You know that awkward moment when you laugh out loud at a movie theater and then realize you're the only one laughing? Either you got the joke and nobody else did (they're idiots, after all) or maybe, you're the idiot and that wasn't a joke at all?
I had one of those moments at a "Sales Pitch" meeting for prospective parents of children who might be "offered" a place in a Monte**ori elementary school. During the Q and A portion of the presentation, the only other Dad there, a guy with just the vaguest hint of being Asian-American, I mean you wouldn't have ever thought of him other than White except in the context of that room, asked:
"You claim to teach Diversity. How do you do that, when obviously (motioning around) we're not the most diverse group around?"
I involuntarily burst out laughing because he was making a joke, but the looks I immediately got from everybody else in that room were downright scary. The whole room looked at me like, "How Dare You Laugh At That Poor China-man!! And How He's Trying To Better The Life Of His Ethnically-Cursed Children!!!"
They went on and on about some hokum about how you can "teach" diversity and acceptance, but I knew right then and there, my children would NOT be attending, and without saying, no invitation would be proffered.
A couple of months later I see the other Dad at our local public school with his kids and I ask him about what happened, if he was offended, and why his kids were now at our public school.
He looked me square in the eye, and said, "Those people are nuts!"
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I had one of those moments at a "Sales Pitch" meeting for prospective parents of children who might be "offered" a place in a Monte**ori elementary school. During the Q and A portion of the presentation, the only other Dad there, a guy with just the vaguest hint of being Asian-American, I mean you wouldn't have ever thought of him other than White except in the context of that room, asked:
"You claim to teach Diversity. How do you do that, when obviously (motioning around) we're not the most diverse group around?"
I involuntarily burst out laughing because he was making a joke, but the looks I immediately got from everybody else in that room were downright scary. The whole room looked at me like, "How Dare You Laugh At That Poor China-man!! And How He's Trying To Better The Life Of His Ethnically-Cursed Children!!!"
They went on and on about some hokum about how you can "teach" diversity and acceptance, but I knew right then and there, my children would NOT be attending, and without saying, no invitation would be proffered.
A couple of months later I see the other Dad at our local public school with his kids and I ask him about what happened, if he was offended, and why his kids were now at our public school.
He looked me square in the eye, and said, "Those people are nuts!"