So I was thinking about this again and how people react to those that are supposed to be beneath everyone else being successful, i.e. this “humiliation” garbage.
We’re not supposed to be successful. That’s the entire humiliation thing, we are stepping out of our little box and being something that racists and sexists and ableists and LGBTphobes (and all the others) have set up an entire system to block us from being. It’s not what we say, it’s not in our humility or lack thereof, it’s not even in the action that we’re doing. It’s that we are not supposed to do anything of importance, we are supposed to be there for those who think they are superior to laugh at. And when we break out of that system and dare to stand on stage and express ourselves and touch the items that only those in power are supposed to have access to, it humiliates them because they know in at least the case of that particular person, their system of blocking failed.
I have some experience with this, not because of being a POC, but because of being a PWD. I was part of the first generation to be “included” in regular public school. Before I went to school, PWD were sent off to institutes and maybe never seen or heard from again. So that was very “interesting” but I digress, that’s not the situation I’m talking about now.
I did not do well in public school until I got to high school. And teachers kept telling me I either needed to do things exactly their way or give up and just resign myself to working in a gas station or assembly line my whole life. And I was ready to do that actually but I got an amazing opportunity to attend a new “alternative” high school and I went for it, and it changed my life and how I thought of myself significantly, and much for the better.
The reason I bring it up is because the school board and the kids that were typically associated with being “winners” hated this idea. And so those students and their parents, and also school board members repeatedly in my four years there tried to get the school shut down. We were learning all the stuff we were supposed to and they kept claiming that meeting requirements for college was the issue they were complaining but that’s not true. The school actually worked with the local university to make sure the curriculum matched what they required, and their requirements are standard for any public university. And the school board knew this.
No, the problem was the “winners” were feeling humiliated. A whole bunch of kids they had bullied and abused and discouraged and discounted and harmed in innumerable ways were being successful despite them and their efforts.
Mr. Gonzales, your opinion of Lizzo is worth the same as you entirely - about as much as gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.
