A4BL--Motivation

Current moment. Need to do more. Much to learn/unlearn. 

I list here a few things I’ve done previously in this capacity, but two things come to me now that I find myself in the middle of Lesson 3: (1) I have some weird compilation to list the stuff I’m doing, even though I’m even more convinced now than ever that I shouldn’t; (2) ?? I can’t even begin to wrap my arms around the feeling that is my #2 here, let alone give it words. Whatever I’m feeling, it has a lot to do with the story of the  student in Lesson 2 who cried after every meeting of the Honor Society and gained admission to OSU and scorn from her classmates (“you got in because you’re black.”). , I was already pretty familiar with much of the content up to the “Calling in Black” video (wow). I’ve used the documentary in my classes, for example, but I still learned something in particular that has to do with a new understanding of “THIS” (see below). It wrecked me. In Lesson 3, I surprised myself when my body . . . somehow, I was sobbing then and as I try to write about it now—hours later and the next day—I almost cried again. That knot in my throat. The individual in the system. It was the human, individual cost of systemic racism as measured for three months following the murder by police of someone in the same state. And that resistance and active demonstration was the way to repair—like in the medical, physical sense (bloodwork drawn, blood pressure). It isn’t quite sorrow, but it is. It’s not joy (as I find/feel joy through direct-action in Dallas, including a fight to defund the police for more than a year), but it is (an answer, a response, not for me but for those who must “call in black” to work—metaphorically if not literally--just to gather the breath necessary to pull the blankets back over heads). 

Something is . . . I need to work/write through “THIS”—what’s this?? (Question to myself). This is my journaling, I guess. I didn’t intend it to be. I just intended to respond to this survey question as part of my to-do list this Saturday morning after grades wrapped up and in for my graduate seminar that ended Thursday (Rhetoric and Race). I will treat it as a journal, then. A journal with a potential audience, perhaps. I’m not reading it before pressing send. Not editing. Nor reorganizing. This is how it’s coming from my heart/soul/body/brain.  

Even so, here I go . . . ignore as you will. This is just a love song from another White woman who has always known herself and pushed those around her to take action because (a) it’s not about me (though still I write below) and (b) is it more important to be the most radical person in the room, or do you want to get shit done?? 

THE MAIN THING (and maybe I have written myself into/through the what-the-fuck? I left blank in #2 above): “This” has been all I’ve done, read about (scholarship, journalism, literature, community writing), taught, written about (student and community activists for racial justice in rural university town between 1954 and 1975), and . . . well, . . . campus and community activism on campus mainly through public humanities efforts in partnership with these student and community activists. In Dallas (I live in a Dallas suburb), more radical, direct-action for racial justice. 

THE MAIN THING HAS TO DO WITH THE “THIS” I PUT IN SCARE QUOTES ABOVE: After more than a decade fully immersed in this (“this”) work, at least as I’ve previously understood it, my new “this” in ways far more focused on racial trauma experienced by individuals than the systemic forces of oppression. 

“THIS”-- I only learned recently to call it “anti-racist” rather than a fight for racial justice with an emphasis on inequitable distribution of wealth in a system built on the genocide of one people and the backs of another (Oliver Cox, Black Marxism). I also found myself trying to justify/characterize myself as credible/committed, but do I mean that I hope you’ll consider me to be “one of the good ones”? I’m in the middle of Lesson 3 at this point. In my socialist circles, we speak all the time about intersectionality in terms of Marxism. However, I’m learning again how much I still have to learn/unlearn. That “THIS” is not what I assumed it was. 

My work as a teacher and a scholar is in community literacy (prison literacy, rhetorical histories of racial justice efforts on my campus and surrounding area, etc), with a heavy emphasis on reciprocity and an activist-teacher-scholar framework. My most direct work as an activist has been mostly in Dallas, as I live in a Dallas suburb (e.g., working largely with local socialist groups to fight proposed fare hikes on public transportation, push for a living wage for support staff at Dallas schools, and, most recently, with teaching, community-engaged work in my rural university town, and work in Dallas--I live in Dallas suburb and my campus is about 60 miles from Dallas)

I've worked toward Black liberation where/inasmuch as I assumed I would/could: focusing on race and racism (historically, systemically) in my undergraduate and graduate courses entirely (in title and in content) or at least in content, community-engaged work, recovering local histories from student and community activists for racial justice in the years right after my university (the second of only two public colleges to desegregate following mandate via Civil Rights Act in 1964)--documentaries, screenings on campus and in the community with panelists featured in the documentaries where possible (many have passed away in the years since I took up this project decade ago). This work has led to a vastly expanded collection of oral history interviews and artifacts donated to the local and university libraries from student activists enrolled and fighting for racial justice between 1964 and 1975), community-engaged work from students, a massive voter registration drive.

Something tangible from these efforts, I guess/hope: John Carlos (from the “Silent Protest” in Mexico City in 1968) attended my university from 1964-1967. I was in Washington DC to attend an NEH workshop for project leaders. My project at the time (2011) included a documentary about John Carlos’s work on our campus, erased from public memory and even—in several, wildly clear cut cases—cut entirely from the public record. That very week I was there, I met Dr. Carlos for the first time. I didn’t know it, but my visit to NEH and the book tour for his memoir (with sports editor Dave Zirin) launched at the same time. The house was packed. They had to bring in extra chairs. I got my copy of his book and found immediately a chapter called “Trouble in Texas.” When I finally met him (the line was LONG) as he signed my book, we talked about the statue of the Silent Protest recently unveiled at San Jose University. He told me how important his time on my campus (positive and negative). He mentioned something about an honorary doctorate. I do not know how it came up exactly. I went straight back to my hotel room that night and sent a letter to the committee that oversees honorary doctorates on my campus. We give very few. The following spring, he spoke at our commencement. His was the very first honorary doctorate my university has ever given to a BIPOC. Ever. He wanted a class ring he could wear on fist he once raised to force attention to “THIS.” That fall, my university finally inducted him into our Hall of Fame. Though he’d been inducted into Halls of Fame all over the world by this point (2012), the committee of largely White, long-time residents and alumni responsible for this had actively blocked any consideration. I’d been told this before. At the reception for his induction, an older man sat beside me. He didn’t say hello. He just spoke. He was kinda behind me. He said, “They did block him, by the way. It’s true. They fought it every step of the way. For decades.” I was merciless in ensuring the honorary doctorate quest was as public as possible to make certain any pushback would be embarrassing for our campus. Once that was finally accomplished, the Hall of Fame committee had no choice. Most of that committee did not attend this event. 

Last Spring, I was on sabbatical for a book project about White supremacy and Black resistance—specifically how campus leadership used rhetorics of “civility” to reify white supremacy in response to social change. We rarely associate rhetorics of Black power with rural spaces. Starts with our university’s founder in  Often the time following Reconstruction is remembered in the same way our university’s desegration was remembered—“dignified” (the word used in the public statement announcing desecration in June 1964 by the outspoken segregationist who oversaw the transition he fought so hard against since first taking pu his post in 1947). This book looks at our campus leadership in our rural university town responded to social change prompted by increasingly visible moments for human rights—regionally, nationally, globally. TITLE: White Texas: (Re)Writing “The South’s Most Democratic College,” 1889-1975. That was our university’s motto for 75 years. They dropped it as soon as we desegregated. .  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlHPMrp6cGs  http://faculty.tamuc.edu/rrt/