Teaching White Students Showed Me the Difference Between Power and Privelege

 

“It’s hard to get right when the free folks out there are more trapped than the criminal folks in jail. I just want to be free” (Brown).

Yet again, I found myself reading another work from Mr. Kiese Laymon. This week, I read an essay entitled, “Teaching White Students Showed Me the Difference Between Power and Privilege”. This work was found on his website under the extension of essays. I originally began reading another essay, which was going to be the topic of my blog; however, this essay caught my attention the second time around of searching for a piece to analyze.

The work itself was everything I expected as far as a powerful message being delivered, which as I said in my last entry, Mr. Laymon does a fine job at. Mr. Laymon speaks of the connections formed between him and a man in Poughkeepsie, New York, as well as observations as an educator, and the links between the two. The essential message within the text is the repetition of the “black cycle” of supporting “white folks”, and how, as Mr. Laymon states it, “Americans with the least access to healthy choice and second chances are given the harshest punishments” (Laymon).

The piece is in no way a work that slanders any race per se, but it is honest in the view and foundation of the social structures that we as Americans have experienced so long, and how we have come so numb to the feelings of society we find being slandered comfortable. I would say that this piece touches my inner activist. I personally love works that are blunt and aware that the world we are in is crueler to some more than others, and there are not as many people as it should be who are trying to change this because people are turning a blind eye to what does not affect them negatively.

The only downsides of this essay were a few missed opportunities that I feel Mr. Laymon could have explored. In my opinion, the best way to explain without spoiling the work itself is that he speaks of a student and the student’s characteristics, but he never speaks on the student’s own comments or how the student reacts to the circumstances he is born with. I believe him being an educator, then he would most definitely see his student’s comfortability in his life or his self-awareness to the standards.

As far as the writing, on a positive note, the essay is written in the form of a story; however, it is embedded with personal thoughts and logic from Mr. Laymon. The work itself is not long, but for its length, I am very impressed with how well Mr. Laymon packed so much depth into the essay. So many well-written points and lines were put into it that it makes a very rich read. I most definitely recommend this work to any who are interested, and I encourage writers to read more works from Mr. Laymon. If you would like to read this essay, click here.

Author: Amory Campbell

You're given a horn and told to listen for sound. You know of no other with that horn however you rely on the fact that you are told to listen for sound, so you wait for a sound that may never come while holding a horn that makes the noise you are looking for. I write because I waited for a voice to write what was in my own head for far too long. I expected someone to make a noise that I knew I could make. I write because not only do I want my words to touch someone's heart or pick their brain to make them take a second and reflect, but also to tell at least one person standing in a busy crowd waiting for a noise that there is a horn right in their hand that blows as loud as they want it to.