A Meditation on Recent History, Belonging and Endurance

I was trying to think of something clever to add to Historiann's list of things to pack as you prepare to take off for graduate school. Medical marijuana? Nicotine patches (especially if you do not already smoke)? Extra courage?

And then I remembered this. In a collection of lectures entitled Writing in an Age of Silence (New York: Verso, 2007), crime novelist Sara Paretsky writes about entering the University of Chicago's Ph.D. program in history:

When I started my doctoral work, the head of the European field committee told entering students that women could memorize and parrot things back, but that we weren't capable of producing original work. In his history of Western Civilization, he included no accomplishments by women.

Thirteen women started the US history program with me in the fall of 1968. I was the only one who returned our second year, and that wasn't because I was a better scholar, or smarter -- it was because the other twelve women all figured out things to do with their time instead of enduring the department's relentless misogyny. I was simply too confused and depressed to work out an alternate career. (56-57)

Paretsky, as many of you know, has gone on to write fourteen crime novels featuring gritty female private investigator V.I. "Vic" Warshawski, so I guess she wasn't as dumb as she looked, eh?

All kidding aside, it's hard to imagine saying something so terribly cruel and ignorant unless the purpose was to send a blunt message that women were not wanted in the program. Until 1972, long after racial segregation in education had become illegal, it was perfectly legal to discriminate against women applying for admission to graduate or professional school -- for any reason whatsoever. The reason that was usually chosen was one's low opinion of women's intellectual capacity as a sex; one's ideas about whether said women would put the education to good use; and/or assertions that men needed education more than women did because they supported families (women supporting families was not unheard of, but was to be avoided at all costs -- unless said women were of color and poor, and then it was desirable that they work at ill-paid labor.) In the late 1970s, when I was enrolled in an Ivy League university that had finally enrolled its first full class of women only four years prior to my arrival, it was not uncommon to hear male professionals and faculty justify their desire to exclude women from graduate and professional programs because "they are just going to marry and have children and they won't use the degree like a man would." The "fact" behind this stance was that demographically "most" women were married, were mothers and had dropped out of the workforce. As someone who had a horror of such a fate, even as a pre-feminist child (I could imagine myself saving damsels in distress but the idea of donning a wedding dress made me frantic), I would think, "Yes, but if they don't let you into medical/law/graduate school, then you would have to get married to make a living, right?"

And when I was at that Ivy League university, I knew half a dozen undergraduate women who were sleeping with professors who had not welcomed coeducation with open arms, but had been happy to open their beds (half of the female academics who tell you they did not have sex with that famous Oligarch post-structuralist are lying, I'm convinced of it.) A decade later, graduate education for women also created an opportunity to recruit highly educated second wives who were younger, and more fun to talk to, than the wives who had typed your dissertation back in the 1960s. As late as the 1990s, in a number of departments I was acquainted with it was not uncommon to hear both graduate students and faculty justify tenured male professors philandering with their female graduate students by pointing out that such relationships had a tendency to result in marriage -- after wife number one got the old heave-ho, of course. I said to one person who explained this rationale to me one too many times, "Yes, but have you noticed that most of them drop out of the doctoral program to have children and never complete the degree?" (since this would often require the awkwardness of recruiting a new dissertation advisor from the ranks of hubby's peers) and the conversation stopped abruptly, not to be resumed.

And have any of you (in real time now!) who slipped in the door of the club despite everything you saw and endured that should have made you run screaming for the nearest military recruiting center, noticed that still, when you are doing a search, and you ask the search committee why there aren't significant numbers (or any) women/people of color in your cohort or in the final candidate pool the most frequent answers are:

a. "There aren't any." (To be followed by liberal and conservative moaning about how few of these individuals in a given field are "in the pipeline.")
b. "There aren't any who are qualified." (Usually not followed by a cogent statement of what the qualifications were that were not met.)
c. "I don't believe in affirmative action."
d. Some comment to the effect that, by asking this question at all, you are revealed as racist/sexist.
e. Complete silence.

Academia is not the same club that it was back in 1968, to the extent that anyone who said what was said to Paretsky would know to keep such thoughts to himself and act on his contempt for women in another way. But it is still a place where belonging is a struggle for many of us, and one of the skills to develop as an academic is to cope with that. Sometimes, it will be so exhausting that, temporarily, you can't go on. You know you will soon, but not now, because you have reached the end of your capacity to endure slights and the ongoing suggestion that you do not belong.

And for moments like that, young graduate students, I recommend you pack a Sara Paretsky novel.

This Post Is Not About Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Attempt To Enter His Own Home In Cambridge, MA

As news about Professor Gates' confrontation with the Cambridge Police Department was breaking -- or was it shortly after the President spoke so forcefully about it? -- a friend turned to me and said: "Do not blog about this."

That may be some version of what Michelle Obama was thinking as she saw her husband embark on what I thought was a humorous, candid and incisive commentary on the events surrounding a wealthy Harvard professor, his friend, being schooled by the police. (As an aside: if Obama were a blogger, he would have known not to use any derivative of the word "stupid." Feminist bloggers know the content of what they are trying to say dissolves as (male) conservatives leap to censure them for disparaging such noble whitemale institutions as American policing or the Varsity Sport That Must Never Be Mentioned.) If there had been a thought bubble over Michelle's head, it would have said something like: "Oh Barack, do not be honest with white people about this thing. They cannot handle it." And indeed, it seems that we cannot.

Black commenters have spoken eloquently about the class and racial dynamics attendant to Professor Gates' arrest, particularly here and here. I think white people have very little to add to some parts of this story, and so I would only like to thank the President for having said an honest and true thing. Why, even if I didn't agree, it's such a relief to hear a President do that! I don't even think the word "stupid" is a fatal flaw: my guess is that it was a place-holder for "racist" in the way people often substitute a non-descriptive word for the descriptive one when trying to speak about repetitive, painful events (Spouse: "How was the department meeting?" You -- a seething full professor who has just been treated like she knows nothing about her own field by a bunch of people not in her field -- "Oh, it was just stupid." And you say that because if you said "It was so sexist" you would have to experience that stab of knowing that nothing you do, ever, will cause them to stop treating you badly; that you will always have to endure it.) And of course, there were many layers of racism in this incident: from the anonymous white person who called the police in the first place, to the white officer unwilling to appear intimidated by a wealthy black Harvard professor's rage, to the news media choosing to depict Professor Gates in handcuffs screaming, or with a mug shot, rather than using any one of a number of portraits that are commonly available (In less than half a minute, I downloaded the one in this post from his academic web page.)

So I want to talk about and to that anonymous white neighbor. Because I am a white neighbor of black and brown people, one who lives in an urban university environment, and there are a few things I have learned.

Primarily what I have learned is that white people put black people in danger every day, an insight that was crucial to southern women's activism against lynching as early as the 1930s. I have learned that while many of us believe racially integrated neighborhoods are desirable, and some of us actively seek them out, no one talks to white people about their responsibilities for reigning in the racism that inevitably follows when white and black people come into proximity with each other. There is no doubt in my mind that white people put black people into danger all the time as a result of their good intentions, and that being aware of this is a full time job. I worry, for example, every time a close friend of mine I have known since college -- a major property owner in the neighborhood, with an Ivy degree, wealthy, and a football celebrity -- borrows my lawn equipment, because to your average cop he is just another _________ (fill in the blank) walking down the driveway and up the street with someone else's electric mower.

This kind of awareness is very painful to come to terms with, as was the time I was driving a black job candidate around Zenith, stopped to ask directions, and saw the white man in his pretty suburban yard hurrying his children into the house -- until he noticed that there was a white woman getting out of the driver's side. I could feel his relief as an almost physical thing between us. As one of my friends said later about the job candidate, "I guess it's something he should know about what it would mean to live here." Of course he did already -- it was me who had to learn it.

Coming to terms with slights, and ones that can turn into a dangerous situation in a heartbeat, is something every person of color in America deals with and knows more about than virtually any white person: I don't care if Republican senators like Jeff Sessions says it ain't so, it is so. Sonia Sotomayor is absolutely correct on this point. And to my mind, white people have a responsibility to come to an awareness about this. and act on it as a moral responsibility. To wit:

About two years ago, I was about to leave on a trip; my partner had taken the car somewhere else, so our driveway was empty. As I opened the door to a small hallway that leads to our back door with a bag of garbage in my hand, at that precise moment, a man standing at the door popped the lock with a screwdriver and stepped into my house.

I was, needless to say, surprised, and so was he. I said, "what the fuck are you doing in my house?" He said, very politely, "I'm so sorry," turned around, closed the door, and walked swiftly down my driveway. I came shooting out the door, shouting some version of what I had already said as he turned the corner of the driveway and disappeared. Needless to say, I was very frightened, and probably would not have behaved so aggressively if I had not been.

I called the police. It seemed to be the right thing to do at the time, since my neighborhood suffers from a lot of petty theft that I suspect is endemic to neighborhoods full of students from the 'burbs who can be pretty casual about locking up: laptops next to open windows disappear, bicycles are liberated from back yards and so on. I described the thief the best I could: around 5'8" (my height); medium-complected African-American; shaved head; round preppy glasses; middle-aged; dressed in a tennis shirt, pressed chinos and white sneakers. He looked," I said helpfully, "Like a college professor." What happened next was instructive: the investigating officer put the description out, and asked if I wanted to ride around and look at a variety of men who were being braced around the neighborhood for my inspection. I did, and with sinking heart, I saw "suspect" after "suspect" who looked absolutely nothing like the description I had given. They were tall; they were short; they were twelve; they were old; they were dressed like bangers; they were dressed in rags; to a man, they had full heads of hair, mustaches and beards; none were wearing glasses, and so on. Oh yes -- all of them were, as far as I could tell, Latino, which in Shoreline generally means Mexican or Puerto Rican.

As I tried not to be sick with shame all over the officer's front seat, I thought three things. One was, I hope to Heaven they have not picked up one of my friends or one of the next door neighbor's children (who were routinely picked up by the police after a purse-snatching in the neighborhood.) The second was, how easy it would have been for me to say, "That's him!" either in honest error or not and cause someone a world of trouble that was beyond humiliation: being taken to jail indefinitely, a lost job, being kept out of school, being found guilty of another misdemeanor. And the third was, this is what racial profiling looks like. Unless I or someone I know has been violently assaulted, I must never, ever call the police again for something so small if I am going to be a responsible citizen of this neighborhood. Letting someone get away with attempted robbery, a person who was completely non-violent (which experienced burglars are), is absolutely worth not humiliating ten other people who the police are using this opportunity to intimidate and shake down for evidence that they are committing some other petty crime.

This kind of event is, of course, part of what police mean by being in control, and what the officer was doing when he arrested Professor Gates who was guilty of nothing more than saying angry, nasty things at the top of his lungs as a crowd gathered. When a police officer makes an arrest like that he is saying, "See? I can do this. I can make your life a living hell for an hour, a day, or longer. I require deference." The desired result is how many black men describe living their lives: a constant state of uncertainty as to what the police will actually do in any given situation, resulting in the need for profound deference and elaborate forms of self governance at all times (don't run, wear too much jewelry, show money or speed when driving; make sure you dress nicely, cut your hair, avert your eyes, carry your company/university ID at all times.) A policeman intimidates so that he does not have to use violence (hence, making the risk of violence to his own person greater.) This can be best accomplished when a large number of people already believe that a policeman could become violent at any moment, for any reason at all. And why do the police not do this to white people as much as to black people?

Because, God help us, we white folks believe the police are our friends.

So Mrs. Cambridge White Neighbor, what should you have done? You should have stopped and asked the gentleman who was trying to get into the house if he needed help -- and did he want to use your cell phone to call a locksmith (hint: burglars don't jimmy the front door in full sight of everyone.) If he had no business getting into the house, he would have left. If he did have business in the house, he might have said, "No thanks -- I think I've got it!" Or, "We've had so much rain, are your doors stuck too? " Or, "Yes, thank you, I need to call my wife -- hi, I'm Skip."

But you didn't. Perhaps it was because you fear black male strangers, like so many white people, no matter how they are dressed. But my guess is that you were embarrassed. You thought, "This is probably a Harvard professor trying to get into his own house, but if I stop and ask, he's going to think I think he's a criminal just because he's black. And he might think I am a racist! I can't risk that. So just to be safe -- I'll call the police!"

And my point is, Mrs. White Neighbor: safe for who? Why safe for you! Because the police are not a neutral party in such matters. They are not paid to help you navigate the social awkwardness of identifying your neighbors in a racially integrated neighborhood. They are paid to intimidate people who are physically similar to Professor Gates on your behalf, which means you cannot call them and expect that there will be no damage. To save yourself embarrassment or fear, you put a neighbor in a position in which there was a high likelihood that he would be arrested, physically injured or killed. He knew that -- why didn't you? And this is something I have not heard anyone say as a possible explanation for why Professor Gates behaved as he did in this situation.

He was frightened. And if so, in my experience, he was right to be.

What is Wrong with Trying to Raise Test Scores? Five short answers.

I had the opportunity to meet with the great test score promoters in Washington but turned it down. What would be the point? The entire administration is devoted to raising test scores. I would convince no political person to change his or her view. That having been said, what could be really be wrong with testing and emphasizing test scores?

1. Testing teaches that there are right answers. The problem is that is that in real life, the important questions don’t have answers that are clearly right or wrong. "Knowing the answer" has made school into Jeopardy. It is nice to win a game show, but important decisions are made through argumentation and force of reason not knowing the right answer.


2. Testing teaches that some subjects are more important than others. The tests are small in number. If there were thousands to choose from, then perhaps people could get tested in fiber optics instead of history. But the system has determined which subjects are the most important. Just remember that the system made that determination in 1892. Some things have changed in the world since then. No one in Washington seems to have noticed.


3. Testing focuses teachers on winning not teaching. Many teachers are extremely frustrated by the system they have found themselves to be a part of. They cannot afford to spend time teaching a student or getting a concept across if the issues being taught are not on the tests. They are judged on the basis of test scores. So, any rational teacher gives up teaching and becomes a kind of test preparation coach.


4. Students learn that memorization is more important than thinking. Teaching students to reason ought to be the beginning and end of what education is about But in an answer-obsessed world, "go figure it out for yourself" or "go try it and see what happens" are replaced by more memorization. Giving kids a chance to fail helps them learn. Actively preventing failure by telling the right answer just helps kids pass tests.


5. Innovation in education is eliminated. How can we offer new curricula and new ways of learning if no matter what we do children must pass algebra tests? The administration says science is important over and over again but since science in high school is defined by boring tests of vocabulary terms and definitions for the most part, who would be excited to learn science? If a really good scientific reasoning curriculum were created the schools could not offer it unless it helped kids pass the very same tests that that curriculum was intended to replace.

Oh. One more thing. Testing also reduces knowledge to short answers like the ones I have given here. In reality, serious argumentation is much more lengthy.

My Transportation Policy son sends me a job announcement about Education

My son, who works in transportation policy in Washington, forwarded the following announcement to me:

Job Announcement for Executive Director
The nation's largest coalition of education associations seeks new executive director
starting January 1, 2010. The Committee for Education Funding (CEF), established in 1969, is a strong, unified voice in support of federal education funding, ranging from pre-school to postgraduate education in both public and private systems.

I wrote back saying that I was against federal funding for education and he responded that of course I was right. This is a funny thing for someone who works on funding issues in transportation to say. What is the difference between transportation and education?

Highways that don't connect to highways in other states would be a problem for the country. Airlines that followed different rules in each state would create chaos. That is why we have a federal government. Making rules about infrastructure is critical. But education is not infrastructure. States can, and should, have different rules. Farming matters in some places and managing casinos matters in another. Some states have aircraft jobs and some have marine related jobs.

The federal government, nevertheless, insists on national standards, treating everyone the same, which usually means lots of algebra and literature for some unknown reason.

The President announced $12 billion in funding for community colleges the other day. Yippee, Yahoo. Real education for real people related to real jobs.

Uh oh. Maybe he means to impose national standards on community colleges too. Please don't do that Mr. President. Community Colleges are not interstate highways.

all opinions all the time aided by technology

I read an article the other day about a 3 year old child talking on a cell phone and infuriating the doctor he was going to see by walking right past him while talking. The writer of this article was asking for people to express their opinions about it.

We live in a world where all opinions are equally valid and must be expressed.We also live in a world where children must all have cell phones and will imitate their parents who likely treat their phone call as more important than the people they are having dinner with. This is the technological world we have created. I am all for new technology of course, but at some point we need to ask software companies to start creating intelligent applications for that technology.If kids are going to play with electronic gadgets at dinner, could we at least make the software on them something that opens their minds in some way? When we build e-learning software could we try to make it better than school and not worse? When we report news constantly could we be done with Michael Jackson in something less than all day every day for weeks in every country in the world?

The fault is, of course, due to Google and Microsoft. They have plenty of smart software people whose main intention, it seems, is to beat the hell out their competitors. How about harnessing their abilities to help education?

We are heading for a time when no one talks to anyone except via technology any more. This wouldn't be so awful if they had anything of interest to say. Everyone expresses their opinion all the time. No one gets any smarter as a result. (Me too.)