Palestine, Private Schools and Politics
This piece is written by a Palestinian-American who wishes to remain anonymous for safety reasons. She met two empty souls. It filled her with clarity.
My white friend’s white daughter attends The New Community School, a private school in Richmond, Virginia. She often wears her “Free Palestine” hoodie — a limited edition run I’ve coveted. It’s simply the words “Free Palestine” with a figure holding the Palestinian flag. It’s beautiful.
But it wasn’t beautiful to them. The mostly-white private school.
To them, it was downright disgusting.
Liberation for Palestinians? Visibly supporting freedom for others?
That was offensive, divisive, unacceptable, to this private school.
So much so that the middle school principal, let’s call her Karen, pulled my friend’s daughter from class and told her she needed to either 1) take the hoodie off 2) turn it inside out so the words “Free Palestine” were not visible.
The reason?
“It could be offensive to Jewish students,” she tells her.
Fast forward. My friend — an ardent Free Palestine supporter — sends an email to the school. A tome. A really well-written, direct note pointing out the blatant racism, direct harm and their infringement of free speech. She asks pointed questions about what policy her daughter violated; the dress code doesn’t cover anything that seems relevant.
Instead of replying to her questions, they ask her to come in for a meeting.
I offer to go with her. You know, if they’re going to be offended at the idea of a Free Palestine, do it to a Palestinian’s face. Because let’s be real. They probably have never met a Palestinian. Let me token my way into that school and have them face the very real reality of my existence. Of our existence.
Here’s what goes down . . .
We walk in. My friend and I. Me in my Here4TheKids “Ban f*ckery” shirt and keffiyeh. My friend warmly wrapped in her own.
We’re in the lobby.
Crickets.
Nobody says hi.
Nobody welcomes us.
Nobody asks if we need help.
Five minutes go by.
We walk directly up to the front desk, the high-counter front-desk and hey! there’s a receptionist. A Black woman, one of very few spots of color in this ivy-ish grandiose school on a hill. In the absence of help, we ask for it.
We’re ushered into an office, resplendent with cut crystal water glasses, two white women sparkling with righteous whiteness. They ooze of white privilege and mediocrity, of an elevated sense of importance
Their whiteness chokes the room before they even speak. I almost gag on it.
The head of school (let’s call her Perfect) is there along with principal Karen, who is dressed in bright florals, caked in foundation, blonde hair pulled back, lips twisted in derision, unironically holding onto a genocidal Starbucks cup.
I let my friend take the lead in the conversation. My goal walking in had just been to VISIBLY EXIST. That’s all.
Perfect asks my friend to open the conversation. She punts back to them. “My feedback and questions were in the email, if you can provide the answers I’m looking for?”
This is the cheshire grin moment. Perfect plucks a thick printout off of her desk. A few sentences highlighted. With deep pride and righteousness, she prefaces her reading: “Without getting into the meaning of ‘Free Palestine’ or the nuances or the splitting of hairs . . .” she reads the dress code.
Ah! Got us! It says no “political” messages on clothing. “‘Free Palestine” is a violation because it’s “political.”
She looks pleased. Karen looks pleased. Karen and Perfect preen. They did it. They squashed my friends entire thesis on how they f*cked up.
Apparently, my human rights are political! My existence is political! My right to freedom is political! Ahhhh. Now I get it! Who says you can’t learn new things about your own culture and heritage and existence from white people?
Sarcasm aside. It gets worse.
Perfect then holds up another printout.
“I did do some research, albeit from Wikipedia,” she says. Then she begins to read. It goes something like “The Free Palestine movement started in 2012 and is a terrorist organization that hates Jews and wants them all to die.”
At this point my rage begins to mount.
I hear a roaring in my ears.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
How can I not react?
My hands are shaking.
My body frozen.
Shaking and frozen, at once.
I ask for the printout, and glance at it.
“Free Palestine began in the 2000s?” I ask. “I’ve never heard of this. This is racist, offensive and inaccurate.” I pinch the printout between two fingers like it’s a dirty diaper and drop it with disgust on the coffee table.
Oh, did that open the door for them.
“We’re trying to have a civil conversation,” Perfect says. “But I’m seeing hostility. A hostile attitude.”
Lord. Lord give me the patience to not slap, scream, hit, escalate. Rip that Starbucks cup from Karen’s hand and fling it in her face, hoping it’s hotter than hell. Hostile. I’m hostile. As hostile as the allegedly terrorist Free Palestine Movement of 2012.
Hostile.
My blood boils. I tell myself to simmer down. “She needs to see you as ‘nice’ for this to be effective,” I tell myself. “Chill. Get your points in calmly.”
My friend and Perfect have a bit of back and forth. I’m still coming down from an intense high of you know, hostility.
A few minutes later, I find an opening. “Do you know what Palestinians want to be free from?” I ask both Perfect and Karen. Karen, who hasn’t spoken even once. Remember, Karen is the principal who asked my friend’s daughter to remove her Free Palestine hoodie.
They look at me.
Frozen.
No.
They don’t know.
Of course they don’t know.
So, I teach them the basics.
“Palestine is one of the last places on Earth occupied by a foreign military power. Palestinians don't have basic rights, ability to control their own access to food and water. To move within their own towns. They have to go through military checkpoints everywhere. They get sniped at, shot, killed, for no reason.”
Looking back, I feel annoyed that I didn’t throw in more. You know. Like apartheid. “Administrative detention” and our thousands of hostages. Some genocide stats while I’m at it.
I wish I’d told the story of the pregnant Palestinian woman who was just raped by IOF outside of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, her husband and relatives at gunpoint forced to keep their eyes open and watch. Then they executed her.
I should have talked about rape and war crimes, maybe rattle a bit of the crystal china laid out so sparkly on Perfect’s coffee table.
Then I asked a more basic question. “Do you know what happened in 1948? The Nakba?”
The Nakba refers to the day in May 1948 when Zionist militias forced more than 750,000 Palestinians to flee their homeland. Today, when Israel occupies most of historical Palestine, Palestinians continue to fight for their rights to return home.
Nope.
They don’t.
More deer-eyed ignorance.
Chosen ignorance to keep their white innocence intact.
These women — who in their conversation with my white friend were extolling their inclusivity, how safe their school is for students of color, the ample DIB training they’ve conducted for staff, all the ways they are already doing the right thing — say no. They don’t know anything about what happened to Palestinians in 1948.
Of course these righteous sacks of sh** don’t know. Their knowledge is powered off of stereotypes and Wikipedia articles about “Free Palestine” written by Zionists.
So I tell them the basics. 750,000 Palestinians displaced, 15,000 murdered. But I want to make it real for them.
“Imagine Henrico (an adjacent county) decided it wanted to own Richmond. So it comes in, forces you and everyone here from their homes, and shoves us into nearby alleyways to live. Then they move into your homes. They use your furniture, your food, your clothes. And only anyone born-and-raised in Henrico is allowed to live in what was Richmond from now on.”
They blink. I don’t think they can even imagine this.
I look directly at Perfect. “I’ve shared a lot. From what you’ve learned, can you tell me: What’s your understanding of Free Palestine now? What do Palestinians want to be free from?”
She looks down. “I’ve been listening,” she said. “They want to be free from occupation. From not being able to control their own food and water. From all the checkpoints.”
I give her a hard look. “That’s right. Do you believe that desire for freedom is political?”
“No,” she whispers.
“Thank you,” I respond. “I appreciate that you understood that.”
Looking back: WHYYYY. Why am I being nice to her? Wasn’t this my moment to burn it down to the ground? To shout: “So we all agree! Free Palestine is not political!” Then to rip off my shirt and reveal a Free Palestine hoodie beneath it, and to run around the school slapping Free Palestine stickers on every surface while cackling with abandon?
Sigh. I wish the meeting ended like that. A high note.
But Karen hasn’t said anything yet. At all. Fucking Karens, always sliding in to ruin things.
“I haven't said anything yet, because I wanted to really listen,” she says with emphasis. Oh! I sit up. She’s been listening? Like hearing us? Bring it on, because all I had observed ‘til then was her facial expressions: Smug, defensive, derisive, righteous, disagreeable, disgusted.
Karen more than makes up for her silence. Her monologue spills forward. I hear a version of this, said with such malice. Such derision.
“How dare YOU accuse ME in that email of all those things (racism, etc). YOU don’t even KNOW anything about ME and MY personal beliefs. I’m such an amazing leader that every day when I walk into this school, I check all my biases at the door. My brain and body and soul are a bias-free zone as I walk these hallowed halls. I make the decisions that are best for students. You don’t even KNOW the context of what was happening about that hoodie for the last two weeks that was POSSIBLY MAYBE going to lead to conflict in our school. AND guess what I had Covid for the first week of it so SORRY NOT SORRY that I didn’t think to loop you in as the MOM of the student I decided to flag as violating the dress code by DARING to advocate for freedom for Palestinians.”
Ah, hostility. There it is. True hostility.
The burning, violent hostility of a white woman being accused of racism.
Looking back, how I wished I’d taken the opportunity to ask for civil discourse. To voice my discomfort with her hostility. Never mind the fact that she’d completely cut a parent out of any context about her concern over their child’s clothing. Context which we never got, at any point in the meeting, even when we asked for it.
“Your daughter loves me by way,” Karen throws in. “She didn’t push back about taking the hoodie off at all and we have a GREAT relationship.”
Perfect looks on, nodding her head. Pride beaming in her eyes at her underling, defending so poignantly their love and inclusivity of all children.
At this point, I start to come undone. My body is tight. Tense. I feel tears pushing at my eyelids. My hands are still shaking. I’d tried to pick up that crystal cup and sip water, but they were trembling. The nausea is kicking in.
I’m realizing, what feels like too late, that I’ve been too nice. That I’ve even tried to ingratiate myself with these two horrific white women, telling them “I’m the daughter of immigrants, but I was raised in Kentucky and can even turn on a Southern accent!” I realize I’d been trying to prove my humanity this whole time, to two women with none. To two soulless ghouls.
My friend must realize this has all run its course. She wraps the meeting.
Perfect walks us to the door, shaking my hand. It’s been nice to meet me, she says.
I avoid Karen, hurrying out through the lobby we’d been ignored in and stumbling out the front door.
The tears flow. My friend hugs me. I begin to feel the violent violation of their racism course through me. I struggle with the coexisting truth of two things: Lack of regret that I’d joined her, and abject trauma of the experience.
Is it worth it? Putting our Palestinian bodies and hearts on the line with people who can’t see beyond their own supremacy, stereotypes and biases?
It’s not. In the day since (it’s been 24 hours), the meeting has rushed through my head. “If only I’d said this” and “If only I’d done that.”
But no. None of it matters. When you meet an empty soul, you don’t pour into it. I learned more from that meeting about myself and about what matters than they did about Palestine.
Our fight is not with them. It’s with the systems they, and we, are entrenched in. That’s where I’ll focus. On women like my white friend who called the BS and will burn it all down, even if it affects her daughter’s education. Because she knows her privilege is power and she’s willing to use it. She’s actively using it.
At the end of the day. Who frees us? We free us.
That’s what keeps me afloat.
I am so sorry for the experience you and your friend went though, and appreciate you sharing it.
“When you meet an empty soul, you don’t pour into it.” SO WELL SAID! Thank you to the author of this piece.