j.r. leonard

I will never know what it's like to be around that face and its power as a Native person. But I know how many times I've seen that face in the classroom.

There was always one of them in every class. The guy who whispered to his friends when I lectured. The guy who snickered when his classmates answered questions. The guy who tried to turn serious class discussions into jokes.

Of course, that guy was also the guy with the gumption to ask for extensions. To miss class and email asking "what'd I miss?" To plagiarize. To get a C and come to office hours and try to flirt his way to a better grade. The gall of his mediocrity never ceased to surprise me.

I encountered this guy at big state schools and small elite private colleges. His accent and major might change but the fundamentals of his identity did not: he was white, he was male, and — at least as far as he performed it — he was straight

This kid and his behavior is a symptom of something much larger. I don't think focuses on him, specifically, does much — and also leads to the current narrative of his victimhood.

Natives who were there and Natives who have made addressing that systemic equality their live's work want to decenter these kids and talk about how indicative this interaction is of power relations that are centuries old and so often ignored or made invisible