I feel fortunate to have had opportunities to travel around the world to both see, and experience various perspectives - particularly in politics. Often times the "things I learned in grade school" turn out to be incomplete, or not even true. These are some of the challenges and opportunities I see as a Fulbright Teacher for Global Classrooms. An incredibly stark example happened last week.
But here's the crazy thing: the stickers had the message "better dead than red" with a line through a hammer and sickle. The assumption is that this racist group would pick a common enemy, communists, to try and win support for their racist cause. At the time of reading this, I was in Kerala State, which happens to be run by a communist government. There are red flags with the hammer and sickle logos everywhere, including a massive monument on the beach. Keralinians are proud of their communist party; even the familiar silhouette of Che can be found adorning bus stops and auto-rickshaws.
During my stay in Kerala state, I heard disturbing news back home in my small town of Indiana, PA. A white supremacist group had placed stickers all over town in advance of a rally organized in the public square protesting the treatment of immigrants on the U.S. Southern Border. This group was the one linked to the man sentenced to life in prison for charging his car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville in 2017.
Being Vice-President of our Boro Council, and one of the public champions of efforts to make our town more welcoming, this incident hit me pretty hard. It was tough being so far from my family and feeling like our community was being threatened. The good news is that our local police were very responsive, and the investigation is continuing to see if they can't figure out who the jerks were spreading hate.
But here's the crazy thing: the stickers had the message "better dead than red" with a line through a hammer and sickle. The assumption is that this racist group would pick a common enemy, communists, to try and win support for their racist cause. At the time of reading this, I was in Kerala State, which happens to be run by a communist government. There are red flags with the hammer and sickle logos everywhere, including a massive monument on the beach. Keralinians are proud of their communist party; even the familiar silhouette of Che can be found adorning bus stops and auto-rickshaws.
So, what's going on here? I grew up in the 80s, when communism was such a known threat that when Sting suggested Russians loved their children, it was controversial. I asked every Keralinian I could what it meant that there was a communist government. To my surprise, the answer was always two things: it means there is 100% literacy, and that there is no caste system, everyone is equal.
That's not what Ronald Reagan told me. There are plenty of free markets happening in Kerala, plenty of private property, and everyone I spoke to loved their children, too. When I pushed people about Marxist doctrine, one friend told me that actually, the communists are just politicians like the rest of them.
It has left my head spinning, and highlights the incredible dearth of perspective shown by these jerks posting stickers in Indiana, and our education system's tendency to oversimplify global differences. I hope I can intelligently convey this to my students and community at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment