Let's Get Real

I'm so angry - I don't know where to put it all. I'm trying to design a "lesson plan" for my students that will engage them and help them to want to persist in their education, and I begin to realize that they can't engage because they don't understand why it even matters - why anything beyond developing the skill-set that will get them the job (and the paycheck) they want even matters to their lives at all.

There's so much I want to say to them, but I'm inadequate. I can't just stand up in front of them and lecture (read: "preach"): I'm not smart enough; there's not enough time, and who the hell wants to be lectured at for two hours anyway?

How do I get across to them that the point of education - the real point - is learning to THINK!


The point is not learning algebraic equations which they may or may not ever use again in their lives; the point is certainly not learning to write "Comparison/Contrast" essays - which they would never write that way even if they were doing a comparison in an actual business situation. The point is to learn to think critically; the point is to learn to problem solve. How do I get across to students a mindset that has nothing to do with anything they've had to think about before, because no one has ever in their whole lives asked them to? How do I get them to understand that the wealthiest people in the country would not send their children to places like Harvard, Stanford, or Yale just to learn that a + b = c or that a thesis statement defines your essay topic, creating an arguable point.

One thing is certain - if I don't figure out the answer to this problem, it won't matter if I use a multi-genre process or just stand on my head and teach with my toes - if the students don't find the class relevant and understand why they should care, nothing I do will  matter.

What Do We (Should We) Choose?

It constantly amazes me - what my students do not choose. So much so, that I have to question my own motives (once again) for wanting them to choose differently. 


I often tell a personal narrative to my classes when we're discussing understanding how something works vs. just "working something" (e.g. how a car works vs. just turning the key and having faith in the magical car gods) - I worked in an office where, for many of the employees, time was mostly spent doing data entry using an extremely old DOS-type system. When I was being trained, I was given a list of instructions: something like


1. Hit F5
2. Enter number from box form
3. Hit F3, ENTER, F7
4. Enter second number from box form
5. Hit F3, ENTER, F7, F4,
6. ENTER, ENTER, ENTER
7. Hit OKAY
8. Hit F5


The list was actually much longer than this - probably about two pages of "hitting" and "entering" in different combinations. No explanation of what any of that meant, just hit the keys and enter the numbers in that order. And, be very careful because, if you enter something wrong, we'll have to call the IT guy, who actually lives in another state, and he's hard to get a hold of, and he gets mad when he has to go in and reset stuff...


Well OF COURSE I was going to make a mistake - and OF COURSE we had to call the IT guy, and everyone was upset - and they made me do it, because, after all, it was me who messed up, right? The difference for me was that I liked working with computers - I'm not smart enough to do any kind of real programming, but I can program macros and have some grasp of MS Basic programming language, so, instead of just waiting for the IT guy to chew my head off - I started asking questions.


For instance: if I understand the steps, would it be possible for me to figure out how to fix my own mistakes?

I could hear the near-tears in his voices as he answered:  "YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"I've tried over and over again to explain the procedure to the people there so they won't have to keep calling me to reset the system from here - which is a pain in the butt - but all they want to be responsible for is the data entry steps." Within a month, as the only person onsite who "understood" the system, I was promoted to supervisor.

What I want my students to take from this tale is the idea that knowing how something works (anything and everything, up to and including knowing how our government works) gives you the power to change it. But, just like the employees in the office where I worked, so many of my students seem way too ready to abdicate all personal power and just have someone tell them exactly what to do so they can do it and go home and not worry about being responsible for any change in their own lives let alone in the world around them

The funny thing (funny - sad, that is), I don't really think it's their fault. I think this is the mentality we inculcate in them from their first day in kindergarten. It is the attitude that keeps them in a sheep-like stupor.

The question is, then - how the hell do I wake them up? Or - is that just the "white" in me that feels like they should have to wake up and fight and take responsibility for the change in their lives - are my expectations coming from an authentic place or are they a product of my own indoctrination into a different social field?

Watch Where You Swim

            As Tim Wise points out again and again on his website (timwise.org) – the concept of antiracist racism is all about perspective. This seems simplistic, but in a society in which “White Privilege” is the water we swim in, so to speak, suddenly seeing the edges of our social construct as a complete set-up as opposed to seeing it as “normal” or “natural” – like Neo waking up in The Matrix – is surreal at the very least, but, possibly, it is also life changing.

            What if, for instance, young America started actually equating Nicki and Paris Hilton (Wise “Overclass” 319) with leeches – the way they may currently see, thanks to Mom and Dad, the poor Wise talks about in “Collateral Damage?” In other words, what if they saw them as people living off society’s good graces; what on earth would happen to MTV? To the Red Carpet?
         The word Cheryl L. Harris uses in “Whiteness As Property” – and one I have associated with “white privilege” from the moment my eyes began to open – is “oblivious” (77). We are, especially those of us who consider ourselves to be card-carrying, left-leaning liberals, oblivious. We see the outward effects of racism – the poverty, the skewed crime statistics – and we think: “Oh, what a shame; something really needs to be done about this.” Then, we dutifully vote appropriately when a ballot issue appears – never really, I’m certain, following up on what happens after the initiative we voted for (or against – and probably spent long hours involved in intellectual debate over before the election) passes or doesn't pass. If it passes – did it do what it said it would do? If it doesn’t, what happened to the marginalized groups who suffer still because it did or didn’t pass? Do we ever ask? Do we really care? Voting is an intellectual exercise, which means nothing – and even less than nothing if, as Malcolm X claimed in “The Ballot or the Bullet” you “don’t even consider [yourself] an American” (487).[1]

            In “Whites Swim in Racial Preference,” Wise writes that when white people try to put themselves in the place of marginalized groups – that is, they try to imagine what it would be like to be black, Latino/a, etc. – they, the white people – “[presume] that if [they] had grown up black [or in any other marginalized situation], everything else about their lives would have remained the same” (243). 

          The thing is, there is just no way I – or any other white person – can ever know (unless reincarnation is a reality – and what good is that without memory?) what it feels like to walk around with the “mark of Cain” painted clearly on my skin – where everything I do is suspect, where my very presence causes discomfort in a room full of white people.

            I used to fool myself into thinking I was colorblind – now I have to call my own bull*#%$ for such an obvious lie. When I see a person of color, I don’t not notice they are black, or Latina/o, or Asian – of course I notice. What’s more, when I see them coming I immediately start checking myself for discomfort, for feelings that might paint me with a less obvious mark than that of skin color – with the mark of a racist. And, these are just the thoughts I know to check after years of self-reflection – what about those parts of the water I still can’t see I’m swimming in because I am so immersed?
        When I read Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” I had a thought; it seemed like such a simple, almost nonsensical thought at first, but it began to grow on me. She wrote: “whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average” – what would it be like to be me, to be in this society, if I didn’t have the comfort of this foundational assumption underlying everything I do? I started to realize, almost immediately, the ramifications to me personally – I might never have come back to school at the age of forty – the idea that haunted me, the judgment that hung over me from the time I was kicked out of the University of Colorado in the early eighties and the subsequent path I took – marrying, having children instead - these were White ideals. These were the expectations of a white, middleclass upbringing. For most of my adult life, I felt a stigma attached to myself – like a visible stain (back to the “mark of Cain?”) – because I had no college degree. Until I turned forty and made the determination to rectify the situation, running from that stigma defined my identity. And, that was just me, myself, and I. What about the dominated cultures who live with that expectation hanging over them – who live with that “Mark of the Uneducated” everyday but have no reasonable way to "erase" that stain (not that my stain is erased, but as I meet new people who don't know about my past, in a way I am "passing" as the acceptable white woman).

            There are so many questions attached to this thought – do subjects from marginalized cultures feel that stigma – of course, they have to, because they are made to feel that way every time they step into the workforce and have to settle for less responsibility (therefore less pay) – does this mean we ought to make it possible for everyone to get, and complete, a college education – or is that a White Ideal? Maybe the system should be changed so that college is no longer the test for intelligence and possibility. This -public education - is a fundamental, weight-bearing wall on which the structure of our current society is built; if we move it, or change it, or take it away – what kind of collapse would there be? If we decide the cost is high, should we continue to pretend everything’s okay the way it is – the answer is clear: we must take the risk, if we decide it is what we must do, whatever that turns out to be. If we see the water we swim in is becoming polluted with our own stuff – we need to make the decision to clean it up, regardless of risk.

---

[1] Malcolm X. “The Ballot or the Bullet.” Composition I: Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies. Southlake: Fountainhead Press, 2009.

No Offense, But... It's the Least We Can Do

(Loud frustrated sigh). I can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing that my students seem out to offer fodder for this discussion.

In a Basic Writing class, we read part of Gloria Anzaldua's "How To Tame a Wild Tongue" last week, and the assignment was to blog and respond on it. Seldom does a student take such an assignment seriously - they usually do a brief (and I'm not going to lie - usually lame) summary paragraph themselves and then add some one-liners in response to their peers (like "I really agree with what you said..." or "I think you did a great job summarizing the article..."). This time, however, Anzaldua's ideas seemed to strike a nerve in at least one student.

I don't feel comfortable offering direct quotes from her blog, but, apparently, having grown up here in Pueblo's multicultural environment, she actually felt like a part of a minority as a white person, and she stated that she believed the Mexican culture here precluded any expression of culture for her family. But, more importantly, she was feeling the weight of whiteness on her back. I understand - being called names and constantly feeling as though you have to justify yourself in the face of the choices of your ancestors can be like wearing a heavy chain attached to something you can't see or free yourself from. And, we cannot. As Paulo Freire said in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:


"As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized...It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors" (56) - who don't even know who or what they are.

We become so caught up in the white experience of being dominant, "any other situation...seems like oppression" (57) - or, at the very least, like "reverse discrimination." It is frightening and frustrating - and, yes, oppressive - confronting the sins of our fathers. My husband grew up in a poor area of Houston; he went to a middle school that was "mostly Hispanic," and a high school that was "mostly black." He got beat up - a lot - because he was white, and when confronted by issues of anti-racism, he gets angry. "I didn't do anything - it wasn't my fault - why were they beating up on me? How does that make them any better than the white people who discriminated against them?"

He doesn't want to deal with questions of history and habitus and the fact that the very reason those children beat on him was, ironically, the same reason he feels the way he does now - anger at injustice, injustice perpetrated by his own ancestors (both literal and figurative - his Texas family is unapologetically racist).

I understand, more than I maybe want to admit, my husband's - and my student's - fear and frustration. I grew up in Pueblo too, and I too have felt my white skin like a badge of shame, but I am coming to see it is the least we can do. We cannot give back the lives, or even the dignity lost to so many years of genocidal discrimination - we may, someday, be able to give back land, offer real opportunity for education, but not now. Now, we have nothing of value to offer by way of even smallest compensation but our shame and anger at those who came before us, and our solidarity with those who struggle today.

"thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world" (77)

Stevie Ray Vaughan Life By the Drop

Vaughan, Clapton, & Bourdieu

In Language & Symbolic Power, Pierre Bourdieu asks:

"When the dominated pursuit of distinction leads dominated speakers to assert what distinguishes them - that is, the very thing in the name of which they are dominated and constituted as vulgar - according to logic analogous to the kind which leads stigmatized groups to claim the stigma as the basis for identity, should one talk of resistance? And when, conversely, they strive to shed that which marks them as vulgar, and to appropriate what would allow them to become assimilated, should one talk of submission?" (95).

I'm pretty new to the theory game, but is this the flip-side of a question asking whether or not Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton appropriated Blues music as a dominant gesture? To be fair, both are probably more likely classified as Blues-Rock, but Bourdieu, at any rate, speaks of the generation of "popular speech" which may otherwise be considered vulgar except for "The vague feeling [among dominant subjects] that linguistic conformity implies a form of recognition and submission which raises doubts about he virility of men who abide by it" (94) - the chafing of the very kind of submission they impose on marginalized groups - so maybe the appropriation of artifacts of dominant culture, not just speech, but other cultural artifacts such as music, are a way for dominant subjects to assert difference, hence, virility?

But, what if it's not about virility at all, but about a lack of self-definition: what if part of the apparently bottomless need to appropriate ethnic culture by the white race is a sad attempt to make up for a lack of our own culture?

Let's face it, white people, especially white Americans, have more in the way of "tradition" than culture. We have Christmas - founded, historically, in pagan religions and carried on the backs of malls around the country; we have Thanksgiving - a tradition built on a mythological "friendship" between the pilgrims and the indigenous people whose knowledge and stores of food they pillaged, and which gives us an excuse to gorge ourselves indecently one day a year (longer if leftovers are involved);  the only holiday we might truly call our own is the Fourth of July - another holiday founded on a mythology of "founding fathers" who knew what was best for us all - and now an excuse to drink heavily, this time cleverly couched as a patriotic meeting of American minds. Of course, there's Halloween - possibly the most honest holiday as it purports to be about nothing other than having fun by hiding behind outrageous costumes in order to pretend in the morning to not be the person who got sloshed the night before and had sex in a car with someone wearing a Bill Clinton mask.

We appear, at first glance anyway, to have little in the way of unifying culture - maybe football (which can actually be equated with alcohol and violence); possibly heavy metal music - but even our rock and roll is linked inextricably with violence, drugs, and a childish relationship with sexuality. So, our white "culture" consists of: mood-altering chemicals and violent displays all played out through the shadowy lens of half-hidden, half-denied sexuality and backed by the only thing we all really have in common - an addiction to consumerism.

For better or worse, though, none of this changes the fact of my particular habitus, which has encompassed a love of rock and roll since I was old enough to hear - and way long before I was old enough to understand words like assimilation and appropriation - and has always included the music of Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, as well as Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley.

My habitus, which Bourdieu assures me is "the product of the whole history of its relations with markets...is, indeed, linked to the market no less through its conditions of acquisition than through its conditions of use" (81) - ultimately, the rock and roll I have always associated myself with was informed and infused with the Blues, imprinted on me - admittedly from a "white" perspective which, by its nature, must alter the original meaning; still, I cannot deny it now as a part of my life and identity, nor do I want to - it may be the only link I have to a true culture.

My Favorite (Insidious) Childhood Story

When I was little, my favorite story did not come in the form of a book - at least, I didn't know it did; I found out much later, when I was grown and already questioning my childhood and the racist tendencies of my family. The name of the story as I heard it was "Pamenondas," and it was just a silly story about a funny little boy who couldn't seem to get anything right. And, I can't honestly say that had we not moved away from Texas before I started school, I ever would have discovered the stereotypes growing through this tale like creeping weeds.

Even having moved, and long after I began to think of myself as a "colorblind," non-racist liberal, it did not occur to me to examine the story until someone else pointed out the hypocrisy of not doing so, but I still hadn't seen the book, so it was easy to determine that this someone must be "overreacting." Still, being a good "White Liberal," I decided never to tell the story to my children or talk about it at all (still not to examine it, or myself).

Then I was assigned a literacy narrative in a graduate class, and, given the prominence of the story in my childhood (I asked my grandmother for the story nearly every time I saw her when I was small), I couldn't avoid looking at it any longer.

I searched the internet and found, not Pamenondas, but Epamninondas and His Auntie - a 1907 story by Sara Cone Bryant. I found a copy online and was appalled - this is not at all what I had pictured in my head as my grandmother told the story:


Epaminondas and His Auntie

But, what did I imagine? That's the question.

One of the things I always thought - even having learned through an intensely painful teenage encounter with my grandmother (which I will address another time) how racist she could be- was that there was nothing specifically "racial" about this story. The protagonist was just an absentminded child who did funny things; the child could have come from any ethnic background. Of course my grandmother told it with using an exaggeration of her own Southern accent, but that could be explained away as her attempt to amuse her grandchild. But, no matter how I turned it over in my head, the fact remained that - even without having seen Bryant's book - I always knew 'Pamenondas was black. And, after seeing the book cover, I know without a doubt this is what my grandmother pictured in her mind's eye when she was telling the story. I now wonder how long I've really known.

Just to be clear...Just being - Us

I do want to be clear that I am starting this project as part of a study for a graduate thesis, but also for my students: because I want to be clear about what I am teaching them (consciously or subconsciously); finally, I am doing this because I think it is time. There simply should not exist in the 21st Century the kind of poverty, homelessness, and need we see everyday around the world. The only way such atrocities can possibly continue is through an equally atrocious ambivalence on the part of those who have the power - that would be - us.

The only way to keep ignoring the obvious is to pretend it isn't there or to pretend there's nothing we can do about it. Either paradigm is criminal. We can only pretend the problem doesn't exist if we make those marginalized by it "Other" - other than human - other than someone, anyone, we need to be concerned with. Or, we can blame them for their own problems - "how can we help them, when they won't help themselves!?!" 

We can also turn them into a product or a mask to be put on and taken off as if they weren't quite real (I refer here back to the idea of the hip hop genre - of music, dress, etc - and the white penchant for appropriation); better yet, we can turn people into a cause to be contibuted to, in order allow ourselves to feel good about just being - us.

EXAMINED LIFE

Cornell West/ Peter Singer from Astra Taylor's documentary Examined Life

The First Time

The first time I, reluctantly, admitted to myself that I might be inadvertently, or maybe obliviously is a better word, racist was the day I was standing outside a place of business, taking a break with co-workers when the only black person in that office (at least that I had seen in my short time there), came out to stand with us. Almost immediately, I began working out in my head how I would share with the group that my husband (also white) was a huge hip hop fan, so, by association, I knew a lot about the genre (that I really hadn't learned to appreciate and still knew almost nothing about).I was trying to relate to this well-spoken, intelligent African American man by showing off knowledge of a subject he may not even have cared anything about

(yes, I realize this statement itself is revealing, stereotyping anyone who "cares" about hip hop as unintelligent - I am, obviously going to have to look at this thought more closely; I'm afraid, I'm going to be back-tracking and catching myself a lot with this blog - but that is the point I guess).

To this day, I cannot believe I did that. Obviously, working something that random into a conversation will never be done smoothly; it wasn't - and I have no doubt that I came across as exactly what I was - a white woman trying to show a black man how understanding she was about his blackness.

Perhaps, the worst thing about this, is that the realization happened so long ago - and I am just now confronting myself about it. For a very long time, I blamed it on my husband and his weird redneck/inner-city-of-Houston childhood influence (he had - still has, though not as pronounced - a weird tick that triggered his white-boy-pretending-to-be-black switch anytime anyone of color was near), so, I blamed my moment of shame (the only one I had acknowledged up to that point) on being around him too much - it was rubbing off.

Unfortunately, even then, I could not hold onto this theory as realistic - so, as soon as I left that particular company (not long after), I just put it behind me - pretended it was an anomaly and would never happen again; certainly, it had never happened before - had it? I definitely was not going there. The truth is, though, I have never been able to shake that knowledge of myself; it has haunted me underground ever since.

I knew I had come from a racist family - I spent every summer and Christmas break in Texas with them fighting - I thought - the good fight against their intolerance (another word to explore). My mother once told me that, she knew she had probably inherited those tendencies, though she tried to fight them, and she moved us to Colorado as soon as she could and tried to raise my brother and I to "not see color." I do believe her intentions were noble, and the understanding of that particular statement as impossible, verging on the ridiculous has been a long time coming. Not seeing color, I am slowly coming to see - thanks to some great professors and a lot of reading - is both impossible and, most likely, part of the problem.

Obligations are calling, so I have to go - but even in this short beginning, I am seeing so many things I will need to address going forward. I'm not sure where this journey will take me, where it should take me, or even where I want it to, but I know that, I do believe it maybe the most important path I will ever walk.