Posts
I work as a
university researcher while studying as a PhD student. The last couple months my research has focused
on Racism in K-12 education. The idea
being to see how various factors of racism are discussed in the field of
education and how it might be applied to Public Policy or Administration.
Shockingly,
researching this topic for numerous weeks left my brain feeling like it had
been beaten with a cudgel.
It was a
strange arc to the whole process too.
The first half dozen sources I worked thru I could immediately see a
larger narrative (one that held steady thru the remaining research) and enjoyed
the act of learning for its own sake.
Then as I
read the next half dozen I started to think, “Oh good, a lot of these
literature reviews see policies in action, and it seems like they know how to
fix many of the underlying problems.” During
this time is where a normal undergraduate would be able to write a paper
spelling out numerous issues and numerous solutions. Then I kept going…
The refrain
of racism became an earworm. 20-25
sources reviewed and all I could see is the long pattern stretching back thru
American and world history and it leading to the current state of things. The attempts to fix it, the constant push
back, and the half-hearted attempts to dig out the infection of systemic racism
and cultural bias, it was the arc of history and while things are better, they
still suck, and it is too easy for them to get worse.
Conversations with people at the dog park were a treat for them I am sure. As puppies played and older dogs sat on benches and got head pats from the various lounging dog owners, I turned conversations with those who would listen to me into town halls. There a bunch of people listened to me explain how subtle racism permeates every aspect of the primary education system. And then went on to explain how that racism is part of the legacy of segregation and white supremacy that is as baked into the apple pie of America alongside patriarchy and heteronormativity.
I was being a bit
of a downer.
By the time
I had finished summarizing and organizing more than 30 of these papers (each in
turn a literature review or meta-analysis of numerous other studies) I had been
thinking about racism constantly for a month… and I stupidly didn’t stop there.
I am an
avid user of audiobooks and I had been listening to some of the free titles
offered via my audible subscription on history.
What were two titles I had picked?
“A
Concise History of the Haitian Revolution” and “Reconstruction
and the Rise of Jim Crow” as my stupid ass had decided without really
thinking it out, “Hey, I have been wanting to learn a little more about these
topics” and ended up reading about a whole other dimension to racism. (Both of those titles are quite informative; I
am not slighting them in the least, do pick them up if you are a fan of history.)
Racism was the
hobgoblin of my thoughts. You might be
saying, “what about your classes? Didn’t
studying for those take your mind off of it?”
Well, one of them deals with philosophy and certainly did, the other… It
deals with Welfare Programs in the US and HOLY SHIT is it just racism all the
way down. I kind of lost my mind at some
point when we were having class discussion where people were trying to give the
benefit of the doubt to… let’s politely call it, “the other side” by spelling
out their fiscal conservatism and romanticizing of the Protestant Work Ethic.
Yeah, I
decided not to give the same benefit of the doubt. Ending up on a mini rant about how we all
need to stop giving them credit or listening to them lie. Spelling out how persistent racism has been
the guiding star of so many “reforms” and so many abuses within the American
welfare system (and America in general) that we have to stop treating the other
side as acting in good faith. At a
certain point you have to come to the realization that you and the public you
serve are in danger, that the other side is not acting in good faith, that the
other side does not tell the truth, and that if you don’t start acknowledging all
that you are going to allow great harm to come to the most vulnerable.
Regardless
of all these attempts to kill my own soul by burning away what little remained
of my own ignorance (keep in mind, I am not learning too many new things about
racism, it is the wallowing in the subject matter that is getting to me) I did
come out the other end and will continue to work on the material.
I talked to
my supervising Professor about how draining it has been to bathe in this topic (it
is interesting at least to see which authors look at things with a cold
detachment, those that feel a sense of sad pity, and those that have some real
fire to their writing) and the professor suggested to distance myself from the
material a bit, focus on putting out a useful policy message and maybe making a
positive change.
The
professor also made the suggestion to go back over the reading list he had
given his students earlier in the semester which included the titles, “White
Rage”, “White
Trash”, and “White
Fragility” and not read those titles for a little while. The university and our department in
particular had been trying to position themselves as “Anti-Racist” (something I
support) and that had led to many such reading lists to help the student body
understand the context of the university’s work on the subject. I previously discussed the book “Blindspot”
for this very reason. The Professor saw
that I was already knee deep and needed a bit of a mental break.
Good news is
that I might be able to publish some of my work from this and that might do
some good in the future.
Maybe.
Maybe it
will just be the latest in a long line of papers saying, “Here is the problem,
we all see it, here is a possible solution, please don’t ignore it” and then it
getting filed away to only be referenced by other academics and ignored by
policymakers… Cause racism.
______________________________
If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world. I would appreciate it.
