“Fear of The Unknown” or “Other” = Inhumanity

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Work, Youth

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"Fear of the Other", "Fear of the Unknown", #AltonSterling, #PhiladoCastile, American Narcissism, Black Box, Dallas, Duquesne University College of Education, Empathy, History of American Education, Humanity, Inhumanity, Islamophobia, Racism, Southern and Eastern European Immigrants, Teaching and Learning, Xenophobia

A black box with question mark, a certain “fear of the unknown,” July 9, 2016. (http://socialcapitalmarkets.net).

The phrases “fear of the unknown” or “fear of the other” has been something that I’ve been familiar with as long as I’ve been in the classroom. So many essays, so many discussions, so many presentations where these stock phrases have greeted me in my capacity as instructor, professor, facilitator, administrator, and public speaker. Ultimately, the use of these all-too-often used phrases reflects the inability of the people who speak and write them to see other people as Homo sapiens, thus diminishing their humanity in the process.

The first time I seriously encountered either phrase, though, was in my second semester of teaching History of American Education in the College of Education at Duquesne University for MAT students. It was the fall of 1998, and I was teaching a required education foundations course (I was also doing Multicultural Education that semester). To be sure, there were a couple of veteran teachers who didn’t like having a twenty-eight year-old Black man telling them about the marbled history of their profession and the institutions for which they served as K-12 teachers. Some of their bigoted evaluation responses disclosed as much.

It was the week I lectured on the Southern and Eastern European immigrant experience in America’s emerging public school systems between roughly 1880 and 1930. In going through the efforts of educators to literally beat out of these children the language of their mother countries (e.g., Italian, Yiddish, Greek, Polish, etc.) while sorting them into lower intellectual tracks within public schools, I noted the anti-immigrant xenophobia among WASPs at that time. One of my students during discussion tried to explain it away as a WASP “fear of the unknown.” I asked, “What was the unknown? Were these immigrants aliens?” — in this case, I meant “extraterrestrials.”

Data Mining/Fear of the Unknown cartoon, Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News, July 6, 2013. (http://adamzyglis.buffalonews.com/2013/07/06/data-mining/).

The student didn’t really answer my question, as if “fear of the unknown” needed no explanation. But on the paper related to the experiences of the children of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, Black migrants, and working-class women, over and over again, the phrase “fear of the unknown” kept showing up. What made this use of phrase even more disappointing was an even more sobering Western Pennsylvanian reality. Most of my students were the descendants of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, some of whom were old enough to have had contact with grandparents who must have recounted their experiences with xenophobia in public education. That these students couldn’t possibly see the inhumanity of the phrase “fear of the unknown” made me question whether these current and future teachers should be in a classroom at all.

Luckily, I did manage to reach a few of my more skeptical students around these sorts of issues as this course progressed. After all, most teachers really do want to help their students. A couple even wrote me notes after slamming me in their evaluations about how my History of American Education course had opened their eyes to inequality and social reproduction in K-12 education.

Since then, I have remained keenly aware of when students, colleagues, public speakers, and fellow administrators (specifically in the context of the nonprofit world) have said or written the “fear of the unknown” or “fear of others” phrases. Mostly, it’s not in the context of White ethnics from an era in which “White” mostly meant “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” Over the past fifteen years, I’ve seen and heard “fear of the unknown” in reference to Blacks, Latinos viewed only as free-loading immigrants, and Arab-Muslim Americans as US-hating terrorists. There have been students who have justified the race riots of the not-so-recent past (the ones where White mobs stormed into Black neighborhoods and burned them out while maiming and killing Black men, women, and children) with the phrase “fear of the unknown.” Or co-workers who’ve explained away their xenophobia or homophobia as a natural “fear of the other.” Or public speakers who’ve explained Islam as if it were a magical black box that churns out terrorists the way Detroit used to turn out automobiles.

Caravaggio’s Narcissus (1594-96) , May 15, 2011. (Masur via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Stop it. Just stop it. What does “fear of the unknown” really mean? That you didn’t know that Black Americans were human beings with a need for work, education, housing, sleep, air to breathe, and food to eat? That you couldn’t conceive of Latinos as a group of folks who’ve been part of the American landscape (specifically Texas and the southwestern US) for far longer than there has been a US? That you can’t contemplate the idea that Arab Muslims have just as much right to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, religion, and assembly as any “red-blooded American?”

Using the phrase “fear of the unknown” says more about the people using it than it does about the “others” they attempt to describe as “unknowns.” All anyone really needs to know is that the so-called others are human beings. To say “unknown” or “other” means than you think you are superior to these “unknowns.” Or, conversely, that these “other” humans are not “normal,” that they are defective or not quite your equals. When groups of humans attempt to justify inequality or their fear with phrases like “fear of the unknown” or “fear of the other,” it means they have little or no empathy for the “unknown” or “other.” And when we as humans can cut ourselves off from other humans in this way, doesn’t that make us less humane, more “other” because we believe ourselves to be normal, even special, and therefore, better, than these “unknown others?”

Of course, there are tremendous psychological and material advantages to seeing other humans as “unknowns” and “others.” This week of #AltonSterling, #PhiladoCastile, and #Dallas has been proof positive of the value of some lives versus “unknown others.” The truth is, no Homo sapiens live in black holes. Unless those with the power to cut off empathy to their psychological and material advantage make a mental home for us there.

OJ: Microwaved in America

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Colorblind Racism, ESPN, Ezra Edelman, Misogyny, Narcissism, O.J. Simpson, OJ: Made in America (2016), Questions Unanswered, Racism, Review, Viewers, Weaknesses

Ezra Edelman (sports documentarian and son of activist/Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman), 2015, June 26, 2016. (Deqrassi4 via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-4.0.

Ezra Edelman (sports documentarian and son of activist/Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman), 2015, June 12, 2016. (Deqrassi4 via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-4.0.

Ezra Edelman is a pretty good documentarian. Period. Edelman is no Ken Burns, David Attenborough, or even Spike Lee. Although his O.J.: Made in America has gotten Edelman kudos and other critical accolades, for this viewer, it felt like an unedited draft long on O.J. Simpson’s post-football life and woefully short on the “made in America” theme. Like a McDonald’s or microwave meal, Edelman’s O.J.: Made in America tasted more like fake food than it did a carefully crafted work with a serious balance of protein, starches, fruits, and vegetables.

Mechanically processed chicken, the key ingredient in McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, pouring out into small tubs, October 5, 2010. (http://huffingtonpost.com).

Let’s start with the long. The five-part documentary was nearly eight hours in length, about three hours too long overall. Spending more than twenty minutes of Part 3 on the Bronco chase was an error that most directors would’ve left on the editing floor. Anyone with access to a TV and over the age of thirty has seen this chase at least once, and for people like me, at least one time too many. There were so many other places, though, where Edelman chose not to make editing choices. Thirty minutes of Part 3, all ninety-five minutes of Part 4 and the first fifteen minutes of Part 5 were on the O.J. trial. There wasn’t much “made in America” with this part of the documentary.

And how could there have been, really? Edelman’s idea was to let the audience make up their own minds about O.J. Even so, an occasional narration of events would’ve helped with the timeline of the five parts, especially Parts 2 and 3. When did O.J. break up with his first wife, Marguerite? How did O.J. go from dating to marriage with Nicole Brown? What was O.J.’s relationship with his first children, with the Brown family, prior to the 1994 slaying and subsequent trial? Why wasn’t a timeline consistently added to the documentary? Who refused to do interviews for the documentary? With so much information, Edelman expected viewers to draw inferences for all of the missing pieces. There was too much and not enough information at the same time.

Edelman’s expectations also meant the limited (really none, in this case) use of experts to draw out nuances in the story, to truly make this about O.J. and his relationship with America. Sure, references to the LAPD, Rodney King, and the L.A. Riots of 1992 were fine. What about O.J.’s internalized racism and obvious colorism? What about the toxic nature of O.J.’s -isms mixed with the racist fetishisms not only on the part of Nicole Brown Simpson, but also of nearly everyone in O.J.’s orbit? This would’ve been a great place to have some expert commentary. Instead, Edelman divided Americans into two neat racial camps: most Whites for a colorblind race transcendent in O.J. before falling into hatred, and most Blacks pretty much the opposite.

O.J.: Made in America (2016) poster board, June 26, 2016. (http://variety.com)

The last part of Edelman’s documentary came down to whether people believed O.J. “did it” or not. That question is no longer relevant. In fact, it may never have been relevant, even on June 12, 1994. Especially if the idea is that O.J. the misogynist, narcissist, and self-hating probable murderer is a representation of the American cultural psyche. This is where skill, expertise, and narration can subtly frame such an overarching theme, instead of taking us to the land of America in racial and gender stereotypes.

For this viewer, if I want a documentary that addresses societal issues like race through the lens of an individual’s experience, I’ve already learned whom not to watch again. At least, not until Edelman learns what I already know. Seasoning is as important in a documentary as cooking with gas. One ensures good flavor and a variety of perspectives. The other blandly reinforces people’s misjudgments and stereotypes.

Mrs. Shannon

25 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Affection, Crush, Daydreaming, Demographics, Discipline, Expectations, Mrs. Shannon, Nathan Hale Elementary, Neighborhood Schooling, North Side, Puppy Love, South Side, Teaching and Learning, Traphagen Elementary, William H. Holmes Elementary

Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, circa 1976, June 25, 2016. (http://www.moviepilot.com).

It’s been nearly four decades since my first teacher crush, maybe really, my only teacher crush. Of course there were a number of teachers I came to adore and love, but not in a child-like, puppy-love way. Ms. Griffin, Ms. Martino, Harold Meltzer, even that tough old bird in Mrs. O’Daniel (R.I.P.) were a few of my favorite teachers before college. (And as a professor, I do make the distinction between teachers and professors, since the former [mostly] work with students more closely, and at a more impressionable age.)

For me it was Mrs. Shannon and third grade at William H. Holmes Elementary, the 1977-78 school year. She was my real-life Wonder Woman, with none of the skills but all of the passion of that goofy ’70s show. Beyond that, she really set me on the path to make education my weapon, my equalizer, even though it would be years before I realized the untruth of this ideal for so many.

Third grade was my transition year from Nathan Hale to Holmes. The two elementary schools were at the opposite ends of Mount Vernon, with Nathan Hale on the predominantly Black and more impoverished South Side, and Holmes on the more middle class and Whiter North Side. Though one school veered toward Pelham and the other toward the Bronx, both were similarly composed of mostly Black and some Latino kids. Interestingly, Mostly White Traphagen ES was technically a closer walk than the seven blocks between 616 and Holmes, but the Board of Education cut off the neighborhood zone right at the northern corner of the East Lincoln-Sheridan Avenue intersection.

My pretend version of an introduction to a documents-based question essay for AP World History (in my best-worst handwriting), June 21, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Despite this zoning, I lucked out. Mrs. Shannon was a young Black veteran teacher, probably between twenty-eight and thirty-three years old at the time. She was full of energy and ideas, and kept all of us on our toes. She even made my first grade teacher Ms. Griffin look lethargic by comparison (and Ms. Griffin was a bundle of energy herself!). She gave out tons of homework, drilled us on spelling, grammar, and all but beat my fingers with a ruler to improve my penmanship (my handwriting is still horrific).

In that year of learning about my new school, my new classmates, and my new neighborhood, I learned a lot from Mrs. Shannon. For one, I learned to read about more than Peanuts comic strips in short picture book form that year. I began to see books not as a burden, but as a window to new worlds, to worlds better than the one in which I lived. I learned, too, the power of multimedia. Mrs. Shannon used the latest in technology, the compact short film strip projector, to show us everything from current events to the rise and fall of ancient Mayan civilization. The screams that came from the tape recorder that came with the film strip made the fall of civilizations scary for me.

But really, after a year of unacknowledged abuse, Mom’s divorce from my dad, moving to 616, and a terrible teacher in Ms. Hirsch, I found myself healing a bit in Mrs. Shannon’s class. She actually hugged us, hugged me even, when it looked like we could use one. She was tough, though, too. I daydreamed so hard during one math lesson that I fell out of my desk chair. I ended up standing in the corner for fifteen minutes while balancing my textbook.

I daydreamed a lot in those days. I usually daydreamed about food, usually Hostess Suzy-Qs (back when they were made with lard) or what we’d have for dinner that evening. As the year progressed, a good portion of my daydreaming was about Mrs. Shannon. I was eight, so mostly it would have been about her face, her smile, her smell, maybe a kiss here, or a hug there. (Back then, I even loved the smell of her lunches, which mostly comprised of cans of tuna fish with the occasional crackers.) She would get frustrated with me, too, because I coasted for most of the year with B’s and C+’s. Mrs. Shannon asked me one, “What are you daydreaming about?” There was no way I could say, “Why, you of course!”

Ice Capades 1978 brochure (with Dorothy Hamill near middle right), June 22, 2016. (http://www.retrospace.org).

Still, without Mrs. Shannon, Mom doesn’t go out and spend $300 on the ’78 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. It was the path that led to my cosmic leap of academic development and use of near photographic memory power. With Mrs. Shannon, I saw the world beyond Mount Vernon and 1978. I could see New York beyond subway and Metro-North rides with my drunk father. I went to the Statue of Liberty and to Madison Square Garden for Ice Capades with her. Without Mrs. Shannon, I wouldn’t have recognized that I had within me any intellectual capabilities to develop. Without Mrs. Shannon, the lessons I barely knew I learned — from Roots to multiplication tables — would have disappeared from my memories.

By the end of third grade, I didn’t want to go to fourth grade and Holmes’ second floor, where the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms were. I felt like I would never see Mrs. Shannon again. On my way out of her classroom, I gave her one last hug, while she reminded me that I could “always do better” academically. I went home that morning, went into the bedroom I shared with my older brother Darren, and walked into our small walk-in closet. Once there, I shut the door, and cried like a little baby for at least a half hour. The good news was, no one was home that Friday. I cried as if I’d never see Mrs. Shannon again, even though I knew I would. That was thirty-eight years ago this week.

Where Everything Equals “Radical Islam” Terrorism

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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"Radical Islamism", #Orlando, #PulseShooting, Fairies, Fairly Odd Parents, Hillary Clinton, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Racism, Islamic State, LGBT rights, Misdirected Hatred, Mr. Crocker, NickToons, Omar Mateen, Terrorists

Mr. Crocker from The Fairly Odd Parents, June 14, 2016. (http://cdn.smosh.com/).

The tragic shame of fifty dead and fifty-three wounded because of one Omar Mateen’s anti-Black, anti-Puerto Rican, anti-gay, and anti-Islam hatred. The attack on an LGBT sanctuary in Orlando, Florida will continue to make news as the world learns more about the deceased attacker, his family and friends, as well as about the dozens of living and dead victims of Mateen’s venom.

While there is much to learn about all of this, there is one thing Americans and the world already know. That we as Americans — politicians, media, and ordinary citizens — are incredibly quick at jumping to conclusions before we have any facts at all. Declaring Omar Mateen an example of “radical Islamism” when he barely brushed an arm of anyone even remotely connected to terrorism in the name of Islam? Thanks a lot, Hillary (you’re supposed to be the sensible choice of the two presidential candidates, right?)!

Really, our reaction as a nation is no different from Mr. Crocker’s to unexplainable phenomenon on NickToon’s The Fairly Odd Parents – a play on the words “fairy godparents.” Until my son hit his preteens, I’d been subjected to six years of this ridiculous show about a permanent ten-year-old with fairies granting his every wish, all to his and the world’s detriment. Mr. Crocker, his permanent elementary school teacher, once had fairies when he himself was a kid. Upon suspecting that his charge has fairies of his own, Mr. Crocker became obsessed, building gadgets and devising plans to prove to himself and the world that fairies exist. Or, even more extreme, to steal the ten-year-old’s fairies and use their power to dominate the world.

But instead of yelling “FAIRIES!!! FAIRIES!!! FAIRIES!!!” every time a mass killing occurs in the US, we scream “TERRORISTS!!! TERRORISTS!!! TERRORISTS!!!” To be sure, what Mateen did was an act of terror. In our use of the term, though, Americans always mean terrorists who are of Arab descent, terrorists who claim Islam as their religion. We don’t do this for White “Christians” like Dylann Roof or, going back two decades, Timothy McVeigh. Why is that? Because we Americans are so obsessed with IS (Islamic State), that we never deal with our own -isms. Which ultimately may be why Mateen could take his internalized homophobia, racism, and misogyny and explode it into taking and harming the lives of so many innocents.

Addendum to “My Muhammad Ali:” Open Agendas

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Sports, Work, Youth

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American Exceptionalism, American Individualism, American Narcissism, Anti-Racism, Attallah Shabazz, Billy Crystal, Bryant Gumbel, Economic Inequality, Funeral, Hypocrisy, Interfaith Service, Joe Rapport, KFC Center, Louisville Kentucky, Muhammad Ali, President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, Public Funeral, Religious Acceptance, Religious Bigotry, Structural Racism, Valerie Jarrett

Ambassador Attallach Shabazz (eldest daughter of Malcolm X) speaking at Muhammad Ali's public funeral, KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, KY, June 10, 2016. (http://www.odt.co.nz/).

Ambassador Attallah Shabazz (eldest daughter of Malcolm X) speaking at Muhammad Ali’s public funeral, KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, KY, June 10, 2016. (http://www.odt.co.nz/).

Public spectacles, if not properly processed and analyzed, are like champagne and wedding cake at a reception. Without a filter, a spectacle can easily become empty calories and shiny objects, lacking in context and devoid of implications.

The hours-long coverage of both Muhammad Ali’s ride to his grave and the public funeral service that followed the private one in Louisville, Kentucky on Friday had its moments. Ambasador Attallah Shabazz’s heartbreak, joy, and eloquence regarding her lifelong relationship with Ali and the connections between him, her, and her father, Malcolm X. Bryant Gumbel’s somber and bittersweet speech about Ali the man and athlete, so imperfect, so flawed, and yet, nearly as great as Ali said he himself was. Billy Crystal’s ability to mix comedy and sorrow, so typical of the great comedian when he was in his heyday. Rabbi Joe Rapport’s ability to keep his words and stories simple, to make his message plain. They were the highlight of the public interfaith spectacle that despite all objections to the contrary (including my own), was all that Ali wanted in the aftermath of his death.

"Ali Wins Decision" on 8-0 Supreme Court decision to "Kayo Draft Rap," June 29, 1971. (http://www.nydailynews.com).

“Ali Wins Decision” with SCOTUS decision to “Kayo Draft Rap,” June 29, 1971. (http://www.nydailynews.com).

If the service had only consisted of this group of men and women, the service would’ve been over in under an hour, and would have accomplished all Ali apparently wanted. Sadly, other people had the opportunity to speak for Ali and on his behalf, imbuing their own selfish and whitewashing stamps on the man and his public funeral. Valerie Jarrett, one of the powers behind President Barack Obama’s Oval Office chair, read Obama’s statement commemorating Ali at the funeral. Except that Valerie Jarrett’s reading of the president’s commemorative letter sounded more like a call to America as a great and exceptional nation.

He’d have everything stripped from him – his titles, his standing, his money, his passion, very nearly his freedom. But Ali still chose America. I imagine he knew that only here, in this country, could he win it all back.

Where else was Ali going to go to continue his career? Ali was going through the courts in order to keep from going to prison for draft dodging, no? Running away would’ve made his predicament worse, not better. Ali may have chosen America between 1967 and 1970. But let’s not pretend as if Saudi Arabia, Australia, Sweden, and the USSR had invited him to live and fight heavyweight championship fights abroad as an alternative.

President 42, William Jefferson Clinton, ended the four (or was it five?) hour public funeral with his standard “I feel your pain” speech. Clinton had been crying for at least twenty minutes before he walked up the steps to the podium. His face was flush and a bright pink from grief. Clinton began with a few choked words as he stifled tears. Now, I am not saying that any of this was Clinton fakery. He has always been in the moment as long as he’s been in the public eye. And in that moment on Friday, the former president was as heartbroken as anyone in that 18,000-seat arena.

Still, Clinton managed a select choice of words that conjured up America the beautiful and the message of American individualism.

We have all seen the beautiful pictures of the humble Muhammad Ali with a boy and people visiting and driving by. I think he decided something I hope every young person here will decide. I think he decided very young, to write his own life story. I think he decided, before he could possibly have worked it all out, and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided he would not be ever be disempowered. He decided that not his race nor his place, the expectations of others, positive negative or otherwise would strip from him the power to write his own story.

See how Clinton just slipped that in his eulogy, as if structural racism, economic inequality, the chaos of one’s family or community can be overcome by sheer force of will? (Or, as the researchers call it these days, “grit” and “resilience?”) Clinton snuck that American rugged individualism in there faster than a twenty-seven year-old Ali could turn out the lights and jump into bed. Or, rather, the way a sneaky teenager can spike a bowl of punch with whisky or rum.

How much grit does one need to overcome society’s barriers?, June 11, 2016. (http://shop.takachpress.com).

For Ali, it wasn’t just grit or determination that was critical. He had skills that only a handful of people on the entire planet have ever possessed in any generation. The kind of skills that made him a three-time heavyweight champion. His family was working-class in the Jim Crow South, a major achievement in the 1940s and 1950s. A Louisville police officer who also happened to train boxers “discovered” Ali in 1954, when the latter was twelve years old. Maybe Ali, like me at twelve, had discovered some sense of his calling and pursued it fully. But opportunities matter. Talent matters. A background that incubates and nurtures that talent matters. Sheer will alone only gets individuals so far. Thanks for continuing to spread the American mythology, Clinton.

Clinton also said

I have spent a lot of time now, as I get older and older, trying to figure out what makes people tick, how do they turn out the way they are, how do some people refuse to become victims and rise from every defeat.

The answer isn’t merely in individual struggle, but in dismantling structures that stifle the ability of individuals to overcome. Or really, dismantling structures so that there is no need to overcome racism and inequality in the first place. The idea that it’s just the individual’s fault that they do not overcome being victims. This could just as easily be the argument that rapist Brock Turner’s father made against “Emily Poe” after his son was sentenced to only six months in county jail for sexual assault in California.

The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013) poster, June 11, 2016. (http://www.kartemquin.com).

Maybe President Obama’s right. “Muhammad Ali was America. He will always be America.” But what America was he? Was he a narcissistic megalomaniac who had no empathy for the plight of the poor and vulnerable and didn’t understand structural racism and religious intolerance as fundamental obstacles to freedom? Or was he the unapologetic Black man who stood for what America ought to be, rather than the hypocrisy that America often is? Or, perhaps, Ali represents both strands of this bipolar and narcissistic American identity after all?

What this means is that while Ali can forever rest in peace, for America, peace will remain elusive.

Lifetimes of Hypocrisy

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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"Hard Habit to Break" (1984), Academia, Academy for Educational Development, AED, Capitalism, Chicago, CMU, Contradictions, Disillusionment, Hypocrisy, Illusions, Ironic, Irony, Leftists, Liberals, New Voices, Nonprofit Organizations, Nonprofit World, Pitt, Progressives, Social Justice, Worker Exploitation, Working-Class History Seminar

Twitter conversation on labor historian job and irony, May 26, 2016. (screen shot Donald Earl Collins).

Irony/Ironic is a word that we in the West use a bit too often. It is ironic, for instance, that I left the job insecurity and financial instability of the nonprofit world after a decade, only to find myself part of the unstable world that is academia these days. But it isn’t ironic that nonprofit organizations working for a better world exist only because their leaders have the task of constantly raising money for their work. The best of these leaders make high-six-figure incomes and their nonprofits make billions, in organizations like Educational Testing Service, College Board, and my former organization, Academy for Educational Development. This isn’t an example of irony, at least not just. It’s maybe a contradiction, it’s maybe hypocrisy, it’s maybe even straight-up bullcrap.

A week and a half ago, a colleague became part of a Twitter conversation about a labor historian job at Rutgers University. (Full disclosure: I’d already seen the job a week earlier on Rutgers’ website, so no surprises for me). The job was for a non-tenure track position teaching a 4/3 load (four undergraduate courses one semester, three the other, with no summer courses, at least), the position potentially renewable after one year. The standard teaching load at most four-year institutions is between five and six courses (counting summers) per year. The ironic punch line was that it was the Labor Studies & Employment Relations Department that advertised this position, a department that ought to “know better.”

The Cog in the Machine, June 8, 2016. (http://catholicreadingproject.blogspot.com).

The problem for me is that this isn’t ironic at all. This department exists within the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. These schools are not exactly incubators for “workers of the world unite” types, and would be most likely to take advantage of the weak job market to hire a labor historian desperately in need of a one-year or more gig. This is naked exploitation to be sure, but I find no irony in this job search at all. This is typical of the majority of jobs in higher education these days.

It is definitely hypocrisy, at least on the level of academia at large. Especially in considering that supposed bastions of liberal ideals (which universities really aren’t — they’re capitalist business enterprises which sometimes house some leftist leaning faculty) have turned the secure work of the professoriate into non-tenured service industry work. That this has coincided with the plunge in the number of full-time positions and in the number of living-wage positions in the US labor force in general is telling. It says that academia is nothing special beyond the expensive education, that it isn’t some sacred place for intellectual exchange and political mobilization. It is as firmly tied to capitalist pursuits as Wall Street and K Street.

I learned this lesson a quarter-century ago, thanks to the working-class history seminars at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Between Dick Oestreicher, Bill Chase, Reid Andrews, Joe Trotter, and Joel Tarr (among others), the level of hypocrisy was enough to make me sick. The distance between what these people wrote regarding leftist movements, ideas, ideals, and exploited workers and how they treated students and colleagues sometimes was breathtaking. It was like the distance between the Terran system (Earth) and Alpha Centauri (roughly 25 trillion miles).

Hammer & Sickle & Pitt Flag [symbolic of Pitt’s history department], December 13, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins).

Sure, it’s all “let’s start a communist revolution” when discussing the 180th nuanced on E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working-Class. But when graduate students wanted to unionize to have their work recognized as workers, then these leftists suddenly became capitalists. “No, you’re not workers,” they said. “You’re students.” In the face of virulent racism, they said, “Get use to it. Shit happens.” Heck, some of these so-called bleeding-heart-liberals were themselves harassing students, exploiting their work for prestige and profit, and playing favorites to promote yes-men and yes-women while keeping others from pursuing their doctorates.

I saw the same distance between noble liberal ideals and center-right realities in my decade in the nonprofit world, mostly working in social justice. Yes, some of the very people who had made it their calling to ameliorate racism and combat injustices were also knee-deep in their own contradictions. Gender-based, race-based, and intersectional harassment wasn’t exactly uncommon. Exploitative labor practices like working two people full-time for the price of one, denying promotions based on gender or racial bias, even paranoia over power within a social justice organization. They all were the usual things I witnessed or experienced in the years between 1997 and 2008.

Wolf in sheep’s clothing, a false prophet (a symbol of my ex-stepfather), November 2008. (Source/flickr.com)

There is nothing sacred and no safe space for those of us looking for such things. This belief in academia as being so different from the rest of the working world is an illusion cooked up by neo-conservatives who’ve made millions selling the idea that academia is a liberal bastion. We should all look for positions and places in which our work can thrive and we as individuals or even groups of people can grow. Those obviously still exist. But believe me, it’s been years since I thought that academia was a place where being far left-of-center was a good thing. It’s only good if you’re good at acting like this is so. It’s another illusion that others have chosen to create to cover up their hypocrisies. The irony is that people still believe in these ideals anyway.

My Muhammad Ali

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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"Impact", Blackness, Bonds, Boxing, Closed-Circuit TV, Death, HBO, Legacy, Life, Maurice Eugene Washington, Meaning, Muhammad Ali, Parkinson's Disease, Robert Farmer, Roots (1977), Self-Awareness, Self-Discovery, The Greatest (1977)

Meme of Muhammad Ali quote on “impossible” combined with iconic photo of Ali in 1st Round of first fight with Sonny Liston, February 25, 1964. (Getty Images via Twitter).

There is so much I could say about Muhammad Ali. His greatness. His contradictions. His imperfections and frailness. And all of them would be true. He was both a great man and a deeply flawed man at the same time. But, from 1964 through 1980, Muhammad Ali was the most recognizable person on the planet, with every aspect of his complicated onion on display in every corner of the world.

I have a few childhood memories of Ali’s headier days and nights. One was in ’74. It was the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Ali and George Forman. My father Jimme took me and my brother Darren over to his drinking buddy Robert Farmer’s house to watch the fight on closed-circuit TV (yep, Mr. Farmer spent good money on this fight). I do remember seeing bits and pieces of the fight, with Ali using the ropes around the ring like they were a trampoline. But mostly, I remember my dad and Farmer and Lo and others drinking and smoking away while watching the fight. October 30, 1974 was also the night that I learned my first colloquialism, the “rope-a-dope.” I know that the “dope” was Foreman, but I’ve seen lots of people as dopes in the four decades since that fight.

The Rumble in the Jungle poster, October 29, 1974. (Armbrust via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use because of low resolution for reproduction.

I remember watching the “Thrilla in Manila” nearly a year later between Ali and Joe Frazier, either at Mr. Farmer’s place or at a bar, I’m not sure. Again, smoke, drinks, beer cans, sunflower seeds and cigars, all in the midst of two fellas knocking the hella outta each other. My father sure knew how to show his two young sons (I was five and Darren was seven at the time) a good time.

These two fights became vague but embedded memories, perhaps two of the greatest bouts of all time. Although, Jack Johnson-James Jeffries, Joe Louis-Max Schmeling I and II, and Ali (née Cassius Clay)-Sonny Lister also come to mind in terms of historical significance.

But where I remember seeing Ali in a context beyond the right was in this movie The Greatest in May 1977. Believe it or not, my soon-to-be idiot stepfather Maurice took us to see this mediocre docudrama of a biopic on Muhammad Ali’s through 1974. (So I guess I was wrong when I said my stepfather had only done two good things for me growing up). At seven, there was no way I could know how bad the film was, between scenery chewers Ernest Borgnine and James Earl Jones. Still, the movie put those hazy memories from ages four and five in better perspective. After having seen Roots a few months earlier, I was really conscious of the wider world, of race, and of Muhammad Ali’s importance for the first time.

Muhammad Ali tweet re: Prince’s death (pic is from their first meeting in 1997), April 22, 2016. (Twitter).

Unlike Natalie Cole, David Bowie, Prince, and going back before 2016, Michael Jackson, I’ve been expecting Ali’s death for quite some time. His Parkinson’s wasn’t just Parkinson’s, but likely brain damage the likes of which NFL players have come to fear. That it took Ali until 1984 to announce what millions had suspected as far back as 1978 told us that he had taken a long time to come to grips with what would become his second act, his new reality. That Ali became a symbol of philanthropy, activism, and humanitarianism during this second act suggests that his strong will and support system deserves way more credit for the quality of his life than anything he did in the ring.

“Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy” comes from the 1920 mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If he were to write Muhammad Ali’s story, it would likely read as a tragedy. Luckily for us, Fitzgerald isn’t around to do so.

We have glossed over a few things in our millions of small eulogies for Ali this weekend. His sexism and occasional misogyny and abuse, both in words and deeds. His obvious colorism, calling Joe Foreman a “gorilla” and most of his somewhat darker skinned opponents “ugly” as a euphemism for their failure to pass the brown-paper-bag test. His rejection of Malcolm X at the very time when Malcolm needed him the most. Ali in the years between his biggest bouts and his mostly silent second life expressed regret about these -ism words and actions.

Despite this, Ali was still a father, a husband, a Muslim, a three-time heavyweight champion of the world, an author, a poet, an actor, an anti-war activist, a civil rights advocate, a social justice leader, a humanitarian, a hostage negotiator, and a Parkinson’s survivor. Ali was a fighter, in the most panoramic sense of the word. And yes, he was a Black man, in the narrowest and most intersectional senses of that two-word phrase. And all of that made him an icon. RIP.

Striking members of Memphis Local 1733 hold signs whose slogan symbolized the sanitation workers’ 1968 campaign, March
1968. (Richard L. Copley/http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/).