There Goes My Social Life (6 page)

Of course the guys in Los Angeles weren't thinking of the Bible when they created their groups. But they figured if two is better than one, four is better than two; ten is better than four; fifty is better than twenty. That's how gangs proliferated, on and on until every single student had to decide.

“Crips or Bloods?” I was asked by a friend named Catherine as she and her twin sister Emily walked with me through the hallways on the way to class. Catherine was in one gang but her sister Emily was in the other, a house divided because Emily's boyfriend was already established in a gang. I didn't know which to choose—there was no “how to select the gang that's right for you” quiz in
Cosmo
that month—so I joined the same gang as Emily based on nothing but the fact that her boyfriend was really a nice guy.

That's what breaks my heart. Gangbangers, drug dealers, and hustlers are all made out to seem like horrible people, when they're just trying to survive. They're just doing what they think is the only thing to do, but they're being lied to: white people don't actually hate them, all white people aren't rich, and you don't have to behave like criminals on television to be cool. I know what it's like to believe you have one option—a gang—and to go along with it. Once I joined, my social life was set. Crips or Bloods. Red or blue.

Of course people don't join gangs by filling out a form and sending in an enrollment fee. To join, people have to prove their loyalty through horrible initiations involving revenge shootings, jail time, and more. Thankfully, they didn't make me go through with any of that. Gang members assimilate into various roles. Some are quick-tempered, while others are chill; some fight, others are on the lookout; some make plans, some execute the strategies. The gangs—thankfully—had already noticed my reputation as a brawler, so they let me in without having to prove myself. They called me “the smart girl.”

After I chose my colors, I had to dress differently. I had to start wearing khakis and big white tee shirts and a certain color rag. The gangs took the fact that they didn't have a lot of money—and therefore couldn't afford nicer clothing—and turned it into a badge of honor. A pair of khakis, a tee, and a rag were all that were required to fit in. In fact, anything else was shameful. You were in or out, and your clothes were a kind of uniform. The first morning that I was a gang member, I took one look in the mirror and laughed. I looked like an inmate at Rikers Island.

But my gang membership didn't protect me from the one-off fights.

The next month, the biggest girl in the school said she didn't like the way I talked. She was an ugly black girl named Keisha. Everybody was scared of her—white kids, black kids, everybody. When I heard that Keisha didn't like the way I talked and wanted to fight me, I thought,
Oh great
. But here's the thing. I'm not going to be bullied or intimidated. If I feel for one second that someone is going to try to hurt me, I'm going to let you know real quick that's not how it's gonna go down. I'm not going to stress out about it every day, I'm going to finish it before they even know it's begun.

I went to the location where Keisha wanted to fight and scoped it out—a corridor with lockers lining the walls. I'd learned in New York that I had to act faster and use an element of surprise. I knew I had to take her out quick before she saw me coming. As soon as I saw her, I pushed her up against the locker and took the locker door and I bashed it into her head. I kept bashing it into her head until she fell to the ground with her face bleeding. Then I got on top of her and started pounding her. I was so sick of people telling me that I wasn't good enough because I didn't live up to their standards. I guess you could say I fought dirty, but she was big and that was the only chance I had. I think I might have killed her if somebody hadn't pulled me off of her.

I guess you can see that I've never backed down from a fight. My stubborn insistence on standing up to bullies twice my size came from necessity . . . but I have to admit it has helped me in life. Without the constant practice of conjuring that strength at school, I'd never have been able to stand up to the bullies that hide behind computer screens on Twitter, blogs, and Facebook as an adult.

My classmates got the message—don't mess with Stacey—but life didn't get easier. I missed my dad and my friends in New York, and I felt like I was in a war zone at school. I didn't get in trouble for fighting—it's amazing what sort of violence was just left unchecked by the teachers. But I would frequently get in trouble for talking back to them. “Here, do pages 47 and 53,” the teacher would say, before slipping off to the teachers' lounge for a smoke. I guess I had been spoiled by the example of Mr. Ackerman back in New York, but I could spot lazy teachers a mile away.

“What's wrong with you?” my mother asked me when she noticed I was favoring my hand.

“I broke my finger,” I said. It was the last day of school in the eighth grade. I had leaned over the water fountain to get a drink when I felt a hand slip up my shirt. Rather, a hand trying to slip up my shirt. I turned around and hit the guy square in the face. He hit me back, and we ended up having a fight right there in the hall. My finger was throbbing and hurt like hell.

“On what?”

“A boy's nose.”

I had told my mother that things were bad at school, but we weren't the type of folks who fled danger or left a place scared. Finally, after an entire year of me getting in fights, she relented.

“Okay, I'll send you to private school,” she said. When my mother eventually took me to the heart of downtown Burbank to Providence High School, I could already tell this Catholic school would be a welcome change. As a freshman, I met a girl named Cynthia. We became fast friends, and she's still my best friend today.

But my family never stayed anywhere long.

As you can see, I had many layers of problems during my educational years, most that extended beyond the scope of school. However, since my experiences with school have been so harrowing, I'd like to think I learned a few lessons along the way. Here's what I learned about education:

1. EDUCATION IS NOT POSSIBLE AMIDST A CLIMATE OF VIOLENCE AND INTIMIDATION

No one should ever be physically intimidated or harassed at school. If I hadn't had to fight my way through school, I might know Latin by now! But anti-bullying initiatives have been so politicized, it's hard to actually put your support behind them. Take for example, Lady Gaga's “Born This Way Foundation,” whose mission statement said it tries to “foster a more accepting society, where differences are embraced and individuality is celebrated. The Foundation is dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a kinder, braver world. We believe that everyone has the right to feel safe, to be empowered and to make a difference in the world. Together, we will move towards acceptance, bravery and love.”

Doesn't that sound amazing? When Lady Gaga launched the initiative, she talked about her own experience being bullied and how horrible it was for her. (Believe me, Gaga, I understand!) Soon companies like Office Depot partnered with this anti-bullying initiative, signs popped up in their stores, and “Born This Way” merchandise was created and sold on the aisles of America's stores. The Back-to-School items targeted young kids and advertised Gaga's organization to them.

But the “anti-bullying” organization wasn't really about bullying at all. On the organization's blog, Obama was cited as an example of courage because he was “brave” enough to support gay marriage; another example of courage was a student who came out as a transgender; another example was Chaz Bono for the “courage” to undergo gender transformation. The winning “Born This Way” poster was an image of two guys kissing.

Should gay people get beat up at school?

Never.

But celebrities like Lady Gaga use something that everyone can rally behind—anti-bullying—to camouflage a radically liberal agenda that does the opposite of what they claim. (And by the way, this “courage” word is used too much when it applies to people like Chaz Bono and Caitlyn Jenner for undergoing plastic surgery and hormone treatment because they “accept themselves for who they are.” Does that make sense to anyone? If they accept themselves for who they are, why did they have to undergo such radical self-mutilation? It's not “courageous” to have plastic surgery . . . and using that word in that way does a real disservice to people like our American soldiers who have shown true, selfless bravery.)

Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation says it's about “tolerance” and “acceptance,” but how accepting do you think it would be of a student who doesn't approve of gay marriage or transgender surgery?

Anti-bullying initiatives are very common in American schools, but parents should be wary of the liberal indoctrination that's behind them. Additionally, parents should be aware of this very sad fact: they don't work. Recently, a study of these anti-bullying programs revealed that students who attended schools that had anti-bullying programs were shockingly more likely to be bullying victims than students who attended schools without them.
¹

Since 70 percent of high school students will deal with bullying at some point,
²
parents need to think soberly about how to protect their children. However, submitting them to liberal indoctrination is not the answer.

2. BIG GOVERNMENT = BAD SCHOOLS

I went to school in three states, and I can tell you that the top-down, government-run education system is failing everywhere. It'd be nice to report that our political leaders took a step back and came up with some innovative solutions. Instead, they just push for more of the same big-government solutions. In 2015, President Obama got in front of the press once again to announce another federal program. The program, supposedly designed to help blacks, was an increase in preschool education. But several studies, including those released by his own administration, have shown no significant impacts in education from such programs. A report even gave the nation a D+ for our early education index.
³
I may not have gone to college, but that doesn't sound like a program that's working very well. Yet Obama wants more of it. President Obama also says he wants to increase reading proficiency and graduation rates for minority students—good goals—yet he opposes the school choice options that are already doing both of those things effectively.

What Obama and the Democrats—and even some Republicans—don't understand is that big government solutions are not the answer. No Child Left Behind is a recent big-government flop, because it forces teachers to prepare students to do well only on a specific standardized test, takes authority out of the hands of local leaders and parents, and taxes us more to do so. Race to the Top, President Obama's $4.3 billion initiative, gave states a payoff for getting out from under the NCLB restrictions and suffered the same problems found in most Washington solutions. Throwing federal funds at the problem doesn't provide an answer for a major reason for low student performance: the culture of poverty and the lack of opportunity inherent in that culture. Common Core was supposed to figure out what students should know and how to best measure student progress toward learning it. The result is yet another top-down, big-government program being forced on parents at the taxpayer's expense.

As education results have declined, big government has grown. Not surprising. The solutions we need are the ones that get government out of the way as much as possible so parents and local leaders can develop real solutions, the kind that produce real results in the real world for our kids.

3. IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY

In
Jerry Maguire
, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character spoke to his agent over the phone and said four words, over and over.

Show me the money
.

But unless you've got a really strong stomach, you don't want to look too closely at where the money in our educational system goes. States have spent more than double the amount on education per student since 1971,
⁴
but national testing scores for seventeen-year-olds remain unchanged.
⁵
No statistical difference between scores for students then and now
.

The United States spends more money per student than any other nation in the world, but it's stuck in the middle on international test assessments.
⁶

More money isn't going to fix our nation's schools, and neither is screaming about racial discrimination. That's why I say . . .

4. STOP SCREAMING. START LEARNING.

In 2013, the Obama administration Justice Department sued the State of Louisiana, claiming that its school voucher program was discriminatory.
⁷
When Governor Bobby Jindal demanded that the federal government abandon its attack, I stood with him and called for the big-government bullies to back down. They understood the power of school choice, because “the program enable[d] around 8,000 Louisiana students from low-income families in school districts graded C, D or F to use public money to attend private schools.”
⁸
I spoke up for those students, not because I'm against public schools, but because I know what it's like to be stuck in a failing public education system. I know the difference it made for me when my family could finally afford to send me to a private school. Failing schools in Louisiana can improve over time, but these kids didn't have time to wait.