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Mental health seemed taboo in the all-girls, Catholic high school I attended for four years. During this time, my parents were going through a divorce, but internal family problems seemed to never subside even before then. I missed a significant amount of school from the middle until the end of my time there, not because I was a bad student, but because I didn’t want to speak or interact in any way with another human being. On days that I did muster up the mental capacity to wake up and put on my frumpy uniform topped off with the signature saddle shoes I loathed, I would drag through the day wishing I could just go home and curl into bed. Even though my grades never got too bad, my mental health was unstable. When the school finally instilled mini therapy sessions for all students to try out, I thought this could help my severe depression. I expressed my grievances with the therapist they assigned, and she was less than useful. High school students should be given the opportunity to have access to free, confidential mental health professionals without feeling like they need to walk on eggshells for saying the wrong thing. I want to educate myself more on how mental health is being handled in public schools, at least, since all private institutions seem to vary too drastically from the next. I would like to do a podcast on the importance of mental health in educational institutions, especially high school. This is a time where I felt trapped with nowhere to turn. I wish there was an easy way to access a good therapist who was experienced enough to at least refer me to someone else. The YouTube video we watched in class called “Boom” reminded me of a time in high school when I needed help the most. I hope to use this video as inspiration for the podcast I want to create. 

Dominguez, Sammy, and Zachary Taylor. “Boom.” Accessed on 26 April 2020. https://youtu.be/sllLtmP6_n0.

Stephanie Tate shared her experience with Teen Vogue as a black woman at a predominantly white school, North Carolina State University. In her article, What It’s Like to Be Black at a Predominantly White School, Tate explains how she was first set on attending a historically black college or university. She expresses her lack of resources when compared to the white students she was surrounded by in high school. Their generational wealth led them to educational ties, something she didn’t have. This idea of attending an HBCU shifted when she grew to really enjoy NC State during a tour. Once she began her college career, she indulged herself in the black community and found a sense of community within this PWI. However, this shifted as she got older and advanced in grade levels. It seemed to get increasingly worse the older she got. During one incident, Tate recounts a time when she was “shoved and called a monkey while exiting a food court on campus.” She continues, “I felt violated and unvalued.” 

Whenever students of color protested, Tate describes actions that wreak of insensitivity, ignorance, and most profoundly, racism. When she discusses how students of color were told they were being too sensitive about a topic that heavily concerned themselves, she is describing an experience many white students cannot and will not experience while in college. This article can be targeted at a few different audiences. It could be targeting students of color who are deciding on what school to go to and may have doubts, students of color who are experiencing similar interactions in a PWI, and even white students who will never be able to understand what it’s like to be a minority in such an institution. There are challenges white people will never understand because of their skin color. 

“In the fall semester, students were caught using the N word and speaking about bringing guns to a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in the app GroupMe. Towards the end of the fall semester, white supremacist fliers surfaced around campus and one ended up in a Nubian Message newsstand,” says Tate. The Nubian Message was an African-American newspaper at NC State. Despite experiencing such actions as described, she ends her article off by saying how with every racist incident, there are even more positives that follow. She says there are love and support from black students, faculty, and staff and that your experience at a school such as this one is what you make it. She reassures the readers that she is stronger and more resilient as a person after all of this turmoil. It’s a beautiful message for those who may feel scared and uncertain about attending a PWI and not being able to find a community there. She shows that it is possible and closes with, “At my PWI I have found a community of scholars who look like me, allies willing to stand in the gap, and a plethora of love. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Before reading “Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory: A Rhetorical Trope to Raise Awareness About Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic Studies” by Aja Y. Martinez, I was frankly quite skeptical that an allegory could act as a tool of resistance and have any stable ground to raise awareness. An allegory is a story that teaches you something. The story itself is not true, but the experiences and emotions can reflect the life of someone we couldn’t possibly understand ourselves. Martinez refers to Derrick Bell, a prominent voice in Critical Race Theory or CRT, who seeks to make invisible forms visible. Bell has used historical events and contemporary American legislation to supplement his allegories. Through his dramatization of real events that took place, Bell “ illustrates the imminent threat of cultural erasure posed when a people are denied the right to their history; a real threat in Arizona’s anti-ethnic studies climate” (Martinez 1).

Martinez writes this allegory about a first-generation American and college student respectively, Dr. Rosette Benitez. Before graduating and becoming a pioneer in the biomedical engineering field, Benitez recounts her time living with a host white family during the school year so she could attend a college preparatory high school. She compares the traditions or lack thereof of her family and the family she stays with. The family she stays with drinks hard liquor three times a day, never interact much with each other, and speaks more to their Consuelo than their own parents. Dr. Benitez recalled how strange it was that everything was done for them and she didn’t have to clean up after herself. At home, she had to do her own chores and family members drank only on special occasions. And if they did drink, it was just beer. These comparisons show the difference in home life that Benitez was able to encounter, showing readers a perspective we would otherwise not have been able to understand. 

What really changed the narrative for me was Dr. Benitez’s mentality that if her other family members worked just as hard as her, they could’ve done what she did. They just didn’t want it as badly. We know this is all not true and that minorities have not been given equal opportunities throughout history and even today. She realizes this isn’t true once Senator Borne proposes the use of Dr. Benitez as the face of this miraculous injection that makes people live forever.  This medical breakthrough was going to be made available only to pure descendants of the founding fathers, which are all white people. This would mean that everything Dr. Benitez worked for would result in the erasure of all minorities, including her own.

After reading about this fake bill proposed by Senator Borne, I was able to understand what House Bill 2281 really meant. This “equal” treatment of all students is not actually fair because you’re dismissing the underrepresented students who have cultural ties that are being cut due to this type of education they’re not receiving. This bill threatens school districts with a ten percent cut in funding if they fail to abide by these rules, which inhibit the teachings of cultural solidarity. Being able to understand this allegory helps to put into perspective an issue I can’t necessarily relate to. I’m not fully a minority and have never experienced what it’s like to be a first-generation American or college student. An allegory like this can really make people sit back and realize it’s not all about hard work when it comes to making it in this country. 

Works Cited:

Martinez, Aja Y. “ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISM: TEACHING RHETORIC AND WRITING Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory: A Rhetorical Trope to Raise Awareness About Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic Studies Aja Y. Martinez, Binghamton University-SUNY.” Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory, pp. 1–17.

Min-zhan Lu’s experience with conflict between her home and school language/ writing has shaped her into the person she is today after she was finally able to form her own voice. After reading her article “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle,” it is apparent Lu tried her best to separate her thoughts engrained in her from home and the radical thoughts enforced on her at school. Her experience with language began as a pleasant one that came with the forewarning that English equated to success. Her parents told Lu how her grandfather kept losing jobs because he couldn’t speak and attributed Lu’s father’s success to his ability to speak English. Lu makes this journey from resenting English lessons after school to feeling proud of her ability to speak English and then ashamed for ever speaking English and only using it at home. This newfound pride after Lu’s homeroom teacher asked for help. She says, “It was only after my homeroom teacher had “sanctified” English that I began to connect English with my education. I became a much more eager student in my tutorials” (Lu 438). 

Eventually in high school, her educators made it a point to single her out for being part of an upper class and shamed her and her family for not being members of the working class. China was transitioning into a socialist country and these social identities that arose were very significant. After Lu’s aunt was criticized for speaking English and labeled as a Rightist by her colleagues,  Lu made the connection that since China’s enemies were the Americans and British, so was the English language. She goes on to say, “I began to see my parents’ choice of a family language as an anti-Revolutionary act and was alarmed that I had participated in such an act” (Lu 439). 

Lu made it a point to only speak English at home and Standard Chinese at school. She connected English with the Bourgiouse and Standard Chinese with the working class. Even though she rejected communist thinking and was told by her father to only learn math and science from school, she found herself having an issue balancing her own thoughts and writing. She realized this struggle when she reported on The Revolutionary Family and realized she couldn’t hand in the first version because she emphasized and analyzed the wife’s moment of weakness as she deliberated sending encouraging her son to join the revolution. She wrote a new copy that would fulfill the communist standards her school enforced but kept the first copy in her desk. She also couldn’t show it to her family because they would be shocked to hear she enjoyed such a book. “My parents would have been shocked to learn that I could like such a book in the same way they liked Dickens” (Lu 443). She sets this standard that if she could still tell right from wrong in these readings that she had a good sense of control over the two. This became more and more difficult for her and Lu fears the impurities she produced in her writings whether she was careful or not. Lu began second-guessing her words and their meanings. However, this loss of “spontaneity” was a product of her conflict.

She realizes eventually that writing is a tool that can be used to maneuver through educated arguments and readily available when needed. It is this struggle with her thoughts and writing that made her realize how is she able to navigate writing through a “discourse.” Lu refrains from putting this pressure on her own daughter who she believes is handling the cross of languages a lot better than she did growing up. 

I have never had this conflict, but these were different times and depending on a student’s country of origin I’m sure there are students today who feel strongly about this subject and the conflict engrossed in feuding languages/ their political meanings.

Source: Lu, Min-Zhan. “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle.” College English, vol. 49, no. 4, 1987, p. 437., doi:10.2307/377860.

With an unequal distribution of education in the first place, it’s hard for me to completely say whether or not a language is right or wrong. Some people were not given the tools or education to learn standard English and some people don’t speak standard English at home. I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and education system. I even had a speech pathologist as a child so I could pronounce all of my consonants and vowels correctly. For most of my childhood, I had a stereotypical, New York Italian accent since because of my dad. I guess before I was born, my mother from Jersey spoke like that even though her parents have heavy Filipino accents. It’s very confusing. But growing up, I was taught Spanish throughout middle school, high school and half of college. Latin was another language I was forced to learn, that in which I earned a lovely 50% on the final since I didn’t think it was important and no other school on Staten Island made this a requirement. Eventually, I came to the idea that speaking properly without a New York accent sounded a lot more educated and would be better for my career as a broadcast journalist. My entire accent transformation is available through my YouTube channel where you can watch my speech change over the past 9 years. Cringy— I know. 

In Staten Island, however, a lot of the Italian-American people who honestly probably have never been to Italy in their entire lives, pronounce so many Italian words wrong. Calamari sounds like “galamad” and soppressata sounds like “soop-uh-sohd”. A year ago when I went to Italy and asked the true opinion of a native Italian did I learn for a fact that these pronunciations were horribly wrong. I was embarrassed because when you go back to the origin, you hear the best version of the word. I still pronounce words like calamari and mozzarella wrong, but that’s because it’s how I was raised and sometimes I will feel out of place in a social situation with my Italian-American friends if I say it the proper way.

The whole reason why non-standard English is scrutinized is because of the implementation of institutions by white people who colonized America. I feel like this topic has too many circles to go in because what is the standard supposed to be? Is there supposed to be a standard? If there is no standard then how do will we be graded and tested? Is this standard fair? For example, if you’re writing a medical journal on the coronavirus, using non-standard English could possibly confuse people and lead to discrepancies. In a medical case, you would want to use standard English. But, in other cases that don’t need standard- English to convey a message very precisely such as a memoir or personal narrative, I feel like that’s fine to speak however one would like. I don’t know. I’m confused. Because also copula absence or the absence of using the verb ‘to be’ in a sentence historically roots back to West Africa. But, a double negative doesn’t as far as I know. However, the Students’ Rights to Their Own Language says, “ If teachers understand that the spoken language is always primary and the written language is a separate and secondary or derived system, they will be able to recognize that students inexperienced in the written system may still have great competence and facility in the spoken language.” If a student can’t pass a standard exam, it doesn’t mean they aren’t smart and don’t understand the idea of the text. It may just be that they’re not used to standard phrasing and structure, which is rewarded by passing. I don’t believe a student should be corrected if they speak non-standard English. They may very well be articulate in their own home language, which should not be discredited and looked down upon.

Zitkala-sa’s experiences depicted in her personal narrative “The School Days of an Indian Girl” subvert Pratt’s binary of Indian savagery and civilized whiteness. This narrative shares a first -hand account of the effects of the Carlisle School. These traumatizing and life-changing experiences are true testaments to the fact that this school was made to deny children of their culture and drain them of any individuality. 

Zitkala-sa immediately describes a simple morning she shares with her mother as they walk along the river. Just by describing the free-spirited nature of her hair in the wind and the feeling of her soft moccasins on her feet, an image is painted of simplicity and freedom. Pratt describes Indians as savages and this first story contradicts the idea that they are uncivilized people. 

What truly shows her open-mindedness and even her child-like innocence, is her willingness to go to the school when a representative addresses her family. After some deliberation, her mother asks if she wants to leave, to which Zitkala-sa responds, “Oh, mother, it is not that I wish to leave you, but I want to see the wonderful Eastern land.” 

When Zitkala-sa finally gets there, she is forced to cut her hair. Hair to her and her family symbolizes more than just hair. “Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards,” she expressed. The “gnawing” of the scissors cutting her hair brings on the feeling of that uncomfortable reform she must now go through. 

Pratt makes it seem as though he is doing the Indians a favor, almost as though it is an act by God for him to “help” the “uncivilized”. The uncivilized thing about this entire story is the way the palefaces treat Zitkala-sa, the other Indian children, and their families before them. Zitkala-sa also brings up the story her mother told her about her late sister who got sick and couldn’t survive essentially being herded out of their homes by the palefaces. Her mother says “Well, it happened on the day we moved camp that your sister and uncle were both very sick. Many others were ailing, but there seemed to be no help. We traveled many days and nights; not in the grand, happy way that we moved camp when I was a little girl, but we were driven, my child, driven like a herd of buffalo.” By attempting to humanize and civilize the Indians, Pratt and his administration of people are hypocrites. 

By telling her own story and various experiences through this narrative, Zitkala-sa is able to flip the script on the conversation of Indian savagery and civilized whiteness. Without her narrative, a piece of history is excluded and a perspective lost.

The first chapter of Paolo Friere’s book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Friere explores the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Oppression seems to stem from the need for one party to humanize another party of individuals who aren’t deemed as qualified enough to exist in society without an authoritarian figure. In this case, the oppressors seek humanization, but end up dehumanizing the individuals instead.

Friere further discusses how the oppressed become the oppressors or seek to become like the oppressor even though it is not their desired goal. When humanity is stripped from an oppressed person, Friere says they strive to obtain power and become “sub-oppressors.” “Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity,” says Friere. This warped sense of humanity may seem reasonable because they were denigrated and tyrannized.

One could also say that this same idealistic manhood they seek also enables them to selfishly ensure their own freedom by overpowering others. They may willingly ignore the need to liberate others because they want to make sure nothing like this will happen to them again. He also goes on to say, “It is a rare peasant who, once “promoted” to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner himself. This is because the context of the peasant’s situation, that is, oppression, remains unchanged.” Originally, I could not understand this sort of selfishness towards your own people who have suffered with you, but then I remembered a simple childhood memory where I was part of a small population of girls at my lunch table that didn’t own any of the Littlest Pet Shop toys. These tiny, plastic toys determined whether or not you were going to be made fun of or included in this elite group of Littlest Pet Shop toy owners. Once my mother let me finally become a gratified owner of my one and only plastic dog, I too looked down on the other girls who couldn’t proudly participate during lunchtime. This extremely menial scenario simplifies the concept of a peasant becoming an oppressor and treating their former comrades as poorly as the oppressor once did.

Another affliction for the oppressed occurs when the idea of freedom. Some people do not want to stray from a routine they’re so used to following, especially if they were born into a certain life and this is all they know. Freire introduces the idea of prescription and says, “Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness.” Ones own ideas may have been inherited from the oppressor who makes the oppressed feel as if this is what they want for themselves not just what is being forced onto them. This reminds me of Stockholm syndrome where the victim feels true affection and trust for their captor. This warped idea of the captor being in any way loveable is sick, but it’s also a result of abuse.