Re: [xmca] UCSD protest: You tube

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Great info pouring in Richard, thanks.
I attach the intro to Newfield's unmaking of the public u provided by Althea
and an important article I had not read on the consequences of diversity for
college students suggested by Jay.

March 4th looks to be an interesting day. For once i hope for sunshine
around here!
mike

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Richard Beach <rbeach@umn.edu> wrote:

>  Mike, one perspective to adopt on these events relates to the emotions
> associated with White college students’ resistance to framing these issues
> as a reflection of institutional racism evident in the fact that so few
> Black students can even attend UCSD, particularly low-income Blacks, due to
> reductions in support for public higher education not only in California,
> but nationally where “public” universities are now primarily “private.”
>
> From a 3-g CHAT perspective, one way to connect the dots related to how
> different systems (real estate values <---> racial segregation <--->
> resistance to taxes supporting the “other”/Prop 13 <---> cuts in
> state/higher education budgets) in California created this situation is
> Sheryll Cashin’s *The failures of integration: How race and class are
> undermining the American dream. * New York: Public Affairs, 2005 (For her
> publications: http://tinyurl.com/y9w3a7f).
>
> Cashin argues that while neighborhoods in the past were often integrated in
> the first part of the 20th century, they became increasingly segregated
> later in the century as the real estate industry, in conjunction with local
> governments, as a means of creating a hierarchy of “desirable” versus less
> “desirable” neighborhoods according to the racial demographics of those
> neighborhoods.  In some cases, government housing/zoning policies prohibited
> African Americans or Latinos from living in certain neighborhoods.
>
> These policies sparked the “white flight” exodus from urban neighborhoods
> into the suburbs (Weis & Fine); then, when even inner-ring suburban
> neighborhoods became more diverse and therefore less “desirable,” whites
> moved to exurban neighborhoods, leading to the fact that a city like LA is
> highly segregated.  These policies also resulted in inflated housing prices
> simply given the perceived value of living in “desirable neighborhoods.”
>  This also led to resistance to “tax revolts” to paying taxes for support of
> the “other” in the perceived less “desirable” neighborhoods.”
>
> Unfortunately, as Bonilla-Silva’s (2001; 2003) survey data indicates, many
> college students resist framing these issues as a matter of institutional
> racism.
>
> In her work as a composition/rhetoric researcher, Jennifer Trainor seeks to
> explore the emotions related to that resistance constituted by “systems of
> privilege.”   You might consider using her essay, “The Emotioned Power of
> Racism: An Ethnographic Portrait of an All-White High School,” *College
> Composition and Communication, 60*(1), 82-112, 2008.  In that essay, she
> notes:
> racist assertions do not always or even often originate in racist attitudes
> or belief. Instead, racist
> language functions metaphorically, connecting common racist ideas to
> nonracist feelings, values, beliefs, and associations—emotioned positions
> that
> are learned in school. I suggest that racist discourses are best understood
> as
> psychosocial rhetorical phenomena—forms of persuasion that need to be
> understood
> not only for their political meanings and implications but also for
> their persuasive subjective and affective coherence—and that racist
> discourses
> structure feelings sometimes linked to, but surprisingly rarely reducible
> to, the
> racial politics such discourses forward. I then extend this argument to the
> infrastructure
> of schooling—those tacit, taken-for-granted practices and rituals
> that scholars have linked to the teaching of social class identities—to
> show
> how school scaffolds the emotioned frameworks within which racist
> discourses
> become persuasive. I suggest that part of what makes racist discourses
> cohere
> and thus what makes them persuasive is school itself—its infrastructure,
> which
> exerts a powerful, but largely unacknowledged, pedagogical and persuasive
> force.3 Finally, I turn to materials gathered from Laurel Canyons—students
> narratives of their first memories of learning about race, transcripts of
> class
> discussions, and interviews with students conducted informally in the
> classroom
> and more formally, in the private setting of the library. These materials
> are used to illustrate the argument above, and as such they suggest
> provocative
> new directions for those interested in whiteness studies and anti-racist
> pedagogies, particularly those that conceptualize white privilege as a
> property
> (as Peggy MacIntosh does in her widely used essay “Unpacking the Knapsack
> of White Privilege”). Indeed, my argument here raises questions about
> privilege-
> as-property metaphors in anti-racist education; these may not be effective
> tropes with which to explore racism with white students. Consider, for
> example, Laurel Canyons’ contradictory demographics: at the time of this
> research,
> the school was moderately high-achieving, with slightly higher than
> statewide average scores on state standardized tests. The median home value
> in the district was above the state average, and fewer than 7 percent of
> the
> students qualified as “low income.” The population of adults in the
> district
> who had college degrees was nearly 40 percent (above the national and state
> percentages). Yet most of the students in Elizabeth’s classes had no
> college
> plans. Indeed, the overall percentage of the state’s population who had a
> bachelor’s degree was 16 percent at the time of this research, a fact I had
> to
> repeat several times as I talked to colleagues about this research. Many
> students
> in Elizabeth’s classes hailed from ambiguous class backgrounds: one student
> had a parent with a college degree and another who worked as a beautician,
> for example; another had college-educated parents who themselves doubted
> the value of a college degree and pushed their child instead toward
> community
> college; another lived in a mobile home with her family but took, and
> excelled
> in, all the high-track classes in school. In these ways the students
> problematized the economic metaphors of white privilege. Their lived
> experiences
> suggest a view of whiteness as a dynamic, emotioned, rhetorical process
> rather than a “property”—metaphoric or actual— that gives way to racism as
> a rational way to hang on to what one owns or as a compensatory “wage” paid
> to working-class whites. This is not to suggest that privilege and racism
> were
> not at work at Laurel Canyons, in the choices available to the students and
> parents, and in the educational and social power they wielded. This is
> power
> that is not accessible, or not accessible to the same degree, to students
> of color
> and their families. I do not, that is, want to lose sight of the very real
> system of
> whiteness in place in public education and elsewhere. However, I do want to
> suggest here that the metaphor of whiteness as property and the conception
> of
> racism as a response to the need to protect that property do not adequately
> capture the complexity of systems of privilege as they are affectively
> experienced. (pp. 85-87).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2/26/10 5:07 PM, "Lois Holzman" <lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi Mike,
> > I just read about the events in the last week or so at UCSD.
> > I don't know of a reading on this specific topic...but peripheral might
> be
> > something Joshua Aronson has done and/or this  interview Derrick Bell did
> with
> > Lenora Fulani a few years ago.
> > Sounds hard,
> > Lois
> >
> >
> > December 21 , 2004
> >
> > Professor Derrick Bell interviews All Stars Project
> > co-founder, Dr. Lenora Fulani
> > by KARLA KEFFER
> >
> >
> > Drs. Bell and Fulani
> >
> > “The Miracle of Motivation,” an invigorating three-part public interview
> of
> > Dr. Lenora Fulani, co-founder of the All Stars Project, conducted by the
> > distinguished civil rights activist-attorney and Visiting Professor of
> Law at
> > New York University Law School, Derrick Bell, graced the stage of the
> Castillo
> > Theatre, Tuesday, November 16, Monday, November 22, and Tuesday, November
> 30,
> > 2004. The three interviews were hosted by Nathaniel Christian, Barry
> Mayo, and
> > Beverly Parker, respectively.  A wine and cheese reception followed the
> > November 16 interview, and Professor Bell was on hand after each dialogue
> to
> > sign copies of his latest book, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of
> Education
> > and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform.
> >
> >
> > Professor Bell kicked off “The Miracle of Motivation” with a discussion
> of
> > Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Having
> been a
> > young lawyer involved in the desegregation effort, Bell recalled, “The
> real
> > evil was segregation, and if black folks were willing to let bygones be
> > bygones, then white people would comply.”  That this did not follow, Bell
>
> > concluded, illustrated that the real problem was white superiority, while
>
> > segregation was only a symptom.
> >
> > Dr. Fulani countered that the All Stars Project and its leadership
> training
> > program, the Development School for Youth (DSY), picked up where the
> civil
> > rights movement had failed, that the real problem was not white
> superiority,
> > per se, but rather a failure to engage the experience of segregation — a
> > necessary step if real integration was to take place.  One of the DSY’s
> > workshops, Fulani explained, serves exactly that purpose.  Young people
> are
> > encouraged to share their experience of disengagement from the
> mainstream,
> > “white,” culture, and are then challenged to grow and develop beyond that
>
> > sense of alienation by learning to perform in new and different ways.  By
>
> > gradually integrating into the business world, DSY students discover that
>
> > professionals, black and white, are, in fact, quite sensitive and
> empathic
> > toward the inner city black experience, in contradistinction to
> conventional
> > wisdom.
> >
> > Dr. Fulani challenged the conventional educational approach toward
> inner-city
> > youth, which has tended toward consciousness-raising, largely in the form
> of
> > focusing on teaching young people about their African roots, disputing
> both
> > its effectiveness and its reliance on stringent ideology.  In Fulani’s
> > opinion, “the black intelligentsia’s inability to loosen its grip on
> cultural
> > nationalist ideology has proven more detrimental to the advancement of
> > inner-city youth than helpful.” Pigeonholing certain behaviors and
> thought
> > processes as “white,” Dr. Fulani believes, is a roadblock to development.
> “I
> > decided a long time ago,” she explained, “to go where I had to go and do
> what
> > I had to do in the interest of helping young people grow — whether or not
> I
> > was being ideologically correct.”
> >
> > Part Two of the series began with a discussion of the non-acquisitional
> > learning model of the Development School for Youth and the failure of the
>
> > antiquated acquisitional-learning model on which the U.S. public school
> > education system is based. Professor Bell displayed particular interest
> in the
> > DSY’s insistence upon punctuality, and how learning to be on time helps
> give
> > young people a solid foundation. Dr. Fulani said that in inner-city
> > communities, young people often don’t learn the importance of being on
> time.
> > Young people relate to being on time as a disciplinary measure, as
> something
> > an authority tells them to do because “those are the rules.” The DSY
> teaches
> > young people that being on time is important because they themselves are
> > important. Learning how to be on time teaches young people to take
> themselves
> > seriously, to take others seriously, and to learn how to put forward
> their
> > best performances. “The kids who join the DSY self-select,” Dr. Fulani
> added.
> > “They want to be there. They’re not assigned by teachers; their parents
> don’t
> > make them come. It’s an agreement between them and us to participate in
> > whatever we have to offer.”
> >
> > “Perhaps the most important component of the DSY,” Dr. Fulani continued,
> “is
> > the résumé writing workshop. Young people in the DSY have lived their
> whole
> > lives — gone to school, hung out — within a twenty-block radius. They’ve
> not
> > been out into the world. Nobody talks to them about workshops or résumés.
> I
> > think what’s so important about the résumé workshop is that it makes them
> see
> > that they’ve done something in life that’s worth putting on paper.”
> >
> > “One of the things that growing up poor does,” according to Fulani, “is
> rob
> > you of a certain youthfulness. So we allow the young students to be in
> touch
> > with their youthfulness — to play with things, to come alive and be
> excited
> > about things. When they come here, we see an awakening of that
> youthfulness —
> > not of a ‘lost childhood,’ but the youthfulness that gives way to a sense
> of
> > excitement — something that the schools, unfortunately, don’t promote.”
> >
> > The series concluded with an in-depth analysis of the debate between the
> > developmental learning model, which, as employed by the All Stars
> Project,
> > Inc. and the Development School for Youth, focuses on growth, and the
> > acquisitional learning model, which is the standard in most American
> public
> > schools and has a devastating effect on inner-city children.  According
> to Dr.
> > Fulani, the acquisitional model, which “teaches kids to be knowers — to
> > manipulate and acquire information — has failed the black community
> precisely
> > because of its complete abandonment of development.” Having few or no
> > opportunities to develop, Dr. Fulani believes, is why inner city black
> kids
> > are “dumber” than middle-class white kids. With only the acquisitional
> > learning model at their disposal, black kids find it nearly impossible to
>
> > learn.
> >
> > The DSY’s focus on performance, Dr. Fulani stated, serves as a way to
> initiate
> > young people’s development. The insular lives that many DSY students lead
> give
> > them few opportunities to discover the world around them and other ways
> of
> > doing one’s life. The DSY provides young people with new opportunities to
> be
> > in the world, as opposed to simply acquiring facts. Young people will not
> be
> > able to grow if facts are all they’re exposed to. DSY graduates perform
> better
> > in their academic environments, because they’ve learned how to perform.
> >
> > One of the key components of learning how to perform in a corporate
> > environment, said Dr. Fulani, is through learning how to be “less
> reactive to
> > all that’s wrong with the public school system, and to prejudicial
> > statements.” When Professor Bell asked if this would “make blacks more
> > passive,” Dr. Fulani responded, “I think growing, along with making and
> > responding to challenges, is much less passive than sitting around
> complaining
> > about how white people treat us. In the DSY, kids learn to put
> ‘unpleasant’
> > matters on the table and to ask for help.”
> >
> > During the question-and-answer sessions that followed each dialogue,
> audience
> > members proved just as spirited and thoughtful as their onstage
> counterparts.
> > Many questioners inquired about Dr. Fulani’s hopes and expectations for
> young
> > people — if she wished for them to merely fit into the system or to
> change it
> > as well, to which Dr. Fulani responded that it didn’t particularly matter
> to
> > her what young people did with their lives, as long as they were able to
> take
> > responsibility for their choices, and to find a measure of order amidst
> “the
> > madness.”
> >
> > Karla Keffer holds a B.A. in English from Hobart and William Smith
> Colleges
> > and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New York University. She has been
> > published in Limozine Magazine and the Baltimore, MD-based poetry
> journal,
> > Smartish Pace. Ms. Keffer has been volunteering with the All Stars
> Project
> > since March 2004.
> >
> > Lois Holzman, Director
> > East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy
> > 920 Broadway, 14th floor
> > New York NY 10010
> > tel. 212.941.8906 ext. 324
> > fax 718.797.3966
> > lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org
> > www.eastsideinstitute.org
> > www.performingtheworld.org
> > loisholzman.org
> >
> >
> >
> > On Feb 26, 2010, at 7:49 PM, mike cole wrote:
> >
> >> Some have asked me about the current conflict at UCSD. There are several
> >> youtube videos,
> >> the most recent of which is about an hour old. You can find hints about
> more
> >> than I or anyone else knows about these events on youtube by typing in
> ucsd
> >> protest(s).
> >>
> >> I have not, unfortunately, gotten any suggestions of an essay to use
> >> Thursday when the entire campus
> >> turns out to confront the budget crisis, with which these events are
> >> certainly connected in many ways.
> >>
> >> mike
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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