Good Morning Ms. King,

 

I’m Nathan’s absentee father. I sincerely desire to be a partner with you on this and all other issues regarding my son Nathan, as well as Naomi when she gets there. If you play this recording with Nathan in the room along with some of his friends as well as faculty and staff that may have felt disrespected by Nathan’s overuse of the ridiculous term “bruh”. I knew that this was Nathan because he disrespected me many times by calling me that and I gave him his life nearly 14 years ago. It was about time for there to be some school issue because being a minority race in Tomah & America has natural growing pains and pangs of freedom yearns that I also experienced, because it is part of the black experience. Thank God I’ve been in Nathan’s shoes growing up, except that I did have one advantage over him, looking back on my 12.5 years of public school education In Illinois. I went to both types of integrated schools growing up, majority whites & majority black. Nathan would benefit if he at least lived with me for 1 school year and attended a majority black school. He’d be able to come into himself and his own racial understanding in the same way that his white friends and fellow students, and also many of the professional educators that may h felt disrespected by my son’s overuse of the term “bruh” when addressing adults. The whites at your school have a shared understanding of cultural context as whites, so a young white stident calling a teacher a “bestie” doesn’t feel as disrespectful as my black son with his eraser head haircut saying “bruh” to a staff member. Bruh & Bestie puts the student on equal footing with the adult before the student is ready to handle handle what it means to be equal in the eyes of the law, you know the proverbial “…all men are created equal…” and “freedom of speech” which includes disrespectful words unfortunately. Amy, I do not endorse my son use of the word “bruh”. Please play the linked recording for my son so that he can hear my voice letting him know a better way to express himself. If he were at a majority black school, everyone says “bruh” so there’d be no disrespect taken because I don’t believe my son’s intentions are to be disrespectful. Valarie never saw me disrespect his mother or anyone, but he has watched me handle disrespect at the hands of people who aren’t fans of me or my podcast THE MATT ELLIPSIS SHOW or my music which is at m3dots.com, which includes a webpage of Nathan’s music. Let’s work together Amy! Thank you for all of your emails over the years.