WHITE PEOPLE DON'T GET IT.

I hate to be blunt, but listen.

The schools in my neighborhood are much the same as the were before Bloomberg, before Giuliani, before Koch. It's a neighborhood which attracts hungry European and now Asian immigrants. They come, they pool their funds, they kick their kids into school and make them fear getting "B's" let alone failing, and they do well. My cat Larry could be teaching English. Those kids are going to find a way to understand the work and their parents will pay tutors with their last dime to do it. I know. I was one of those kids in a neighborhood which is its twin on the other side of Brooklyn.

My students, who are predominantly African-American and Hispanic do not reside in this sheltered world. And sheltered it is. My mother didn't tell me anything about the relationship of college to getting a job. That wasn't the point. You went to college because that's what snobby intellectuals did. Being a snobby intellectual was the apex of existence. Distinguishing between good music, literature, politics and food was what I was told a person lived to do. Mine, like many of the families in my neighborhood, was a family which LIED to itself every day about the hardships of life so that they could find joy within them. Going to the opera by subway and eating cold spaghetti when we got home was a glory -- the music was worth the trouble and the growling stomach.

It's easy for me to imagine how my students feel because I feel the same way. Despite those trips to hear Verdi at The Metropolitan Opera House, I no longer feel the need to even leave my house outside of going to work. The duckets matter: 40 or so dollars to sit in the Family Circle where I will see nothing although I will hear well, and then take the long subway ride home is just not a bargain to me. I can listen at home, read the review, imagine. The bottom line for me and money is always about staples and what I do with my money is about how I will survive. Every time I listen to music, I long to go back to school and get a Ph.D., but I will never do it. No jobs in it.

As Joe Biden hinted in the Vice Presidential debate, fewer people in the US can cloister themselves in the feeling that they will achieve the American Dream. My immigrant neighbors band together in groups larger than ten to buy houses or shares of businesses hoping someday to each have space of their own. They are aging more and more on my street and few people move out. I've noticed beer cans in EVERYONE's garbage these days. They're hard to overlook as the elderly Chinese immigrants in my neighborhood often go from pail to pail, looking for a misplaced can that they can add to their enormous plastic bags. For them, the rewards will not be on earth, but they imagine they will be so for their children who imagine it will be so for their children. At some point, they will tire, too. It's inevitable.

Meanwhile White People don't see what is going on. They continue to stretch their credit and push for that lucky break. It has to be there. Things look the same except that there are fewer and fewer jobs and the economy is shot. They know that, but they don't know what it means in terms of schools and education.

My students see the everyone stretched to their limit and they don't lie to themselves. Sure, they listen to pop and spend away on ridiculous trends in clothing. That's partially what's left of a dream of someday being successful and partially the result of a sense of "might as well, NOW." They know they won't be able to afford the 45 dollar hat when they get older. And a 45 dollar hat lasts forever as far as they can tell. It provides status, pleasure and it looks like what successful people wear. It's the same theory that pushed my JAPPY friends and I to buy Ralph Lauren and Lacoste in the 80's. We wanted to look like the proud and successful second and third generation Jewish immigrants we hoped to be. Now all of those clothes are in a suitcase somewhere. I can't fit into them as I have gained weight and they are very old, anyway. But, it was a way then to keep me in my dreamworld and that illusion kept me in school. It doesn't for my students because many of their heroes didn't finish school and many of their family members did and are suffering economically.

How many times did you hear of a millionaire with a "C" average or who quit school early? You blocked it out because you thought it was a fluke, or like me, you knew you had no business sense so school was your only hope. Imagine that more of the successes you know of fit that category than people in school.

I have always said that had I gone to the general public schools as they are, I would've dropped out of school and become a car thief. I have fast hands and am good at navigating through the dark. There is no comfort in the current public high school. No one even tries to sell the idea of study for its own sake, or of success based on anything but SKILLS. When I was growing up, I never heard that word. I searched for knowledge. Skills, I expected, I would gain in life, afterwards and I would apply what I knew to my work which would somehow make me better. It has been a career of problem solving, much of which I learned in school. A skill.

I no longer write on cover letters that my experience or education will be of use. I talk about my "varied skill sets".

Generally, I don't leave the house or buy anything which does not have to do with the aforementioned "sets".

If I were a student now, I'd be planning to be a nurse. I'd get an A.S. I'd try to get the B.S.N. later, but the priority would be on learning what I could do in all kinds of situations.


My students, I guess, see themselves as constantly facing challenges ahead -- handling things. When I was their age, I wanted to discover ideas, to write precisely and with authority. Sometimes I accomplish those things, but the email would be just as useful if I wrote it without punctuation and shipped it off ASAP.

All self-deprecation aside, though, I have enjoyed my education and all of my work. And the jury is still out on what will be remembered and what I will focus the bulk of my life on. I wouldn't give up a minute of the time I've spent in the theater and I haven't worked on a project yet which wasn't well respected. And, yes, it made a difference that I got that FANTASTIC education -- the quality of my life and work has been enriched by it. I've done some amazing artistic work and I have taught some terrific classes. I've ALWAYS given my students a good education and a few laughs. My students defied the odds. I get calls all the time from kids who are in college who weren't expected to graduate high school. WHO COULD REGRET THAT?

It's NOT FAIR that I got to have this kind of enriching experience very much because I am WHITE. Being WHITE made it easier to balance theater and education because I was given much more leeway than a person of color. I'm white and well-spoken and I am accorded INSTANT RESPECT because of it and THAT'S NOT FAIR. Furthermore, I got that fabulous education largely because I was fortunate enough to have a parent who could afford to send me (on scholarship, but still) to Hebrew School, which got me into Stuyvesant, which got me into Barnard and then to Stony Brook -- both of which came with scholarships. Children don't choose their parents, and those first years of education mean everything. And my Hebrew School existed for MY COMMUNITY -- white, lower-middle class Jews struggling to get ahead. Again, I got shelter and chances to enjoy things my students don't necessarily have time for because of my SKIN COLOR. And that's not fair. I COULDN'T BELIEVE how badly the public schools treat my students when I started my career and I still can't-- it is NOTHING like the way I was treated in Hebrew School or at Stuyvesant. Frankly, I was given MORE CHANCES TO FAIL. It was assumed that eventually I would get it right...because I'm a bright, nice Jewish girl. And I know that.


I don't know how to make WHITE PEOPLE get it until they have lived it. I'm one white lady who knows that our economy has drained our schools not just of their resources, but of their relevance. The crudeness of our greed has made listening to a beautiful voice not a pleasure, but an obstacle. We must now fight the distraction of art and all sentiment to see the bottom line. Keats said famously that "Truth is beauty." Then we no longer seek truth, but the answer of the moment, which is often, ugly indeed