How many of your high schools have a "community service" requirement? I am here to raise a warning flag about this based on some long-time thoughts I've had and triggered by an experience I had today.

So I've been volunteering to give away food at my school site this summer. 1/

There has been a very helpful white-presenting HS boy there the last few days. We never got to talk because it's BUSY -- we gave out 1000 meals today, BEFORE 11 am -- but today I got to talk with him for the first time. He's a rising sr. at a local prestigious Catholic School. 2/

Why are you here? I asked. "I have a community service requirement, and I'm about 2/3 of the way done," and then he said that "coronavirus cancelled my trip to West Virginia to help the poor people in Appalachia."

Okay. 3/

The food line was busy. Like, really busy. A line down the block. I mentioned something about the crowd, and he said, "You know, I think people just like the idea of free stuff. Like last week we had diapers, and like really old people were grabbing them. Like, what?" 4/

In the midst of my duties, I tried to explain that we were at 20% unemployment, and even without unemployment being what it was many parents relied on school meals for 2 meals a day....but clearly, whatever I said was not going to be enough for this young man, at that moment. 5/

His school, in requiring a white kid to do "community service in a low-income community of color, did nothing to address this kid's simplistic, untaught, racist, classist perceptions of social problems. In fact, the experience reinscribed racist, classist ideas (FREE STUFF). 6/

I don't blame the kid. I blame the school structure that frames community service as a savior-ish personal mini-solution instead of recognizing huge systems of oppression. But it could be different! 7/

Think how rich a true "community service" program could be if it required -- & guided -- an analysis of the social issue they were addressing: Wait, why do I even have to give away food at all? MY mom isn't waiting in this hot sun to get food. That's messed up.

It's not hard. 8/

Instead, this school (and many others, I'm sure)is allowing its noblesse oblige to feel great about themselves, get their grad credits, form some specious ideas about the people they're "helping," and continue to prop up a broken system that benefits them.

Torpedo the arc.
Fin