Obama is My Cool Art Teacher and Clinton is My Mean Science Teacher

[AlphaCentauri]

Editor's Note: One young man can't help but compare Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to two of his teachers from school - one who inspired him to become a better person and one who represented the worst of institutional America. Hector Gonzalez is a contributor to Silicon Valley Debug.

The youth of today are voting in unprecedented rates and are becoming a voting block to be reckoned with. They call us the millennials. We’re the kids that grew up in the 90s who outsmarted our parents, dated interracially, and whose politics defy cultural and racial stereotypes.

Young people have the ability to see through our teachers, cops and counselors – only paying attention when they keep it real. The same standard applies to political leaders, especially now, when – for the first time in American history – a women or a black man could be president.

I can’t help but compare Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to two personalities from my school days. There was Mrs. Austin, my 8th grade Science teacher, a white woman who had this nice pearly white smile, but wouldn’t hesitate to give you a referral, send you to the office or call your parents. Then there was Mr. Gonzalez, a.k.a. Mr. G. He was my 11th grade graphics teacher – a half-Mexican, half-Filipino man that would tell us stories about the old school days, make us laugh, and let students talk to him on a one-on-one level about their problems.

To me, Hillary Clinton is Mrs. Austin and Barack Obama is Mr. G.

Mrs. Austin gave me an institutional perspective of a character that I would run into again and again through out my life – from school teachers to counselors to principals to cops to probation officers to District Attorneys to public defenders to judges. When I think of these people, I get cold chills and a sense of frustration, because they are all a part of the establishment that made me walk home from school with referrals for my father to sign or had me suspended from school. They are same people that had me in a cold white room in county jail with people whose minds were slowly deteriorating. That same establishment is the one that bombs Iraq, establishes a poor health system, industrializes the military complex, and has exploited poor people through out the world for years.

Mr. Gonzalez, on the other hand, taught Graphics so all the graffiti kids took his elective class. There was a bond of camaraderie in the classroom. Mr. G would talk to us and everyone would listen, he had gained our respect. He kept it real and spoke from the heart. He constantly reminded us that his parents were migrant field workers from Stockton, CA., and if they could make it – there wass no excuse why we couldn’t be successful. It’s not that he wouldn’t give us referrals or call our parents, it’s that he set an environment that he didn’t have to.

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