Puppet From Hell (white activist faux pas)

I'm starting a new job soon which involves more teaching! I'll be working with children in families affected by HIV. So, we had "HIV sensitivity" training yesterday and it was a little more "radical" than I thought (i.e. had a slight anti-oppression focus).

There was seven of us tutors in total, meeting the "diversity" quota ever so nicely. There was this one person who stood out in a way that was, how can I put it, incredibly annoying (and definitely had me on my toes). It was this recently M.A. graduated, "activist" white woman who kept busting out in academic jargon/analysis to remind us all of shit that I personally didn't think mattered (been there done that, not going there again!)
She'd have these two minute rants, to which I would respond, just to challenge her cookie cutter "radical" discourse which in no shape or form related to everyday lives of poor, people of color dealing with HIV and how we, with all of our privileges, fit into the picture as self-reflexively, as self-critically as possible.

We were discussing the issue of disclosure and how some families did not share information with others about the HIV - whether to their own children, to the wider community or to us. So the same chic put up her hand and said something about "non-disclosure as reinforcing the stimga around HIV" and how unfortunate it was that families couldn't come out and share this info with others just to break that cycle of shame and stigma. Ummm, hello? Victimhood narrative much? UGH. Having said that tho, I also thought about immigrant communities of color in the diaspora and the complexities of support systems within our communties (especially when it came to something as stigmatized as HIV). I was so annoyed with this white, activist chic who just didn't seem to get it. Yah yah, theory and action = social change, bla bla bla...get over it and get real.

At one point, the group was discussing the difficulties of home tutoring and getting students to focus while their other siblings were were running around making nose. This chic put up her hand and told us that the best solution to that situation was to engage the other siblings in a fun activity (i.e. puzzles, toys, etc.) to keep them occupied. This would also help make a positive association with our presence in the space for them. Ok, that made sense to me. I dug the idea.

But check it out. She had one experience where she had taken two incredibly large hand puppets of hers (a pig and a cow) to the home of a Muslim Somali family to engage the younger children and build good rapport with them. She had rung the doorbell, puppets in hand, ready to greet the kids. So what happens? The 5 year old opens the door, with the 3 year old by her side. They see the pig and immediately freak out and run away crying! It had not occurred to this woman that pigs were HARAM. Stuffed animals or not, pigs are just not seen to be cute or cuddly by children from most Muslim households. So to cut a long story short, she did not make good rapport with the kids because now they associated her with the pig, which made her haram by default.

I got a good laugh from the story. In fact, I think I was the only one laughing. Her though, she was amused by her own ignorance. She thought it was funny or ironic, because after all (as she had mentioned to me earlier), she had taken all her required "post-colonial" courses. But regardless of how much Said, Spivak and Fanon this woman had read, at the end of the day, she was still the white chic with the Puppet From Hell!

Honestly, I don't know. She meant well, there's no doubt there. Her heart is in it. But that's not enough. Is that unfair of me to say? I mean, she is more of an ally than a right-wing, conservative, fucko. But how much of an ally can someone be if they just don't get it? I don't know.