A Black boy and a White boy

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Some folk will read the title of this blog and think that this blog is about race relations or racism. This blog is not about that, at all…

This blog is not about the Black boy who got arrested or killed by police. It is not about some Black boy who is a genius and who has defied the odds and created some great new invention. It is not about some White boy that got away with something that would probably get the Black boy killed. And it is also not about some White boy, who, like that Black boy, invented some new technology or has an unusually high IQ. This blog is about two typical American boys…

I met the Black boy a few years ago when I went to observe a music class at the Atlanta Music Project. He was proudly and boldly blowing his clarinet. A few months later I attended his recital with the rest of the music students in this program. He remembered me and promptly took me to meet his music instructor. I chatted amicably with his mother, and like most native Atlantans, she and I discovered we knew a lot of the same people. Since then, I have discovered that this Black boy has added the bassoon to his growing number of instruments. He also won some position in student government at his elementary school. Thoughtful, talented, intelligent and kind, he gives me a big hug, every time I run into him with his mother at the supermarket. His mother told me that instead of watching TV every night, that television viewing is limited in their household. Instead, they have full conversations and they tell stories…

Now I met the White boy last week on a ride on the MARTA train heading home. Five-years-old and seated with his young mother, he proceeded to read everything on the signs in the train. “You read very well,” I said. He quickly extended his hand to shake mine. His mother and I chatted about school, education, and how well her son reads. She told me that she lives within walking distance of a public library where they have these great storytelling sessions for children. As I approached my stop, I said, “So nice talking to you. Now young man, you keep reading! I get off here.” She replied, “This is my stop, too! Take my business card,” she said, “I know a lot of historians. Maybe we can all get together some time.” I thanked her and watched she and her five-year-old son walk home in what is and remains nearly a 100 percent Black neighborhood. And I am also quite familiar with the library that she told me about. The Black women who conduct those storytelling sessions there at the library have engaged this little White boy. He not only could read—his pronunciation was perfect…

It should be obvious to anyone reading this that the Black boy and the White boy have parents who spend time with them. These parents have found programs and activities that are beneficial to their children. Now, I’m not making any major pronouncements here about parenting or race relations. I am simply writing about typical, well-raised children. I am, deliberately avoiding the noise—at least momentarily—from the media that often dominates the narrative. Not all the news about children and what happens to children is bad news. And the future is not all gloom and doom. And, for now, I’m going to bet the future on my Black boy and my White boy. Àṣé.

(My previous blog is Frank Wittow’s Legacy…Nevaina’s Dream)

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

One Helluva Conversation with My Students Today…

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

Leslye Joy Allen, Copyright © 2013. All Rights Reserved. Self-Portrait.

Today I spoke with my history students…I reminded them of some advice that both of my parents gave to me.

Mom and Dad said that I must never speak for any person or any group of people that I did not know personally or at least have some first hand knowledge about.

I reminded these students that no matter what they saw on the news, or who they liked on the news, that a good portion of who or what was reported was tainted, including the news that comes from the Left and the Right…

And don’t start whining because you know I am on the Left or leaning Left…because several of my journalist friends on both sides of the political aisle have reminded me that in these last days of 2014 that journalists and news rooms have forgotten their duties and started twisting and altering stories just to…

stir up more trouble and unrest so that they could have something to talk about or write about…because you know if it bleeds, it leads…

So, I reminded my students that the only promise I have actually kept to my parents was that I would never try to pass myself off as representative, or a spokesperson for anyone or anything I did not know well…

So, again, I put on my sneakers and walked miles through my neighborhood with my iron pipe to ward off crazy stray dogs (and fools, if necessary)…and I talked to old folk on their front porches, and…

Watched children play and ride their bikes in the street, and reminded myself that no one on CNN or MSNBC or any other network has bothered to visit some of these neighborhoods which is why…

I will avoid the shrill and unnecessary and unproductive conversations and debates of those on the so-called Left and the so-called Right who do nothing but spout their, “I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong” diatribes until I see all or any of them put their sneakers on…

and stroll through the neighborhoods and speak to the people they allegedly claim to speak for…and that admonition goes for our local elected officials and our clergy too…

My students are fired up and that was/is enough for me.

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog, or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

A Turk Talks Atlanta: Another Perspective of Race and America

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen

On Wednesday, September 10, 2014, I boarded the MARTA train here in Atlanta heading home from teaching a morning class and having a brief meeting with a professor. When I entered the train station, the humidity was overpowering. A man in a business suit that appeared to me to be either Arab or Turkish, pulled off his jacket. He looked at me and smiled and said in a thick accent, “HOT-LANTA is not just a nickname, eh?”

We laughed and began to exchange pleasantries about the weather and the city. He informed me that he has to travel all around the United States quite a bit, but he said something that struck me.

He said rather seriously, “Your young people, the students and the school children, are so much more polite and friendly. They are nowhere near as noisy or ill mannered as I have seen in so many other cities around the country. I like Atlanta, except for these humid days.”

We laughed as we both boarded the southbound train. I asked him where he was from. He was originally from Turkey. Then I asked him why he thought Atlanta students were so much quieter. He said that in some places around the world, people consider Americans to be rather loud or at least that is the general stereotype. “In fact,” he said, “I saw a restaurant once with a sign that said, No Loud Americans, please.”

He saw a look on my face that suggested to him that I had another question. He said, “I am always flying in to the Atlanta airport and taking your train to downtown, and almost all the kids and young people I see are Black and polite. Some of them dress funny, but all have been friendly and rather quiet compared to what I have seen elsewhere.”

I had to scratch my head. For while I deal with large numbers of respectable, hard-working young Black students all the time, the perception from many quarters of Atlanta and throughout the United States is that to be in the company of young Black people means you will be constantly annoyed by loud music and loud conversation. Truthfully, I have encountered loud and rude behavior from young folks of all races and ethnicities right here in Atlanta, but it has not been nearly as severe or as often as some people might think.

This Turkish man taught me something about perspective and why I am glad I now strongly insist that my students and friends read foreign news reports as often as possible. The view from some place else is not the same as when you routinely see the same folks all the time, even when those folks are your own people.

Importantly, this Turkish man decided to look at Atlanta and Black people with eyes and ears that have not been trained to only focus on the disasters that are regularly reported on the six o’clock news. He has been observant enough to notice that when people encountered Americans overseas who were loud, that the loud American—stereotype or not—was not a racial stereotype, but a national one.

In the weeks and months ahead as we Black folk all process so much of the bad news about domestic abuse, gender discrimination, racial profiling, violence and war, I hope that we remember that perspectives about who and what we are as a people are not always as negative as the pundits would have us believe. I hope we also realize that the constant worry about our image is unnecessary. People here and around the globe are either intelligent enough and informed enough to form a reasonable opinion or they are not. No degree of sugar-coating or covering up anything will change perspectives in the United States or abroad.

Yet, I also hope we remember that the perspectives of people who are on the outside looking in, who do not live with us constantly, have much to tell us if we bother to listen to and look for those perspectives. Yet, the only way to listen to those perspectives and look for those other opinions abroad is to make sure we are not the loud and brass Americans that only think our perspectives matter. Peace.

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen & is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog, or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

Complicating the Simple

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Ph.D. Candidate

"Weary - Self Portrait" by Copyright © 2013 by Leslye Joy Allen. All rights reserved.

I am not going to take up too much space here rambling about the disaster that was and remains the unfunded educational program known as “No Child Left Behind” or the more recent pros and cons surrounding “Common Core” standards that were put in place in classrooms in at least 45 states. I can only say this…

In the last five plus years, I have witnessed perfectly intelligent college students who are unable to make “simple” statements about particular areas or events in history or the world they live in. I have witnessed them struggle to understand what I mean when I say, “Keep it simple.” Usually, after a few weeks, they understand or at least become comfortable with the idea that my classroom is a place where a free exchange of ideas is a requirement.

Please understand that in most colleges, History is not the regurgitation of facts, and it has not been for quite some time. It is, rather the deep analysis and questioning of why and how certain things happen; and/or why some people (or peoples) have had a history of success, failure, oppression, or any mixture of all of the above…Someone told me a few years ago that all historians were radicals. That is not true of all of us, but I did understand that person’s logic.

History on the college level has long since ceased to be “big man/big woman/exceptional man/exceptional woman history.” However, when students are unable to state the obvious, then something else is at work. I would not take anything for the beautiful efforts that my students make in order to grasp and engage the material that we study, and to pass my class. Yet, so many of them yearn for answers that are not that hard to find if one bothers to look.

Too often, students think that every question is a trick question and that every answer is hidden somewhere under a rock; or worse, that there really is a SINGLE answer to every question. Too often, I run into students who cannot answer a simple “Yes” or “No” question because somewhere along the line someone told them that to simply answer in the affirmative or negative was not enough information. An answer is always complicated, so many of them seem to think.

Too often, I encounter students who are afraid to trust their own instincts and their own common sense and personal interests. This is where both Ms. Allens (Mama and I) come in and say, “What do you think and tell me why you think it?”

There are no easy answers to this dilemma; and I do not know how much this is the result of “No Child Left Behind” or the relatively recent “Common Core” standards. Yet, we must start encouraging young students to capitalize on their personal and academic strengths and to speak their minds even if we do not like what they have to say. After all, none of us can fix anything that is broken until we learn where and how it is broken.

For more information about Common Core standards, visit this hyperlink: http://wunc.org/post/fact-check-clearing-7-common-core-claims

Leslye Joy Allen is a perpetual and proud supporter of the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog, or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author.

Artistic and Intellectual Dangers: Two Scenarios

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Ph.D. Candidate

Scenario One:

Although it now seems ages ago, I remember one of my former classmates told me something quite revelatory shortly before my graduation from Agnes Scott College. She told me that when my classes were over, and I had turned in that last paper, I was going to make a discovery: I would discover my reading and analysis addiction. I laughed. After all, I thought, we both were older when we returned to school to complete our college degrees. Were we not naturally immune to the kind of excesses that affected much younger women? Agnes Scott’s student body was and still is well over a fourth non-traditional age students, meaning students over the age of 25.

The benefit of attending school with students of various ages was that we all learned something from each other. I was a History major and every semester I was usually assigned anywhere from 18 to 22 books to read in semesters that were usually no longer than 15 or 16 weeks. When my classmate (who graduated before me) told me that after graduation she would get up at 6:00 AM just to go out to fetch the morning newspaper to read, I was certain she was telling one of her funny stories. I was wrong!

After I turned in my final paper for the Senior History Colloquium, I lounged around for a couple of days and then it started: the hunt for reading material. Now, I already owned over a thousand books. I suddenly found myself opening books and re-reading chapters of books I had read years ago; then magazines, scholarly journals, and the TV guide. I read a couple of stage plays, including the stage directions. Was it possible for me to just stop reading and just let my brain relax for a moment? Was it possible for me to pause and not do what I was trained to do? Yet, if I did read something, could I read it just for pleasure?

Like most “Scotties,” my classmate gave me some good advice. She said we all know that most people need to read more. We tell our children to read books; and there is a genuine crisis in how little some people read. Yet, she said, anything you cannot turn off for a while is controlling you, not the other way around. Reading is absolutely necessary and essential to any good education. Yet, when you have to struggle to allow yourself to take a break, there is a problem. Reading and deep analysis must always be self-directed. Deep analysis can become ineffective once it becomes an involuntary reflex.

Scenario Two:

On a few occasions, I have attended stage plays with actors. Most of these actors I love to death. We have sat in the audience making small talk before the show began and then WHAM! Less than two minutes into the production, the same actors that I love were analyzing every thing: “I wonder why the set designer placed that chair over there?” “How did the stylist get that woman’s hair to look like that?” After the play was over, the analysis really kicked into high gear: “I thought that this character should have entered from the left instead of the right.” “It was a great play, but I would have placed the intermission in a different place.” “Why was that odd sculpture on the table in the corner?” Soon I was thinking to myself, “Why, oh why, did I not just come to see this play by myself?”

Now, to be fair, all actors, playwrights, directors, and etcetera have to analyze plays like this. If they do not do this, they risk overlooking important details that might compromise the integrity of their future performances and productions. It is an exercise in understanding what works on a stage and what does not work on a stage. They cannot take anything for granted: the lighting, the set, costumes, particular moments in the script that they believe need to grab the audience’s attention. Yet, there is a problem when the criticisms and evaluations seem to run on automatic pilot. There is also a problem in not being able to simply sit in an audience and just enjoy the show.

So why are these two scenarios a bit dangerous? After all, there is every reason to complain about the lack of intellectual and artistic stimulation in society as a whole. Most of us with any degree of brains knows that putting a book in a child’s hands or taking them to see a play or to a concert is far better than giving them $200 sneakers and video games. Most of us have witnessed the performance that pandered to the audience for cheap laughs or sank into a ridiculous melodrama designed to do nothing more than make people weep. We have all read the book or essay that seemed written purely for titillation. We do not need any of that. Yet…

The danger in never being able to simply watch a performance just for sheer enjoyment is dangerously close to losing the joy of viewing performance art altogether. The danger in not being able to momentarily, put the book down or not being able to stop analyzing everything is also very close to becoming entirely disconnected from the very people you wish to reach and teach. When you watch what they watch or read what they read, do you do so through their eyes and ears? How can you know what the people expect or need to know or want to know or want to experience or need to experience unless you occasionally JOIN THEM?

So, take a moment and just chill. Every once and awhile, when you read, simply drink in whatever you are reading, and leave your criticisms, questions, and analysis for some later time. If you are watching a play or listening to a piece of music, just watch, just listen, just enjoy. Pause and try to recall when everything that you know now (or think you know now) was once perfectly fresh and new to you. Take that occasional moment to deliberately NOT review, but to renew. Then, get back to work!

Peace.

Leslye Joy Allen is a perpetual and proud supporter of the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog, or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author.

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Tag Archives: students

Complicating the Simple