Social Etymologies

The Minnesota Daily
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
By Trica Keaton, Rose Brewer, David Chang, Roderick A. Ferguson and Karen Ho

The following statement is endorsed by numerous University faculty members.

Why weigh in at nearly the 11th hour on Don Imus when it appears that everything has already been said and done? As faculty, our students - particularly young black women most immediately debased by his remarks - look to us for insight and leadership, indeed, ways to address and inhabit everyday racism and sexism of this nature. In many ways, the brunt of the "Imus affair," and the inevitable and painful mocking that typically accompanies such events, will be effectively borne by them and other young women of color on predominately white campuses throughout this country. It is our responsibility, then, to voice our views so that they may know, fundamentally, that Don Imus' racist and sexist comments - unworthy of repetition - are not just another Michael Richards or Mel Gibson moment to be eventually forgotten or dismissed. Nor are his words merely an unfortunate reflection of our time. This was no unconscious slip of the tongue, a mimicking of misogynistic hip-hop lyrics, or "humor-gone-wild," as the media would have us believe.

To suggest as much is to assume racial pluralism in our society, to assume that all groups have enjoyed the same power and privileges, that race and gender have played no role in our human relations and institutions, and that, ultimately, Imus simply expressed what could be an "equal opportunity" attack. No. Imus' brand of insult is symptomatic of much more profound issues in our society, which is why these "shock jock" attacks will continue. Though the subject is avoided like the plague, minimized in its importance, or glossed as urban cultural pathologies, race interlocked with gender has been made to matter in our society, since its inception, and "the Imus affair," if nothing else, exposes just how very much this remains true.

But what of the humor? Are not those remarks somewhere or somehow funny? To be thought of as humorous, these statements need to have a social referent; they need to resonate with a group's understanding of the world and be recognized as an applicable (though exaggerated) description. Otherwise, the audience would be too confused to laugh, incapable of understanding what the joke was about and who was being made fun of. It would, then, be random, unintelligible, and frankly, not funny. For Imus' comment to be a joke, it must link up with an underlying cultural belief. That is, for Imus to be funny, his insult-humor needs to, at some level, resonate with a cultural assumption inherent in our society about black women and who they are purported to be.

But let us not forget to whom Imus was talking. The assumed listeners to his bratty screeds and snickers are not black women or women of color. And, let us not forget what he told those listeners about themselves, which was the subtext of his comments. He said, "You have power. I'll model that power for you, because your power and my power are the same - it is the power to define others, the power to debase black women as physically deviant sexual commodities, and the power to laugh together as we exercise that power." Besides, "we hear worse statements everyday in the black community," says this power and a public eager to believe it. This conveniently ignores, however, that the denigration of people of color and women did not begin with them. But power relies upon manipulation to exist, and manipulation relies upon consent.

Now, in the aftermath of Imus' outrageous comments, people of color, especially black women, are answering Imus with righteous anger and brilliant insight. Yet, to raise those voices automatically invites both hate and accusations of "political correctness," that label applied to anyone who seeks to call into question a status quo. "Diversity fatigue" becomes increasingly its twin brother in these debates, the idea that white Americans are tired of hearing people of color supposedly complain about discrimination. If a backlash ensues, well, we are to blame, rendering us its architect, not its object.

But, if we say nothing, treat this "affair" as one pedagogical moment or yesterday's news, then we miss a rich opportunity to exercise our authority not only to identify our insult (rather than have it done for us), but also to assert that anti-racism cannot be the responsibility of people of color alone. In the final analysis, Imus' inexcusable comments touch more than the Rutgers women's basketball team. They touch us all. In the spirit of coalitional politics, then, we protest and challenge the racist misogyny of Imus' remarks not merely as faculty, but also as human beings.

The following University faculty and additional faculty endorse this statement:

Rose Brewer, Professor of African American and African Studies

Hakim Abderrezak, Assistant Professor of French and Italian

Patricia Albers, Professor and Chair of American Indian Studies

Nancy 'Rusty' Barceló, Vice President and Vice Provost for Equity and Diversity/Educational Policy and Administration

William O. Beeman, Professor and Chair of Anthropology

Colin R Campbell, Associate Professor of Pharmacology

Bianet Castellanos, Assistant Professor of American Studies/Chicano Studies/American Indian Studies

David A. Chang, Assistant Professor of History

Ananya Chatterjea, Associate Professor of Theater Arts and Dance

Brenda Child, Associate Professor of American Studies/American Indian Studies

Susan L Craddock, Associate Professor and Chair of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

Evelyn Davidheiser, Professor and Director of the Institute for Global Studies

Jigna Desai, Associate Professor and Director of Asian American Studies/Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

Kale Bantigue Fajardo, Assistant Professor of American Studies/Asian American Studies

Roderick A. Ferguson, Associate Professor of American Studies

Katherin M. Flower, Department of Sociology

Njeri Githire, Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies

Kamisha Hamilton Escoto, Postdoctoral Associate of Health Policy and Management

Karen Ho, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Leola Johnson, Associate Professor and Chair of Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies at Macalester College

Trica Keaton, Assistant Professor of American Studies/Institute for Global Studies/African American and African Studies

Josephine Lee, Associate Professor of English/Asian American Studies

Richard M. Lee, Associate Professor of Psychology/Asian American Studies

Enid Lynette Logan, Assistant Professor of Sociology

Elaine May, Professor of American Studies/History

Lary May, Professor of American Studies/History

Keith A. Mayes, Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies

Louis Mendoza, Professor and Chair of Chicano Studies

Kevin P. Murphy, Assistant Professor of History

David Noble, Professor of American Studies

Jean O'Brien-Kehoe, Associate Professor of History/American Indian Studies

Alex Pate, Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies/Novelist

Jennifer L. Pierce, Associate Professor of American Studies

Riv-Ellen Prell, Professor and Chair of American Studies

Paula Rabinowitz, Professor and Chair of English,

David Roediger, Professor of History at University of Illinois

Gilbert B. Rodman, Associate Professor of Communication Studies

Abdi Ismail Samatar, Professor of Geography

Simona Sawhney, Associate Professor of Asian Languages/Literatures

Earl Scott, Professor and Chair of African American and African Studies/Geography

Shaden Tageldin, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies/Comparative Literature

Klaas van der Sanden, The Institute for Global Studies

Harry Waters Jr., Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance at Macalester College

Eric D. Weitz, Professor and Chair of History

Margaret Werry, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Dance

John S. Wright, Professor of African American and African Studies/English

Posted by LA at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of my freshmen sent me this along with the following comment: "This comic pretty much sums up everything." As you can see, my student is extremely astute. I only wish the media could be as intelligent and perceptive.

In their article, "Virginia tech bloggers: approach and confirm or link and disclaim?", Cybersoc.com takes a good look at the tactics journalists have been using to manipulate youth into providing interviews, their opinions, and their online chats regarding the Virginia Tech incident.

Spiegel Online International has an article entitled, "European Press Reactions: Blaming Charlton Heston." The excerpts from press responses throughout Europe all appropriately target U.S. "gun laws," or lack thereof.

Posted by LA at 07:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nation
16 April 2007

For the full article, click here.

To read BERNARDINE DOHRN's 4 April 2007 response to "The New SDS," see below my comments.

Christopher Phelps is an associate professor of History at The Ohio State University at Mansfield. For those of us who are interested in the cultural construction of youth, interesting to note in Phelps's article on the new Students for a Democratic Society is his discussion of the kind of social issues the new SDSers are trying to tackle. His observation that "most SDSers would have an easier time defining 'heteronormativity' than corporate liberalism" reminds us as educators that our students often discover their political voice in college.

Once youth get into our college classrooms it is important for us to dissuade our expectations that they're coming from high school with all the critical social links ready to engage complex social theories. More importantly, Phelps's observation reminds us that if we just slap students with a book on race or an academic article on sexuality, the material itself is not enough to help them generate the kinds of important links and affiliations we want them to make.

College educators need to devise creative ways in the classroom to help our students become critically literate, which entails creating and utilizing *active* critical pedagogy for the college classroom; it is important for college educators to design classroom strategies and activities that help students make connections across lines of power experientially and intellectually simultaneously. We can't relegate this sort of "lesson" planning or "prep" to the realm of secondary school teaching; creative planning belongs in our classroom repertoires as well. Reading, analyzing, and writing a critical paper cannot be the only modes of instruction and processes for learning--it is imperative that college educators at all levels (undergraduate and graduate) become curious about their students, about what their students know and want to know. And, if we are open enough to listen and watch, we are, then, obliged to prepare diverse modes of learning that will meet and challenge that curiosity.

Youth need help detaching from more bourgeois sentiments because, as Phelps helps us to see, their education has left them without the critical awareness skills necessary to deconstruct or even identify "corporate liberalism," or more broadly, class hierarchies and their connections to social issues of race, gender, and sexuality. The latter are easier as isolates for most people whether young or old. Examining these issues in connection to class hierarchies and global capitalism helps to break down the neoliberal notion that culture, politics and the economy exist within "discrete spheres of social life" (Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?).

-Lisa Arrastía

RESPONSE TO PHELPS's ARTICLE FROM BERARDINE DOHRN:

The Nation
Chicago

Christopher Phelps has written a timely but ultimately disappointing article about the vibrant and growing student movement [The New SDS (April 16, 2007)]. He transforms the tough challenges of movement-building into a set of tepid formulas about what not to do. The new wave of student activism in America and around the world is a hopeful development worthy of our active participation and respect. Yet Phelps focuses on the sectarian divides of the MDS generation rehearsing old political grudges or offering simplistic “lessons” from the New Left, rather than highlighting the steps forward and the common ground between radical organizers.

Our points of convergence (young and old, organizers and activists) are numerous, including the need to strive for participatory democracy and non-exclusion, resist the savage US wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, fight brutal poverty and gluttonous wealth here and globally, act to end catastrophic climate change, racial injustice and patriarchal power, and reject the permanent so-called war on “terror” in toto. Phelps would have benefited from more attention to what led to coordinated anti-war actions on 60 campuses last month, and to the new SDS diverse political campaigns ranging from getting military recruiters out of high schools and off campuses to anti-sweatshop coordination, from opposition to police violence against the community to protest when war criminals speak, from support for Assata Shakur and the new Panther 8 defendants to fights for universal health care – radical youth organizing is broad and deep. This is the power and the inspiration of a vast, left umbrella network with variety and vigor.

Phelps stereotypically characterizes me as a “celebrity” while the male ideologues are described by what they say about politics. I object. Who knows why any speech or article is well received? At the SDS conference at Brown University in Spring 2006, it seemed that the political substance of my talk was what generated the positive response from students: the urgent needs to reject the framework of US military and economic empire, to forge active opposition to white supremacy and grapple with the issue of multiracial organization, and to reckon with the importance of direct action to organizing and educating. I intentionally ignored the challenge to debate the issue of what killed SDS 38 years ago and who was right when, in favor of exploring what we all can do, in solidarity, now. Building bridges between issues, finding points of convergence, and creating an independent radical movement resonates across generations. The last thing the new SDS needs is patronizing elders wagging their fingers with cautionary tales.

-Bernardine Dohrn

Posted by LA at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My friend Idris is an educator and artist who received his BFA from Columbia College and his MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. Recently, Idris was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts grant to finish work on two productions: Shut Mouth Karaoke, which includes facilitated writing from college students based on song lyrics, and Pluto: An Opera, which was an official entry in the PAC/Edge Festival. Idris was on HBO Def Poetry in February where he recited his poem, "What is They Feedin Our Kids" in which he jokes and challenges nutrition's racialized and classed elements.

Check out a sample (my favorite of his rhymes, "Ebonix") from Idris's latest CD:
Download file

-Lisa Arrastía

Posted by LA at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kevin Coval is a close friend who lives and will probably always live in Chicago. His last book, Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica), was published on EM Press in 2005 and the book is already in its third printing. The reason the book has done so well is that its main audience, youth, have internalized the poems, rhymes, and "chaikus" Kevin writes. Kevin is white and Jewish and wrestles with issues of self, other and difference in his non-fiction essay writing and poetry. Live, he uses performance to illustrate the way in which words have subjective and objective personal and social meaning, intent and purpose. On the page, his expository writing might define a new form: the critical lyrical essay, perhaps much in the style of Eliot Weinberger's "What I Heard about Iraq." Kevin juxtaposes Judaism against racialized conceptions of white and dark so as to help youth critically address complex issues of bias and difference in their own lives as they engage emotionally charged social issues. Kevin's work encourages youth to avoid the temptation of commodification inherent in cultural appropriations. Instead, he tells youth to tell the stories that are in front of their noses, to call out the cultural and economic crimes they see enacted in their names, and to cross boundaries toward each other with humility and integrity.

Important is the contribution Kevin makes to critically looking at the role of whiteness in hip-hop. Kevin does what Gwendolyn Brooks encouraged: he writes about the story in front of his nose. He doesn't try to write like a gangsta, which he too fraid to be; he doesn't try to write like anyone he is not. Kevin uses a hip-hop poetics to tell his own story about his life and to expose political criminalities and the criminalization of culture. In doing so, Kevin highlights hip-hop's form, shape, and history; a history embedded in 1970s post-industrial economic representations by Blacks and Latin@s in the South Bronx and then nationwide. Like they did, Kevin uses hip-hop as a call and a response to contemporary events and the contemporary socio-cultural, political, and economic conditions that produce these events.

-Lisa Arrastía

Posted by LA at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)