The Art of Unlearning

The evolution of humanity is not a threat

Going back to college after 30 years has been a process of learning and unlearning. Raised by a very liberal artist/activist in the deep South in the 1970s, I always thought I knew a lot about inequality. But then again, I was white.

My mother taught me and my sisters all the right things. Showed us the right books. Took us to the right movies. I always knew that being a liberal intrinsically meant being on the right side of history. Being from the deep South during that time often put us on the opposing side of what the people around us believed. I was taught a South Carolina history that favored the Confederacy. Most of my friends used the “n” word around me even though I asked them not to, and I heard a million excuses as to why that word didn’t mean what I thought it did. My mother once made a cheerleader walk a mile beside our car at an away game for using a racial slur. I used to feel this way of thinking absolved me from the racism that surrounded us. I used to think I understood everything.

My mother laid the groundwork, but it wasn’t until one of my first college classes as an adult more than 12 years ago that I started to see things for how they really were. Social Science 101 showed me that my liberal ideals weren’t just opinions; they were science. They weren’t just the things my family believed in. They were truths that were more than philosophical. They could be proven and quantified through data. They are as close to the truth as you can get.

Once I started truly opening my eyes to other perspectives, I learned about mass incarceration and how prisons were created as a substitute for slave labor. I learned that Texas wanted to secede because Mexico outlawed slavery. How environmental racism swallows and poisons minority neighborhoods. That so many systems (politics, art, music, tech, education) are stacked against minorities. That all of these things and their ramifications are happening all around us all the time. And there is still so much to unlearn. So many cultures and opinions and complexities to the human condition to explore. America is a crazy, mixed-up place full of contradictions and tragedies—sacrifices and salvations that have made us who we are, and as much as politicians and pontificators want you to think “who we are” is just one thing, we are far from homogeneous. We are many.

In my Shakespeare class, we’ve been reading about the 2010 Arizona HB 2281 that banned Mexican American Studies (MAS) in Tucson Unified School District. The ban was found unconstitutional in 2017, but it certainly set the stage for what we see in education and the government now. In 2024, Texas enacted SB 17 banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and offices at public universities. Classes are being canceled, professors fired, and students are terrified, all because white people are scared of minorities being empowered through information. Afraid that somehow their dominion will be diminished by lifting others up. They claim white students are traumatized and shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for transgressions of the past, even when we are living in a world that was created by that past. Those restrictions are currently being enacted government-wide, with some corporations, media outlets, and municipalities following suit.

In one of the videos we watched about Arizona HB 2281, a student said that her MAS class didn’t make her hate white people, it made her love herself. I have cried more than once thinking about her words. Whenever someone says something that makes me uncomfortable, I try to lean in and listen. I fight against the part of myself that wants to default into old ways of being, old ways of thinking, because it’s easy. I try and keep an open mind about the ways I contribute to the patriarchy without realizing it. I don’t feel guilty. I want to be better. I don’t get everything right, but I sure as hell know when I’m wrong.

I am proud of who I am. I struggle to love myself, just like a lot of people do. I’m proud of myself because I work hard and try to be kind even if I fail sometimes. The evolution of humanity, to me, is not a threat. I can love everything I am and leave space and room for the other people around me to love themselves without diminishing who I am and what I’ve earned.

I am not a scholar of equal rights. I am not as smart as Madeline Sayet, who writes plays about being Mohegan and challenging the system of Shakespeare and is so fucking brilliant that it makes me want to just shut up and listen forever. I am not Dolores Huerta, who is a champion of the Chicano Rights movement and has spent her life for a cause she’s willing to die for. I am not Augusta Savage, a sculptor and a revolutionary of the Harlem Renaissance who helped other African Americans achieve the kind of arts education she was denied. Nor am I Gavin Grimm, a trans young man who risked everything to sue the shit out of his school board in Virginia for discrimination and won.

I am just a middle-aged white lady who is going back to school, completely fired up by all these things I am learning and unlearning.

There are really shitty things happening around us all right now, even beyond the big-ticket stuff that is playing on repeat in the news. In my neck of the woods, there is Texas v. Becerra, where a group of 17 states are suing the United States government to get rid of Section 504, a law that protects people with disabilities. And don’t get me started on the Texas school voucher wars.

I know all of it seems like too much. Too much to handle. Too much to do anything about. Just know that in this new world where people are being marginalized more than ever for their race/color/religion/disability/gender, you don’t have to be an activist or run for office or start a revolution. You just have to keep learning and unlearning. And pay attention. You have to love yourself enough to stand up for what’s right. You have to love this country and the people who populate it enough to shut up when it is time for others to speak and speak out when it’s time to stand up for someone.

The time is now, friends.