The Other (One)

June 30, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

What’s wrong with segregation?

I ask my students this when we talk about the underlying causes of the Tulsa Race Riots – the ongoing circumstances in place just waiting for something to trigger them. Dick Rowland stumbling into Sarah Page might have been an incident all by itself, but it wouldn’t have burned Greenwood to the ground without combustibles already in place. There were causes – one of which, I respectfully suggest, was segregation.

If they’ve paid attention when we discuss Indian Removal, or Reconstruction, or Immigration, they should have an idea where I’m going with the question. Otherwise, they stumble through the clichés on which they were raised. Segregation is bad because everyone’s the same… we’re all equal… it’s wrong because it’s bad…

To their credit, some variation of ‘separate is inherently unequal’ eventually surfaces, whether they know Brown v. Board or not. They understand intuitively that when two groups are persistently kept apart, one will likely get a better deal than the other.

But what if it COULD be equal? We have Men’s bathrooms and Women’s bathrooms – separate, but similar. What if we could guarantee consistent quality, and equal value? Would segregation still be bad?

They’re sure it would, but aren’t often able to express why. Maybe they’re going on gut conviction; perhaps they’re simply THAT indoctrinated. Either way, we must discuss ‘The Other’.

When we lack relationships with people different from us, or when those relationships are so strictly defined as to preclude true interaction, we can’t help but see them as fundamentally unlike ourselves. We can’t know who we don’t know.

I don’t claim my district has eliminated all conceivable racial issues, but we’re a fairly diverse bunch – racially, economically, and to some extent culturally. We have lots of interesting colors, religions, a few very vocal non-traditional sexualities, and enough different home languages to keep things challenging.

I, on the other hand, graduated from a nearby suburban school 30 years ago with a senior class of around 700, of which exactly two students were black – both guys, and both of whom played football and were nowhere near my social circle. There was one Vietnamese kid, and he was really good at math. That was it in terms of diversity.

Well, there was one gay kid. We all kinda knew he was gay, but he didn’t seem to be aware of it, so we just let it slide. He knows now, and we’re all Facebook friends, so that seems to have worked out.

I had a strong, albeit largely subconscious, sense of ‘The Other’. My students don’t – at least not to such an extent.

I wasn’t particularly racist or sexist by the standards of my peers, but I walked in the sort of conviction and clarity only possible with limited knowledge, and in the peace of truncated understanding. Separate is inherently unequal, but also inherently obscuring. You can’t love, accept, or even properly argue with what you don’t know and can’t see. You don’t even know what questions to ask.

When anything involving other cultures or races comes up in class, my kids are well-armed with polite clichés and politically correct worldviews. They may even think they mean them.

But they lack depth because, for so many of my kids, the idea of a world in which culture or race are a deep divide, capable not only of circumscribing what you do, but how you think, feel, or function – shaping reality itself… it’s just not there. At best it’s abstract and distant.

In their defense, that’s true of 90% of anything we talk about – they’re Freshmen. They live in a perpetual ‘now’ with themselves, themselves, and those who amuse or arouse them this exact instant. And themselves.

They’ve been hearing the same handful of safe racial, religious, and sexual platitudes their whole lives, along with Stranger Danger and anti-bullying campaigns, but most have neither overtly experienced nor consciously perpetrated any of things being warned against. It can’t be real to them, any more than feudalism, factory labor, or war.

Most can’t consciously fathom ‘THE OTHER’. If only we could add odor to it, as with natural gas, so we’d be warned when it begins to affect us…

History is full of ‘Them’. It’s fundamental throughout time and place. Babies gradually learn to distinguish ‘Me’ from ‘Not Me’. ‘Family’ is different than ‘Not Family’. In some bucolic regions, ‘Neighbor’ is still different than ‘Not Neighbor’.

As an evolutionary or historical approach, it’s not such an evil thing. As the earliest hegemonies or social contracts developed, they would inevitably have ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ moments – whether over resources, food, land, or women.

Much like ‘all snakes are poisonous’ or ‘reality TV is fake’, universals are a practical necessity when life is otherwise nasty, brutish, and short. The benefit of attentive discernment is outweighed by the risk. You may find a few exceptions to your rules, but the payoff is too small to justify the energy invested. “Look! A non-poisonous snake! I’ve devoted precious time and mental capacity to identifying it so I can… have absolutely no use for it. And if I’m wrong I’ll die painfully!”

Unless you happened to be in a Disney Movie or After-School Special, the chances of making a new bestie when you reached out your Capulet arms to embrace a Montague stranger were slim compared to likelihood you’d become someone’s slave or lose your teeth so they could make a nice necklace. ‘The Other’ was scary. Dangerous.

To be fair, evolving from ‘All against All’ into ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ was actually a huge improvement socially and politically. At least you had an ‘Us’ instead of simply an ‘I’. At least societies could be built.

Separately.

But the world has changed. We are safer, healthier, better educated, and more entertained and entertaining than at any other point in human history. In the U.S. in particular, we celebrate ‘diversity’ in its ever-multiplying forms, and speak of being a great ‘melting pot’. Our foundational ideals, in fact, proclaim unequivocally that “all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Apparently this was unclear to some, so we added a 14th Amendment which explicitly states that a people is a people is a people. There are no gradients or levels of personhood or value in the eyes of the law or in the ideals of the United States.

Period.

That’s led to a number of kerfuffles as various individuals and groups seek to be part of ‘Us’ rather than being content in their roles as ‘Them’. They wished to be less ‘Other’.

Some wanted to attend the same schools, ride the same busses, eat the same places, and live in the same neighborhoods as ‘Us’. Others wanted to form different sorts of families, promote different types of faith, or live some very different lifestyles, but with the same rights and respect as ‘Us’.

It can get rather complicated. To our Founders’ credit, though, we’re mostly still trying to make it work. Contrary to how it sometimes seems, we’re getting closer and closer. But it’s weird.

Yet the prevalence of ‘The Other’ persists. At times it seems there are more ‘Them’ than there are ‘Us’, even 225 years after those ideals were so effectively used to birth a whole new country whose primary task was to prove them workable.

Why?

I have a few ideas…

RELATED POST: The Other (Two)

“Why Teach?” (Response to #OklaEd Blogger Challenge)

June 28, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

#OklaEd blogger extraordinaire Mindy Dennison recently issued a challenge to fellow edu-bloggers to address the question, “Why Teach?” She’s already received a dozen quality responses taking a variety of approaches – including my personal favorite so far from the Marauding Mentor. MM details many common reasons for going into teaching and finds them delusional at best before concluding – “…but we need you…”

I appreciate the many posts about how rewarding and fulfilling teaching can be. I’m thankful for so many out there who connect with, nurture, and challenge their students throughout each year. I’d have to agree that’s the primary energy on which we feed – those little moments of success, of insight, of realization. It’s not particularly selfless; it’s simply swell when you manage to say or do just the right thing to help some young person’s day suck less than it otherwise might.

It’s less swell when you fail, but still…

The biggest reason I teach is that it needs to be done, and no one else will do it. Don’t misunderstand – there are many, many people across the state and the nation teaching. Many are amazing and will never be recognized as such. Others are largely dead weight but between systemic problems and teacher shortages, we have little choice but to keep them. Most are somewhere in between, depending on circumstances, and can be good when the spirt moves or the situation promotes such. They rise and fall with the pressures of their reality.

But there aren’t enough. It’s a running joke with my superiors when I’ve yet again managed to stir someone’s pot or complicate an otherwise simple situation (I simply do NOT understand how this occurs so regularly!) that I freely submit to their wrath and invite them to start interviewing that long line of highly qualified professionals who desperately want my job.

Because no one wants it, you see. So I keep stirring. For the children.

(Actually, several probably do want my job – I have a sweet gig, teaching-wise. But they’d all be coming from other teaching positions, keeping the net shortage the same and merely shuffling the particulars.)

The fields are ripe. Teenagers are a huge pain in the ass, but they’re not all as stupid as they’d like for you to think. Many of them are quite entertaining if you let yourself see and hear them, and far more than you’d think are hungry for an adult with a reasonable sense of professional boundaries to show even token interest and affection for them.

Many have the potential to be rather smart, if driven to be so. They won’t wander there on their own, thus ruining decades of anticipation regarding the miracle of technology changing education forever as students hungrily devour knowledge according to their individual interests, but most will meander along the trail with some success if you stay focused and on your horse and have a good pedagogical cattle dog.

I kinda lost that metaphor along the way. Hopefully you get the idea.

So we teach.

I’m smart and capable enough, but not as naturally gifted as so many others who don’t even consider this as a serious career. They don’t want it, or don’t ‘get it’. So I do what I can do, and over time I’ve become reasonably good at it. I must. We must.

Because the need is great. One of my favorite posts on this topic was, of course, written by me. The Spartans at Thermopylae were outnumbered and outsupported by the Persian hordes storming their shores. But they stood in the gap for as long as they could – not from any delusion of winning, and not because they could guarantee it would change anything substantially. They did it because it was the thing to do. They couldn’t control the outcome, but they could damn sure go down swinging.

Come home with your lesson plans or on them.

I’m not comparing a little high school history teaching to the kind of dramatic sacrifice made by the 300 (of course I am), but I do believe we’re too easily distracted and derailed by talk of reform and assessment, of structure and standards. We lament funding and formats and charters and TFA and technology and teacher school and sometimes I just don’t even care about ANY of it.

What difference does it make what names, hair color, or preferred weaponry each Persian brings with them? Do we honestly believe there’s some strategic scenario in which we win? Some combination of lobbying efforts and public enlightenment that turns this one around for those in the gap? Occasionally we can sweep aside an Ephialtes or celebrate a Dienekes, but that’s not why we stay.

We teach because we believe.

Kierkegaard spoke of an essential “leap to faith,” but such terminology is a bit presumptuous, even for me. Being in Oklahoma, we could just as easily go to Scripture, where “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11.1, NIV).

Both of these capture the idea that our convictions don’t stem from having a pretty good plan. They’re not the result of measured goals or cost/benefit analysis. They’re certainly not based on having the slightest idea where we’re going or how this will turn out.That’s what makes it ‘faith’ – it’s terrifying and futile and probably wrong, but we commit as if we know know know know KNOW what we’re doing makes sense.

I teach because I choose to believe. I choose to believe in my kids and their possibilities, even as I recognize we’re going to lose some of them. Probably most of them.

But not all of them.

We must save enough to hold the gap. We teach because someone has to stand here next.

Given that we’re talking education, I should probably quote a book:

“We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it’s here. And the hour is late. And the war’s begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colours…
For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good…
Right now we have a horrible job… It’s not pleasant, but then we’re not in control, we’re the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war’s over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world.”
“Do you really think they’ll listen then?”
“If not, we’ll just have to wait… A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last.”
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

I pride myself, however, on spreading my wisdom and insights with all peoples equally – profound, and yet so very accessible. So, rather than look to Existentialism, Literature, or the Word of God, I’ll conclude with R.E.M.:

All the people gather, fly to carry each his burden – we are young, despite the years.
We are concern; we are hope despite the times.
All of a sudden, these days, happy throngs – take this joy wherever, wherever you go.

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Boomers & Sooners, Part Five ~ Cheater Cheater Red Dirt Eater

June 25, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I confess I’ve always had a disproportionate revulsion and hostility towards people who cut in line, take up multiple parking places, or otherwise demonstrate an utter lack of interest in the possibility there are other people in the world but themselves.

My home was robbed when I was a kid. More upsetting than the stuff I lost was the inexpressible sense of violation, and marginalization. How could one person do that to another, consciously and willingly?

Lie to the IRS, abuse your meds, cheat on your man-toys if you must – but to take from another human being who’s no better off than yourself and to be OK with that…? I couldn’t get it.

Sooners weren’t stealing from the Amerindians – not by this point. They weren’t simply fooling the government, or the soldiers stationed there. They were decreeing through their actions that the wants and needs of those lined up for one last chance at the American Dream weren’t nearly as important as their avarice. Their presumption.

To hell with those families, those hopes – those rule-abiding suckers.

Perhaps we can excuse, if not entirely justify, the actions of desperate individuals willing to take big chances – to hide in the bushes or sneak past armed defenders. But what we so often gloss over in Oklahoma History is how many Sooners didn’t have to sneak in at all. They were there with permission. By orders, actually.

They were there being paid with the tax dollars of the fools waiting patiently for the starting gun.

From the New York Times, only a few days after the first Oklahoma Land Run:

Six or seven thousand people are huddled together in tents or shanties… enduring privations which assuredly had no part in the programme mapped out previous to the invasion. Today not fewer than one thousand men departed with disgust plainly stamped on their faces…
The cause of this revulsion of feeling on the part of men who a few weeks ago were singing the praises of the projected town, is the action of the United States Marshals in appointing as Deputies many real estate sharks and others who went to Guthrie solely to secure town lots in advance of the great body detained on the border by order of the Government. These so-called deputies appeared in Guthrie and Oklahoma City Saturday, and had the former site surveyed and selected before 10 o’clock Monday morning…
When the hour of 12 arrived Monday the deputies go in their work so effectually that when the trainload of boomers came in from the north some time later, all the best lots had been claimed…

Soldiers, land-surveyors, law enforcement – anyone with the right connections to get themselves into the territory ahead of time and scope out the best land. Often they’d announce their resignations minutes before noon, presumably in anticipation of future accusations they’d violated the terms of their employment.

Others didn’t bother. From Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1889:

It was an eager and an exuberantly joyful crowd that rode slowly into Guthrie at twenty minutes past one o’clock on that perfect April afternoon. Men who had expected to lay out the town site were grievously disappointed at the first glimpse of their proposed scene of operations. The slope east of the railway at Guthrie station was dotted white with tents and sprinkled thick with men running about in all directions.
“We’re done for,” said a town-site speculator, in dismay. “Someone has gone in ahead of us and laid out the town.”
“Never mind that,” shouted another town-site speculator, “but make a rush and get what you can.”
Hardly had the train slackened its speed when the impatient boomers began to leap from the cars and run up the slope. Men jumped from the roofs of the moving cars at the risk of their lives. Some were so stunned by the fall that they could not get up for some minutes. The coaches were so crowded that many men were compelled to squeeze through the windows in order to get a fair start at the head of the crowd…
I ran with the first of the crowd to get a good point of view from which to see the rush. When I had time to look about me I found that I was standing beside a tent, near which a man was leisurely chopping holes in the sod with a new axe.
“Where did you come from, that you have already pitched your tent?” I asked.
“Oh, I was here,” said he.
“How was that?”
“Why, I was a deputy United States marshal.”
“Did you resign?”
“No; I’m a deputy still.”
“But it is not legal for a deputy United States marshal, or any one in the employ of the government, to take up a town lot in this manner.”
“That may all be, stranger; but I’ve got two lots here, just the same; and about fifty other deputies have got lots in the same way. In fact, the deputy-marshals laid out the town.”

Legal recourse was widely sought, of course, but those with the resources to pursue extended legal actions weren’t usually hanging out in the middle of nowhere running for land. Most Sooners kept their plots – especially those who’d acted collectively. How do you kick out an entire town, community leaders and all? And guess what…

That sort of advantage is self-perpetuating.

Sooners were far more likely to farm successfully, having started with better farms. They were generally more prosperous as merchants or other businessmen, having established ideal locations and opened for business while others were still gathering basic supplies. They’d produce the healthiest children who’d receive the best educations and have the best opportunities due to family connections and social savvy.

Some of this could simply reflect ‘grit’ – whatever else Sooners were, they weren’t lazy. Maybe the same drive that led them to cheat helped in legitimate endeavors as well. It would be silly to reduce the next century of development to who started where.

But it doesn’t take long before yesterday’s plunder is today’s hard-won prize. How many days passed before Sooner families began to credit themselves with the pluck and determination to make the run successfully? To disparage those less successful, who had THE SAME CHANCE and couldn’t cut it – slinking away in frustration and failure?

I mean, hey we were all part of the same run! Everyone had their shot. Are you saying I didn’t work for what I have?

I’m not interested in going back and wringing our lil’ hands and hearts over the sins of our forebearers. Land was a big deal, and people did worse for it than the things described here. Move on, people.

But that doesn’t mean we have to glorify it, or reframe it as something of which we should be particularly proud. I don’t see many states excited about labeling themselves the ‘Overseers’, the ‘Soiled Doves’, or the ‘Unrepentant Confederates’.

Actually, I take back that last one. They actually kinda do. But you get my point.

We may express periodic ambivalence towards Pretty Boy Floyd or the Daltons, but they at least robbed and killed those representing the system – the powerful – ‘the man’. Sooners robbed the commonest of common men, and did so just as he was risking everything to improve his condition and claim his small slice of the American Dream.

It’s not a bad reflection of larger issues in our national past and the much more significant advantages gained by some as a result. As with the Sooners, we would do well to periodically reconsider who and what we glorify in our own past – not to deny it or rewrite it, but to help us maintain clarity and honesty about ourselves.

I’ll pass on the perpetual lamenting and retroactive accusations. It’s not always helpful, and so easily turns sour. A little perspective and confession, however…

Well, they wouldn’t hurt.

Boomers & Sooners, Part Four ~ Dirty Stinkin’ No Good Sons Of…

June 20, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

You may remember the movie Far & Away – if for nothing else than Tom Cruise’s wonderful Irish brogue (“I’ll Get My Land! Pink Hearts! Yellow Moons! Green Clovers!” It also has a wonderful Oklahoma Land Run as part of the finale, including this moment:

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We’re rooting for the Christies the whole movie, of course. Wealthy landowners from Ireland, they are nevertheless stuck in a rut personally and socially, and after their home is destroyed by Irish tenant farmers (“Captain Moonlight!”) they come to the U.S. in pursuit of their daughter, and end up as Sooners in one of the major Oklahoma Land Runs. Adorable.

Not all Sooners were such loveable characters, however. From the New York Times, April 25th, 1889:

The stories told of the opening-day exploits are as varied as they are entertaining. The impression seems to be general that at noon of that day there were enough men in the Territory to take up every available homestead.
”The fact is,” said and intelligent boomer from Marshall County, Kan., “the soldiers were not half so anxious to keep people out of the territory as they were said to be. I know perfectly well that the train on which I journeyed from Arkansas City… left several hundred men inside the proscribed territory. They dropped off at every station and hid in freight cars, or crossed the prairie to the nearest brush and secreted themselves.
Monday’s event showed that at the hour of noon men appeared as if by magic around the stations of Oklahoma City, Norman, and Walker, and of course the same scenes were witnessed at Guthrie… What possible show did an outsider have against these men?”

All of this was possible because the Boomers had finally ‘won’ – at least in terms of the public debate. In March of 1889, Congress passed an amendment to the Indian Appropriations Act (1871) opening the Unassigned Lands in Indian Territory to settlement under the same terms as the Homestead Act (1862).

I realize that sounds a bit dry, which is why I usually just go with ‘the Boomers had finally won’.

It was later announced that these lands would be opened up through a ‘Land Run’ – an approach which certainly reduced paperwork and eliminated the traditional 5-year waiting period before taking title to a section of this last remnant of American frontier, now being referred to more and more often as “Oklahoma.” It was a weird system even for the times – times far more interesting than usually credited.

A little over a year after that first Land Run in 1889, the U.S. Census Bureau would proclaim the frontier ‘closed’ – vanished, actually – with no new lands left to settle or civilize. This was the statistic which prompted Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous “Frontier Thesis,” presented in Chicago in 1893 as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ voyage of discovery.

The 1890’s was a big decade for the ‘common man’. The Wounded Knee Massacre effectively ended Amerindian resistance on the Great Plains (or anywhere else, for that matter), the American Frontier was decreed to have officially passed away, the Second Industrial Revolution was beginning in the northeast, and thanks to that first big land run, the Organic Act begins nudging Oklahoma towards statehood. Populism becomes a thing, returning in various forms as Progressivism, the New Deal, the Great Society, and eventually Obamacare and Teen Mom 3.

People were reading Kate Chopin, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde, while Arthur Conan Doyle introduced a new character named “Sherlock Holmes.” Those kids from Newsies, led by a young Bruce Wayne, were doing that thing they wanted the world to know, although it’s unclear whether they used the same choreography as in the movie. L. Frank Baum was writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz so that schoolchildren a century later could discuss bimetallism without losing consciousness, and those guys who kinda invented flying machines just prior to the Wright Brothers were crashing them in various interesting ways as part of their efforts to claim the skies.

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There was a depression in 1893, but other than that things were good until Mark Twain labeled it ‘The Gilded Age’ – a term suggesting it was all a thinly veiled illusion masking sickness and corruption, and now a common chapter title in any American History textbook discussing the advent of the 20th century.

Twain was SUCH a downer.

The census was a year away, but the sense that the nation was ‘filling up’ and land was ‘running out’ was hardly news to Boomers and others looking for those last few opportunities in the west. The future state of Oklahoma, once so disparaged that the Natives were placed there by force so white guys could have the GOOD land, was looking better and better as other options fell away. Necessity, it seems, was the mother of invasion.

So President Benjamin Harrison, as one of his first acts in office, officially set April 22, 1889, exactly at noon, as the starting time for this madness. Three or four times the number of settlers as there were plots, competing under limited supervision for land they no doubt considered essential to their very survival. Social Darwinism, thy name is Oklahoma.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Perhaps it’s little wonder, then, that so many cheated. Sometimes it wasn’t even a question of WHETHER you’d cheated, but whether you’d cheated ENOUGH:

{Two Sooners, Grant and Crossman,} had taken advantage of the temporary absence of the troops from one of the fording places and crossed in advance of the main column, so that when the signal was given they were probably a mile beyond the river. They rode at a gallop the entire distance and came upon the desired ground just as a man broke from the timber with a hatchet in his hand and planted a stake in one of the claims. The man then quietly mounted his horse and waited for the friends to approach.
“Rather got ahead of ye, didn’t I, boys?” he asked, when they came up.
The tone and the accompanying leer excited Crossman beyond measure, and he drew his revolver and fired at the stranger. The bullet went wide, and the man, without an instant’s hesitation, hurled his hatchet at Crossman. The blade struck him full in the forehead, and he fell dead in his tracks…

Still, even this we might sweep aside as typical of the times. We must not judge the past by the standards of our far-more-convenient present. Perhaps hatchet lad, and Grant – who went on to shoot the bastard – may be excused for their Lord of the Flies behavior.

But they were only one kind of Sooner. The far more loathsome sort remind me of too many people today.

Maybe that’s why I’m bitter.

Boomers & Sooners, Part Three ~ Who’s Your Daddy? Why, It’s David L. Payne!

June 15, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

If you’ve ever been a teacher, you may have experienced a moment like this:

One of your darlings is off-task and taking others down with her. After a few verbal redirections, you tell her to move to a seat further from her audience – probably near your desk.

“No no no no no! I’ll stop! I’ll stop! Just one more chance! One more chance!”

“Those chances have passed, anonymous sample child – let’s go. Come on.” You motion firmly, but with style.

“Pleeeease?! Look – I’m working!” She waves a piece of paper around vigorously, believing this irrefutable evidence of focus and commitment. I’ve always found that part weird.

You are firm, but not angry. “C’mon. NOW.” You tap the destination desk a few times for emphasis.

At the first sign of acquiescence, you continue whatever you were doing, and efficiently guide the class back on track. It may be several minutes before you notice she hasn’t actually moved.

“Child’s Name. Seriously. Over. Here.” Motion motion motion.

“I’m not talking anymore! I can’t see over there! I’m being good! Just one more chance and if I mess up, you can move me! Please?!?!?? Pleeeeaaaaassssseeeee??!?!?!!!???”

Because you are a master of classroom management, you overcome this distraction yet again, and this time you wait until she’s physically moving before you once again guide the rest of the room back into the edu-zone. Now the learning can happen!

A few moments later you realize she’s moved exactly one desk over. If you’re lucky, it’s at least a diagonal move, which you COULD count as two desks.

*sigh*

At this point you have two choices. (1) Give up on having class in order to kill this child dead in front of God and everyone as a warning to others, or (2) pretend this was exactly what you intended all along, or at least an acceptable compromise. “OK. Good! Now stay put!” Firm gaze, hint of wry smile so they know your scolding isn’t personal and you’re still the cool teacher they secretly adore.

The issue is not bold defiance or soft incompetence. It’s a calculated risk on the part of the student – who knows you. She’s betting you won’t go nuclear on her – no referrals, no yelling, no hurling heavy objects. She’s ready at any point to back down and comply – at least until your attention has shifted. She’s also sure you have things you’d rather be doing than power struggle with her, and that you don’t actually dislike her – even if she is making you crazy at the moment.

She ends up sitting pretty close to where she began. Even if she moves today – all the way to that desk next to yours – tomorrow she’ll come in and sit where she started, waiting to see if you say anything and begin the struggle anew.

That’s the ‘Boomer’ movement. That’s David L. Payne.

Like many who make history, David L. Payne had an unwavering conviction that he was right. That sort of bold confidence can be rather irritating, but it’s typical of those who inspire others to follow them.

In Payne’s case, the question wasn’t always who’d follow so much as who could keep up. A hunter, scout, politician, and businessman, he was certainly never at a loss for things to do. Then again, he doesn’t seem to have stayed in the same place for more than a few years at a time… so there’s that.

He had a common-law wife and a son who was, by definition, “out-of-wedlock.” He volunteered to fight for the Union as soon as the war broke out, then stayed in the army to help ‘civilize’ the Great Plains after. He fought under Custer and knew Kit Carson and Wild Bill Hickok.

He had a reputation for ‘understanding’ the ‘Indian character’, which seems to have meant he was pretty good at the ‘killing them’ part. Fortunately for him, this kind of thing was in great demand in the decades following the Civil War.

Oh – and he was tall. 6’4” or thereabouts.

Why all the background? Because he’s my daddy – and yours too, if you’re an Okie. Don’t be ashamed! Own your statehood! I mean, come on – it’s not like you’re from Florida or something.

After Charles Carpenter bailed on the young ‘boomer’ movement, Payne stepped up in a big way. He sold theoretical claims to plots in the Unassigned Lands and talked up efforts to move in and truly settle the area. Unlike Carpenter, he actually accompanied most of the forays into Indian Territory (I.T.), taking on the same risks and hardships as those who followed him.

He was removed by the U.S. Army, but he went in again. He was removed again, then went in again. Removed, return, removed, return, removed, return, removed…

You may notice a pattern.

Notable was the lack of meaningful consequences for these repeated violations. He was threatened, and eventually fined (he didn’t pay it), but he wasn’t locked up. He wasn’t killed. He was just… removed.

And then he returned.

He KNEW the U.S. Army didn’t actually want to shoot anyone over this land. He was betting they wouldn’t even actually imprison him – or anyone else – for any length of time. Not for THIS.

What they WERE willing to do was march his party back home time and again, often by long, dry routes, on foot, with limited food or water. What they WERE willing to do was embarrass or frighten them.

Ironically, the most humiliating removals were those handled by Buffalo Soldiers – black units organized in the west primarily as ‘Indian Fighters’. While typically more professional and better behaved than their white peers, the idea of hungry white homesteaders being escorted off of red land by black soldiers was particularly difficult for many to bear.

And then he returned.

Payne had dealt with the law and government and the military before. At any given moment, he was willing to comply. They had the guns and the authority, but he had unlimited time and patience. And – this part is key, so pay attention – he believed he was entirely right.

It wasn’t simply that he thought he could ‘get away with it’, although he did. It wasn’t just that the Boomers he organized and spawned really truly needed this land, although in their minds they did. He believed without reservation that these lands were public lands, and should be opened to white settlement – enough to want to force the issue.

Payne wanted a trial to determine whether or not the Unassigned Lands were still reserved for unspecified ‘Indian’ use, or should be thrown open to white settlement on the same terms as other lands in the west.

Payne believed.

He may have been wrong. Stubborn. Annoying. Tall. But whatever else he was, Payne acted with the firm conviction that if he WERE breaking the law, the law NEEDED to be broken in order for constitutional mechanics to engage and his actions to be vindicated – not only for himself and his subscribers, but for the greater American good.

This, in my mind, sets the Boomers apart in an essential way from the Sooners with whom they are so unjustly joined in commemorative song. I’m not vindicating the Boomers, but I am suggesting that – at least at the leadership level – they acted in accordance to their understanding of our foundational ideals and constitutional law. They believed they were in the RIGHT, and stood stubbornly by this until vindicated.

The Sooners, on the other hand… Hmph.

David L. Payne died at breakfast on November 28th, 1884. Nearly five years later, on April 22, 1889, the first of the infamous Oklahoma Land Runs began opening up the Unassigned Lands to white settlement. This time the settlers were allowed to stay.