"Speaking the Unspeakable" Reflection

For many people, the topic of introducing young children to the LGBT community has become taboo. For many parents now a days, they struggle trying to find the best time to bring it up with their children, and what would be considered appropriate for their ages. But as the article indicates, I think it is extremely important to make this topic a part of these young students lives. By educating these children, we are allowing them to make their own informed choices and helping them to be accepting of others.

All people throughout the United States should be considered equal, or at least that is what we are constantly told. However, that is not what we practice. To this day, people who identify themselves as part of the LGBT community fear for their jobs, homes, and in some cases lives because of that label. The teacher of the third grade class felt she could be open with her colleagues about her home-life, but not with her students. But it is apparent that straight teachers do not have the same worries as she does. This teacher also has concerns on how to bring it up to her students and how they will react. People have become virtually silenced, and can not express who they really are.
Why are we treating these people as second class citizens? In this Tedx talk video, iO Tillet Wright talks about how no one should feel constricted to a label or a box that society tries to force them to fit into. No one should feel like a second class citizen because of how they chose to identify their sexuality. She proves that these people are like everyone else, they look like us, they work for their money, they have a life outside of their sexuality. They are part of what makes this society work. Yet they are not equal. And some people are working to fix that, but others are still working hard to oppose this. And in the world today, just one voice can change the minds of many. One voice can be powerful.
One voice that holds a great deal of power is a teachers. Children spend a great deal of time with these people and look to them as role models. If they can not educate them about the world around us, then who will? I grew up not hearing anything about LGBT until about middle school and continue to learn more up to this day. The subject was never brought up in my household or school, and looking back I think it should have been. There is no way to go through life without learning about it, so by putting it off you are only hindering the child. In a society where we pride ourselves on opportunity and freedom of expression, we are certainly sending mixed signals when it comes to the topic of LGBT. It is sad to see people not treated the same as all other humans, based upon a label society has created. I think it is crucial to educate our children not to follow in the footsteps of those before them. When this "unspeakable" topic is no longer taboo, that is when all of the people in America will know equality.