Troubled Man

To get to heaven sometimes you have to go through hell

I find myself writing this when in actuality I should be working on my dissertation. Unfortunately, I am a bit preoccupied with the residue of previous bastards of my life. A colleague called me to share deep concern about what is and what is not right. In one regard I was flattered while on the other hand I was flabbergasted that someone would consider me a moral compass. I am about as chaotic neutral as one could be. For example, there are somethings I am just aggressively passionate about: my family, my philosophical sense of right and wrong, and coming to the aid of my friends, family and fellow humankind oh I forgot, social justice and advocacy for those who cannot advocate for themselves. (Sounds like a film noir anti hero) To put it bluntly, I don't like being screwed over and the only thing worse than me being screwed over is seeing those I care about getting screwed. Ok that sets the context. Liberation and emancipation are expensive. It cost money, time, and in some cases, even bloodshed. In other writings, I've said and still maintain that I am a pacifist. I don't like confrontation. By no means do I promote the use of physical violence to address conflict. However, I am a strong believer in the concepts of self defense, negotiation, and cerebral, intellectual, and symbolic violence. Self defense is self explanatory. If one puts hands on me or my family in anyway other than acts demonstrative of love and humanity, then those actions must be met not by equal, but superior force to sufficiently neutralize or severely incapacitate said individual. I hate to put it in those terms but it must be exact and unswervingly clear. Thats the intellectual way of saying, in hip hop terms, "you know the code of the street," On to the other strategies I mention, negotiation, cerebral, intellectual and symbolic violence, ironically, I take part of that from my dog, part for Bordieu, and one part which is strictly orgional.
Tune in for part 2

The Art of Putting Bastards In Check

This is bittersweet entry I have to write but it is my hope that this entry will inspire others to know how and when to put your own friendly neighborhood bastard in check. Recently I completed reading a book called "The No Asshole Rule." Wonderful book for dealing with asses in the workplace. In my particular situation, there was an I ass I worked with named David. I'll be nice and not mention his last name. In fact everybody I am sure has their own Achilles heal they have to work with. My grandfather had one named Joe Hester, my Aunt had one named Jan and my wife has her own. In my case David was a real kid spelled backwards if you catch my meaning. Yesterday i had to go to a funeral of a dear friend, mentor, and colleague. Dr. Friedrick Jones was my department chair and assistant dean where I use to work. He was instrumental in hiring David, who became our department chair in mass comm. In the midst of his interview something didn't ring true about one of his answers, something about why he left a university in Louisiana according to David, he stated that he left the university due to hurricane Rita. In the back of my mind I was thinking, "You were a department chair, brand new and a hurricane blows in and then you leave?" To me it was a red flag certainly in my mind an indicator or even predictor of his character. Prior to his arrival, I took the liberty to have a beer with some people who knew him in a work capacity and there I wasn't getting anything positive. I think the real deal breaker for me was when he started trashing my school during his interview. I think the comment was something like oh Central is so far behind in their department of mass communication. Before he went any further, I had to politely caution him that I was a graduate of NCCU and the same Mass Comm Program. So in a nut shell, I didn't like the guy. Call it intuition call it the third eye, all I know is that I got a negative vibe on the guy. But because we live in a democratic society, and I was outvoted, he was hired. Within his first year he reeked so much havoc and turmoil in the department and on the campus that he knocked off he dean, tried to fire me without any due process and basically became Asshole number 1-5. Dr. Jones, who could not stomach the gross injustice that was being committed told the administration in spades that what they did was unethical, wrong and simply something he couldn't do. So he left but not without saying on his heart what needed to be said. Not only did he expose David for being the fraud that he was, but he also labeled the administration as being hypocritical and pretty much took a moral and ethical stand for me. Regrettably, he died and I strongly suspect it was due to David. Dr. Jones was an assistant dean at shaw and elected to go back to the grunt work of being a frontline teacher, teaching a total of 7 classes at the age of 66. He died of phenomena and I really think that happened due to a compromised immune system. He worked himself to death. During the funeral, I have never cried at a home-going but this one, I did. To me he was the man who took the "bullet" for me and a few others. At his funeral David made an appearance. I couldn't believe it. It was psychotic in my opinion for that bastard to have the nerve to show up. Dr. Jones put it in writing that the guy was slime in two different newspapers. So in my mind, what part of you shouldn't be at this funeral did he not understand. -- Here is where we get to the art of putting bastards in check. After the burial my mother insisted I come home because I was still somewhat shaken. I agreed and so driving to mom's house I had to pass Shaw university. As I was driving past, I actually saw David getting out of his car going into a building. Grief stricken and somewhat disappointed I made a quick detour parked right beside his car. I then went into the building said, "Robinson, he said, "What are you doing in here?" He was obviously surprised to see me. "We need to talk." he attempted to rebuff me by saying "He would not speak to me without a third party." I'm why are you afraid to talk. Again, he tried to maintain some semblance power and control, so finally I broke, he said "I'm not entertaining this conversation." "I'm calling security" So I then responded saying, "Fine, I talk you listen!" (mind you, I've only seen that done in the movies :-) "I buried a dear, close personal friend of mine today." He said, "I'm there with you on that." "You are nowhere even close. You are going to have to pay for what you did to Dr. Jones, I wanted you to know that." Then I walked out....To my audience please pardon what you are about to read--(Damn it felt good stepping to his bitch made punk ass) Of course being that I have a conscious I felt bad to me what was disrespectful but I had something to get off my chest. I didn't take weaselly way out, I talked to him man to punk and served him notice. Now I am not a violent person, in fact I am pacifist. I don't want anything violent or destructive to happen to this man, in fact, I think this might be the thing that makes me go back to church so I can learn to forgive my debtors. This forgiveness thing is going to be haaaard. I just wanted to make sure he knew how I felt and still I want to move forward.

Failure to Communicate? Really?

One word... Twitter... I never really thought I would find myself going to twitter mode of communication but man when one thinks about it, it could be a blessing and a curse all in the same breath. Me being a communications junkie-- again, I am a Ph.D. student soon to be candidate in mass communications and media studies-- I am both in awe and running for cover as this new modality of communication really begins to take flight. In regard, I think something like twitter is great for closed communications with families... In my case at one time we actually had a family news letter called the Russell Pipeline. It was a tabloid paper which kept all members of the family-- Russell/Alexander/Robinson/Chavis/Howell and other extensions in the family know. The tabloid was put together in MS Word and then sent via email to everyone who chose to subscribe. The effort to put the newsletter together was pretty great as we can see now that our chief layout officer is among the dearly departed. When she died, publication ceased... But with twitter, no longer is the family limited by the modality of delivery but instead limitations are nullified. Everyone has a mobile phone that has the ability to function dually as a PDA-or personal data assistant... As there was the MTV Generation, Generation X then Generation Y well there now is a Blackberry Generation that strangely has a retroactive effect. As we are in a hypermedia environment, the bubble we live in media saturated. Information is available 24/7/365 and boudaries again are only of the imagination. Hence going back to the family conundrum I was talking about previously. Whereas an document had to be drafted and then distributed via email, twitter nullifies that where messages are sent out in 140 characters or less. Photos can be sent instantly. In fact JR was the subject of my latest tweet--tweet simply is the content delivered through the medium called twitter. Now to me, certainly not to him when he is a teenager, this great family history which can be shared with everyone. Of course if twitter were around when I was a teen and my mother and her aunts knew how to use it, those lousy report cards I brought home, as well as the time I tap danced on the console television would be damning to my family social capital. In plain Russpeak, I would have been on the Russell Robinson Ass-whipping Tour 0f 1982 which would have started with a kick off concert in Raleigh, NC going up 85 to Palmer Springs Va, heading through I 95 to Maryland, with two stops in Philadelphia, PA and two sold out concerts in New York City. Mind you in 1982, long distance telephone calls cost money so instead of multiple calls, bad news in our family became in my case viral. One person told another, that person told two others and so on so on and so on.. Like that old shampoo commercial. That's the bad side of twitter.

The potential for communication to become viral and defamatory all at the same time. With twitter, information is not policed, so depending upon my social capital or as they call it clout, if I say something negative about someone whom I just don't give two cents for (and trust me there are plenty of people in that category) but I have lets say 10,000 people who actually listen, and they tell folks, I could make somebody's life pretty miserable. Lets say I know somebody who has access to those 10,000 and I still put something out that is not favorable about my social mark, that person is officially blasted... The funny thing is that that again, the first amendment grants immunity for this hit because cyberspace is the new final frontier and last I checked, the FCC didn't have that much jurisdiction there.... So in the words of the Captain in one of my classic films Cool Hand Luke, "What We've Got Here is Failure to Communicate." No in fact we have the exact opposite, what now has to be determined is who are the social media haves, the have nots, and those in between.

2B or not to be: Oppressed -- That is the question

This pic is of my grandmother and grandfather, both who well lets say on both sides of their family had a zero tolerance on BS and believed in their constitutional right to bear arms. Me, I consider myself a bit different. More of a pacifist only to resort to violence as a means of self defense. On both sides of their families, my grandfather (according to family lore) had an uncle who was forced to migrate to Canada when he stood up to racialize oppression-- Of course this comes from my late uncle jim. On my grandmother's side, she had an aunt we'll just call ____. She had two husbands and outlived them both. It just so happens the first husband, she expedited his untimely demise after he made the mistake and hit her. Needless to say because it was black on black crime, the time she did was pretty limited. In both cases, they simply didn't stand for the politics of BS, be it raced or gendered. I think that trickled into my DNA somewhere because I kinda am in a new version of oppression. In my first definition of White Folks, I modeled the term not after skin tone but more after political privilege. In my second rendering of white folk, I also included people of color, African Americans in particular. Why? well I feel there is a generation of A2s who ascribe, subscribe, and inscribe to the politics of white supremacy. This domination is not only color based but class based, gender based and even body based. That said, I found a prolific piece of writing which I feel should be mandatory reading at the HBCU so that folk can decide for themselves if we have really come such a long way....

its called

The Student As A Nigger

by Jerry Farber, 1969

Students are niggers. When you get that straight, our schools begin to make sense. It's more important, though, to understand why they're niggers. If we follow that question seriously enough, it will lead up past the zone of academic bullshit, where dedicated teachers pass their knowledge on to a new generation, and into the nitty-gritty of human needs and hangups. And from there we can go on to consider whether it might ever be possible for students to come up from slavery.

First, let's see what's happening now. Let's look at the role students play in what we like to call education. At Cal State L.A., where I teach, the students have separate and unequal dining facilities. If I take them into the faculty dining room, my colleagues get uncomfortable, as though there were a bad smell. If I eat in the student cafeteria, I become known as the educational equivalent of a niggerlover. In at least one building there are even rest rooms which students may not use. At Cal State, also, there is an unwritten law barring student-faculty lovemaking. Fortunately, this anti-miscegenation law, like its Southern counterpart, is not 100 percent effective.

Students at Cal State are politically disenfranchised. They are in an academic Lowndes County. Most of them can vote in national elections -- their average age is about 26 -- but they have no voice in the decisions which affect their academic lives. The students are, it is true, allowed to have a toy government run for the most part by Uncle Toms and concerned principally with trivia. The faculty and administrations decide what courses will be offered; the students get to choose their own Homecoming Queen. Occasionally when student leaders get uppity and rebellious, they're either ignored, put off with trivial concessions, or maneuvered expertly out of position.

A student at Cal State is expected to know his place. He calls a faculty member "Sir" or "Doctor" or "Professor" -- and he smiles and shuffles some as he stands outside the professor's office waiting for permission to enter. The faculty tell him what courses to take (In my department, English, even electives have to be approved by a faculty member); they tell him what to read, what to write, and frequently, where to set the margins on his typewriter. They tell him what's true and what isn't. Some teachers insist that they encourage dissent but they're almost always jiving and every student knows it. Tell the man what he wants to hear or he'll fail your ass out of the course.

When a teacher says "jump", students jump. I know of one professor who refused to take up class time for exams and required students to show up for tests at 6:30 in the morning. And they did, by God! Another, at exam time, provides answer cards to be filled out -- each one enclosed in a paper bag with a hole cut in the top to see through. Students stick their writing hands in the bags while taking the test. The teacher isn't a provo; I wish he were. He does it to prevent cheating. Another colleague once caught a student reading during one of his lectures and threw her book against the wall. Still another lectures his students into a stupor and then screams at them in a rage when they fall asleep.

Just last week during the first meeting of a class, one girl got up to leave after about 10 minutes had gone by. The teacher rushed over, grabbed her my the arm, saying, "This class is NOT dismissed!" and led her back to her seat. On the same day another teacher began by informing his class that he does not like beards, mustaches, long hair on boys, capri pants on girls, and will not tolerate any of that in his class. The class, incidentally, consisted mostly of high school teachers.

Even more discouraging than this master-slave approach to education is the fact that the students take it. They haven't gone through twelve years of public school for nothing. They've learned one thing and perhaps only one thing during those twelve years. They've forgotten their algebra. They've grown to fear and resent literature. They write like they've been lobotomized. But, Jesus, can they follow orders! Freshmen come up to me with an essay and ask if I want it folded, and whether their name should be in the upper right hand corner. And I want to cry and kiss them and caress their poor tortured heads.

Students don't ask that orders make sense. They've given up expecting things to make sense long before they leave elementary school. Things are true because the teacher says they're true. At a very early age we all learn to accept "two truths," as did certain medieval churchmen. Outside class, things are true to your tongue, your fingers, your stomach, your heart. Inside class things are true by reason of authority. And that's just fine because you don't care anyway. Miss Wiedemeyer tells you a noun is a person, place or thing. So let it be. You don't give a rat's ass; she doesn't give a rat's ass.

The important thing is to please her. Back in kindergarten, you found out that teachers only love children who stand in nice straight lines. And that's where it's been at ever since. Nothing changes except to get worse. School becomes more and more obviously a prison. Last year I spoke to a student assembly at Manual Arts High School and then couldn't get out of the goddamn school. I mean there was NO WAY OUT. Locked doors. High fences. One of the inmates was trying to make it over a fence when he saw me coming and froze in panic. For a moment I expected sirens, a rattle of bullets, and him clawing the fence.

Then there's the infamous "code of dress." In some high schools, if your skirt looks too short you have to kneel before the principal in a brief allegory of fellatio. If the hem doesn't reach the floor, you go home to change while he, presumably, jacks off. Boys in high school can't be too sloppy and they can't even be too sharp. You'd think the school board would have been delighted to see all the black kids trooping to school in pointy shoes, suits, ties, and stingy brims. Uh-uh. They're too visible.

What school amounts to, then, for white and black alike, is a 12-year course in how to be slaves. What else could explain what I see in a freshman class? They've got that slave mentality: obliging and ingratiating on the surface but hostile and resistant underneath.

As do black slaves, students vary in their awareness of what's going on. Some recognize their own put-on for what it is and even let their rebellion break through to the surface now and then. Others -- including most of the "good students" -- have been more deeply brain washed. They swallow the bullshit with greedy mouths. They honest-to-God believe in grades, in busy work, in General Education requirements. They're like those old grey-headed house niggers you can still find in the South who don't see what all the fuss is about because Mr. Charlie "treats us real good."

College entrance requirements tend to favor the Toms and screen out the rebels. Not entirely, of course. Some students at Cal State L.A. are expert con artists who know perfectly well what's happening. They want the degree or the 2-S and spend their years on the old plantation alternately laughing and cursing as they play the game. If their egos are strong enough, they cheat a lot. And, of course, even the Toms are angry down deep somewhere. But it comes out in passive rather than active aggression. They're unexplainably thick-witted and subject to frequent spells of laziness. They misread simple questions. They spent their night mechanically outlining history chapters while meticulously failing to comprehend a word of what's in front of them.

The saddest cases among both black slaves and student slaves are the ones who have so thoroughly interjected their masters' values that their anger is all turned inward. At Cal State these are the kids for whom every low grade is torture, who stammer and shake when they speak to a professor, who go through an emotional crisis every time they're called upon during class. You can recognize them easily at finals time. Their faces are festooned with fresh pimples; their bowels boil audibly across the room. If there really is a Last Judgment, then the parents and teachers who created these wrecks are going to burn in hell.

So students are niggers. It's time to find out why, and to do this we have to take a long look at Mr. Charlie.

The teachers I know best are college professors. Outside the classroom and taken as a group, their most striking characteristic is timidity. They're short on balls. Just look at their working conditions. At a time when even migrant workers have begun to fight and win, most college professors are still afraid to make more than a token effort to improve their pitiful economic status. In California state colleges, the faculties are screwed regularly and vigorously by the Governor and Legislature and yet they still won't offer any solid resistance. They lie flat on their stomachs with their pants down, mumbling catch phrases like "professional dignity" and "meaningful dialogue".

Professors were no different when I was an undergraduate at UCLA during the McCarthy era; it was like a cattle stampede as they rushed to cop out. And in more recent years, I found that my being arrested in demonstrations brought from my colleagues not so much approval or condemnation as open-mouthed astonishment. "You could lose your job!"

Now, of course, there's the Vietnamese war. It gets some opposition from a few teachers. Some support it. But a vast number of professors who know perfectly well what's happening, are copping out again. And in the high schools, you can forget it. Stillness reigns.

I'm not sure why teachers are so chickenshit. It could be that academic training itself forces a split between thought and action. It might also be that the tenured security of a teaching job attracts timid persons and, furthermore, that teaching, like police work, pulls in persons who are unsure of themselves and need weapons and the other external trappings of authority.

At any rate teachers ARE short on balls. And as Judy Eisenstein as eloquently pointed out, the classroom offers an artificial and protected environment in which they can exercise their will to power. Your neighbors may drive a better car; gas station attendants may intimidate you; your wife may dominate you; the State Legislature may shit on you; but in the classroom, by GOD, students do what you say -- or else. The grade is a hell of a weapon. It may not rest on your hip, potent and rigid like a cop's gun, but in the long run it's more powerful. At your personal whim -- any time you choose -- you can keep 35 students up for nights and have the pleasure of seeing them walk into the classroom pasty- faced and red-eyed carrying a sheaf of typewritten pages, with title page, MLA footnotes and margins set at 15 and 91.

The general timidity which causes teachers to make niggers of their students usually included a more specific fear -- fear of the students themselves. After all, students are different, just like black people. You stand exposed in front of them, knowing that their interest, their values and their language are different from yours. To make matters worse, you may suspect that you yourself are not the most engaging of persons. What then can protect you from their ridicule and scorn? Respect for authority. That's what. It's the policeman's gun again. The white bwana's pith helmet. So you flaunt that authority. You wither whispers with a murderous glance. You crush objectors with erudition and heavy irony. And worst of all, you make your own attainments seem not accessible but awesomely remote. You conceal your massive ignorance -- and parade a slender learning.

The teacher's fear is mixed with an understandable need to be admired and to feel superior -- a need which also makes him cling to his "white supremacy." Ideally, a teacher should minimize the distance between himself and his students. He should encourage them not to need him -- eventually or even immediately. But this is rarely the case. Teachers make themselves high priests of arcane mysteries. They become masters of mumbo-jumbo. Even a more or less conscientious teacher may be torn between the need to give and the need to hold back, between the desire to free his students and the desire to hold them in bondage to him. I can find no other explanation that accounts for the way my own subject, literature, which ought to be a source of joy, solace and enlightenment, often becomes in the classroom nothing more than a source of anxiety -- at best an arena for expertise, a ledger book for the ego. Literature teachers, often afraid to join a real union, nonetheless may practice the worst kind of trade-unionism in the classroom; they do to literature what Beckmesser does to song in Wagner's "Meistersinger." The avowed purpose of English departments is to teach literature; too often their real function is to kill it.

Finally, there's the darkest reason of all for the master-slave approach to education. The less trained and the less socialized a person is, the more he constitutes a sexual threat and the more he will be subjugated by institutions, such as penitentiaries and schools. Many of us are aware by now of the sexual neurosis which makes white men so fearful of integrated schools and neighborhoods, and which make the castration of Negroes a deeply entrenched Southern folkway. We should recognize a similar pattern in education. There is a kind of castration that goes on in schools. It begins before school years with parents' first encroachments on their children's free unashamed sexuality and continues right up to the day when they hand you your doctoral diploma with a bleeding, shriveled pair of testicles stapled to the parchment. It's not that sexuality has no place in the classroom. You'll find it there but only in certain perverted and vitiated forms.

How does sex show up in school? First of all, there's the sadomasochistic relationship between teachers and students. That's plenty sexual, although the price of enjoying it is to be unaware of what's happening. In walks the teacher in his Ivy League equivalent of a motorcycle jacket. In walks the teacher -- a kind of intellectual rough trade -- and flogs his students with grades, tests, sarcasm and snotty superiority until their very brains are bleeding. In Swinburne's England, the whipped school boy frequently grew up to be a flagelant. With us the perversion is intellectual but it's no less perverse.

Sex also shows up in the classroom as academic subject matter -- sanitized and abstracted, thoroughly divorced from feeling. You get "sex education" now in both high school and college classes: everyone determined not to be embarrassed, to be very up to date, very contempo. These are the classes for which sex, as Feiffer puts it, "can be a beautiful thing if properly administered." And then, of course there's still another depressing manifestation of sex in the class room: the "off-color" teacher who keeps his class awake with sniggering sexual allusions, obscene titters and academic innuendo. The sexuality he purveys, it must be admitted, is at least better than none at all.

What's missing, from kindergarten to graduate school, is honest recognition of what's actually happening -- turned-on awareness of hairy goodies underneath the pettipants, the chinos and the flannels. It's not that sex needs to be pushed in school; sex is push enough. But we should let it be , where it is and like it is. I don't insist that ladies in junior high school lovingly caress their students' cocks; however, it is reasonable to ask that the ladies don't, by example and stricture, teach their students to pretend that those cocks aren't there. As things stand now, students are psychically castrated or spayed -- and for the very same reason that black men are castrated in Georgia: because they're a threat.

So you can add sexual repression to the list of causes, along with vanity, fear, and will to power, that turn the teacher into Mr. Charlie. You might also want to keep in mind that he was a nigger once himself and has never really gotten over it. And there are more causes, some of which are better described in sociological than in psychological terms. Work them out, it's not hard. But in the meantime what we've got on our hands is a whole lot of niggers. And what makes this particularly grim is that the student has less chance than the black man of getting out of his bag. Because the student doesn't even know he's in it. That, more or less, is what's happening in higher education. And the results are staggering.

For one thing damn little education takes place in the schools. How could it? You can't educate slaves; you can only train them. Or, to use an even uglier and more timely word, you can only program them.

I like to folk dance. Like other novices, I've gone to the Intersection or to the Museum and laid out good money in order to learn how to dance. No grades, no prerequisites, no separate dining rooms; they just turn you on to dancing. That's education. Now look at what happens in college. A friend of mine, Milt, recently finished a folk dance class. For his final, he had to learn things like this: "The Irish are known for their wit and imagination, qualities reflected in their dances, which include the jig, the reel and the hornpipe." And then the teacher graded him, A, B, C, D, or F while he danced in front of her. That's not education. That's not even training. That's an abomination on the face of the earth. It's especially ironic because Milt took that dance class trying to get out of the academic rut. He took crafts for the same reason. Great, right? Get your hands in some clay? Make something? Then the teacher announced a 20- page term paper would be required -- with footnotes.

At my school we even grade people on how they read poetry. That's like grading people on how they fuck. But we do it. In fact, God help me, I do it. I'm the Commandant of English 323. Simon Legree on the poetry plantation. "Tote that iamb! Lift that Spondee!" Even to discuss a good poem in that environment is potentially dangerous because the very classroom is contaminated. As hard as I may try to turn students on to poetry, I know that the desks, the tests, the IBM cards, their own attitudes towards school, and my own residue of UCLA method are turning them off.

Another result of student slavery is equally serious. Students don't get emancipated when they graduate. As a matter of fact, we don't let them graduate until they've demonstrated their willingness -- over 16 years -- to remain slaves. And for important jobs, like teaching, we make them go through more years just to make sure. What I'm getting at is that we're all more or less niggers and slaves, teachers and student alike. This is a fact you might want to start with in trying to understand wider social phenomena, say, politics, in our country and in other countries.

Educational oppression is trickier to fight than racial oppression. If you're a black rebel, they can't exile you; they either have to intimidate you or kill you. But in high school or college they can just bounce you out of the fold. And they do. Rebel students and renegade faculty members get smothered or shot down with devastating accuracy. Others get tired of fighting and voluntarily leave the system. This may be a mistake though. Dropping out of college for a rebel is a little like going North for a Negro. You can't really get away from it so you might as well stay and raise hell.

How do you raise hell? That's a whole other article. But just for a start, why not stay with the analogy? What have black people done? They have, first of all, faced the fact of their slavery. They've stopped kidding themselves about an eventual reward in that Great Watermelon Patch in the sky. They've organized; they're decided to get freedom now, and they've started taking it.

Students, like black people, have immense unused power. They could, theoretically, insist on participating in their own education. They could make academic freedom bilateral. They could teach their teachers to thrive on love and admiration, rather than fear and respect, and to lay down their weapons. Students could discover community. And they could learn to dance by dancing on the IBM cards. They could make coloring books out of the catalogs and they could put the grading system in a museum. They could raze one set of walls and let life come blowing into the classroom. They could raze another set of walls and let education flow out and flood the streets. They could turn the classroom into where it's at -- a "field of action" as Peter Marin describes it. And believe it or not, they could study eagerly and learn prodigiously for the best of all possible reasons -- their own reasons.

They could. Theoretically. They have the power. But only in a very few places, like Berkeley, have they even begun to think about using it. For students, as for black people, the hardest battle isn't with Mr. Charlie, It's with what Mr Charlie has done to your mind.

Blues from the flu

This is one of the few time I took a little time to actually add one of my original photos to the site. In attempting to recover from the flu--eech I hate it, I am pretty much bound to three places; the sofa, the bed, and maybe the computer. As I am waiting for the revision to come back from my dissertation advisor I am having to recover from aches, the fatigue, the drip drip nose... In an attempt to get to my 100th post I wanted to take time to be creative but also lament. Since I am confined, there have been some things I just ain't been able to do. One is sleep right. I'll either wake up from being congested, or have the headache from hell. The other thing is read. Its kinda hard to focus on work when you have to take one pill after another. Tamiflu, vitman C, zertyc, tylenol, thereflu. All this just so I won't have the full blown flu. Eitherway it still stinks...I can't go to the gym, run or anything-- Just beat up completely. I hear when people are usually confined they then take time to get more creative... I guess this is my version. I took some time the other day and came across a text which i wish I could figure out how to liberate the minds of some of the folks where I used to work. Though its controversial, I think the text hits the nail on the head.

Look for it in my next post

Out of Hibernation

On a whim, I decided to check my blogs and noticed I have not been posting in since forever. I have been through so much in the past few months that I really don't know where to begin. Lets start from the last posting. In June of 2009 I was released from my employment at Shaw University for charges I did not commit. Even funnier, I suffered through a whole lot of isht the entire summer -- part of me thinks I need to title this draft "cruel summer." Lets see job loss, household drama, court stuff and thats only one month. The interesting thing is that during all of that crap, I really noticed the importance of family and even extended family. When the job crisis broke, I had the backing of the faculty senate, as well as the dean and the assistant dean of the college of arts and sciences. Without going into too much detail, lets just say that was one of the elements which took me on three month odyssey into the insane.
In June a few weeks after being released, I filed the apporpate paperwork with AAUP, the press, a lawyer, SACS and anyone else who would listen. This was all done within a week. Also during that time, I got a present from the city of Raleigh. As it turns out, when you don't pay your parking tickets, the city gets a little upset with you-- that said, I got a nice boot on my truck. having been released from Shaw, and now facing a 350 boot removal fee, I did what any-self repsecting person who had been pissed off to the highest point of pistivity, I took the boot off my damn self. chalk this up to another one of the dumb moves I made in my life. Within two hours of living as a virtual outlaw I quickly realized I did the wrong thing. Chalk one up to morality and Newcastle beer. Once that minor situation was resolved I then had to rotate to the wife and boy coming back from a month in michigian. Going through job loss especially when you have been railroaded can take it's toll on a person. In my case I was having multiple setbacks which really set me back on my dissertation. In august I went through one life changing event after another. That said having gone through setback after setback I finally started getting drafts of the dissertation proposal off to my advisor. Flash forward to now Oct. Well things are working themselves out. Rt now I am recovering from the swine flu. So for now I am hanging in there before they hang me :-)

Popularity Breeds Comtempt

This will be a cross post at MLTWF. In this new age of transparency particularly with government, we are now beginning to see those in power, suddenly coming under fire. The most recent contestant asked to come on down to catch the beatdown is former NC Governor, Mike Easley. From the media reports, apparently his political muscle went a little too far as he used his power and influence to get his wife an appointment at NC State University. From the now recent fall out, a provost and a chairman of the board of trustees of NCSU have been either forced out or been given their walking papers. Just yesterday the Chancellor of NCSU leaned on Easley’s wife to leave her position. How did all this happen? Could it be trip to Europe that I and other NC taxpayers fronted the bill for where he and his wife stayed at hotels which exceeded normal line item costs. Could it be the fact that his wife, a state employee received an 88% raise in pay when all government agencies were asked to cut back? What I find interesting is the ivory axe coming for one of its own. Again from my perspective when it comes to white collar crime, white folks have low tolerance when it comes to one of their own in a position of power operating in nefarious activities. Remember Mike Nifong. After being summarily bankrupted, tarred and feathered by the press, he then spent one day in jail after being disbarred all curtsey of the Duke Lacrosse Machine. From this latest report, I believe the feds are beginning to preform their version of a colonoscaphy on the former governor. Just think about it if you will. If you are like me, you don’t exactly look forward to a prostate exam. Now imagine Dr. Jeckle administering it. You really don’t want it now. For Mike Easly, he’s about to really feel the wrath of pissed off white folks, especially in this new age of transparency. Again, you’re the governor, and ex NC Attorney General, who’s going to stop me? What was that thing about Pride and Falling? Man that cliff is looking pretty steep, and I am a moderate democrat–somedays libertarian. As a rule, I usually stay away from politics because to me I really don’t see the spot where the interworking of the government I just see the aftermath. That said, maybe this should be my wake up call. After all, they are public servants whom we elect. I think the problem though is the status we associate with the elected official. We see politics as we do many things in our society, through the lens of celebrity as opposed to what it is, a job. As Chris Rock said, if your register comes up short at the Gap, you’re going to get fired. Same thing with our elected officials–there has to be some accountability otherwise the system becomes jaded and as usual you have the few feigning service for popularity-which as the culture club said, “Popularity breeds contempt.”

The Mappings of Superiority

Apparently it starts at birth. It's something I can't prove scientifically however I strongly believe that the concept of White supremacy starts at birth and manifests itself through various structures including the family and media structures. Case and point. My youngling and I were doing our weekly father/son Thursday cookie at our nearby Barnes and Nobel. Of course our youngling is now at the age where everything in his world is literal and tactile. At least that is what his mom and the non verbal communication texts tell me. After our cookie, we head to his usual haunt, the Thomas the Train Station. As we are there at first we are the only ones there so he pretty much has the trains to himself. So while he is playing with his toys, I am taking some time to do some leisure reading (Mac OS leopard, WordPress, and other computer app stuff). Then burst in a little boy about 4 years old. A white child and of course, I think everything is benign on the surface. Inside of 5 mins this boy bumrushes my son and tries to take well not even tries, he takes his train. Needless to say, I have my eyes on this child because I really don't want anything to happen to my son. Also in my mind, I am playing the role of the dad thinking in the back of my mind, "clock him!" As any father, he doesn't want his son to grow up soft. I know--its a hegemonic construct, but everyone should know the rudiments of self defense. The boy's father shows up, about 6'0 even weighing in at 210 and he collects his rambunctious son. I'm trying hard to play this off because this episode could go wrong on so many levels. Sure I could play the role of the militant dad and say, control your kid, using the base and race of my voice. I could also play the role of the overprotective parent by cuddling him. This too would cause my son to be soft. That's just not going to happen. So instead, I played the role of the neo liberal chilled black parent and just sat back in the cut. There are times and places I need not let my son see his dad flash because one I have to set the example. In this case, I think the message I am trying to send to him is choose your battles wisely. Now on to this racial component. For some reason, this little white boy thought it was appropriate to take what he wants from smaller kids. In fact, I don't think the boy saw color, but it was just weird to see the race and class dynamics play out. He goes and takes something from my son in a rather aggressive manner. This is a trait I see in white folk in general. There exists a hyper aggressive nature we find which the media in my opinion allows to play in many of the story-lines (both real and dramatic) which endorses this pummeling of the weak, marginalized and oppressed. I am sure if we were to take a look at the ethnography's and biographies of white folk who have money, status and power, I would venture to say that this behavior, you take, you be assertive, you are different and above the rules for everyone else, these positions of superiority are interwoven within the developmental years of kids. Now if we couple this with a media system again which was orchestrated by and for those in the positions of racial and socio economic class hierarchy, the ideological base works only to their advantage. Albert Memi stated it best, those who own the means of oppression have no interest in dismantling a system which works exclusively to their advantage. It would be foolish.

The Ontology of White Folk and the Media Connection

Funny, how problems are emergent when white folk are impacted. Take for example the current epidemic of homelessness and joblessness sweeping the nation. From previous reports, in news and popular culture, the macro levels of mainstream news production would have us think that the nation is at a crisis that just happened two years ago with the economic crash of 2007. The general populous is loosing their jobs and homes at alarming rates. Well, I offer a different spin on this problematic.
To be white and privileged in America a specialized must be met. There is undoubtedly a class dynamic which must be considered tangentially with the color caste system we employe. One must be considered in a higher tax bracket as well as be of a certain educational level to enable the benefits of being white folk. In America as we have illustrated previously white folk bask in the world of normality, being recognized as human by the ideological factories we have come to depend upon the social construction of our various realities. Chomsky refers to this as a propaganda analysis where eventually the information that is spread from the dominant forms of media relate to nothing more than a list of directives handed down from the top. The connectivity factor here is relatively simple.
People who historically have represented the underclass and lower class castes of society have been through crisis such as these considerably longer than the new tenants of poverty. Because the face of broke now looks like Mike and Carol Brady as opposed to James and Florida Evans, suddenly, to be underclass has the appearance of being human and now there appears to be a problem. It's almost like that quote in the book The Godfather which cites the legitimization of selling drugs in the community of the "colored." Paraphrasing, they are lost anyway, so it doesn't matter if drugs are sold in the ghettos. Its like when Hurricane Katrina hit, the Blacks who were seen on CNN and MSNBC were deviant criminals, looters and refugees. The hundreds of thousands of white folks are homeless and not vagrants or hobos. The politics of language and race in American society, particularly the news media in my honest opinion represents a powerful locus of social control. The dominant news media in our country functions as an agent for those who are in the power elite reinforcing the politics of humanity, race, and gender. In essence it concurrently remanufactures and redistributes the ontology of White Folk.

The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade 21st Century

History is cyclic

Guess Who's Back

Man its been a hiatus for that tail but I am now back.
So many new tales so many new comment so many new adventures. Since i just got this mac, life has been mixed blessing. I love the speed of it but damn if i will ever go bootleg ever again when it comes to computer electronics.
UPDATES:
OK 1) Dissertation
2) Dissertation
3) Dissertation
did I mention Dissertation.

Other than that.. i will do my best to be more update w- my publics :-)

Yes, I'd like to Place a Call to the Underworld

As promised, yes I would like to make a call to the underworld please. Preferably collect. Today I had one of those days which I could actually justify being a republican at an HBCU. Shutter the thought but its the truth. I will try to avoid details for the simple fact that as we all know, a still tongue makes a happy life. See Episode One of The Prisoner, Arrival.
Today I got an email while at home sick. Prof. R. there are some students who wish to launch a grade appeal. OK grade appeal... for those who don't know, students actually have rights as well. They have a right to appeal any grade they receive, no matter how miniscule the matter may seem. Reading this laundry list of concerns, in the back of my mind I thinking ok, this guy, who obviously does not care for me, really has an agenda to remove me from my job. Call me paranoid, but it's just that sense I feel. He is a bit over zealous about pointing out my issues and rarely makes himself available for consultation or encouragement. Mind you I am speaking as nice as I can because I do realize that some family may be reading these posts. Anyway, on to my call to the underworld. Reading his diatribe, championing the cause of these students, I am like dude, why did they come to you and not me and why did it leave your office and go all the way to the vice president's office for academic affairs. That's putting your name beside the word stupid in crayon but we all have days like that right? The students in question scored new lows on their final exams and some cases ripped their research papers from the internet. Now here is where the republican part came in. Not too long ago our students exercised their rights to civil disobedience. There was a big class walkout on the day before reading day. Among their concerns are that they are not treated like students at a TWI (traditionally white institution). OK, so if we treat them like that, then guess what, 1/2 of the student population will be on academic suspension because they simply failed to come to class. Here is another instance, let's say we treat our students like UNCG. This means there is an inherent expectation that our students come to class, with books purchased and actually study. Some of our students actually will take their bookstore allowance and come to class G-ed up, in the words of Bruce Bridges at the Know Bookstore, some will spend 300 dollars to put something on their head as opposed to in it. Lastly, I'm going to say it, at the TWI if you get caught cheating, you are expelled and your academic career is over. At my institution, where we are paid the negro rate, we turn a blind eye to academic fraud. In the process the instructor is then prepared for flogging because he or she attempts to actually teach. In my honest opinion for what it's worth, this is when we are dealing with the White-Negro, the one who is a closet hypocrite. Its scary and for this reason, I would like to place a call to the underworld so that my White-Negro brothers and sisters who believe in living the little white lies can be successfully DROPed. DeProgramed and Restoration Of Pride. Where is the Drop Squad when you need them?

Notorious for 09

I just had to put that out because I liked how it sounds. Notorious for 09. Biding a farewell to 2008, I must say that last year was the largest amount of information posted for the year. Needless to say, it was an interesting year to say the least. I hate new years resolutions which is why I am making my traditional one, to abstain from them. I've come to understand one thing-- under promise and over-deliver. That way one can rarely over commit. There are some things however that will be a little different with the blog this year. One, more media. Now that youtube has become more user friendly with their embedded code I hope to provide more video posts in addition to other widgets so that my loyal band of readers will be inclined not just to read my posts/rants/fears etc, but also feel free to chill and even participate in the discourse. Two-I may be a little light on posts this year part due the one exception for resolutions I am making this year: GRADUATE! Now that I have passed my comprehensives and have a better grasp of my dissertation topic, the goal is to be in Ph.D. candidacy by April (aka ABD all but dead) and Dr. Russ by December of 09. Three, continue my journey into the magnified world of hegemonic legalized white supremacy. Again, for those who are newly initiated, borrowing from the words of Julius Ceaser, "I've come to bury whiteness, not praise it." That means the supremacist ideologies of racalized and classed hierarchies which have been cultured, politicalized, legalized and normalized the way people have been forced, better conditioned to look at the world. Our American Media System clearly be it print, interactive or digital represents the primary conduit for this latent conditioning, hence the devaluation of lives of color: Allow me to present this stunning example: The Hidden Race War of Katrina
courtesy of the Nation Institute