welcome to our new blog. please excuse my one-handed typing, and my post surgery grogginess. i am eager to start this blog and to see where we go from here.
first, thanks to Lily for her summary of our last workshop. i sensed (and heard from some of you) some dissatisfaction with what did or did not occur during our meeting. i thought we had some great discussion, and also thought i should have interrupted it a bit to keep us headed toward application. It's always tricky to assert,share,critique,evaluate...power.
Nonetheless, a few moves to hopefully move us to a title, a format and a sense of our next meeting in my next post. i'm feeling ill right now so i'll leave uo with some comments from a listserve i belong to that build on some of our discussion of everyday whiteness, race privilege, racism.
post below:
i sat on a panel at my school this year with a black colleague of mine, listening to two white guys tell us about the "glories of post racial nirvana." One of these guys had been with SNCC until they kicked he and his wife out. These white guys sat back expectantly as they expected me to congratulate them for tellling us all is right with the world now because Obama is the prez. I told them that as long as white students can walk in my class on the first day and walk right by me up to the oldest white man or woman in the class to find out if they are the course instructor, we still have a race problem. When i can still go to administration offices on campus and they ask me which staff department do I work for instead of knowing I am a professor, there is still a problem. As long as police on campus can profile our young black men simply by the cars they drive, ( never mind the white meth freaks and dealers we have on our campus) There is a problem. I am going to court in August because a young white cop gave me a ticket because he said I "failed to stop" at a stop sign. Mind you, he had no camera in his car. He did not even tell me what the charge was intially. He got mad because I demanded to know why he stopped me when there was no traffic on campus and he was sitting back too far to even see anything. He left me sitting there while he called for another cop. I found out later he did not have his ticket book with him; the other guy brought it to him. When he finally came back to me, he told me to sign the ticket. I refused to do so (they are supposed to tell you that this is not an admission of guilt; it is just to say you received it etc). I asked him why he decided to give me a ticket and why he had to call for his ticket book. He said it was " officer discretion." When I kept asking questions he told me to stop talking and I told him I was not raising my voice nor arguing I was exercising my first amendment right to speak. Anyway, he gave me the ticket just to show me he could curtail an uppity professor like myself. Oh yeah, I should tell you I had some of my black students in the parking lot because it was opening night for my play " Raisin in the Sun" and I was delivering food to the cast who was getting their last afternoon practice in. I kept talking to them to try to calm them down, but it was evident they were concerned. I go to court on August 11th. Even if I have to pay the ticket I will. He made some mistakes on the ticket and did some things out of procedure which I will point out to the judge. the officer says the judge will believe him because he does not lie as if to say I do lie. I have only had two tickets in my entire life about 14 years ago. I said all of this to say that even the most simplest of offenses we still have to remind ourselves to fight them. Whites are not our allies, are not glad to see us succeed and will continue to try to bring us down. I spend a lot of time reading blogs from national newspapers and magazines and it is absolutely amazing what whites are still saying about racial issues. they claim we are race card playing overly sensitive babies who can only get what they want through Affirmative Action because God knows we aren't smart enough or talented enough to really do anything on our own. Wake up call!! Brothers and sisters my alarm clock is always on!! Elizabeth F. Desnoyers-Colas,Ph.D Assistant Professor, Speech/Communication Art, Music and Theater Department 11935 Abercorn Street Savannah Ga 31419 912 344- 9130 office
No comments:
Post a Comment