"My Name is Not Annie"

By: Liberate Zealot

I’ve worked with children and adults from Ireland, Poland, Russia, French, Hawaii, China, India, Iran, and who are African-American, all of whom have had “traditional” names that could be difficult for people of other cultures to pronounce. 

I’ve always made the effort to pronounce people’s names correctly, and every other teacher and adult I know has made the same effort for Niamh from Ireland, Katarzyna from Poland, and Guillaume from France. Not so for Jinyue or WeiWei from China, Negeen from Iran, or the African-American La-a or Aungenette, or say, Quvenzhané.  When these white teachers and adults who struggle so much for white people with long names or sounds unfamiliar to English tongues don’t care.  A close approximation is good enough, or else it’s:

“Don’t you have an English/nick name?” 

“I’m going to call you…”

As if not working our white person tongues, or feeling embarrassed from mispronouncing a name while we struggle to get it right, is more important than the feelings and identities of people of color.  

And if your response to this is “Well I’d call Katarzyna ‘Kat’ or some other nick name, or everyone with long names has a shortened version” than you’re missing the biggest part, the historical/racial context.

For centuries white people, Europeans, have forced name changes upon people of color. We’ve done it to Asian immigrants.  To the Native Americans from “King Phillip” all the way down to the children in the Christian re-education schools in the 1960s.  We’ve done it to the Africans we enslaved, and in modern times by refusing to hire people with “black sounding” names.  Sure, that history isn’t *our* fault, but if you don’t want to be associated with it then don’t repeat it by refusing to call people of color by their real names. 

Attribution Theory and White Male Mass Murder

By: Liberate Zealot
Content Warning: Mass shootings, White Supremacy, Christian Supremacy, Eliminationist Language

In Education Attribution Theory students perceive their unexpected successes and failures and attribute these events to internal or external causes.  Do they think it's about internal and/or controllable things like their effort and ability or external/uncontrollable luck or their teachers?  Education psychologists and researchers have examined this theory among different ages, genders, and countries to understand the different ways students make use of Attribution Theory.  When I was studying Education I was taught, though not everyone agrees with this, that as a whole boys and girls have different types of Attribution.  When something good happens, like they unexpectedly pass a test, boys attribute it to themselves, their efforts and ability.  Girls are more likely to attribute this to luck.  However, this method of internal vs. external attribution flips when students unexpectedly fail a test.  Then girls attribute this failure to themselves (they aren't smart enough, they need to study harder), whereas boys attribute unexpected failure to outside influences, specifically an unfair/bad teacher. These findings are based on white children.  African American students are more likely to consistently attribute failure and success to their teachers, ability, environment, and luck (all sources outside their control).

The point is people attribute things based on how they're socialized.  White (cis)men/boys think that success is all them, while failure is attributed to the fault of some Other. Think about that for a moment and then start to apply that theory to the culture at large. Then go a step further and think about how this relates to the recent (and past) mass shootings and terrorist/hate crime attacks on non-christian religious centers.