The "White People Are Mosquitoes" Video in FCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think OP should watch the video again more closely. I don't think this video is trying to say that white people are the only people who can ever commit microaggressions and people of color are the only ones who ever experience them. In the middle of the video there are two white people (one disabled and one a woman) who are being bitten by the mosquitos. Basically any group that can be marginalized or has been considered "less than" at any point can experience them. People of color happen to be a large group that are frequent recipients. The disabled community could make a similar video showing people of all races saying problematic things to them.

The author of that article comes across very paranoid. I personally know and work with people who do research on SEL and have developed measures for schools to use (not those questions FCPS used in their screener, but better ones). They also do research on how teachers can promote SEL in children. They are not trying to push some woke agenda. They recognize the importance of SEL in a time where we have 6 year olds shooting teachers. We have too many kids who are angry, don't feel like they belong, don't know how to talk about their feelings, don't have parents who check in on them and pay attention for red flags. Someone has to give kids tools to name their emotions and learn how to manage them. Conflating SEL with DEI stuff is just uninformed.

shhh that doesn't fit OP's narrative

[Anonymous]

That is a fantastic video. I am not white and it sums up some of the things I have to hear all the time. And the teacher telling the kid to aim lower academically has happened to us. Ex. Teacher telling us maybe our 4th grader should aim higher than a CC because he seems really smart. He might actually be able to get into a 4 year college right away. So disheartened to hear. Both my husband and I have graduate degrees but in the teacher’s mind he is a poor brown kid and we are too dumb to know about colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Videos like this are why we end up with so many young people now turning into arch-conservatives. They are rebelling against an establishment that pushes this SEL nonsense.

Zoomers and young millennials are overwhelmingly voting for non-conservatives but go off I guess.

[Anonymous]

Just don’t expect white people to go along with this nonsense.

[Anonymous]

According to the article, the video was shown to high school students. I think it's a great way to explain how the cumulative effect of certain well-intentioned comments based on our assumptions about certain groups can harm others. I don't know that it would be helpful for younger students, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just don’t expect white people to go along with this nonsense.

LOL that's kind of the point Karen. We know you dgaf. Keep on keeping on with your racist BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched the video. I think it actually tries to explain micro aggressions in a clever way. And yes at the end, the POC seem very annoyed by the micro-aggressions and hit the mosquitoes. Is that what you mean by saying the video implies minorities could engage in violence against white people? Because that is not what I got at all from this video. You know what is scary OP? How some conservatives are completely overreacting to CRT and the like. See Florida. I agree that we should focus on academics more than anything. But this fear mongering is scary. And the Federalist is biased AF OP. They are right wing and very much pro-school choice/not fond of public schools. But I am guessing you are already knew that, no?

There was also a flamethrower.

Yes. Do you think the video was saying, literally, take a flame thrower and kill white people? Because I thought it was hyperbole, showing a woman so sick of being bitten by mosquitoes that she felt LIKE taking a flame thrower to all of them buzzing around her. Somehow I was able to distinguish between this cartoon frustration and.... reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just don’t expect white people to go along with this nonsense.

I'm white, and I think (aside from some questionable grammar) the video is fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to the article, the video was shown to high school students. I think it's a great way to explain how the cumulative effect of certain well-intentioned comments based on our assumptions about certain groups can harm others. I don't know that it would be helpful for younger students, though.

I guess. IMO, it would be better to teach kids to ignore/shake off/re-interpret unhelpful comments from others rather than kill the mosquito. The ones who are most hurt by micro-aggressions are the ones who are most hurt by them, not the ones who most receive them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was saddened the other day when my white ES kid came home from school and I asked "what did you learn today.?" And the kid said glumly "same thing as everyday. White people are bad."

Alex, I'll take "Things That Never Happened" for $800, please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was saddened the other day when my white ES kid came home from school and I asked "what did you learn today.?" And the kid said glumly "same thing as everyday. White people are bad."

I call BS on this. If that happened I'd march my liberal white @ss right over to the school and heads would roll. Again, METAPHORICALLY. I wouldn't actually chop off heads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the article, the video was shown to high school students. I think it's a great way to explain how the cumulative effect of certain well-intentioned comments based on our assumptions about certain groups can harm others. I don't know that it would be helpful for younger students, though.

I guess. IMO, it would be better to teach kids to ignore/shake off/re-interpret unhelpful comments from others rather than kill the mosquito. The ones who are most hurt by micro-aggressions are the ones who are most hurt by them, not the ones who most receive them.

It would be better to teach people not to care about being treated poorly rather than teaching people not to treat others poorly? Will you tell your daughter the same thing when it comes to boyfriends? Just ignore it? Dunno about you, but I'm teaching my son to recognize when he is being hurtful so he can grow up to be the man he wants to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the article, the video was shown to high school students. I think it's a great way to explain how the cumulative effect of certain well-intentioned comments based on our assumptions about certain groups can harm others. I don't know that it would be helpful for younger students, though.

I guess. IMO, it would be better to teach kids to ignore/shake off/re-interpret unhelpful comments from others rather than kill the mosquito. The ones who are most hurt by micro-aggressions are the ones who are most hurt by them, not the ones who most receive them.

That's a different lesson, but it doesn't make this one less useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was saddened the other day when my white ES kid came home from school and I asked "what did you learn today.?" And the kid said glumly "same thing as everyday. White people are bad."

I call BS on this. If that happened I'd march my liberal white @ss right over to the school and heads would roll. Again, METAPHORICALLY. I wouldn't actually chop off heads.

?It was a child's perception. I don't know exactly what led them to say that, but I'm not the type to "march right over there" and make "heads roll."

[Anonymous]

The world is going backward not forward.

We're heading for another period of segregation, mark my words.

It already happens so often in my local community. The MLK march was only attended by a handful of white people and most of the younger POC did not want any of them there. The younger generation has more anger than any previous one I've seen before. I tell my grandson, WHY are you so angry? WHAT do you have to be so angry about? He speaks of the past like he lived it and like it was his struggles. I tell him and the younger ones all the time, you must release this anger to move forward and make progress. This anger will hold you back.

When we have a local block festival, each race keeps with their own and there is almost no comingling. The sense of community is fading. There's no more community feeling around these days. It's all 'this is MY street' and 'this is MY block' instead of 'this is MY neighborhood'. We need to bring back that community spirit. A neighbor is a neighbor regardless of skin color.