Dear HillBuzz,

Yesterday, I sat in the principal’s office under a cartoonishly-executed tempora painting of several klansmen holding candles against a midnight-blue nightscape, sprayed from above by a giant bottle of “Racist-Off” insect repellant, the product pitch “Spray No to Racism” flourescently scrawled in the sky above.

It’s the second most bizarre painting I’ve ever seen displayed with great care and pride in anyone’s office (the first being, collectively, a series of gorilla paintings a 50-something-year-old woman I know named Madison keeps in her office here in Chicago: gorillas dressed up like Marie Antoinette or Cleopatra, Gorilla George Washington, Gorillas visiting Millennium Park, Gorillas eating various sandwiches without irony, all painted so amateurishly I at first thought actual gorillas made them (which would have been remarkable, for actual gorillas, but then I realized Madison, a Human Resources Director, wasn’t outsourcing her art to great apes but was instead poorly aping said apes’ violent, opposable-thumb-challenged, artistic direction; once I realized these paintings were made by a fully-functioning adult human, the only thing remarkable about them was the every-day-is-April-Fools attitude required to exhibit those monstrosities in an office where other fully-functioning adults come to do business)). 

“Spray No to Racism” hovered above me while I waited for the school’s principal to give me a tour of the building and show me which health and nutrition classes I would sit in on that day.  If I looked away from the painting, I would start to imagine the little klansmen in their ridiculous getups simpering and muttering all manner of vile curses, as the “Racist-off” melted them into tiny puddles of robes, Margaret Hamilton-meets-Evian-style. If I stared at the painting, I became wholly absorbed by the bizarreness of it, in much the same way gorillas dressed as famous people (as painted by someone clearly out of her mind) captivate me, and not in a good way.  

For the rest of the day, all I could think about was racism, and tiny klansmen scurrying into the walls to hide from “Racist-Off” spray, and how much the art in that principal’s office and the rest of the school could be, unintentionally or intentionally, impacting the education the students there received. 

And, of course, I also thought of cupcakes. 

“Emergency cupcakes” (and “emergency champagne”, too) and a conversation I’d had with my good friend Jessie the other night, where she asked me for some good first-date things to do with a guy she liked but didn’t want to scare off by doing things she typically does, like inviting him over to look through her astonishing stacks of old dog-eared, tear-stained issues of Martha Stewart Weddings (or talk about shoes, and how much she loves shoes, because after the wedding planning stuff, you all know that’s the second-best surefire way to send straight men scurrying for cover, “Racist-off” style).

Because a single, gay man whose longest relationship was with a lying, cheating, Asperger-afflicted, prescription-drug addicted, momma’s boy like my ex David is OBVIOUSLY the best person to solicit winning first-date advice from. 

Clearly. 

Because THAT always worked so well on Will & Grace, too. 

But, I do have to say, “emergency cupcakes” have never failed me before, and I was surprised Jessie had no idea what I was talking about, as I have gotten more guys over to my apartment with this bit than with skywriting or voodoo.  Combined.  

“Just text that guy you like and tell him you’re having an emergency and need his help. That triggers the He-Man, giant-spider-killing, distressed-damsel-rescuing, testosterone-fueled cowboy that lurks somewhere in even the whimpiest guys.  He instantly answers the old Bonnie Tyler “where have all the good men gone and where all the gods…where’s my streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds” call and thinks there’s a big dragon for him to slay, so he’ll ask you what sort of emergency and how he can save the day, and you tell him it’s a cupcake emergency.  That’s the particular kind of emergency that involves too many cupcakes in your apartment at that particular moment in time, coinciding with your real and exasperated need for someone meeting his EXACT DESCRIPTION to come over IMMEDIATELY to crisis-manage the situation by eating at least half of those delicious, gourmet cupcakes, procured from any one of the dreamy cupcakeries here in Boystown.”

What you’ve done, quite deliberately, is stimulated several different areas of the male brain all at once, going all the way back to his childhood, where all little boys on some level want to play hero (and never grow out of that), and most have wonderful memories of cupcakes baking in kitchens, if not at home then at least at grandma’s house or school or somewhere (and the smell of treats baking is much, much, MUCH more powerful magic than any of those expensive perfumes, lotions, creams and other nonsense women slather themselves with, making them smell like flowers soaked in alcohol and chemicals instead of something that would actually trigger positive sensory memories in men).  You also differentiate yourself from other people he’s dated, who call him to fix broken pipes, deal with emotional crises, take care of a sick dog, or whatever other typical emergencies guys are summoned to handle for girlfriends who speed dial them for these sorts of reasons.  

A “cupcake emergency” is a welcome emergency, and it’s kooky enough to get that smile on his face as you coax him out of his place and over to yours, all suited up and ready for adventure with someone unlike anyone else he’s dated before. 

But, the downside to having cupcakes lying around your house, or champagne sitting in your fridge (awaiting catastrophes of its own), is that you are tempted to have these sorts of emergencies more often than you should.  The emergency champagne, for instance, is very easy to abuse, as it’s also very effective in dealing with almost any other sort of real or imagined crisis in your life.  Bad day at work?  Break out the “emergency champagne”! Hate the finalists on American Idol this season?  Thank Hera for “emergency champagne”! Drank too much last night and feel like Hades this morning?  ”Emergency champagne” for breakfast, to the rescue!

So, in concept, emergency cupcakes and emergency champagne are good things, meant to serve noble purposes (or, at the very least, be on hand should you ever have a chance to get Chris Pine out of his Star Fleet uniform and over to your place, in that or any other order, because Chris Pine and his baby blues are the new Jake Gyllenhaal rocking my world). But, if you are always looking for emergencies to drink champagne and eat cupcakes, then you’ll ultimately end up the love child Liza Minnelli and Oprah mercifully never had.  

You will find emergencies everywhere, because you predispose yourself to look for them around every corner. 

The same is true for the anti-racist verve at the school whose principal was so fond of that “Racist-Off” painting, because it really set the tone that racism was absolutely everywhere, likc cockroaches, throughout the whole day.  Every student, every teacher, every visitor passing through that principal’s office had to remain forever vigilent and on the lookout for RAAAAAAACISM!  

And that “Racist-Off” painting wasn’t the only piece of art encouraing this:  the rest of this almost 100% Hispanic school was decorated exclusively with Mexican and Central/South American art, with only photos of famous Hispanic people up on the walls and only prints of artwork by Hispanic artists.  The one exception to this was a mural (FABULOUSLY done) of famous Native Americans like Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Pocahontas, and Sacajawea…with a picture of Ghandhi nearby, which still puzzles us (because it could be a weird play on the word “Indian”, or it could just be an inadvertant coincidence because Ghandhi was being recognized for his pacifism and nonviolence completely separate from the Native American place of honor).

When I saw the Ghandhi/Crazy Horse proximity, I immediately realized this is one of those opportunities crazy people use to start PC-trouble (I call these particular trolls bogomilskys, after the most vile PC-policeman in Seattle, the man who waged war on Christmas back in 2005). People who wake up each day determined to find something to complain about will indeed succeed.  Someone conditioned to look for RAAAAACISM! around every corner will spend their whole lives convincingly impersonating Al Sharpton, James Clyburne, Eric Holder, and Jesse Jackson.  I’m truly surprised one of these bogomilskys hasn’t complained to the principal that, “I find it offensive you have a portrait of Indian peace activist Ghandhi, my personal hero who I know nothing about, really, except that he is not only my idol, but Bono’s as well, too close to a mural depicting Native Americans because I find “Indian” to be a pejorative used to subjugate and malign Native Americans and First Nation members, and so I am scarred and deeply troubled because seeing an actual Indian, from India, too near the Native American mural makes me think everyone in this building needs sensitivity training.”

Though we can imagine bogomilskys going on for days and days in that vein, the reason something like that wouldn’t happen at a 100% (or close to it) Hispanic school is because Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other minority groups can never, in this realm of PC-logic, be racist.  Only white people can be racist, so anything hanging up in a Hispanic or black school has to, by nature, be 100% politically correct because white people didn’t put it there (so there is no problem with it).

The portraits of Che Gueverra hanging on the walls are a very interesting choice (where “interesting” can be a synonym for anything you like).  I also remind you those same portraits hung in Dr. Utopia’s campaign offices in California, Texas, Nevada, and other largely Hispanic areas.  Not being Hispanic, I don’t know why, culturally, Gueverra is hung on the walls but Delores Huerta isn’t featured up there (who would not only be a positive role model, but would also be a WOMAN featured prominently in a school where I saw about 30 rooms, none of which had a single woman honored with a painting, portrait, or bulletin-board feature).  These are all questions for another time, that people with much, much more experience in this than I do could maybe shed some light on. 

And it was fascinating to get a glimpse into how history was being taught in this school.  Speaking purely anecdotally, with no information about what’s in the lesson plans or history books in these classrooms, and just talking about what I personally saw on the bulletin boards and other classroom displays, it seems Victimhood is what these children are exposed to constantly every day.  One of the classrooms had a big display on the evils of colonialism and all the damage that did to Afro-Caribbean peoples.  That same room had another map asking who were REALLY the first people in North America, and who REALLY discovered “the New World” (interestingly, no mention was made of Vikings and their suspected settlements in present day New York or New England, but there was a big mention of the theory that Chinese voyagers reached North America before Columbus — who, incidentally, was only mentioned in passing with a line like “Columbus didn’t really discover America, so who really did?”). 

It’s just fascinating to walk around in alternate reality like these classrooms and see what I learned in school, and what I have continued to learn as an inquisitive adult, twisted and reshaped to fit into the desired victimhood molds prescribed by whomever is in charge of the public school curriculum.  It’s definitely people like William Ayers behind this sort of thing: rich, white liberals who took over the education system with an “America’s bad!” mindset some time ago.  Not being a teacher, and not having a background in childhood education, I have no idea how any of this impacts people’s lives as they get older.  But, I don’t see how mulitculturalism, if it’s indeed as great as liberals always say, doesn’t apply at a 100% Hispanic or 100% black school.  Where is the multiculturalism in the art and curriculum of segregation and victimhood?  

I have a good friend named Joaquin who is Mexican-American and grew up outside Dallas, Texas.  He only spoke Spanish at home, because his mother never felt the need to learn English, as her mother never learned a single word of it.  Joaquin’s father is American-born and is some kind of businessman, but Joaquin’s mother has never worked, and doesn’t often leave the house.  When she does, she goes to other Spanish-speakers’ homes, or to Spanish-mass at church, or to the Spanish-speaking Mexican grocery store.  So, she lives in this Little Mexico world she’s created for herself. 

That’s actually VERY similar to Polish immigrant families I know, who pretend they are in Little Warsaw when at home:  only going to Polish internet sites, only watching old VHS tapes of Polish shows on TV, paying hundreds of dollars to get Polish movies flown in on DVD so they never watch American movies, eating only Polish food and never going out to restaurants or trying anything new (“Why would we go to restaurants when there is food here?  Polish food is best!).  

What’s interesting is that the children of people like these Polish families wouldn’t find themselves in a public school that pretended it was Little Poland.  Those kids would become part of the larger American culture, and would not be segregated all day in classrooms with giant photos of Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa exclusively.  They would be exposed to everything, in mainstreamed schools. Will they do better in school and in life as a result?  I’m not an education expert, so you tell me. 

But, Joaquin has a lot of trouble socially because he missed out on American culture for all those years he lived at home and went to a Spanish-dominated school.  Because he didn’t watch anything but Spanish TV and didn’t have exposure to things his mainstreamed age peers had, Joaquin doesn’t get pop culture, literary, or historical references in common usage.  He’s forever saying, “What’s that?  I’ve never heard of that.”  He sits there, clueless, while other people are laughing and sharing jokes, because he didn’t get the broad education that mainstreamed kids get.  

What’s truly tragic about all of this is that people back in Mexico treat Joaquin the same way. He’s not Mexican, because he also doesn’t get Mexican cultural ques either.  He’s a smart and very nice guy, but he’s clueless a lot of the time because his parents kept him in a limbo between two worlds, so now at 30 he’s not either, really.  

It really feels like the 100% Hispanic and 100% black schools in Chicago are creating generations of people who, like Joaquin, seem like they are also destined to not fit in with age peers who were mainstreamed.  If I was a bogomilsky, I would see hidden racism in that:  by separating these kids and constantly reinforcing what makes them different, educators are ensuring these kids grow up to be adults who never get any of the jokes, who have a hard time joining their age peers in friendships at work, have difficulty using those friendships to network and get ahead, and are doomed to be socially awkward and separate for their whole lives.  I’ve personally set up more opportunities for Joaquin to network than I can count, and he rarely shows up for any of them, but if he does he just stands there alone or sometimes gravitates towards other Spanish-speakers in the room, where they all speak in Spanish together, and miss the point of networking to make new professional contacts.  ”I don’t have anything to say to the other people because I don’t know what they are talking about,” is what Joaquin usually says when I tell him he missed the chance to meet the president of this or that group or business, because he was talking to other people he already knew from back in Texas. 

Joaquin hates his job working in a medical office that deals exclusively with Hispanic patients in a Hispanic part of town, but doesn’t take any steps towards a different career because he’s uncomfortable anywhere that’s not segregated along the racial and cultural lines that have always been emphasized for him his whole life.  

I just imagine this happening to so many more Joaquins in the future, even if the school they are in now is beautiful and the teachers are as wonderful as the ones at the schools I toured this week.  I just don’t see any good that comes from constantly emphasizing separateness and not giving these kids the chance to share the same experiences and knowledge as their mainstream peers.  If the majority of students learn history one way in school, but black and Hispanic kids are taught a history for victimhood every day, doesn’t anyone else see there’s going to be conflict guaranteed in the future since not only will blacks and Hispanics butt heads with white peers over this learned victimhood, but they will also resent each other too — as blacks taught they were the main victims will have to compete for that martyrdom with the Hispanic kids who were taught THEY were the real victims, and kids who went through 13 years or more of this race-based victimhood indoctrination will not only be unable to relate to the mainstreamed kids at large, but will also resent the other racially segregated subgroups out there. 

This is why I was also against the proposed LGBTQ High School here in Chicago as well.  On the surface, it sounds like a great idea, because having a school where LGBTQ youth could feel at home, be accepted, and learn about LGBTQ culture SOUNDS fantastic.  I wish I had that growing up in Catholic School, being taught in religion class first that being gay was a sin and gay people were bad, to later in the late 80s seeing the switch to “being gay is not a sin, but doing anything gay sexually is a sin”, to whatever it is they are teaching now (long after I stopped listening to this nonsense).  A separate LGBTQ school is not the answer anymore than separate black and Hispanic schools are the answer; instead, ALL schools should depict LGBTQ culture positively and not single kids out as different and teach them that throughout their lives they have to hang out exclusively with other different kids, just like them, and never be part of the mainstream culture. 

As fabulous as HillBuzz High would be, it would be as counterproductive as the way Joaquin was raised, creating a smart guy who is forever self-limited by the separateness he grew up with.

So, this is what I thought about when I left the principal’s office at the end of the day, turning in my visitor’s pass, and passing under that “Racism-off” painting again before leaving that public school and heading home.  I also thought about the emergency cupcakes and the dating advice for Jessie and realize what an outsider’s perspective a gay man always has in this country.  I can observe and research various things and issues in the school system, but at the end of the day, my opinion will always be discounted because it’s assumed I will never have kids, so I won’t be a parent, and thus I won’t ever have to weigh in on any of this “for real”.  That outsider status is even more obvious in the relationship advice for Jessie and other straight female friends, because not only will I never really understand their situations, but they never listen to me anyway (and, despite being told repeatedly to stop obsessing over and talking about shoes to straight men, they just keep on making that same mistake instead of whipping out the emergency cupcakes). 

I can see the outsider stuff is what’s driving the art and curriculum in these public schools, but the way it’s handled would be like me spending all my time never leaving Boystown, watching only LOGO or HERE! on TV, listening to nonstop Madonna, eating only at Stella’s or Nookie’s gay-friendly diners, and hanging out only at Sidetrack while reading Advocate and Genre exclusively.  There’s a whole wide world out there apart from Sidetrack’s Showtunes night.  If I went to HillBuzz High would I know that?  If ALL I saw all day was LGBTQ and the lens I learned history through was also 100% LGBTQ, what kind of person would I be and what sort of a life would I lead?

I really don’t have an answer for that, and it kind of makes my head hurt a little, to be honest. 

Time for the emergency champagne, I guess. That always makes everything better. 

 

Sebastian Gray

Chicago, IL