The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [150]
“She used to be the best,” a few students parroted, laughing. “Used to be.”
He didn’t say anything about Joy’s classmates. The teacher had told Joy previously that he pushed her like that to motivate her. “Joy, you’re a smart girl, and I don’t do it to hurt your feelings,” he said once. “Sometimes you need to be pushed. You’re not second best; you’re the best! Plus, I like making you upset; it’s fun hearing you go back into your Jamaican . . . Mi irie, mon!”
The teacher called on a few other students, then returned to Joy. When she didn’t know an answer, she said so, and the teacher resumed his banter. “What’s wrong with you, Joy? You becoming American or what?”
Joy grew increasingly irritated, rapping her fingers against the desk. The teacher thought he was joking around, but Joy was angry. Although she liked America, she wasn’t American. She was Jamaican and proud! Why should she change for anyone?! Next to her, an abandoned textbook lay on the corner of an empty desk. Joy hit the book as hard as she could. The book dented. The class was shocked that Joy had hit the desk. She had never been physically violent before in her life. Joy felt better.
That evening, Joy told herself that this was her home now and there was no going back, so she’d just have to make the best of it. “I recognized that I lost touch with myself because I wasn’t being the best me,” she said. “I was neglecting the very being that makes Joy Joy! I love myself and should try not to be cranky. I’ll return to my accent. I behave like a Jamaican. I stick to my roots and don’t try to conform to societal pressures. And if someone’s rude to me, I will put them in their place.”
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CONFORMITY IN SCHOOLS
Amelia, an excellent student in southern Missouri, had a special relationship with her dad. When she was six years old, however, he died of brain cancer. Just before she began seventh grade, with her mother’s permission, Amelia dyed her blonde hair pink, which she called “the cancer color,” as a tribute to her beloved father. When she showed up for school, administrators sent her home. “You’re suspended until you change your hair,” they told her. The twelve-year-old was concerned about falling behind in classwork, but pledged to make her father proud by fighting to express her individuality. Only after the ACLU got involved did Amelia’s middle school revoke the suspension.
Why would a school try to control the color of a student’s hair? Amelia’s principal told a local television station, “We want it to be equal for everybody, nobody getting any more attention than anyone else, and we just go on with the process of education.” Since when is equality identical to conformity?
In the 1970s, fewer than 25 percent of U.S. residents lived in counties in which the presidential candidate won by a landslide. Thirty years later, that percentage had nearly doubled. Political partisanship, an example of the homogenization of U.S. communities, is also a force powerful enough to perpetuate sameness, politically and socially. The existence of political majorities deters minorities from voting, just as the preps’ perennial dominance of the student government at Whitney’s school caused most nonpopular seniors to skip the elections. But the impact doesn’t end there. Those voting minorities also withdraw from volunteering and other local social activities. The community loses exposure to diverse philosophies and consequently becomes more uniform. “What had happened over three decades wasn’t a simple increase in political partisanship, but a more fundamental kind of self-perpetuating, self-reinforcing social division,” Bill Bishop wrote in The Big Sort. “The like-minded neighborhood supported the like-minded church, and both confirmed the image and beliefs of the tribe that lived and worshipped there.”
One might assume that the more educated a person, the less likely he will prefer such a narrow existence. University of Pennsylvania