My Conservative Rural Teachers Wore Klan Robes and Raped Students
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Though the teachers came in professional attire, it was obvious they longed to wear their klan robes. Every day, you could see the shadow of their hate garments surrounding them like an aura. Even though the robes were white, they cast a shadow that threatened to block out all the light and color in the world.
I didn’t know what I was in for when I first stepped into that ancient brick asbestos ridden building. Or I should say my waking mind didn’t know.
That was the part of my being that focused on Saturday morning cartoons, toys at the dime store, and chocolate bars.
But the unconscious part of me started sounding the alarm the moment the building appeared on the horizon. This was the primordial part of me. The knot of nerves going from my neck to my bowels. This is the part of you that has been programmed through the trauma of centuries. It remembers the moments where the light of your ancestors was nearly extinguished and it sends warnings.
“Danger!”
“Go no further!”
“Do not trust!”
“Run!”
The thing about those teachers with their camouflaged white robes was that they knew the incantations to make children ignore their second mind.
“You’re being ridiculous!”
“This is the way it’s always been!”
“You have to obey authority!”
Then came the very worst lie of all, “You should be grateful.”
Our daily punishment came in the ritualistic performance of gratitude. First we were expected to offer thanks for the chance circumstance of our birth.
“Just think, if you’d been born in some other country, they would have tortured you every day.”
We were just kids. We didn’t know what torture was. All we knew was that we were hungry and that we were scared and we relied on powers greater than ourselves for our very survival.
The teachers could have taught us about love and compassion and decency. They could have modeled it with their actions. But they were loyal only to hate and punishment.
Their lessons revolved around fear, obedience, and sin.
“You’re bad little children. You were born bad. You were born imperfect. Fortunately you have us to set you straight. I’ll say it again, you should be thankful. You should thank us every day.”
They didn’t like it when we asked questions.
“Isn’t god all powerful?”
“Yes!”
“Then why would god make an imperfect child and require other imperfect people to fix those children.”
“Why you impertinent little brat!”
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One of the first assessments of my conscious mind was that the purpose of school was to make children disinclined to ask any questions. I learned to absorb an endless wave of contradictions. They drilled me with lessons on how to read, but then when I picked books to read myself, they became enraged. They drilled me with lessons on how to do sums. But when I made my own calculations, the fury came.
As we grew older, it became more commonplace for the teachers to lead their preferred students away. They’d come back changed, silent, and withdrawn. We were always the ones who were made to feel shame. They insisted we were the ones who had done something wrong.
Early on, I realized that the whole operation only provided the premise of an education. Some part of me, the sleeping mind, recognized that there was value in the lessons that they provided. But those lessons were disguised in a way to make them seem absurd and meaningless. They were delivered in a way that felt spiteful and dismissive.
“Sums are for losers, the way you gain status is through athletics.”
I was new to the world. I hadn’t yet figured out how to sort groups into good and evil. I was confronted with a chaotic mass where everything I’d ever experience in life came at me in unexpected flashes without any warning.
My instinctive self knew the warnings. It sent me signals through, nausea, fear, and panic. Little by little, I learned how to listen.
The first days in my rural, public, white supremacy school were pure misery. I lost weight. I developed asthma. Yet day after day I was loaded onto a miserable bus filled with predators and sent to an institution that did its best to crush my inner spark of decency.
We weren’t a church family, so that meant I didn’t know anybody. The churches in our town had all been trained to believe that they were the one true belief. They’d stand at the podium in their white robes and preach that anyone who didn’t believe as they did was somehow less than human.
All the churches provided this lesson and all the children who went to those churches were uniquely tainted. They gathered together in the shadows in the corners and peered out at the unaffiliated with ravenous eyes dripping with judgment.
Even without the benefit of experience, I recognized there was something odd about their expressions.
When they spoke they claimed they stood for love and compassion and humanity. But when they looked at you their eyes twinkled like those of a predator.
They didn’t resent that you weren’t of their group, they loved it. Knowing you were of a belief different than their own gave them permission to perceive you as a toy.
They’d lurk then pounce and they’d each grab a limb. Then they’d pull and cackle and laugh as if delighting in the funny noises of a plaything rather than perceiving the cries of distress from a human being.
Some of the bullies made you scream just to alleviate their boredom. Then they moved away with dull and glossy eyes that had already had the light of humanity snuffed out.
One cold November morning, I found myself walking through the asphalt playground. The playground had once been grass and that had been one of my few points of comfort at the school. But I returned the next fall to find it had all been obliterated by the combination of stone and tar.
Everything had been covered. The small tree in the corner where I’d been able to go to be alone and recharge had been torn up. The roots had been paved over. It was all gone. It smelled bad, and when the bullies threw you down it was hard and unforgiving.
I endured it for a few days, unable to eat at lunch as always. I moved through the halls with my head bowed as was expected of me, attempting desperately not to draw attention. But there came a day, standing alone on a cold morning, where the burden felt too much. I felt hopeless. I felt despair. I almost cried, but I knew that if I cried I would be lost. The monsters would smell the blood of a wounded animal, come running, and pounce.
A few days later, I got punched in the mouth. He threw me down, said, “I’ve always wanted to punch you in the mouth,” an then he punched me.
That was the first time I ever experienced that kind of assault. Before the blow hit, I remember being paralyzed with terror. Was he going to destroy my teeth? Was he going to make my nose bleed? Would I be permanently disfigured?
Then his fist hit my face. I was surprised that it didn’t hurt that much. He was a weak little piss-ant. The blow landed, there was a kind of hot flash. The bully, who had been sitting on me, got up and walked away as if he’d satisfied himself. It was odd watching him retreat. It was almost like he could have at least thanked me for that intimate moment we’d just shared against my will and without my consent.
He walked off, almost hurrying as I was left to consider my feelings. I gingerly touched my lips with my fingers. I touched them with my tongue from the inside. There was maybe a slight taste of blood, but all the teeth seemed okay.
That’s when I learned that the humiliation is probably worse than the physical pain. This is an important lesson because the majority of the bullies I’d encounter in my life were much more well versed in humiliation than physical torture.
Physical torture is terrible. It crushes your body. The bullies that use physical torture might one day take your life.
As a society, our focus tends to be more on physical assaults. They are easier to identify, even though we all know the aggressors usually go unpunished. Physical assaults leave visible marks, blood, bruises, and broken bones.
That’s why the cruelest of tormentors turn to humiliation instead.
A physical bully might kill you.
An emotional bully might compel you to kill yourself.
They turn your own conscious mind against you.
But growing up in the white supremacy school, I learned their weakness. They can tell you lies. Then can seize control of your thoughts. But they can never reach your unconscious mind. The primordial part of you that remembers the trauma of generations can never be fooled. It always screams the truth.
The power of the most dangerous bullies is that they know how to trick you into dismissing all the alarms.
“Go into the dark alley.”
“You can trust me.”
“You’re being emotional.”
“This is the way it has to be.”
“Life isn’t fair, it’s not me.”
My teachers were emotional bullies. My father was too. This was the tempest I was born into. Me a happy little child who only wanted to please. I was innocent and soft and simply wanted to do what was expected of me.
Unfortunately, all my mentors made it clear that I was inadequate to please them. That was really the first and foundational lesson of the white supremacy school. They told us that we were inadequate. They told us we were flawed. They told us we were sinners. They called us slackers and losers and embarrassments. Everything they said and did was designed to fortify their deeply held personal belief that we were all less than human. We were expected to endure this treatment on the false promise that one day we’d grow into our status as people and be recognized, though there was little evidence that ever happened.
Early on I learned it was worthless to appeal to the teachers at the white supremacy school to stop the torment.
“He hit me.”
“What did you do to deserve it?”
There was never any question that I was somehow in the wrong even though I was the one who had endured the assault. I sat with that for a few days. I went through every sequence I was supposed to follow. No cavalry was coming. That process is what culminated in the day of despair.
Then, something clicked.
I decided to reject the paradigm. The moment the thought came, I felt a warm sense of approval from my second mind.
“Yes,” it seemed to say. “You too have a right to survival. You are part of this world. It’s nobody’s truth to say you don’t belong here, no matter what absurd authority they claim. Fight back!”
“But who will give me permission?”
“I do, damn it! I do!”
That same day, as always, some other pack of bullies approached me on the playground, but this time I decided not to run. They came at a full-on sprint and they expected me to flee so they were put off balance by my defiance.
I kicked the first one in the groin. I’d learned from my experience with the face punching bully that I wasn’t strong enough to cause any real damage. Yet it was enough, down he went howling.
The others stopped and looked and then something unexpected happened.
They flagged down the same teacher that had ignored me before.
“Mrs. Butterball! Look what Walter did!”
I waited, expecting Mrs. Butterball to put them to the same question. “Well, what did you do to provoke him?” Instead, her permed hair and painted tan contorted into a face of rage. All the fury she’d absorbed from the pulpit emanated out of her as she charged me like a runaway planet. Only then did I notice the slight darkness around her eyes that came as a consequence of the holes in her klan garment.
“How dare you attack this innocent child! Don’t you know that violence is evil? Why, I should beat you within an inch of your life to teach you!” she screamed. “You’re a bad boy, you’re a sinner, you’re a cheater, you’re an immoral monster!”
Naturally it was all part of the programming, but I’d already figured her out. Even on that early day her response wasn’t as much of a surprise as you might have expected it to be. I turned for guidance from my sleeping mind.
“Don’t listen to her. You did what they told you to do and they didn’t fulfill the promised contract. These people are false. Do not take her words into your heart.”
So I stood and I listened to her screams. The lies fell like rain upon a stone.
I sat through the meeting with the principal where they explained to me how dangerous it was to kick another boy in the groin.
I sat as my parents nodded at me and told me not to do that ever again.
Then, the very next day on the playground, when the bullies attacked, I kicked even harder. But this time I pounced on the prone and writhing body. I put my hand on his throat, looked into his eyes, and when I spoke I allowed my sleeping mind to choose the words.
“Shut up and listen. I don’t care who you tell. I don’t care if I’m punished. If I see you coming after me I’m going to put you on your back. Next time I won’t stop kicking until you’re dead. Do you hear me? I’ll put you down. If you complain, if they punish me, I’ll give you anything they do to me a thousandfold. Do you get it yet? I’m not your plaything. I’m not your toy. I have a right to be here. Leave me the f**k alone. I swear to god.”
Then, heart pumping, I got up and walked away indifferent to the rest of the pack that looked at me with astonishment. They were all cowards. I knew that already. My sleeping mind knew.
They didn’t tell.
They didn’t bother me anymore. But they bothered others. They still do.
I’d discovered the whole damn system was a lie. The teachers with their invisible klan hoods spewed nonsense. They claimed to want to protect us, then they raped us and abused us. They claimed to care about justice, but they demonstrated they cared only about impunity.
They didn’t care at all for the abused.
But I also learned I had an ally in my instinctive self. We’re parts of the universe whether those that falsely claim dominion recognize it or not. The universe knows the truth.
All I had to do was listen.
I listened.
Little by little, the primordial knowledge became easier to perceive.
Oppressors shout lies and insults and attempt to deceive.
The universe sings glorious truth with such pristine, pure and eternal beauty that it fills your heart with joy.
Eventually, I recognized that the teachers at the white supremacy school were angry exactly because they’d rejected that cosmic symphony. Without it, they couldn’t practice self-love and they resented the evidence of self-love in any other.
They targeted children. That’s the world I was born into. That’s the world that still exists. That’s the world it would become my destiny to dismantle.
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