[whiteperil] Sean: Visibility

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Posted by Sean:
Visibility
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1207032002.shtml


   Stephen Miller at IGF [1]posts about an Advocate [2]column responding
   to the murder of a cross-dressing fifteen-year-old who lived in a
   facility for troubled youth.
   Of course, it's partially Bush's fault. No, really. Here's part of
   Neal Broverman's Advocate piece:

     "Part of the role of a school is to teach young people how to
     function in a democracy," says Kevin Jennings, a former teacher and
     the founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and
     Straight Education Network, a national organization working to
     ensure safe schools for LGBT students. "In a democracy we protect
     the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Where are they going
     to get that lesson? They've got to learn it in school." [Note
     unassailable logic of preceding sentences--SRK]
     But they don't. At least not in the way they did before the No
     Child Left Behind Act was enacted by Congress in 2002 at the Bush
     administration's urging.
     "There's been a real retrenchment of antibullying and diversity
     programs since No Child Left Behind," says Jennings. "What that's
     done is establish standardized testing as the only measure of good
     schools. In the late '90s there was a lot of momentum around
     multiculturalism and diversity. That was really reversed by this
     imposition of standardized testing. A lot of educators are
     frustrated because they understand the importance of addressing
     some of these larger [social] efforts, but when they try to they're
     told, 'You've just got to get the math scores up.'"
     Is standardized testing the only measure of school performance
     that's currently given weight? I'm no education expert, but my
     understanding is that schools are still [3]rated according to their
     safety standards; it's hard to believe that a pattern of violent
     bullying that goes unpunished wouldn't be factored in
     there--assuming the reporting administrators are being honest.
     Keeping schools from finding ways to cook the numbers to make
     themselves look better has been a major issue since the program was
     first implemented. Still, that doesn't mean the shift from trying
     to teach kids huggy multiculturalism to trying to teach them math
     is in and of itself a bad one.
     There was a violence prevention program in place at the school that
     attempted to teach kids how to manage their emotions and empathize
     with others. Would a gay-straight alliance or more explicit
     attention to tolerance of gay kids have helped? Possibly. But
     victim Larry King and shooter Brandon McInerney did not study at a
     run-of-the-mill public school; it was a junior high for kids with
     emotional problems and chaotic family circumstances.
     Broverman delivers the usual coarse generalities about "violence as
     a solution to conflict" (bad, very bad), but he raises the
     common-sense point that maybe King's elders should have taught him
     a bit more caution when it came to wearing heels and eye makeup and
     adopting a flippant, teasing persona in a school full of teenagers
     with emotional adjustment issues. Miller reports that a cadre of
     social welfare busybodies naturally flipped out:

     Braverman [sic--his name is Broverman according to the by-line]
     raised serious issues that are certainly worth discussing. But his
     piece provoked strong criticism from certain activist quarters, as
     in this [4]Open Letter to The Advocate from "lawyers, advocates,
     and child welfare professionals" who declare "hiding fuels hatred"
     and that "We cannot keep children safe by hiding them. Succumbing
     to fear creates an environment in which hatred thrives.
     Invisibility is just another, more insidious, killer." [A
     dumbfounding thing to say in connection with a child whose
     flamboyance just got him shot--SRK]

     That sounds a awful lot like the kind of sloganeering that is meant
     to stifle open discussion rather than foster it. Gay adults know
     that, if they choose, they can walk hand in hand down a street of a
     non-gay neighborhood--and they know that in a great many
     neighborhoods they will risk getting beaten (or worse) for it.
     That's a choice adults can make.

     I think Miller shows impressive restraint. What kind of moron do
     you have to be to go around telling children that they can just go
     around expressing themselves however they like and expect the world
     to love them for it? Or even to expect those who do love them for
     it to be able to bail them out every time they land themselves in
     trouble? I daresay that most people go through junior high school
     hiding what they are to some extent; that's how you get along.
     Teenagers learn through trial and error, as their personalities are
     gelling, how much they're willing to hold back in order to avoid
     making waves and how much they're not. This is not just a gay
     issue.
     In a free society, the authorities aren't policing everywhere you
     go and everything you do. You can go about your business as a
     law-abiding citizen without being watched all the time, but the
     trade-off is that you can get yourself into dangerous situations
     when no one is in a position to help you. It only takes minutes to
     get beaten up, and less than that to get stabbed or shot. (In this
     particular case, one of the issues is how McInerney managed to get
     a gun onto school property undetected; but then, if he was that
     much bigger and stronger than King, he could probably have broken
     his neck or banged his head hard enough to kill him without a
     weapon.) Eliminating the real dangers gays face is not going to
     happen by griping that they shouldn't exist and teaching young
     people to pretend they don't.

References

   1. http://www.indegayforum.org/blog/show/31487.html
   2. http://www.advocate.com/print_article_ektid52689.asp
   3. http://www.reason.com/news/show/36161.html
   4. http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid53081.asp