I am Working on the Topic of Racism

            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.

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