This is how it is.

[CROSSPOSTED AT No Shortage of Opinions]

I am tired, and I am angry. I am overwhelmed by the sense that nothing will stem the tides of violence against black bodies. I am afraid that no amount of hope or change or dialogue or legislation can undo centuries of dehumanization and disregard. I feel sad that the arc of history bends too slowly for so many. I feel powerless. But I do not feel surprised. The Zimmerman trial ended exactly the way I expected it to. I do not feel surprised, and that hollow feeling of "this is how it is"-ness really scares me.

Last night, I did something I'd avoided doing for almost a year and half: I allowed myself to see a picture of Trayvon Martin's dead body. It was attached to an article at Gawker, written by Adam Weinstein, entitled "This, Courtesty of MSNBC, is Trayvon Martin's Dead Body. Get Angry"--I'm not linking because the article is easy to find, and the picture is right up at the top. I didn't really want to see the picture, but I felt like I needed to. I needed to remind myself in the most visceral way possible that this is how it is. Beneath the rhetoric and abstract arguments of the trial and the public discourse, this - this dead black boy - is how it is. George Zimmerman follows, threatens, and fatally shoots an unarmed young man. He walks free, because he was "standing his ground." Elsewhere in Florida, Marissa Alexander fires shots to scare off a man who admits to beating her: she is denied the right to "stand her ground," and is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Things have changed in America, and often for the better. But things have also remained the same.

Last night, I did something I haven't done in years: I cried because I was so angry that I couldn't express it any other way. I heard the verdict and it filled me with sadness and rage. I looked at the picture because I needed to let that out, and I knew that the reality of that image would give me permission to do so. Sometimes crying is cleansing -- a way to expel negative feelings and make room for positive ones. I don't know what I made room for last night. I know that, when I stopped crying, I still felt full. When I started writing this, last night, I felt too full to collect my thoughts in any coherent fashion. (I'm still not sure how coherent this is, but believe me when I say that it's an improvement.) I gave up on trying to let this out and turned instead to taking things in. I let myself get lost in the Facebook posts, Tweets, and text messages full of outrage and sadness and resignation. This sadness, this anger, is how it is. I found some comfort in knowing that I was not alone in those feelings, but it did little to help me settle my thoughts before bed. I thought I could do that by reading something frivolous, but what started out pleasantly escapist soon became too real. I was too full to handle themes of bullying, loneliness, and the emotional damage of being constantly told that you are less-than, so I gave up on that, and went back to my laptop, to see what I'd left open to read from the past few days. As it happened, I'd left open on my browser a transcript of Malala Yousafzai's address to the UN. Malala, who was also shot by a coward who feared the threat that her existence posed to his narrow-minded beliefs, was speaking to the UN on the importance of education. It is worth noting, though, that she ties her focus on women's rights and girls' education to wider ideals of justice, and the lack thereof. "Poverty, ignorance, injustice, racism and the deprivation of basic rights are the main problems faced by both men and women," Malala said. This is how it is. But Malala also reminded me that my initial sense of powerlessness and insurmountable sadness are not the final word.

So here I stand...one girl among many. I speak – not for myself, but for all girls and boys. I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. Those who have fought for their rights:  

Their right to live in peace.  

Their right to be treated with dignity.  

Their right to equality of opportunity.  

Their right to be educated. 

--Malala Yousafzai

Yesterday, I was filled to capacity with sadness and anger. This morning, watching the video of Malala's speech, I was struck by her courage and her capacity for forgiveness. I remember, today, that my hope, though certainly shakeable, is not yet uprooted. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I will again find some comfort in the knowledge that what was shared on Saturday night was not just the understanding that this is how it is, but also the conviction that this is not how it should be. I will, again, find some comfort in the hope that it will not always be this way -- that though some of us may be silenced, others will speak out in the face of injustice.

Malala believes that illiteracy, poverty, and terrorism of all kinds can be fought -- that our situations are not hopeless, and that we are not powerless. I hope that I can learn from her example that this, also, is how it is.

Terms of engagement

A privilege is a special advantage available to some, and not to others. Having a privilege is not inherently bad or good. I love king cake, and had the privilege of being in New Orleans during king cake season (aka Mardi Gras). That privilege is inconsequential to some, and makes others a bit jealous. I'm not a bad person for being in New Orleans, or for loving king cake, or for eating it when I could, and those poor souls who love king cake, but couldn't get any, are not bad people because they missed out. Though they might be sad people. Sad, king-cake-less people. But some privileges are much more substantial than access to delicious baked goods. It may not be such a big deal if I joke about the fact that not everyone who wants king cake can have it, but shouldn't it be a big deal if I joke about the fact that one group has the special advantage of full human dignity, while another does not?

Of Dogs and Lizards: A Parable of Privilege is an excellent explanation of privilege, its perks, and its pitfalls. It's fairly brief, and also funny—if you haven't already read it, it’s worth checking out!

Ayanbadejo and Kluwe vs. Burns

Um, this is fantastic. So, Brendon Ayanbadejo is a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens. He has also been an open and vocal supporter of marriage equality for at least a few years now. Here's an opinion piece he wrote for HuffPo back in 2009. It's short -- go read it. That piece means it shouldn't have been surprising to anyone when Ayanbadejo recently raffled two tickets to a Ravens game as part of a marriage equality fundraiser. Well, surprising or not, Emmett C. Burns, Jr, Maryland State Delegate (D), didn't like it. In fact, he disliked it so much that he wrote this letter, asking the owner of the Ravens to censor Ayanbadejo. Here's HuffPo on that, and here is Ayanbadejo's response, as reported by the Baltimore Sun. I especially like this part of it:

“I just thought it was important because it’s an equality issue. I see the big picture,” Ayanbadejo said. “You know, there was a time when women didn’t have rights, black people didn’t have rights, and right now, gay rights is a big issue and it has been for a long time. And so we’re slowly chopping down the barriers to equality. We have some minority rights we have to get straight and some gay rights, then we’ll be on our way -- because ultimately, the goal is to be the best country that we can be and we’re always evolving. You just look back to where we came from, and we’ve come a long way, but we still have a ways to go.”

I also love (LOVE!) the 2 cents Chris Kluwe, Vikings punter, has thrown in, voicing his support for Ayanbadejo, the first amendment, and marriage equality. With jokes. Go read it, but put your late-afternoon coffee/Diet Coke (or happy hour cocktail, for my East Coasters) down before you do.

Did I mention that I love it. Good work, boys. I might actually have to start cheering for you and your teams. You know, when it doesn't conflict with Saints loyalty and fantasy football.

A world of hypotheses

[E]ncountering divergent opinions strengthens, rather than weakens, our political ideas. In the research methods courses that I teach, I stress to students that personal experience is a terrific way to form hypotheses, and a lousy way to adjudicate whether our hypotheses are true. So at MHP, we generate ideas from our gut, but we build arguments with research, evidence, and anticipation of counter-arguments.

--Melissa Harris-Perry, from the MHP Show Footnote, 6/10/12

Someone asked me once why I thought humanistic inquiry was so worthwhile, and why I'd devoted myself to furthering it through teaching and scholarship. "Why not," this guy asked, "just teach people the content they need to get a job and do something constructive?" I wasn't able to answer the question very well then -- it was relatively early in my graduate career, and I was only just beginning to articulate why I thought being a professor of religious studies might be worth more than just my personal enjoyment of the subject matter. I made some quick reply about having different criteria for "worth" and "constructiveness," but mostly just to get the conversation over with and move on -- this guy was an asshole for other reasons, and I didn't really want to stand at the bar, justifying my existence for the rest of the night. Little did I know that the next 14 years of my life would involve large amounts of time spent standing everywhere from the bar to the bus stop, justifying my existence as an academic, and especially as a scholar and teacher in the humanities. I didn't realize, all those years ago, how many more times I'd have that conversation, how much more time I'd spend thinking about it, and how long it would take me to figure out an answer that seemed adequate.

I still haven't figured out an answer that seems adequate. But, I do have more of an answer now than I did then.

Since 2008, I have spent most of my time teaching first-year students. I have tried to teach them to be better thinkers and writers, better discussants and readers. Now and again, I have explicitly included a little bit of being a better person, but I admit freely that I included it, implicitly and a lot, all of the time. I liked the quote above when I heard it a couple of weeks ago -- I was grading, and it reminded me of countless conversations I've had with students about how to write a better paper, or read a text more responsibly, or be a more productive member of a section discussion. I thought that I would post it here, and say something about careful critical analysis and the difficulty of crafting a thesis statement. But, when I sat down to write that post, it seemed to be missing something. I felt  like there was something else I wanted to say -- some other reason why MHP's statement had stuck with me so strongly -- so I sidelined that post, to give it a bit more thought. As I've sat with the quote for the last couple of weeks, I've realized that I like it so much because it also addresses what, for me, was always the larger picture. MHP was talking about political opinions, and how she and her production team decide what issues are important to discuss on her show. But, with very little tweaking, that quote could just as easily be about what I thought was worthwhile about humanistic inquiry, and especially about teaching in the humanities. Coming into contact with the thoughts of others -- especially concerning the things we consider important -- and being able to deal with those thoughts in an attentive, thoughtful, critically engaged manner is the best way I know of making our own thoughts stronger, and by extension, making our actions make more sense.

We live in a world full of hypotheses, so learning to form, re-form, encounter, and evaluate them is not an elective; it is a basic human skill, relevant personally and professionally, religiously, politically, legally and socially, ethically, emotionally, intellectually and emotionally -- pervasively. It is a basic human skill, but it does not come to most of us naturally or involuntarily. It's difficult. It requires effort. We develop it best when we develop it intentionally, through practice -- whether that practice comes within an academic setting, or somewhere else in the world. It helps to have models to emulate, and interlocutors with whom one can respectfully disagree. And, given all of the areas of our lives in which this type of engagement is crucial, it seems ridiculous to think that developing it in only one arena would be sufficient to the task of sending us out into a world full of hypotheses of so many different kinds.


So those hypotheses -- those thoughts, opinions, beliefs... I think they're really important. And I think they're important to be good at dealing with. As a teacher in the humanities, I think that it was my duty, my pleasure, and my contribution to a teensy corner of the world to help students be better at thinking about important things; to help them encounter some of what others have thought about these important things in more carefully considered ways; and, thereby, to help them strengthen their own hypotheses, not just about the course materials, but about themselves, other people, and the world. Big words, I know. Big claims. But these few years of teaching have offered me plenty of research, engagement with counter-arguments, and evidence to support the hypothesis that what I was doing was worthwhile, in that it had meaning, value, and a positive impact on that teensy corner of the world.

As many of you know, starting this month, I am no longer devoting myself to furthering humanistic inquiry through teaching and scholarship in the humanities. It might seem strange, then, that I'd bother to articulate why I thought it was so important. But, if you've been to this blog before, you know that one of the things I do here is try to work through hypotheses about important things -- especially gender, ethics, and culture. Sometimes I do that by presenting someone else's hypothesis and pointing out what I think is lacking or compelling about it. Sometimes I do that by offering a hypothesis of my own. I won't always be up to such serious business (though my belief that popular culture can be an important place for engaging with big ideas may blur the line a bit) -- there are all sorts of hypotheses to explore, and only some of them are about Very Important Things. But, don't be surprised if you continue to see, side by side, reviews of dubiously valuable entertainment and critical discussions of everything from blog posts to books to film and television shows. You've been warned.


La prof. est mort; vive la prof.!

For those who ask if I've considered adjuncting

Looking at all courses part-time faculty respondents reported on, the median pay per course, standardized to a three-credit course, is $2,700. There does appear to be a wage premium based on credentials among part-time faculty members: those who hold a bachelor’s degree earned a median pay per course of $2,250, those with a master’s degree earned $2,400, those with professional or other terminal degrees earned between $2,800 and $2,937, and those with a doctorate earned $3,200 (table 19). 

This wage premium, however, reflects differences only within an employment category that is significantly underpaid, not just in comparison with tenured and tenure-track colleagues but also in comparison with similarly credentialed workers across the United States in all professions. If we were to annualize the median per-course salaries of part-time faculty respondents and compare them with the median earnings of all full-time workers, it becomes clear just how underpaid this group of professionals is. We first annualized pay based on an annual load of eight classes that might be configured in more than one way (i.e., four courses in each of two terms during the traditional academic year, or three courses in fall and spring and two courses in the summer [table 20]). The gap between what a part-time faculty member earns and the median earnings of full-time, year-round workers of equivalent educational attainment is staggering and becomes more dramatic as the level of credential rises. 

Some would assert that while eight courses per academic year might be considered a full load for full-time tenure-track faculty members, such a teaching load without any research or service requirements does not truly represent the work of a full-time faculty member. Others would assert that, regardless of outside work, an annual course load of eight courses does not reflect fulltime employment. Even if we annualize salaries using an extreme model of a teaching load of five courses in each of three terms during a year, however, we find that the annualized earnings of a part-time faculty member are still dramatically below that of professionals with similar credentials (table 20). 

For most Americans, higher educational attainment regularly and predictably leads to higher earnings. The wage premium for an advanced degree for part-time faculty members who responded to this survey, however, is minimal and comparatively lower than the median earnings of other professionals with the same level of education.

--From "A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members: A Summary of Findings on Part-Time Faculty Respondents to the Coalition on the Academic Workforce Survey of Contingent Faculty Members and Instructors" by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce

Pack of animals on school bus terrorizes passenger

Yeah, I'm talking about the kids in Rochester, NY, who ganged up on and ridiculed the bus monitor until she cried. And, yeah -- I did, in fact, mean to call those children animals.

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I've seen a lot of focus on the fact that these kids are being disrespectful to someone older -- a grandmother, it's pointed out. That fact does make this seem extra-disgusting. But the main problem is not, in my opinion, that Ms. Klein is a grandmother. The main problem is that she's human, and these kids are being abusive. It would be abusive no matter what age the abused. I love it that Matt Lauer is so angry about this. To be honest, I don't think it was necessarily a good thing for someone on YouTube to put the kids' names on blast, but I'm glad someone did. But the collective anger of the viewing public won't fix this, and I have a hard time believing that anyone cruel enough to participate in this has the decency to be properly humiliated by his or her participation being made public. They did, after all, have one of their peers record it, presumably to show off. Lauer wanted to know if they'd apologized. My guess would be that, if they're sorry for anything, they're sorry they got caught and reprimanded. 

School officials promise that their parents have promised to "punish" them. But what sort of "punishment" do people presume is appropriate for this? Yes, I'd like to know that they got grounded, because it hurts me to think that these little shits won't face any consequences for being little shits. But grounding them won't make them better people. Wouldn't it be better for school officials to to promise that the parents have actually taken responsibility for re-socializing the animals they've raised into decent human beings?

And, yes -- I know that that they're young and immature, and that kids do all sorts of things when they're away from parental supervision. But does a well-socialized child actually go full-on Lord of the Flies with no more provocation than a ride on the school bus? They are young. They are immature. They are also cruel, and people don't really just grow out of that. They just grow more strategic about displaying it.

Coming soon to a bookseller near you...

I don't really love the cover, but the Table of Contents is pretty sweet.

Available May 1st. You know, unless you're in it.

New research findings on intelligence and socio-political ideology

"Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice" by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience.com (January 26, 2012)

Building on earlier research that has linked lower levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, a new study suggests that "strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world."

"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," [lead researcher Gordon] Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."

Findings are correlative, not causative, and the claim doesn't seem to be that "all conservatives are stupid," but that there may be a connection between low intelligence and socio-political ideologies that are bad at engaging with unfamiliar people and ideas, and the nuance and complexity that comes with intercultural contact. I'd be interested to read the researchers' presentation of their findings -- the article linked here eventually mentions that they were published in "Psychological Science" on January 5th. I haven't found a way to access that publication yet, but will let you know if I do.

Thanks to M.D. (I found this via her FB).

What exactly do people think people in the Humanities do with their time?

David Brooks at The New Yorker explains how only science can help make the next generation less shallow, "filling the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy."

Wow -- good to know how much of my time I've wasted as a scholar and teacher in the humanities. And here I thought I'd been teaching texts, skills, and personal-interactive habits that aided in the understanding of other people and underlying patterns of thought, action, and writing; the recognition of shortcomings (intellectual and otherwise); and the imagining of alternate futures, not to mention the actual pasts that make them possible even to imagine, much less attain. I wish The New Yorker had told me back in 1994 that only science, and none of the other disciplines that explore "emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, predispositions, character traits, and social bonding" -- not to mention attachments, imagination, empathy, perception, discernment, meaning, and the importance of "the mental virtues that lead to practical wisdom" --  could tell us anything of value about humanity. I certainly wouldn't have wasted my time studying, writing, and teaching in the humanities. How dare we even call them that?! I'd have stopped studying religion, philosophy, and literature, and I certainly wouldn't have bothered becoming an ethicist.

Alas, too late for me to avoid those wasted years. But, now that I've heard of this new study of human nature -- something our so-called-humanities obviously have no interest in -- I'm sure I'll have no problem living the type of emotionally active, critically engaged, imaginative, social existence in question. Of course, which emotions, in what measure, when, and with what limits? How do I choose what to engage with and how? How do I know whether my imagination has left something important out, or clung to an unnecessary assumption? Too bad there's no way for me to learn about what others have thought of these questions, to encounter both texts and actual human beings that push me to ask them, and to attempt to articulate an answer, even when the issue is more complex than which gelato to have. I suppose I'll have to wait until science can do that.

Me, me, me

Good read over at the NYTimes, though I'm actually not sure I'd agree with his formulation. I agree that the messaging current students receive is off, and I certainly agree that self-centeredness and the illusion of absolute freedom are bad things to try to center a life on. This way of thinking reminds me of something a student once wrote to me:

I think the point of English is not at all about the text or what the text is saying or what the author is trying to say. If I wanted that, I'd take a history class where my goal was to learn facts and people's opinions of the time period.

But, I think I disagree with what seems to me to be the conflation of "having/building a self" and "being self-centered." If I had to reformulate on the fly, I'd say that the only way to develop a truly worthwhile self is to spend the time, effort, experience, etc. that it takes to know what you can and should lose yourself in, and to see how, in those places of devotion, attention, practice, etc, you express what is best and worst in the self. Or something.

Slippery slope

Ta Nehisi Coates has a post up (The Abyss Gazes Back) about being uninterested in the debate over whether or not Bin Laden's killing was legal. A couple of excerpts:

There's been a lively debate going on across the net about the legality of killing Osama Bin Laden, in terms of both American and international law. The debate is necessary, intelligent and important. And I do not care. 

I write a lot about the problem of stripping humanity, of othering, and of making monsters of men. I loved The Looming Tower because Lawrence Wright refused to other Al Qaeda. Instead he chronicled all of the group's evil acts, detailed American complicity, and did it so well that you were in the head of the terrorist. You could, all at once, condemn the evil and see how you might come to be its perpetrator. Yet now I find myself conjuring monsters and rejecting the mask--I am unable to consider Bin Laden as part of the human family. 

This is dangerous. 

... 

One of the motivating beliefs behind this blog is that people are people, that tags like "madman," "evil" and even "terrorist" are, very often, escape hatches which allow us to avoid the hard work of understanding the evil encoded in all of us. Often I argue that slaveholders\Confederates\whoever must be seen as humans.

I mentioned to someone recently that, while I understand why I *should* care whether or not Bin Laden received proper burial rites, I really just don't. The man showed a deeply ingrained and consistent disrespect for the lives of others, and he certainly didn't seem to care whether or not *their* bodies were treated with respect, or in accordance with their religious beliefs. I admitted without hesitation that this is not a tenable moral position. Now, this is a thorny one for me, because I really don't feel very strongly about how human remains should be treated. But I believe wholeheartedly that our various and intricate strictures for dealing with our dead are about the living, and that we should not show disrespect to those living who maintain the importance of death and burial rites in our treatment of the dead. And I am refusing to extend that consideration to Bin Laden's remains. I am unwilling to see this as an issue about the living - those who have objected to the body's disposal. Instead, I see it as asking me to care whether Bin Laden would have approved of the manner in which his corpse was disposed, and I simply cannot. If I'm rigorous and honest in my thinking, what I am basically saying that I do not consider Bin Laden human enough for me to care whether his remains were treated with the dignity and respect with which I believe human remains should be treated, even if we only treat them that way because the living will be offended if we don't. Is my lack of human concern and religious respect,  a moral failure on my part? Yes, it probably is. I honestly believe, for example, that it is just not ok to torture people, even if they're "really bad people." To do so is to become less human. Is it dangerous? Certainly. It is a slippery slope, to start qualifying whose humanity you're willing and able to see.

It is such a scary thing when it happens to you, when your principles become alleged and incidental, when you lose interest in the debate. It is so very dangerous to make exceptions. It is so very dangerous to go cold.

I've been trying to rekindle the fire of my humanity, my empathy. But it's cold in this case, and I don't think there's any way to think myself out of that. So I have to wonder what it means about me, that I can think it was wrong to celebrate in the streets over Bin Laden's death, but have no problem with the fact that he was killed, and no issue with the disposal of his remains. Certainly it means that my ethical boundaries are as inconsistent as others'. And then what? Is that something I should look to fix, or simply an unavoidable part of my humanness?

A random post about ethics

Guest bloggers over at Adam Serwer's place, making a lot of sense on how not OK both torture and the clamor for a dead man's picture are.

In not entirely unrelated news, a couple of interesting finds, courtesy of my brother. The first is from the Harvard Business School, and discusses a new books that explores the blind spots in our ethical reasoning -- why we often fail to act  in accordance with our ethical ideals, and why we tend to think we are more ethical than we actually are. The article also references a book on biased judgment in sports  and how it means that that one umpire really does have it in for the Saints. OK, that's not what it says, but it does suggest that referees are likely to unconsciously favor the home team. Combine these two, and you get, among other things, a fancy explanation of why I only care that the ref is totally biased when he's biased against my team, as opposed to all the time.

The second rec. is about a different type of bias: homophily (love of the same), or the tendency to make a bunch of friends who are pretty much just like you. That is, of course, a very loose and flippant definition of the term used to discuss things ranging from why black people tend to have mostly black friends to why you're shocked when you find out that one of your close friends does not share your opinion on something you really value. The author threw a party and, shocked by how white it was, set out to make new black friends. Some interesting things in there, from the specific project of making new friends, to the larger societal trend he sees his tendency towards "monoculture" as a reflection of.

Not surprisingly, I find this set of articles interesting. Not at all shocking, but interesting to look at, and especially interesting to look at together. Yes, I do believe that our willingness to condone torture "under the right circumstances" is directly tied to our ability to overlook our own principles when it suits us, sometimes consciously, sometimes less so. I also think that our tendency to prefer those we consider "like us" works in larger (world politics) and smaller (dinner party) ways to make us more likely to overlook, mistreat, or avoid those who are "not like us." Some will say that the answer to that problem is improving our capacity for empathy by developing the ability to see how "like us" all those others are, but I'm not always sure about that. I think that's obviously part of the problem. But at what point do we talk about how to include those who we really do see as different (sometimes for legitimate reasons) in our empathic considerations?