m writing this post off the cuff, without great deal of preparation. But this is not about my inconvenience. This is me confronting the racism of my hometown.
I’m a fairweather fan of Alamo Heights sports, in that I only tend to pay attention when they do well, and that’s only because hey cool! My high school won something!
I was excited to learn that the Mules (yes, that’s our mascot) basketball team has made it to the state finals tournament. That’s the first time this has happened since 1991 (when I was a sophomore and recent basketball team dropout). Also, the new coach is a guy I went to high school with. It’s the way the fans reacted to the latest big win that is (or should be) embarrassing to all of us.
Edison High School is only a few miles away from Alamo Heights, but it could be on a different planet. It is in a much less affluent part of town (although it does include one very well-to-do area), and the students are mostly Hispanic. When the Mules beat them the other night, securing a place in the state tournament, well, here’s what happened:
A local school district is apologizing after an apparent incident of racism at a boys high school basketball game this past weekend.
When the final whistle blew Saturday, Alamo Heights celebrated a convincing victory over San Antonio Edison.
Alamo Heights Head Coach Andrew Brewer said he was proud of his team.
“Tremendously proud,” Brewer said. “Tremendously. It’s the best group of kids.”
But it was just after the trophy presentation when the coach was not proud of the chant coming from Alamo Heights fans.
“USA, USA, USA,” they chanted.
San Antonio Independent School District officials took the chant as a racial insult to a school with all minority players from a school with mostly white ones.
I can already anticipate the reactions from Alamo Heights students and parents: something to the effect that the kids didn’t mean anything racist by it, that they were just celebrating, that it never occurred to them that this would be offensive, and that Edison’s players and others are being too sensitive. I feel fairly confident that the response (i.e. excuses) will fall into one of those areas.
The first thing to understand, drawing from the racism definition above, is that white people don’t get to decide when someone else should be offended. Second, if it did not occur to people that a predominantly-Hispanic group would be offended by predominantly white, affluent, mostly-Republican students chanting “USA,” then there is a problem, but the problem is not occurring in the Edison neighborhood. Alamo Heights has an image problem, and it has since long before I was a student there. This is Exhibit “A” as to why.
According to KSAT News, the students who have been identified as participating in the chant have to apologize to Edison and are banned from the remaining playoff games. If that seems harsh, keep in mind that kids in Alamo Heights tend to get whatever they want. Call it tough love.
UPDATE, March 6, 2012: Edison’s school district administration has filed a complaint with the University Interscholastic League:
The San Antonio Independent School District filed a complaint with the UIL on Tuesday regarding a chant by Alamo Heights students after a boys basketball game against Edison High School on Saturday.
***
SAISD athletic director Gil Garza filed the complaint with the University Interscholastic League, the governing body for Texas public schools. It was the second year in a row that a complaint about racially motivated chants was filed after the Region IV-4A basketball tournament.
A similar incident occurred last year in a game between Cedar Park and Lanier high schools.
“A bunch of kids made a poor decision, but we can’t ignore it,” Garza said. “Our community is fed up.”
A few of you (okay, one of you) may remember my old Blogger blog, Cryptic Philosopher. For no particularly good reason, I am resurrecting it on a new server with the WordPress platform. And I’m doing it just in time for South by Southwest 2012.
I am still going through and conforming the old posts to fit my older, wiser, slightly-more-minimalist self. Patience, reader(s).
We’ll miss you.
I haven’t been blogging much of late, once again. I’ve been in the process of looking for a new Cryptic PhilosoPad. More news to follow, although it won’t be as fancy as some I’ve looked at.
I had noticed, back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, when I still attended Beer Bike reunions, that the students at my old digs were slipping in their graffiti obligations (NOTE: If you have never been to Lovett College, you probably don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.) It’s good to see that Wikipedia has immortalized the Cobb graffiti for internet posterity.
Lovett ’97. Boat racing rules.
I only pulled an “R” rating, based on the words “dead,” “bitch” and “hell.”
I will therefore now recite the Lovett Cheer, from my old college days. That ought to raise the bar a bit.
The text is shrunken down, for the kids’ sake, you know?
Cock suck, mother fuck, eat a bag of shit.
Cunt hair, douche bag, suck your mother’s tit.
We are the best college, all the others suck.
Edgar Odell Lovett, rah rah fuck!
According to the Wikipedia post, this is Rice’s “only officially University-banned cheer.” What the fuck’s up with that?
A close friend of my family from my childhood died Sunday in a small plane crash outside of Castroville, Texas. They believe she was flying (it was her plane), but the actual cause may not be known for a long time.
She and I had not been in touch for a long time. I had only seen her once in the past 15 years or so, almost exactly one year ago at my sister’s wedding. She’s just the kind of person where you know the world is a better place because she is in it.
At the very least, to the extent any consolation can come to those who remember her, she died doing something she absolutely loved (flying) with someone she cared about. Maybe, looking at the sum of a person’s life and the people they touched while they were here, that is enough.
So long, Susan. I will miss you.
I remember exactly where I was six years ago. I can’t tell you if I ate breakfast or lunch that day, and I can’t tell you who went and posted a note on the door of the classroom where I was supposed to be teaching a law school orientation that morning. I can tell you that I didn’t leave the sofa for hours, but I must have taken a shower at some point, and I must also have gone to school at some time that day.
I was excited about the release of a new Robert Earl Keen record scheduled for that day, as well as the continuation of a two-part Friends episode in syndication. I didn’t get either that day, and I’ve still never seen that Friends episode.
That’s about the worst I can say about what happened to me on September 11, 2001. Everyone I knew in New York and Washington was safe, and a few were even heroic. I was just sitting at home. So were the vast majority of Americans.
I keep hearing that “9/11 changed everything,” and America today certainly seems different than how I remember the first three quarters of 2001. But this particular mantra has always seemed to be more of a way to avoid a discussion than a useful observation.
A blog post and video by someone else, as usual, summarizes my feelings better than I could.
Why has this one 24-hour period come to define this country to the exclusion of anything else? I am somewhat a student of history, and I am not familiar with anyone, six years later, claiming that 12/7 changed everything. Yet Pearl Harbor took almost as many lives as 9/11. This date doesn’t define America for me.
Thanks to the shameless commercialism of the Simpsons, I now know what I would look like in the Simpsons universe:
Try it, if you dare.
