In the Corners of Their Minds

Work is kicking my butt.I must have blocked out the stress that comes with teaching. The stress that comes with working insane hours and trying to take care of your family at the same time.

It's funny how you forget how bad it all really is. I can do without all the the deadlines, planning, the grading, and "high maintenance" parents you can never please. You forget how easily you can be discriminated against because you look too young, too nervous, too brown. Because contrary to what my 6th graders may think, racism, ageism, and all those other wonderful factors you can get discriminated for are alive and well.

It may not always be apparent. It appears in many forms masking itself in new euphemistic phrases. It lurks on the tips of peoples' tongues, in the back corners of peoples' minds. It hides in between lines of dialogue and print. It's there tainted by experiences and stereotypes that refuse to die.

As long as there is at least one person on this earth who is a carrier of racist attitudes, it will be replicated, multiplied, and perpetuated.It may take on a new form much like a virus mutates and changes to avoid detection, but it will still be there sitting in the remote mental corners of its host to be further replicated and spread. A virus without a known cure. A virus that still has the ability to disorient me, make feel weak and my stomach turn. An incapacitation I could do without, and the anger that proceeds because I let it take hold of me.