No guns yesterday. Just tons of racial tension. And hope.

I’m not sure what makes me sadder: guns being an issue at Ms. Dancer’s school or an escalation in racial tension there. This has never been characteristic of this school and it shouldn’t be now.

One of the distinguishing (and attractive) features of this school has always been the way such diverse ethnic and social groups were mashed up into one place without the usual expectation for racial tension. It’s an interesting school demographically. It sits in the middle of a strawberry field, serves students from areas as different as night is to day. Because it is in a rural area, Hispanic students comprise a slight majority, but there are also black, Samoan, and Asian students from different neighborhoods, along with the students like Ms. Dancer, who come from our bedroom community to the east. It’s the only school in the district that serves teenage moms (there’s an on-site daycare center), deaf students, and severely developmentally disabled students. Somehow, that amazing mashup of diverse backgrounds, abilities, language barriers and skills has come together into a school that has always felt like a family.

As evidence, it has the highest number of teachers who actually graduated from the school. They come back, because they want to teach where they learned.

And yet, there’s this:

Gonzales said five boys were suspended for their involvement in the fight Thursday. Gonzales said two boys — one black and one Latino — were “throwing things at each other” last week, which escalated into a fight at the end of Thursday’s lunch period.

“One group of kids happened to be predominantly Latino and the other predominantly black,” Gonzales said. “Staff quickly broke up the fight, and the five students involved were held accountable for their actions. To my knowledge, no one was seriously injured.”

Gonzales said the rumors about someone bringing weapons onto campus began through text messages and soon went viral on Facebook and MySpace over the long Presidents Day weekend. An automated call went out to parents Tuesday morning to inform them of last week’s fight and of the precautionary measures taken.

This concerns me, but it doesn’t surprise me. Race is the boiling lava under a taut surface now. Say it: we elected a black guy as President, a black guy who is brilliant, admired more abroad than he is at home, a guy who lives his example as much as he talks about it. Teapartiers can deny their racist bent all day long, but it’s a hollow denial.

Now it’s right in front of me:

“As a whole, I do not believe racial tension is a huge problem” at Rio Mesa, Gonzales said. “This is the first incident this (school) year that possibly involves a racial component to it. I believe 95 percent of our students come here to do the right thing day in and day out.”

Race is an issue in our politics and in our lives, and the loaded, hot, ugly talk that spills out from that 5% that doesn’t come to do the right thing is bubbling out after years and years of suppression. I see it all the time on Twitter, on the news, on blogs and in news reports. Only a few actually have the nerve to be overt about it. More are inclined to be more subtle, like Tom Tancredo, who didn’t actually come out and attribute President Obama’s election to ignorant minorities even though he did, in fact, do exactly that.

It’s one thing to consider it in the relatively safe sphere of social media. It’s entirely another to see it play out in the lives of our children. I am serious when I tell you that my kids have not considered race to be an issue in how they choose their friends and how highly they regard them. This is true not only of them, but of all of the kids I’ve been privileged to know over the years there. So what’s different?

To me, what’s different is the constant drumbeat, the hammer of individual actions alongside a barrage of media messages that suggest race is an issue in our national and local politics, that it somehow deserves to be an issue, and the subtle messaging that anyone who isn’t white as snow is dangerous. It’s irresponsible, it’s incendiary, and it’s personal.

Maybe it’s time for the President to do a reprise of his 2008 speech on race. Maybe we all should start being honest about the damage done every time a tea partier stands up with a sign like this one. Or these.

Jonathan Weiler has written quite a bit on how race is used by the right as a tool to define the President as a scary black person. It’s a cynical and deeply destructive tactic, which they’re using as a political wedge just like they’ve used religion and abortion in the past. Mind you, the architects of the scheme aren’t in the least bit afraid. They simply understand what reaching into others’ fears means in terms of their own political gain.

The problem, of course, is the message and tacit permission to all those folks who truly are afraid of someone who looks different from them. It invites them to be as hateful as they please, and by reinforcing the message over and over again, it plays out in other less directly related contexts. I believe we’re seeing that here in our little conservative conclave that also happens to have more folks with brown skin than folks with white skin. that reach into irrational, base fear appeals to a deeper, unspoken fear some have about their own identity in an increasingly diverse world.

In fact, that effort – to de-legitimize brown skin as a fundamental part of the American fabric – has become a core feature of the contemporary right (or at least, to make sure brown skin knows its proper place). It’s at the heart of the insane birther movement – the entirely baseless claim that the current president was not born in America. Needless to say, Obama’s place of birth isn’t the problem. It’s the double indignity of a mixed race, brown-skinned man with a Kenyan father insisting on the proposition that the government can, and should, do something to aid those less fortunate, including many who do not fit the right-wing’s view of authentic Americans.

If media, bloggers, and commenters paid no attention to the overtly racist message of the tea party people, who would be harmed? It seems to me that blending pent-up populist anger with hot buttered racism is a recipe for disaster. Indeed, that’s exactly what threatened to play out yesterday morning at my daughter’s school.

I’d much rather call it what it is, deal with it straight up, reject the politics of fear and go back to the language of hope. Have you noticed how the hope message was hijacked by both left AND right with the willing assistance of our mainstream media? It’s time to reject the fear frame and its use as a dividing line for our country, our communities, and even the small little group of students who attend Ms. Dancer’s school.

Hope isn’t something to ridicule. It motivates. It invites success, not failure. Being afraid is a waste. This was why I did send Ms. Dancer to school after being reassured that police would be high-profile on the campus. It’s why I bit back my own jumpy instincts when the anti-scarecrow firecrackers in the field across the street went off right when we arrived. It’s why I let her text me but kept telling her we weren’t going to live in fear of people who were our neighbors and so we were both going to face our fears head-on. Which we did, and I’d say fear of a stray bullet is far more powerful than fear of someone’s skin color.

That’s really the choice, isn’t it? Being afraid or being bold? Hope comes with boldness. Fear brings timidity. Why choose timidity, especially in these times?

Tagged as: diversity, Education, Politics, race, tension, violence