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Young Hedreich Nichols with afro puffs watching Dolly Parton perform on television in a 1970s family living room.

Would We Have Loved Dolly Parton Before She Was Dolly?

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“OMG, who is that?”

“Lookin’ like she came in straight from the streets!”

“Shameful, looking like that in the Lord’s house.”

“Bless her heaaarrrrt”

And if it was in any of the churches I could worship in as a little Black girl… 

“Hmpf. She must be up in here trying to get one of our men. Her weight in the wrong place tho. All coming, nothing going.”

“She is kinda cute when she smiles though. Dimples. She just needs to take off some of that makeup and cut down them fake ass nails. OOPS, made me cuss in church.”

What if she was a registered sub on our campus?

“No she didn’t show up like that at a school!”

“She think this is Vegas? Or worse??”

“Ma’am, our administrator needs to have a word.”

And yet. Flags at half-mast. Tributes and interviews from every industry. Her songs and quotes trending sounds on social media platforms, used by gays and Christians alike.

But what if Dolly, unknown as the star we all came to love, had walked into our church, our school, or our neighborhood? Let’s not pretend she would have been the girl we all wanted to have coffee with, the one we thought would be perfect to head up the Ladies’ Tea committee.

We would have looked at her ostentatious makeup and long nails and assumed things.

She’s a loose woman. A trollop. Fast. Hot. Thirsty. She has zero style, she’s cheap, uncultured, and probably dumb as rocks if she has to pimp herself out like that. Did I cover all generations? 

And what the aitch ee double ell is up with those oversized fake boobs??

Bleached Blonde Hair and Blind Spots

Let’s not pretend that we would have seen her as the multiple-income-stream poster child worth $450–$460 million, with her fingers picking not only guitars and banjos, but winners in industries across entertainment, farming, fashion, real estate, and more. Even with that sweet voice, we could not have predicted she’d be someone who would write over 3,000 songs worth $6–$8 million in royalties every year. We would never have guessed that she would have the moxie to refuse to give up publishing rights to Elvis, and that that one decision would go on to earn her $10–$20 million alone from Whitney’s cover of I Will Always Love You.

The local gossips, while trashing her clothes and makeup, would never have thought that the bleached blonde in a cheap wig (Dolly’s words, actually) would give away millions and millions of dollars, just because that is who she was.

And “millions and millions” isn’t hyperbole. We all know about her giving away books (roughly 3.5 million monthly, btw). But Dolly ain’t new to this, she’s true to this. 

Back in 1988, when one in three kids in her home county were dropping out of school, she told the eighth graders to buddy up. If you and your buddy both made it all the way through high school, Dolly herself would hand each of you a $500 check. The dropout rate reportedly went down to 6%.

Then there are the people working at Dollywood. Full-time, part-time, seasonal, it didn’t matter. In 2022, the company told employees who wanted to continue their education that they would get 100% of their tuition, fees, and books covered. Imagine being the person somebody dismissed as the tacky blonde with the boobs and the nails, turning around and making sure the teenager selling funnel cakes at your theme park could go to college for free.

Teachers get some Dolly love too. Her Chasing Rainbows Award annually celebrates a teacher who has pushed through personal obstacles while still managing to change children’s lives. And they don’t just get a plaque in the mail. The honoree gets an all-expenses-paid trip to Dollywood to celebrate and be celebrated.

All that from the woman we might have taken one look at and decided lacked class. Turns out, maybe we were looking for class in the wrong places.

What Dolly Can Teach Us About Perception

And there’s an educator question buried in all of this too. When we look around our classrooms, campuses, and staff meetings, how often are we responding to what we actually see, and how often are we responding to the story we’ve attached to it? How quickly do we mistake our interpretation of a person for information about that person? Clothes become “doesn’t care.” Quiet becomes “doesn’t know.” Loud becomes “disrespectful.” Poor becomes “unmotivated.” Nails, lashes, dialect, politics, gender presentation, whatever; we see something, attach a story to it, and then respond to the story as though it’s evidence.

Everybody doesn’t have Dolly’s confidence. Let’s face it, most of us don’t. And it’s hard to feel safe with people when you can feel their judgment before you ever hear it. So for those who remember the old WWJD T-shirts from the ’90s, I keep coming back to WWDD. What would Dolly do? Not because Dolly was Jesus, but:

Would Dolly need someone to believe like her, vote like her, worship like her, love like her, or look like her before deciding they were worth making room for?

From everything I’ve read about her, apparently not, and maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking about Dolly so much. Not because she died beloved by all. But because she lived loving all people.

 

Would We Have Loved Dolly Parton Before She Was Dolly? Read More »

Eat the Elephant

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For this week’s post, I’d like to invite you to read my latest article, “A Guide to Equity and Antiracism for Educators”, published by Edutopia. It’s all about actionable steps that you can take now.

I would also like to invite you to Small Bites, my YouTube channel soft re-launch, next Friday. If you’re familiar with the UN’s Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World, the concept is similar. Look for news on Twitter and Instagram.

We can’t eat an elephant all at once, but we can move forward if we commit to actionable steps that move us forward one bite at a time.

Eat the Elephant Read More »

What’s Going On

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While being interviewed this week for Ted Nesloney’s #tellyourstory series, we talked a little about equity. He mentioned, rightly so, that the word equity is kind of “buzzy”, meaning that it’s one of the words popularly thrown around in education these days. He asked me what equity means to me. My encapsulated reply is that equity means doing the very best you can do for the student standing right in front of you.

When we think of the Big Concepts surrounding equity, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Be a culturally responsive educator. Decolonize your classroom. Teach anti-racist curriculum. Where do you start? How do you start? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you begin to make your corner of the world a more equitable place as an educator? By doing the best for the one student standing in front of you.

Let me be clear: systemic racism is a big problem in the US and across the world and this week we have seen it play out in ugly ways in our country, once again. However, seeing the problem, acknowledging the problem, being aware of the symptoms and solutions of the problem and maybe even seeing your own part in the problem is not going to change anything unless you do one thing: Do your very best for the student standing in front of you. A child standing in front of you needs to know 3 things:

  • You value all students;
  • Every student deserves to be valued;
  • If someone is not valued, you will use your voice to help make sure that they are.

If every teacher would model and teach those three things, we could stop defining terms that essentially all mean the same thing: value others just as you value yourself (if you’re so inclined, you may recognize this as one of the 10 commandments). If every teacher had been teaching those three things, Amy Cooper might have grown up to be a person who leashed her dog instead of pulling the Fear Of The Black Man card. If teachers had been teaching students to value others all along, George Floyd would likely still be alive.

If every teacher would do the best for each child in front of them by valuing all students and speaking out against those who don’t, I wouldn’t have to worry about my teenager driving/running/living while black. That’s a hashtag, you know, #livingwhileblack. My pride and joy, a well-liked 16 year-old kid, who is now taller than I am, is perceived by the world as a black man, and we see what happens to black men, even when they are Harvard educated birders or lying faced down, pleading for breath as a peace officer’s knee crushes the life out of them.

Educators, if you are reading this and thinking that my recipe for eradicating racism is overly simple, I’ll concede that. I just don’t understand why it can’t be.

As a teacher, how can I not use my voice to speak out against wrong and teach my students to do the same? How can I not understand that melanin can mean convictions and rogue justice death sentences, often without vindication? How can I not understand that #blacklivesmatter means that students in your class, who look like me, don’t feel like their lives matter as much as the lives of whites because of what we experience and what we see happening in our communities.

As an educator, how can you not want to hug them and protect them and make sure that everyone who does NOT look like them knows that it’s not ok that they feel that way. It’s not ok that they die early and often for reasons rooted in systemic disenfranchisement, reasons that should make every educator into an activist, even if it’s only for one child at a time.

You want a more equitable classroom? Do your very best for the student standing in front of you. Make your campus a place where fairness and justice are not regulated by race, class, ideology or popularity. Esteem and celebrate those whose stories and histories you may have to look beyond the textbook for. When you read the painful stories of those who are not being valued, don’t look away. Teach your students the truth about what happens to people of color and the ugly historical truths surrounding the ugly present realities. Then teach them that they can make a difference. Send cards and letters to mothers of the slain, work with organizations who fight for social justice and teach your students that the grief we feel today will lessen if they value those who look like them– and those who don’t.

Don’t worry about the Big Concepts surrounding equity. Just do your best for the student that’s standing in front of you.

What’s Going On Read More »