NewBlackMan (in Exile): Social Media Saved My Life

Social Media Saved My Life

by David Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Q: What happened after hackers shut down Twitter for a day? A: Twitterers were relegated to communicating the old fashioned way, through Facebook!

Q: Why is Facebook a great site for loners? A: Because it’s the only place where they can talk to a wall and not be considered a loser!

Q: Why is Facebook like a refrigerator? A: Because every few minutes you keep opening and closing it to see if there’s anything good in it! (Source)

It has become almost commonplace to mock social media. Whether describing it as a distraction, as a waste of time, or a world that is otherwise detached from reality, there is almost a cottage industry at scoffing at social media. Steve Tobak is indicative of this line of thinking:

Instead of living our lives, we’re watching our timelines on a two-dimensional display. Instead of doing, we’re content to observe events and post milestones on Facebook (FB). We’re becoming a society of watchers.

Sure, I know you’re all intelligent adults who understand there’s a world of difference between watching and doing. But that doesn’t change the reality that the vast majority of you are doing way too much observing and a whole lot less doing than you used to.

What’s the impact of our crazy obsession with gadgets and social media? It turns each of you a little more into a poor, lazy, lifeless drone every day.

Irrespective of these jokes and the constant disparagement of social media as the demise of “civilization,” social media saved me.

A couple years ago, I often wondered about my career in academia. Many nights (and early mornings) I contemplated other jobs, pining for anything, something other than my current existence. I lamented going to graduate school, I lamented the academic culture, and I even fantasized about a world where I could have traded my Ph.D. for something else. If it hadn’t been for student loan debt, financial obligations, my family, and my colleagues, I would have packed my books and bounced. While partly a fantasy, and partly the result of the intoxicating belief that the job is always enjoyable on the other side, I genuinely considered leaving academia. I thought long and hard about turning in my Ph.D. so I could become an ex-academic.

Between budget cuts, campus politics, disengaged students, societal disrespect for education and the stresses of life, I found myself continually asking, “does this matter;” I found myself hating the job. Maybe it wasn’t even the job but faced with tragedies, when witnessing so much pain and suffering, none of it seemed to matter. Whereas I spent so much of my life with freedom dreams, I found myself confronting nightmares.

This wasn’t just about hatin’ the job since a job “ain’t nothing but work,” but suddenly loathing everything that meant so much to me: reading, teaching and writing. I wanted out. I wanted to do something; really anything else. And that is why it hurt so much. I was slowly beginning to hate myself. For so long, I had seen myself, my identity, and my very existence in relationship to being a teacher, a scholar, a writer, and commentator—working to dream the world anew. In a sense, I hated myself because my identity was wrapped up in the “work.” Since it has never been just a job for me, my growing frustration and anxiety about the “job” was very personal. As a writer, teacher, scholar, and person committed to fostering conversations about equality and justice I felt as if I was betraying myself, betraying those who sacrificed so much for me, and otherwise taking advantage of my privileges by not using them in the pursuit of justice. I was being selfish. With these feelings and emotions, I couldn’t imagine another year, much less a lifetime on the academic grind.

Continue reading @ NewBlackMan (in Exile): Social Media Saved My Life.

Lewis Gordon: The Problem With Affirmative Action | Truthout

The Problem With Affirmative Action

Monday 15 August 2011

by: Lewis R. Gordon, Truthout | Op-Ed

(Photo: _Davo_)

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the famed African-American literary scholar and director of the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, recently reflected the following in an interview on National Public Radio: If it weren’t for affirmative action, he would not have been admitted to Yale University, regardless of how high his credentials were and he would not have had the opportunities to demonstrate his talent over the past four decades.(1)

Gates’ admission reflects a fundamental problem with affirmative action. It works. I had the opportunity to reflect on that out loud in a discussion at the Race and Higher Education conference in Grahamstown last month when I asked: “Are there no mediocre white people in South Africa? Is every white person hired, every white person offered admission to institutions of learning, an excellent candidate?”

My rhetorical question was premised upon what Gates and many other highly achieved blacks know and that is the myth of white supremacy is the subtext of the “qualifications” narrative that accompanies debates on affirmative action.

When I was tenured at Brown University, the process required evaluations of my work from five referees. Expected performance was a published monograph, several articles, satisfactory teaching, service and signs of international recognition. My dossier had the following: three monographs (one of which won a book award for outstanding work on human rights in North America), an edited book, a co-edited book, 40 articles (several of which had gone in reprint in international volumes), two teaching awards and service that included heading a committee that recruited 23 scholars of color to the university. The process for my promotion and tenure was dragged out because of continued requests for more referees. The number grew to 17.

There was a comparable white candidate in the philosophy department. He also supposedly worked in existentialism, one of my areas of expertise. His dossier? A contract for his dissertation and a few articles. His case was successful. His contracted dissertation was published several years later. He has since then not published a second book. He is now a full professor at that institution. Over the years, I have only met one person in his field who knew of and spoke well of his work. That person was a classmate of his in graduate school.

Was affirmative action necessary for my promotion and tenure? Yes. But as should be evident in this example and no doubt Gates’ and many others, there is another truth. Was investment in white supremacy necessary for less than stellar whites to be promoted? Yes.

Affirmative action, which brought people of color to the table to learn first-hand about the level of performance of their white predecessors and contemporaries, stimulated a reflection on standards in many institutions. As more people of color began to meet inflated standards, what were being concealed were the low standards available to the whites who preceded them (and no doubt many who continue to join them as presumed agents of excellence).

To continue reading click here: The Problem With Affirmative Action | Truthout.

White Boy Remixed: Whiteness and Teaching Race

White Boy Remixed: Whiteness and Teaching Race

| special to NewBlackMan

This summer I have dedicated to reading that stack of books I have been wanting to read. The 4th installment (I will write about the other three books on my blog) was Mark Naison’s memoir – White Boy. Naison, a professor of African American Studies at Fordham University, chronicles his personal, political and academic journey, responding to those who have ubiquitously asked how he as a white man became a professor of African American Studies. With a tremendous amount of honesty, openness, complexity, and vulnerability, Naison explores his own history as a teacher, activists, and source of community empowerment. While the book chronicles a powerful story of the 1960s – the anti-war movement, the Panthers, Columbia, identity politics – it is a story of a dynamic man whose life and insights teach us just as he has taught his students for several decades. In telling the story of the “white African American Studies professors, Naison offers a narrative that highlights how whiteness matters but how it does not define or over-determine the arch of his life or career. It is a story that resonates with me on so many levels, leading me to want to share my own story.

Like Mark Naison, I have been consistently asked about my entry into Ethnic Studies. In my first class at Washington State University, I had a student that constantly wanted to know my story. The student could not understand why this White guy was teaching African American film – what had lead me to be me – In the course of the class, he asked “How I can to be the Eminem of Ethnic Studies?” While the class oohed and aahed, some thinking it was a slight against me and others thinking it was a point of celebration, I saw it as a good question, one that could lead (and did) into some important conversations. Another day I had a group of students who came to my office asking me to settle a bet about how I came to Ethnic Studies, each having a different theory – (a) I grew up in the Black community; (b) I had a Black girlfriend or a Black wife who had taught and encouraged me to learn; (c) I was just down. In fact, I have been asked several times if I have a Black girlfriend who educated me about blackness, taught me to be committed and down, and pushed me down my educational and career path.

On another level, I have been asked if I am a “culture vulture,” in the tradition of Elvis, in that I am “taking” and “impersonating” something that I am not, in my educational and professional choices. I have also experienced much celebration being a white guy in ethnic studies. Most often such comments reflect desires for colorblindness as a presumed end goal; that is, my presence in Ethnic Studies supposedly embodies the fulfillment of King’s dream or a sign of progress. A student once sent me an e-mail that said that world was changing racially, for the better, because the best rapper was white, best golfer is black, best basketball player was Asian …and their ethnic studies teacher was white. Not to be outdone, a student cited my presence in Ethnic Studies as evidence of colorblindness, to discount our discussions about racism and inequality. However, what the student failed to see is whether or not their teacher was White, or the president is Black, racism remains a constant.

I am certainly defined by my whiteness, whether teaching ethnic studies or driving through Colfax; yet my relationship to Ethnic Studies, social justice struggles, my scholarship, my pedagogy, my ideology, my gaze upon the world, and my understanding of racism/privilege/inequality is not overly determined by a monolithic white identity formation. As Bakari Kitwana argues in Why White Kids Love Hip Hop, “Each Person has a unique story that brought him or her to hip-hop. Looking at the micro reasons as well as the macro ones helps us make sense of a contemporary hip-hop scene in which a new generation is affected by America’s racial history and in the process is constructing a new politics.” In others words, my arrival to and place within the field of Ethnic Studies (or a larger racialized discursive field) reflects a myriad of factors and experiences, ones that are neither defined exclusively by nor immune from the realities of whiteness, racism, and contemporary racial politics.

I grew up in Los Angeles in a middle-class family that spent most of its income on schools, not so much because of concerns of “safety” or even the quality of education available in the public school system. I went to an elementary school founded by Hollywood Communists, including Charlie Chaplin. During my life, I have never gone to school where we did not call our teachers by their first name; I did not receive “grades” until the 9th grade. More instructive, both detention and the pledge of allegiance were completely foreign concepts to me until high school. This educational background clearly established a foundation but this only tells part of the story.

Continue reading at New Black Man

AFTER ARTEST: THE NBA AND THE ASSAULT ON BLACKNESS

FORTHCOMING BOOK

DAVID J. LEONARD

AFTER ARTEST: THE NBA AND THE ASSAULT ON BLACKNESS

SUNY PRESS, MAY 2012

New Media Literacy and Sporting Cultures

Call for Papers

New Media Literacy and Sporting Cultures

Special Issue of Journal of Sport and Social Issues

David J. Leonard and CL Cole

Challenging those who blamed Twitter for the recent controversy surrounding Rashard Mendenhall, LZ Granderson celebrated the possibilities of new media technologies within American sports culture: “Twitter empowers them to show they are more than just the sport they play, to show they have a sense of humor, are aware of the world around them and are not afraid to try new things, like ballet classes. In other words, they are real people — not product-pushing puppets or faces of the franchise, walking around without thoughts or souls.”

Despite the humanizing possibilities, new media technology, evident in the power of sports video games, fantasy sports, and the often-hateful online discussions, simultaneously dehumanizes today’s athletes.  Reimagined as an object of play, consumption, ownership, and derision, the shifting technological tools exposes and disempowers today’s athletes all while enhancing agency and control. Breaking down boundaries, changing the relationship between athletes-fans-the media, and otherwise reconstituting the ways the sports operates; these technological-cultural-social shifts are changing the nature of sports itself.  We seek to reflect on the ways in which new sports media technologies simultaneously humanize and dehumanize across time and space.

This special issue works to highlight the dynamic nature of sporting cultures and the transformative possibilities resulting from new media technologies.  It attempts to build upon the existing literature all while engaging ongoing debates and discussions.  It seeks to foster critical new media literacy in a sporting context, all while elucidating the social, cultural and political significance resulting from the changing sports landscape.

In an effort to expand the conversation and engage the issues of new media and sports through alternative formats, we seek to publish editorial-styled essays.  We look for pieces that are theoretically rich, those focused on asking questions and expanding the discussion, and those dedicated to critical analysis.  We seek pieces that offer commentary and those committed to advancing and promoting new media literacy within a sporting context.

Authors should follow the ‘Manuscript Submission’ found at the JSSI website. Essays should be roughly 4,000-5,000 words, excluding endnotes and reference list. Questions should be sent to CL Cole – clcole@illinois.edu – or David J. Leonard, – djl@wsu.edu. All submissions are due by February 1, 2012 and should be submitted in electronic format to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jssi