I have to vent. Today is the anniversary of that bitch Katrina. I don't live in NOLA anymore. I teach English at a community college in a very small town in Mississippi. I woke up feeling like I am getting a cold, it's August 29, and I get to my first class, a very basic developmental writing class, and we are reviewing how to brainstorm for ideas to write a paragraph. We were doing an exercise in the book that asks the students to describe different clothing styles. So I get them to start listing different general styles, like preppy, "urban", gothic, nerdy, etc. They then choose "urban" as the style they want to develop into a paragraph. So they list elements of this style--big white tshirts, air jordans, baggy jeans, etc. We write the paragraph together.

I ask them to pick another style for more practice (this class is very very basic writing) and they picked gothic. So off we went--one student said 'black clothes" and another said "skull jewelry" etc--just describing a "Hot Topic goth". And then one young man said he didn't like the exercise because he felt we were stereotyping goths and that it was racist (wtf?). I thought he was joking at first, but when I realized he wasn't, I asked the class how describing goths was any different from describing "urban" teens in baggy oversize white tshirts. They didn't get it.

So I asked if it was stereotypical or racist to describe pentecostal women who wear long skirts, long hair, no jewelry. My point was, it's just a description; we were not saying anything derogatory, and we were not claiming that *all* goths wear skulls, etc. I assured them that many goths do indeed wear black (almost by definition) and some of them wear skull jewelry. My young man said it was racist because goths were white. I told him I knew Asian and Black goths. Meanwhile, the class was getting agitated for reasons I really don't understand. I appreciate his concern re not being racist; it just didn't make sense in this context. Then he said something about me being the only white in the room, and again, wtf?

I tried to explain that it would be stereotypical if we were claiming that *all goths were satanic baby eaters*. They didn't get it. When I mentioned that I knew Black goths, they gave me this disbelieving look and they asked what they looked like. I described them. One student said it looked like I "had been around that block a few times."

I was getting pissed and trying to control it, and I reminded them that I had just lived in, hello, New Orleans. As in, a real urban area with all different kinds of people. So then one of the students asked if the henna design on my foot was real (meaning permanent). I assured her that it was not and decided not to mention my 3 real tattoos. Then someone else asked if I was pentecostal (I have on a long skirt today) and I said no. Another student pops up with "pentecostals don't wear shoes like that" (I have on black shoes with a slight platform and a zipper) and another popped up with "and they don't wear toe rings". I mean, wtf?

Maybe they were just being good natured, but it just seemed a bit judgemental, and I have dealt with far too much judgemental shit growing up based on my clothes, hair style, etc. And it blows my mind how small some people's worlds are, that they even find toe rings comment-worthy. Just scary. And I basically just went back to the grammar exercises in the book, but I felt like screaming or clawing my own flesh off. I am in my office, and my xanax is kicking in, and I am becoming comfortably numb...