Saturday, February 14, 2009

Dangerous Minds

Have you ever seen one of those movies where a white mentor shows ghetto kids the “right” way to live? From Dangerous Minds, to Freedom Writers, there seems to be an endless supply of pretty white women waving the white man’s banner of education and authority, to an unruly congregation of minorities. She is female, skinny, over educated, and oh so benevolent. I mean, she made it to the upper echelons of the elite, so of course she is the direct instrument of God. Her lesson plans are the embodiment of the living gospel. What these movies negate is that freedom is not found through the teaching of a more “correct” set of rules to follow. Gilded chains of the massa, at the end of the day, are still tools of bondage. Freedom is found through the equitable distribution of humanization. To be human is to be fully engaged in the process of creating, re-creating, and the negating, of our socially constructed universe. If the weight of a Harvard Graduate naming of the world, out weighs a crake addicts naming of the world, than freedom is lost for all. True freedom can only be found through the emancipation from a system that translates differences into backwardness. It seems to me that the “dangerous Minds” are not those of the ghetto students, but those of the ignorant teachers.
On this note, I have gained distaste for the term “developing country.” Developing? Developing into what, us? In my lifetime the world’s population will reach an epidemic 10 billion people! The world can’t support 10 billion Americans. Remember Life boat ethics? Plus, we are nothing to be developed into. Yet, we continue to believe the solution to war, famine, AIDS, and poverty, is a conversion to a America gospel, hallelujah! No, a “would like to supersize those” lifestyle is nothing that should be exported!

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