The Calling
Today's Soundtrack:
Charles Mingus Live 1964
In a meeting today, I started to think about my history of working on anti-racism; or diversity, equity, and inclusion; or just diversity; or multicultural affairs as we we used to call it.
When I was an undergraduate, I helped start an underground magazine called The Cumberland. We ran feature articles, music reviews, a Silence = Death column, political cartoons, and various other things. We imagined ourselves something like the Village Voice for Sewanee, Tennessee. This was still the age of off set printing and having to take everything to the printer with the fancier design elements scotch taped to the master document.
During a class assignment where we had to teach a lesson plan in the local high school, I learned from a student that the Black students had worn black t-shirts to protest the high school not celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. The following day the White students wore white t-shirts and walked out of school in protest, and were greeted by the local branch of the KKK who was recruiting students just off school grounds.
In what I felt was a major investigative reporting feat, we managed to get a whole group of Cumberland staff access to the high school under the guise of doing a college project, and spent a day interviewing students, until the principal caught wind of what we were doing. He then corralled us all in his office for an interview and we watched him watch the clock until all the students were dismissed, before letting us leave.
In addition to the unrest around the t-shirt protests, we found that there was an unofficial student KKK club that got a picture in the school yearbook, that there was a culture of intimidation for students who spoke out for greater civil rights by White students, and that Black students did not feel they had a way to voice their concerns to the school.
We kept in touch with a few of the students we interviewed, and then in part two of our investigative reporting, we managed to create an entire event focused around bringing students from Franklin County High School (in TN, not MA) to the campus for an opportunity to learn about the University of the South, visit classes, and for a group of students, to meet with us to talk about race issues at the high school.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, we met with the local chapter of the NAACP, interviewed families about the climate of fear for their children, and organized a campaign to force the high school to address the concerns voiced by students and parents.
We thought we were doing something tremendous. It was actually a little thing. But all little things have a cumulative value, and perhaps it was another little thing that helped other little things. But really, I'm not sure how much it helped the students or the families involved other than getting the KKK club removed from the yearbook and Martin Luther King Jr's birthday recognized (it was not yet a holiday). Thinking more selfishly, what it did help was a burgeoning sense of activism in myself. That once you learn about one thing, you can not continue on pretending that you did not learn that thing. You have to ask the subsequent question, and then you have a responsibility to take a corresponding action that is in your capacity to act upon. You have to make an ethical stand, somewhere and decide, this is the point when I must act. Whether it is a kid getting pushed on the playground, hearing a racist joke, hearing someone use a racist epithet, watching a microaggression unfold, seeing how some people get mortgages easier than others, the disparities in access to mentoring, healthcare, the actions of police, governmental policy, and so on.
For me, I think this was something of a revelation because, I had been on the receiving end of all these things, well at that age, the playground bullies, being the butt of racist jokes, the recipient of racial slurs, experiencing micro and macro aggressions, etc. But until that point, I did not have a way to respond. My response was to turn inward with self-loathing about my own ethnicity, how I looked, how people perceived me, at my own inability to respond in an aggressive enough way to stop the action. That is overstating it. In my inability to respond in any kind of way. When personally faced with an injustice, particularly one centered on race, I was struck with a dumbfounding loss of agency, a freezing. And then, a reliving of that moment and my inaction for a long time afterward.
What I found in my fledgling activism, was that while I could not find a voice or the ability to act when faced with my own travails, when I was working on the behalf of other people, I suddenly had a strong voice and found a sense of purpose and agency.
I suppose some of this is part of a calling that I felt at a young age when I thought I might become a priest. I was raised in the Korean Catholic church and for a period of time imagined myself becoming a man of the collar. I was an altar boy, attended Sunday school, and talked with the sister about theological questions. But I ran into an issue that I could not resolve. I felt the church's view on homosexuality was wrong. I felt that the Pope was clearly just a human being with flawed judgement and there was no way I was going to allow another human being's prejudices to be accepted as the word of God. So at the age of 10 or 11, my first calling, my first professional aspiration, was dashed and I began that age old Catholic cycle of succumbing to damnation, seeking and finding moments of solace, and then realizing I was still damned anyway.
But the purpose of that side story, was that I had a calling to serve. To be selfless in someway. I had an innate capacity for the work and found it suited me, even if the church did not. This followed into my volunteer work in a soup kitchen in high school, and outreach work with the University working in an orphanage in Jamaica, teaching creative writing in New Orleans, and fixing houses in Franklin County. Later, when I got a job at the community college teaching English, I bemoaned my inability to continue doing outreach work, what I felt was the meaningful work in my life. But after a few years of teaching, I realized that this too was meaningful work. That only part of my job was about helping students write a college essay, that equally important to my job was helping students envision a greater future for themselves. Part of my work was to engender a sense of possibility, to engender new ideas, new ways of thinking, and possible futures that they had not been allowed. What more marvelous work could I imagine for anyone?
I am lucky to have this calling, and to have this as my life's work. I of course still have other dreams, other aspirations as well, but this is the one that I'm actually enacting, at least in this moment.
Stay safe and in good health,
Leo
From Our Friends:
From Mary Dent via the NYT:
From Mass Poetry:
Join us on the 21st at 7pm to hear from a stunning set of features: Najya Williams, Emily Duggan, Kenneth Godoy, and Sara Afshar.U35 is a bi-monthly reading series for poets under 35. The series seeks to promote and bolster young Massachusetts poets while giving them a venue to share their work and connect with other poets.Find out more about the features & reserve your ticket
From It Gets Better:
This week, we're celebrating icons of all forms. A generous donation saves Stonewall Inn, model Jari Jones takes over New York City, and a new painting of Sappho by a queer artist.
From ACE Engage:
On June 22, ACE hosted a virtual summit, "Race and Crisis at a Crossroads," in partnership with American University. It brought together over 100 higher ed professionals to discuss findings from a new ACE report and to explore what institutions can do going forward.Read more and watch the recorded plenary session.
From YouTube:
On Saturday, July 25, 2020, film your day and upload your footage and you may become part of a historic documentary – a time capsule of the year 2020.
Anyone can participate and submissions from all over the world will be woven together to create a feature film, produced by Ridley Scott, directed by Kevin Macdonald, filmed by you, and premiering at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Submissions open on July 25th and close on August 2nd.
Learn more about filming requirements and how to take part.
From Complete College America:
Please join us for our next CCA Live Webinar - Amplifying Student Voices: A Dialogues between Students & Higher Education Leaders
As college students prepare to return to campus (virtually or in-person) in a month, it is imperative to hear and address student concerns amidst the many changes stemming from COVID-19 precautions and racial unrest. Join Complete College America’s student interns and a panel of higher education leaders across the country to discuss apprehensions and opportunities for the fall and beyond.
From the AAG:
Data collected from NASA's Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, known as ECOSTRESS, can help monitor how droughts affect the Earth's vegetation and bodies of water. During a meeting earlier this year, attendees learned about the tool and its data.
Full Story: Eos (7/8)
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I put the vacation tunes into Bandcamp if you want to download the EP.
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Today's Online Teaching Tips:
From Inside Higher Ed:
Collaboration Transcending Crisis
Despite COVID challenges, large-scale collaborative projects remain feasible and have the power to reimagine undergraduate education in the humanities, write Nicholas Henriksen and Ian K. Cook. »
For Academic Impressions:
From the Online Learning Consortium:
OLC Accelerate Welcomes Keynote Presenters
Wednesday's Keynote Presentation, "A Pedagogy for the Digital Age" will be presented by Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, author, and opinion writer. On Friday, Flower Darby will present "Teaching Excellence + Technology Innovations: Empowering Students to Engage and Learn." Flower Darby is Director of Teaching for Student Success at Northern Arizona University.
Learn more and register to attend - onsite and virtual options available.
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