Seeing Red

Here we go. An anecdote from Monday (was that yesterday?). I hung up on the wall the "Where I'm From" poems my freshman wrote in the second week of school. They wrote the poem and had to illustrate it in some way. One girl turned hers in to me with a red background and the phrase "Norte X4" across the top. When I was in high school, blue and red gangs separated into Bloods and Crips. In my adulthood blue and red gangs have separated into Republican and Democrat. At the school where I teach I knew that blue and red were Sureno and Norteno, but I didn't know which color represented which. She handed me her poem and I suspected it was a gang reference so I asked her, "Is this something appropriate to hang on the wall?" She looked a bit sheepish but replied, "Sure..." Call me crazy, but my time for reflection is a bit limited, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and put the poem up on the wall. It was, after all, one of the better poems and she had taken such care in her illustration. The next day, though, students from all of my morning classes gathered around the poem and asked me who had written it. Of course, I withheld that information. When my poet returned to class I asked her to stay afterwards. We walked up to the poem on the wall and I said, "So, does this refer to a gang?"

She said, "Yeah."

I asked, "Are you representin'?"

She said, "Yeah."

Then I said, "Because your poem has attracted a lot of attention, some of it negative. I want you to think about whether it's a good idea to advertise your affiliation with this gang. I am concerned you might get hurt."

Her response was a simple, "I ain't trippin. But you can take it down if you want."

I took the poem off the wall and delivered it to the principal with a mental note to myself to keep an eye on my young freshman. As my principal tells me, freshman in particular are the ones who affiliate with gangs. They have not bought into identifying with our school yet, so they bring their own band. By tenth grade, there is less interest. That said, even my seniors seem obsessed with red.

It used to be my favorite color.