1. “Yes, hanging a noose under these circumstances is a hate crime,” Washington, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, told a House Judiciary Committee hearing convened to examine the Jena case. “If these acts had been committed by others who were not juveniles, this would have been a federal hate crime, and we would have moved forward.”
—Chicago Tribune, 16 October 2007. Why then were members of the Jena 6 tried as adults?
2. “Many of those who wield power in the United States have at least one thing in common: a diploma from an elite college or university. And one of the most controversial determinants of who gains access to those institutions – affirmative action – increasingly benefits the children of the wealthy and influential, argues Schmidt. Delving into college-admission practices, affirmative action’s 40-year history in education, and its legal and legislative challenges, he finds that the social justice initiative has strayed far from its original intent of leveling the playing field.
Today, he reports, its justification is more likely to be framed in terms of diversity training for white undergraduates coming from privileged suburban schools. Moreover, he contends, well to do white college applicants, even underqualified ones, are least likely to be rejected in favor of minority students; working class white applicants, Asian Americans, and low income students of color face the toughest scrutiny.”
3. I have a yet more concise boil-down of the message of Reeducation: “You must not treat your life as a serious matter.” This also appears to be a message given the Jena 6, the deserving college applicants who nevertheless do not get a spot, and countless others. The Field Negro says high school graduation is not enough, but what if high school itself teaches you that your life is not a serious matter?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Well sometimes — and indeed most of the time, I suspect — how we are taught not to think of our lives as a serious matter is through being told that our seriousness is not really the true kind of seriousness that ought to be taken seriously.
So, for instance, if I think that the nature of a situation indicates that I am not being treated well because I am a female, then obviously this is a serious issue for me. However, those who oppose me will say, “It is you, yourself, who is not treating yourself seriously by focussing on this issue as if it were a feminist issue. If you wanted to be taken seriously, you would get with the programme, and put this behind you, and be prepared to make real headway!”
So, you know there is an issue (political) here in terms of what is serious.
The big example of this kind of political and perspectival difference is in the way that David Pattison reads Marechera. He has written a whole book which has the effect of saying, “If Marechera wants to be taken seriously, he is surely going about it the wrong way.” What he does not seem to see is that Marechera’s approach is already an approach of taking himself seriously. He is not trying to work towards a point where he comes out of the bath clean and pure and therefore is in a position to be taken seriously. He is already demanding that. And Pattison’s helpful chiding is a way of refusing him the seriousness that he had already claimed in relation to himself.
“how we are taught not to think of our lives as a serious matter is through being told that our seriousness is not really the true kind of seriousness that ought to be taken seriously”
Yes indeed. And Pattison sounds quite fatuous.
Pattison will go down well with the bourgeois paternalistic Freudian set.
have you read nancy lopez’s book on high school? I think your last question about how high school teaches you whether you matter or not is one of the most astute in the list you made. I remember distinctly being told by my academic advisor, who neither helped me pick appropriate classes and tests nor wanted to fill out required forms for colleges, “You will never make it in college” & then being told by my advisor in undergrad “You aren’t grad school material” both based their assumption on race and class as evidenced by other discussions, comments, and patterns of disparate treatment between upper class white students (regardless of intelligence) and working class students of color (regardless of intelligence, but in the case of the latter especially those who were smart). I have multiple degrees, have taught at some of the top colleges in the country, & recently had a book I wrote based on work disparaged by the same undergrad advisor win a prestigious award. What would have happened if I had not had college educated parents who were radicals? Which “no, you’re not good enough” along the way would have been enough to silence me forever? I’ve met a lot of “should have beens” from the old neighborhood and I know most were told they were “never coulds.”
http://laii.unm.edu/survey/display/?username=nlopez
This Nancy Lopez? You’ve just turned me onto her. And yes, it is all true – those “you will never make it” messages do get in. Even I, after many years of not getting them and of accomplishing things, succumbed to them at one point (n.b. they didn’t start coming until I started to get above the correct station for a woman, it seems…) but if these messages could affect *me* *as an adult* what must they be like for much younger people with many fewer opportunities to start with?
Yeah, I had the big “you’ll never make it” message delivered to me by both my parents in tough love mode, when they told me, “You seem to think you’re an intellectual, but you can’t even talk properly.” That was when I was in my early thirties and had been knocked down by some workplace abuse. What it did was make me think that I could get it but that society was not able to “get” me — what I was saying to it and about it.
Yes – I got it from various people but mainly a supervisor, my parents, and Reeducation – although as I say, it was in the air.
My current Bane is envy – of people who have not gone through that or who did not suffer so long from it as I or who somehow got along with that message. I never envied anyone before but I have come to envy people who have never gotten the “you’ll never make it message,” or who have managed to deflect it better than I.
The supervisor and mainly my parents said I would never make it, but Reeducation was worse because it said I *should* not – it would be indecorous or something. 😉
All very non-adult, I must say.
My boildown of Reeducation’s message for this hour is, “you should despair.” C’est bien ridicule!
***
Anyway, I mis-linked in this post, to a horrid Christian site, by mistake. I meant to link to the documentary on N.O. public schools, “Left Behind.” Here is the link again:
http://www.neworleansleftbehind.com/
Haha! I wondered why you wanted us to read the left behind site, but I thought it was an oblique message about what happens to your christian mind if you do not get it educated!
Anyway, I don’t think it pays to envy other people. Really, you above all, have ‘made it”. As for me, the secular party is sending me some money to register as a candidate, this weekend, so I’m having fun, despite my woes.
Yes – isn’t that funny, the Christian site! And: a friend was going on to me last night about how I should get baptized, just in case. (Just in case what?) I said nothing since she wouldn’t “get” it, but my thought was, I do not need the benefits she was saying it would bring, I have them already.
Envy is horrible because it decenters one, and is focused on what is outside. But I envy people who have not been to Reeducation. Yet envy of anything is not a good idea. I, above all, have “made it” – 🙂 – secretly I think so too – largely because those I envy because of not having been to Reeducation, I also wouldn’t want to trade places with really, they are in some *other* sort of pain, I can tell…
There is something about pain that teaches one to let go of useless aspirations — those that are really deceptive and so potentially hurtful to the extreme.
Observation from an IRL friend – “you can tell who the people in the most deep seated pain and anger are, because they are the ones who want to reproduce it.” Interesting.
Yes, I think that is so true! And it puts a lot of right wing movements, and indeed the leadership of our societies, in an unfortunate light.
I don’t know if this is her, but when I finally get around to unpacking my new office (next semester) I will let you know. I teach parts in my intro.
found the reference Lopez. N. (2001). “Girls Out” it is about Latinas, African Americans, Asian Americans, and white girls and how they are systemically denied access to higher education on the basis of race *and* class w/ class being the deciding factor for white girls while race plays a more significant factor for girls of color when gender is the same for all groups (gender within a group, ie white, is also a huge factor and also varied from race to race according to the data presented). It is a really fascinating piece. Will check for the book title when sabbatical ends and I unpack the new office/the book. 😀
Aha – another Nancy Lopez!