It is no coincidence that today, on the 8th anniversary of Katrina, that there is a nation-wide strike called by fast-food workers in several major cities, and that New Orleans is not one of them. Instead, workers in New Orleans resist their exploitation in more subtle ways, hoping to hold on to their jobs in a city where:
Nearly half of the African American men in the city are not working according to the GNOCDC. Since 2004, the city’s job base has declined 29 percent. Fifty three percent of African American men in the New Orleans area are employed now. African American households in the metro New Orleans area earned 50 percent less than white households, compared to the national percentage of 40 percent.
Jobs continue to shift out from New Orleans to suburbs. In 2004, New Orleans provided 42% of metro or 247,000 jobs, now that number has dropped to 173,000 and the percentage has dropped to 34%.
Low paid tourism jobs, averaging a low $32,000 a year, continue to be the largest sector of work in New Orleans. But even this low average can be misleading as the hourly average for food preparation and serving jobs in the area is just over $10.00 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Median earnings for full-time male African American New Orleans workers are going down and are now at $31,018; for white male workers they are going up and are now at $60,075. Whites have experienced an 8 percent increase in middle and upper income households while African Americans have suffered a 4 percent decline. Only 5 percent of black households were in the top income class (over $102,000) while 29 percent of white households were.
In my experience, if you don’t have anyone to vouch for you, take you under their wing, or promote and advocate for you professionally, you can forget about finding meaningful, productive, and well-paid work in New Orleans. As a freelancer who enjoys a positive relationship with many in my immediate and extended networks, I have found it difficult to break the glass ceiling as a woman, as a Black person, and as a young professional. There is still a pervasive mindset that resists any change to the present status quo of entrenched hierarchies; it has been my institutional affiliation with Duke University, my northern accent and my academic credentials which have worked most favorably for me. I shudder to think about the limited opportunities available to men and women who do not already have access to such forms of cultural capital. The restaurant and hospitality industries offer the most promising prospects with their constant need for chamber maids, fry cooks, dishwashers, and clerks. The casinos and hotel chains which comprise the majority of the hospitality industry are not friendly to union organizing, or even informal collective bargaining; needless to say, neither are the fast-food franchises and restauranteurs.
As we mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington on August 28, I can't help but notice that many of the gains made as a result of the Civil Rights Movement are being rolled back.
"There have been some grumblings that the anniversary events will not duly encompass contemporary racial justice issues, and need to do more than re-live the famous images of the past. I am often frustrated with the way racial justice issues for Black people can only be characterized as racist if they somehow reference past symbols of racial violence: legal “lynchings,” the 'new Jim Crow,' and Paula Deen’s antebellum-themed summer soiree." My piece on tomorrow's March on Washington Anniversary.
It’s time white women drop the practice of authenticating—and profiting from—the experiences of women of color.
Disclaimer: I watch Orange is the New Black.
At first I didn't want anything to do with it. "Orange will make you Black? That's racist!" I said to myself. It hadn't occurred to me that the show's title was a riff on a popular saying in fashion. Given that the criminal injustice system has become an institution which targets Black men, women and children, and reinforces through violence the whole race-making project, I simply could not see the forest for the trees. But then a (Black) friend of mine visited and recommended that I watch the show. We sat together and watched the first 2 or 3 episodes and I was not impressed. At all. Well at least not with the white lead. But it was the supporting cast of women of color, older women, and poor women whose stories fascinated me.
While I certainly agree that "it’s time white women drop the practice of authenticating—and profiting from—the experiences of women of color," I guess I'll take what I can get. For now. Perhaps one good thing that will come of this show is that it will demonstrate to the people in power that audiences will watch movies and tv about queer women of color, and they will like it! In the mean time, let's support talented women of color writers and producers so that we can tell our own stories without having to use anybody as a so-called "trojan horse." Check out the pilot presentation of TWENTIES, and circulate it widely. Perhaps we can create another success story akin to Awkward Black Girl.
So the silver lining of the state’s colorblindness in the Zimmerman case is that it allows a better weaponized and capitalized institution—the Justice Department—to bring perhaps a stronger case against all who did Martin wrong in Sanford, Fla. Had race been allowed in the state trial, the...
As we relish in this day off from work, and search in earnest for a barbecue or cookout to enjoy, let us remember the words of the mighty Frederick Douglass. We, as "free" men and women would do well to keep in mind that although there are certain injustices and cruelties to which we are no longer subject, there are surely injustices and cruelties from which we continue to suffer and which are visited upon others in our name, as American citizens. I'll share with you my favorite passage:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
"I think individuals who are trying to defend Paula Deen's use of the "N' word should probably familiarize themselves with all of the facts of the case against her. Just so you know, in case you didn't know, the person who initiated the complaint against Paula Deen and her brother is not "Black." She is a "white female" who was subjected to years of abuse and was finally fed up with her black employees being treated like animals, so stop thinking it was a black person complaining about Paula Deen's use of the N word."
Please read the rest of this short article that explains exactly what the legal case against Paula Deen and her brother is about. It's well beyond using the N word. But then the question becomes, why is exploitation and intimidation of Black people in the workplace such an unimportant subject in this discussion. Why is it that the N word is the only thing we can latch on to as the "violation?"
The organizers of Houston's annual Pride parade, coming up this weekend, almost banned distributing condoms. And I have a lot of reasons to be skeptical about what a new "family-friendly" and "marriage-minded" LGBT community will mean for Pride.
Orange Moons Over the James River: A Father's Day Tribute
I’ve always had a fondness for airports. As a child, they represented the time of year that my parents implemented the terms of their custody agreement. We had summers and alternating winter holidays with dad and the rest of the time with mom.
My father lived in Richmond, Virginia, deep in the woods of Henrico County and the James River. His house was a major contrast to the dense Texas suburb where my mom lived. In Richmond, the neighboring houses were a healthy distance away from one another. At night, the sounds of chirping insect symphonies filled the silence. Each day, my dad would snake through those dark backroads in his car with skill and confidence. During our winter visits, the house smelled of fresh pinewood chopped and stacked by the side of the fireplace. On Saturday mornings, my sister and I would awaken to the smells of bacon, eggs, grits, and pancakes.
At the beginning of the summer, my dad would bring out a large wall calendar and sit with my sister and I to pencil in activities. Movies or bowling on Saturdays? A trip to the planetarium? We would decide together. During the weekdays, he would take my sister and I to work with him. He was a principal and his school became our playground. My sister and I would take over the empty library and school office as the librarian and secretary. We’d type up “pretend” assignments and play endless rounds of Oregon Trail on the computers.
My dad influenced my love for traveling -- and good music. One summer, he piled my sister and I into his van and took us on a cross country road trip to visit our grandmother in California. Every time we’d pass a body of water or mountains-- my dad would encourage us to look out the window. Sometimes we’d pull over to the side of the road to snap photos. Along the way, we grooved to a soundtrack of Frankie Beverly and Maze.
Look at California...
At every step, my father created moments for my sister and I to make decisions that empowered us. He consulted with us about grocery lists, Kool Aid flavors, and movie rentals. Each of these decisions, while small, reinforced his belief in us and helped to strengthen our self confidence. He always told us that we could be anything we wanted and never foreclosed on our dreams. My sister and I -- two little black girls making mud pies in the woods of Virginia -- were encouraged to shoot for the moon.
The summers always began with great excitement and anticipation -- but the departures were difficult. Saying goodbye to daddy was never easy. At the airport, my sister and I would waive to him from the jetway until he was no longer in sight, boarding the plane with wet eyes.
My dad’s emotions were never visible to us. I never knew what it felt like for him to return home to a quiet, empty house. I wouldn’t understand this until years later when I watched my husband prepare for the departure of his son at the end of their summer together. As he folded and packed tiny summer t-shirts and shorts into his son’s suitcase, he quietly broke down in tears.
For years, my dad’s perspective on living apart from his children was something that I never considered. It didn’t occur to me that he suffered just as much heartbreak as we did. My husband’s long distance relationship with his son provided a window into my father’s reality. I’d spent years building compassion for my mother and her challenges as a single mom -- I came to realize that the same grace should be extended to my dad.
There are fathers all across the world who live separate and apart from their children. This doesn’t make their love any less valuable or significant. Regardless of geography, there was never a doubt in my mind that my father loved me. My dad made the most of the time that we had together. Some of my peers who lived with their fathers could not say the same.
There are far too many lessons and gifts to count that I’ve taken away from my dad throughout the years. But I’d highly rank the gift of curiosity. I can’t imagine how exhausting it must have been to answer endless questions all day long from two inquisitive girls. But my dad? He answered every one.
So, it has to be asked: Is Virginia holding the new law to escape racial discrimination review? It’s tough to think of Virginia in that context given its governor just went through the trouble of lifting voting bans on citizens formerly incarcerated for nonviolent...
Growing up near the end of the civil rights movement, I am old enough to remember the phrase, you eyeballin’ boy? It was a hold over from the Jim Crow era, when African American males were consistently reminded of their second class citizenship and that, as Chief Justice Roger Taney stated in 1857, “…they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect…” Older Black Men would use the phrase as a way of asserting dominance over younger Black Men, and the police were quick to throw the line on the table when they felt annoyed at a Black Man’s presence. Its not so subtle subtext being one of violence, backed by years of precedent (and that includes lynching) going back to the start of our fair country.
On June 5, 2013 the New York Senate voted and passed Bill 2402 Establishing the Crime of Aggravated Harassment of a Police Officer or Peace Officer. While the title is well meaning enough, as usual, the devil is in the details; and by devil, I mean the racial prejudices that lead to racial profiling; and by details I mean the peculiarities of legal interpretation that allowed George Zimmerman to murder Trayvon Martin and the police not even consider that perhaps he should be arrested for murder because the Stand Your Ground law would presumably find him innocent anyway, while Marissa Alexander gets 20 years for firing a warning shot under that very same law. It should be noted that George Zimmerman passes for white (he may be Hispanic, who knows?) and Marissa Alexander is African American (who also could be Hispanic, but who cares?)
The detail in this particular Bill “A person is guilty of aggravated harassment of a police officer or peace officer when, with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm a person whom he or she knows to be a police officer or peace officer engaged in the course of performing his or her official duties, he or she strikes, shoves, kicks, or otherwise subjects such person to physical contact.” is the idea that “intent” can be determined and that physical contact is just a wee bit too nebulous for one to assume aggravated harassment, especially since very few of the people who will be targeted seek contact, physical or otherwise, with police officers. Not to mention the insane level of subjectivity the word “annoy” carries with it. Seriously, I frequently annoy my wife with activities carried out by someone else go unnoticed. (you know what I’m sayin’)
In The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, with oodles of documentation, lays out how the United States, following the abolishment of Jim Crow via the Civil Rights Act, shifted its legal system, primarily through the War on Drugs, to maintain the spirit of Jim Crow without seeming to do so. This law does the exact same thing in response to the attacks on New York City’s Stop and Frisk program.
In New York, it is no longer enough for Black and Latino Men to avoid seeming guilty (whatever that means) and have your freedom pass state issued identification whenever out-of-doors. Now you best keep your hands in your pocket and keep looking meekly at the ground. Or, you can get organized and overturn this and all other laws that seek to keep us from our ability to enjoy share in the promise that “We hold these rights to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Peace.
Despite the recent developments, my experience at NOCCA was actually a very fruitful one that brought my teaching to heights unseen prior to this year. I’ve never had students so deeply embrace the works that I’ve presented them and go so far with it. Let the record show that they are my most important critics, and as I told you in our meeting, I have never had a group of students so passionately and deeply invest in the curriculum that I brought to the table. Accolades from reputable class visitors aside, nothing’s brought me more joy than seeing what students did with Gilgamesh and Siddhartha and the entire mythological framework as a whole this year. How they truly “let it marinate” (as I always say, and they repeat with zeal), until the lessons taught have become living entities in their young consciousness.
At the end of the day, it was my passion for my craft and my love for my students that kept me more than afloat amidst adversity both direct and indirect. Despite Mr. Smirk’s excessive micromanagement that found ways to itemize every student in the classroom’s activity like widgets on a conveyor belt during his observations of the class (but oddly enough couldn’t manage morning arrival well enough to prevent two students from having sex before school started), despite my co-teacher’s speciously inadequate means of communication with me which lies at the root of much of this discourse (particularly the accusations about my content knowledge), I still managed to have a great time teaching and learning this year.
Kudos to you John for helping facilitate such an environment, one where 14 year olds can discuss things as varied as the meaning of life and enlightenment while conducting research on ancient civilizations that helps place their entire discourse into deeper context. An institution where young people can be a part of the process that cultivates them into world-class artists and intellectuals capable of blending the sum of all their parts into the constitution of amazing human beings who create incredibly ambitious and challenging work. That said, an even greater acknowledgment is appropriate for the students themselves that dare to embark upon this journey, the artists/teachers who dedicate significant portions of their lives to helping guide these students, and the even older regime of artists/teachers who helped found this institution in the first place.
It is to this final community of artists/teachers that we all owe an incalculable debt. And not just to them for their work in establishing this institution, but also to the communities of color that this institution was originally intended to serve, and whose culture and lifestyle through generations has formed the foundation of the city of New Orleans. I won’t go into detail about the deplorable state of education for children of color in America today, namely in New Orleans which ranks among the worst. These facts are well known and documented and hopefully they are to you as the leader of an educational institution.
But the fact that amidst this torrent of social injustice that renders a quality education barely acquirable in the present New Orleans milieu, and what poor excuse passes for one little more than a slash and burn corporate model that treats standardized testing like the S&P 500 of school worth in a system that looks more like Wall Street than a school system, it is a shameful and criminal act that the one artistic outlet left to African American students would be coopted from them by way of backdoor politics. When I first came to NOCCA I did not know much of its history. As members of my community made this more known to me, I began to realize that I was complicit in the aforementioned injustice.
For a year I taught under the smiling gaze of Ellis Marsalis in the room that Homer Plessy bought his ticket to the streetcar that he was arrested in waging the first popularized fight against American segregation. The irony of the fact that Ellis’ picture hovers daily above a bevy of children primarily not the color of those he and his artistic cohorts presumably created the school for in the 70s was never lost on me. Nor the fact that the school occupies a space that should be a historical landmark for a civil rights activist but instead stands in a neighborhood that is being aggressively gentrified as we speak, and is itself a model for educational gentrification. Upon news of my dismissal, at least I can say that all of the above has finally caused me my last cognitive dissonant headache and my heretofore-sublimated truths can be set free. Free to roam and speak truth to power in the name of decrying injustices like the one that NOCCA perpetuates.
Know that all of these aforementioned parts are directly connected. Know that while I was complicit with a crime against my people that flew directly in the face of all that I champion and am a proponent of, that I was yet and still a hopeful team player for NOCCA. That I was willing to work in concert with this institution that I had so fully pledged myself to and so deeply invested in in the hopes that proper headway towards necessary change would gradually be made. Meanwhile, I had African-American students coming to me complaining about the lack of opportunities for them to be represented in their arts discipline. I had disingenuous conversations being initiated with me around race by Mr. Smirk, who never showed follow through in actually inviting me to the table when the one or two group conversations that occurred around race actually took place. This was an extreme grievance as I asked him specifically to keep me in the loop on these conversations, was asked specifically by students to be included in these conversations, and was ultimately very suspicious when I was not invited.
Some of what I have said may come off as harsh, unprofessional, or “inappropriate” as you all like to say. But understand that your standards and perception are rooted in your own subjective bias and are all but inapplicable to me now. For a year, I swallowed my truths in order to keep myself appropriate at your table. I was much more patient with you than you have been with me on my perceived shortcomings. In the end I was fired regardless. Trust that if your institution continues to try to fill its diversity quota without addressing its complicity with institutional racism, you will perpetually find yourselves on the receiving end of criticisms like the ones that I have expressed in this letter. Where you find success in filling your seats with people of color that convince you that you have achieved progress and change, you will still wreak of the academic inaccuracy that white supremacist standards uphold in all academia, and further the social injustice that institutional racism perpetuates. These seat filler minorities will only last if they swallow their truths the way that I did, in which case you will have achieved nothing but placing hollow shells in the position of educator. A hollow shell ill-fitted to lead young artistic intellectuals in the ways of critical analysis and expression.
I can tell you John that this will not bode well for the academic or artistic culture at NOCCA as whole. Some of your faculty members more beholden to you than I have already voiced their discontent with my dismissal along with the specious disappearing of Max Johnson from his position. They are not as at liberty to tell you the truth, as I am John. They probably fear what I did at the beginning of the year when I first realized that my relationship with Mr. Smirk stood to be a rocky one. The same fears and nauseating discontent I had when I realized that NOCCA’s history ran counter to my own personal morals and principals. They fear the extinction of their livelihood if they speak too loudly. I can tell you that this fear may hold your power in place in a temporal way, but as history has shown us time and again, greater truths will surface and prevail. Furthermore, fear and subjugation is no way to run any institution, much less an art school that prides itself on diversity, critical thinking and expression.
Finally, what was done to me at NOCCA is more of a testament to its current state of mismanagement perhaps rooted in the same DNA strand that wrangled its ownership from black hands to begin with than it is a reflection of my work ethic and professionalism. Throughout the year I noticed that you liked to use phrases like “In-service” and the corollary African phrase “Ubuntu” which translates to “I am because we are.” Your most recent actions and the way they reflect the deeper history of this institution that you sit at the head of, fly directly in the face of either of these catch phrases of yours and reduce them to little more than meaningless quips at the behest of your, once again, cooptation. They are as misleading as say, positioning posters of Huey P. Newton and Malcolm X in the offices of an administration that skirts around direct discourse on issues of race, and further is an arbiter of the very institutional racism that these men sacrificed their lives to fight.
My students’ decision to petition on behalf of their beloved teacher on the other hand is a more accurate fulfillment of the wisdom and commitment that concepts like “In-service” and “Ubuntu” call for. I challenge you, in the future John, at the behest of all the great shoulders that you stand on, as the head of this institution, to truly live up to and dedicate yourself to holistic service with the acknowledgement that what is done to the least of these shall apply to the whole. That the injustice that Mr. Smirk has waged upon me and that you have cosigned on, will resonate—has already resounded as an injustice throughout NOCCA—among students and faculty alike; and for that matter, throughout the greater New Orleans community at large. That the injustice of misrepresentation will always serve as a cancer to NOCCA so long as it is not courageously and directly addressed and remedied. Indeed John, I am because we are. It’s time that the actions match the words.
In our 1:1 meeting that followed the Black History Month presentation, which he had also sat in on, Mr. Smirk first applauded my research and hard work in creating such an extensive presentation. Then he proceeded as usual with the critiques. He questioned why I as the English teacher was teaching history. “I thought that was Mr. Lindner ’s job.” I remember thinking, and may have even verbalized that as teachers of an interdisciplinary course in Integrated Humanities, we both had taught each other’s discipline interchangeably at times. Mr. Smirk also questioned why it was that I had spent so much time lecturing. This, he said, went against the whole “learning by doing” model. I told him that it was a decision based on the very limited amount of time that students had to be oriented towards material so vast and oft controversial as race-oriented subject matter. That students would still be allowed—required even—to learn by doing in the second half of the unit where they would form their own groups and select a topic from the seven different time periods of black history (from 3100 BCE to the present) that my presentation had treated only piecemeal, and create their own power point presentations on their chosen period.
Mr. Smirk seemed, or perhaps pretended to be understanding of this logic, but then accosted me with some very jolting news. He said that a concern had been voiced that somehow I was getting too far off of curriculum in my teaching. This seemed to echo a sentiment that Mr. Lindner expressed to me quietly dead in the middle of my delivering the Black History Month presentation only a week or so prior. But now Mr. Smirk went as far as to say that Dr. Judas had chimed in on this too in some way. I was very concerned. Because while I will cop to a personal feeling of much-needed healing and successful purging by way of bringing the Black History Month piece to class, and deliberately unpacking all of the necessary information that forms a more formidable foundation around race matters in all curriculum, I never intended to derail anything that was going on and I definitely did not think that my actions could possibly do so. If anything, I thought that revealing history from this vantage point would more fully flesh out the curriculum. And it successfully did so with no more than an extra week of instruction and activity.
There are two pieces here. First there is the hypocritical nature of how my presentation was received. Secondly, there is the deceptive means of communicating the discomfort around that reception. I’ll speak to the first one. I can say that it rings awfully suspicious to me that my extra week of instruction was such a horrific grievance when my co-teacher Mr. Lindner , for example, fumbled at a snail’s pace through the first six weeks of the school year clumsily delivering an orientation to the Humanities unit. He taught this in isolation. I only bring this up because once again, I was critiqued for something on my performance appraisal that occurred just as far back, but that actually went a lot more smoothly and successfully (the “Societies in Decline” unit which took 3 weeks). I do believe that when and where vitally necessary addendums to curriculum are needed, when they have been discussed beforehand (I told Mr. Lindner several times what I was planning to do for Black History Month and he agreed), they should be allowed for.
I’ve seen this type of give and take occur several times between the 10th grade Humanities team, and at our best, even Mr. Lindner and I have achieved the same with no problem. I find it odd and suspicious that at the very juncture when I chose to address issues of race directly, during a month universally acknowledged as the designated time to do so no less, that I was accused of veering too far off from the curriculum. If such an action supposedly takes the curriculum so far from where it should be, then there is something wrong with the curriculum, and further still, the academic culture at NOCCA, not my teaching. Meanwhile, the way that Mr. Smirk chose to handle the apparently floating sentiment that I was veering off course was neither efficient nor professional.
I was told that Dr. Judas shared in the feeling that I was getting off course and that since he was my department head, I needed to be more proactive about seeking out his perspective. I found this especially odd seeing as how Dr. Judas had never given me any inclination to believe such a thing. I spoke to Dr. Judas on a regular basis to ask him his opinion on lessons that I was developing and other issues pertinent to teaching. Further, the entire Humanities team met as a department on Wednesdays so we were in constant communication. It seems that if he had an issue with anything that I was doing in the classroom, he would have had plenty of opportunity to say it to me directly. Lastly, his role always seemed to be more that of an advisor than that of a supervisor with the final say on the lessons that I created. He was usually pretty passive but still supportive in his response whenever I did offer a query about something. Nonetheless, I asked Mr. Smirk to provide me more clarity about the purpose and function of the roles at play here in case I had missed something. Finally, I sought out Dr. Judas’s take on things within a few days.
What I found was surprising. Dr. Judas seemed his usually agreeable and passive self where the recent developments were concerned. He alluded to having said something to Mr. Smirk to the effect that things were veering off a bit. But this seemed to be just as, if not more so, related to my choice to teach my texts in a different sequence than Dr. Judas had expected than with the Black History Month treatment. I had already, even prior to the meeting with Mr. Cohn, adhered to Dr. Judas and Mr. Lindner ’s strong suggestion that I rearrange the order despite the last minute restructuring that had been sprung upon me half way through the development of plans for the text that I had already selected (this act of cooperation is clearly cited on my performance appraisal). It’s important to specify that I had chosen Sundiata as the next text as I felt it matched the approaching subject matter of Era 5 best, which focuses on trade and empire. The West African epic of Sundiata was a perfect thematic match. Meanwhile, Siddhartha, which I was told to switch it out for due to its being a more apt fit chronologically (Siddhartha is set some 200 years before the end of Era 5 while Sundiata is set some 1,400 years after the end of Era 5), is heavily focused on Buddhism and thus served as a better thematic match with the final era, Era 6, which focuses on the theme of religion.
Yet, at the behest of both Dr. Judas and Mr. Lindner during a Humanities department meeting, I stopped my plans for Sundiata dead in the middle of development and switched to Siddhartha. The irony is that as we read Siddhartha in the following weeks, Mr. Lindner had to link the novel to the theme of Era 5, trade and empire, in such roundabout ways as to have made it counterintuitive. He showed short documentary footage about Hinduism and Buddhism to orient the students towards the culture covered in the novel, and only started to link this to trade by way of the Silk Roads as of the week before Spring Break as we finished up Siddhartha. It was only because I foresaw such difficulties that I had originally decided to wait until the end of the year to cover Siddhartha so that these connections would not be so contrived. Oddly enough, I’m the one whose content knowledge was questioned.
The irony of my being the accused of being off pace with curriculum in this scenario aside, I took most issue with the way that Mr. Smirk as well as Dr. Judas facilitated the communication. If my planning was as off kilt as they seemed to believe at the time, the most professional and effective way to handle it would have been for both of them to talk to me directly rather than about me to each other behind my back. This malfeasant, roundabout means of communication is one that I have noticed patterned throughout NOCCA faculty, especially at the administrative level. It seems to be rooted in a desire to manage communication between colleagues and avert possible conflict or confrontation. The irony of course, is that it ultimately fosters more miscommunication as communicative channels become tangled and dense. Again, I could speak to the cultural relevancy issues around this chosen protocol, but perhaps that would speak too directly to my own subjective bias around the issue. But more and more, I can’t help but think that in an institution founded by blacks and taken over by whites that claim to embrace diversity, that it’s not merely my own bias that needs to be questioned here.
HBCUs vs Dr. Dre: Why Ne’re One of 'Em Is Providing a Real Solution
This op-ed in the Los Angeles Times has been making the social media rounds and stirring up plenty of conversation. Most of it either praising Dr. Walter Kimbrough, President of Dillard University, for calling out the rapper Dr. Dre for donating millions of dollars to USC rather than an HBCU; or denigrating Andre “ Dr. Dre” Young (rapper, producer, maker of Beats headphones, and third richest hip hop mogul) for well, the exact same charge. Reading through the countless facebook threads on this is troublesome, to me, because most folks can only argue one of the two points listed above.
There was one interesting point that ran tangent to the herd, and that was the point that Dr. Kimbrough was using the opportunity to position Dillard University in particular, and HBCU’s in general, into the general conversation around public support for higher education. A noble cause for sure, but because he didn’t say so explicitly, kinda reeks of sly manipulation (IJS).
But even that position misses the mark of what (I feel) ought to be the real conversation. You see, Dr. Dre can give his money to whomever he deems worthy; and Dr. Kimbrough has every right to use the opportunity to lift his institution’s profile for the purposes of increased fundraising. However, most of the folks who have posted on this “beef” claim to be about the business of social justice in some form or other - mostly, African Americans who want to see their people supported in the work left behind following desegregation (yeah, I went there. If you want some, come get some, if you bad enough come take some).
The real problem with how Dr. Dre gives his Do-Re-Mi is the same as Cash Money giving out turkeys following Hurricane Katrina –they don’t know no betta. As Blacks got “good jobs” following desegregation, and the intense promotion of individualism during the Reagan era (think Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is Good” from the movie Wall Street, 1987) rode the wave of quick “crack money”, the idea of responsibility to the Black Community continually faded – or should I say “caught shade.”
My point is that prior to desegregation there was a unifying ideal that every child could be the “the one” to lead us out of the misery of second class citizenship. To that end, children were warned by even pimps and prostitutes to be about the business of getting an education. Our teachers taught for excellence of all students and were supported by parents and community. Let me say that again – community. The newness of the school building and what the school was called were not important. What was important was the quality of the education being provided – which by the way produced just about every important black history personality we all admire.
The issue is not to whom wealthy Blacks give their money, or even why HBCU Presidents might want to call them out. The issue is how have we as a community become so diffuse in our ideals that the folks who come out of our communities do not realize that they actually have a responsibility to support that which produced them – and that, my friends goes beyond simply supporting your friendly neighborhood HBCU.
Wayne Allyn Root - seriously, look his face in the last gif.
I don’t even know whether to classify this as classism, the dehumanizing effect of capitalism, or simply “look at this fucking asshole”. The most appropriate is most likely “I’m a rich white guy; nobody’s suffering matters more than my money” - a brief synopsis of a good 65/70 % of the world’s problems.
In the month of February, as Mr. Lindner geared up into an extensive museum project and I meticulously graded two sets of essays, I simultaneously undertook the task of attending to the Black History Month treatment. I did this primarily by myself as Mr. Lindner was consumed with managing the museum project. I also felt it most appropriate that I, as an African American, be not only the arbiter of this research, but the lead presenter of it and guider of the student projects as well. With a subject as wrought with potential for tension as race is, and having born witness to far too many an adult drop the topic clumsily, I felt it necessary that I as a member of the African American community be the one to present that discourse for the class.
I have also noticed vast gaps in the NOCCA Humanities curriculum thus far as concerns race and deep time, and this presentation availed the opportunity for them to be unpacked and addressed deliberately. When I first heard of the opportunity to teach deep time during the interview process last year, I was elated for two primary reasons. First of all, on the English side of things, it would give me a chance, along with my students, to reveal the stories of cultures that were prominent on the earth long before the damaging effects of white supremacist colonialism and imperialism (hence, the focus on ancient myth). This would avail the entire student body, in their freshman year no less, the awesome opportunity to proactively and in many ways, preemptively undo the racist ideologies and attitudes implicit in far too many a Western curriculum. On the history side of things, I hoped and imagined that students would be exposed to the successes and achievements of ancient cultures in ways that truly expose the truth about the autonomy and ingenuity of these people prior to colonization.
I won’t say that this was not achieved in some way. I was however, disappointed to see how glancing and superficial the treatment of the accomplishments of ancient Egypt was, for example, or inextricably crucial details like the fact that mankind’s origins are found in East Africa and evidence shows that we migrated out of Africa thereby evolving into other races by way of climate adaptation. Instead, I heard counterintuitive misinformation presented by my co-teacher to the tune of all of the Western myths that ground contemporary mankind’s knowledge and achievements in the temples of ancient Greece. Malfeasant misinformation like this is not only deleterious to the prospects of creating a truly progressive, global, multi-cultural and forward thinking curriculum in the 21st century, but it is toxic to the psyche of the learner (and the teacher) as it fosters old myths rooted in falsehoods too antiquated to enter a classroom at this point.
The irony of course, is that my knowledge of content was called into question. Whatever that critique was supposed to mean, and wherever it originated (perceivably with my co-teacher, Mr. Lindner ), it needed to be unpacked and hashed out much more intricately before finding its way to my performance appraisal if not disposed of altogether beforehand. It is an incendiary presumption and inaccurate assessment imbued with all of the racial attitudes betrothed to academic racism and elitism that a truly multicultural and progressive curriculum attempts to undo. While it is alleged that I did not know content well enough, I find it shameful that amongst all these so-called scholars with doctorate degrees, that either a lack of knowledge or intellectual courage and integrity could allow for a curriculum to progress through six months of instruction and hundreds of thousands of years of human history, and not sufficiently unpack such obviously damaging myths rooted in the racist history of Western academia.
One must ask oneself what it does to the psyche of the young learner of color when they are constantly besieged by stories and accounts of history that either exclude them or leave them at the bottom of the socio-historical totem pole. For that matter, as my experience at NOCCA is testament to, one must ask oneself what it does to the instructor as well. I told you in our meeting John, that I hail from the oldest, and one of the most prestigious Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the world. Florida A&M University also lays claim to the strongest, biggest Black Psychology department in the country, if not the world. As I told you in our meeting, it is at the feet of some of these great self-identified African scholars, and the community of teachers and learners that they exposed me to, that my worldview and philosophy was tremendously fortified, and in some ways initiated.
Until you understand the perspectives of a Dr. Kobi Kambon, Dr. Dana Dennard, Dr. Naaim Akbar, Dr. Marimba Ani, Dr. Booker T. Coleman, Dr. Umar Johnson, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Dr. Chiek Ante Diop, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, and many others, you will never truly, fully understand my perspective or from whence bails my knowledge of content. I will venture further and say that until this happens, the perspectives of many enlightened and informed, socially conscious African Americans will be lost to you. It is a new day John. The old ways and myths are dying. Even older truths are reemerging. Until you and your cohorts can more fully wrap your minds around this, you will always struggle to satisfy the diversity quota that you seek to fill. Of that list of teachers I mentioned, I was personally taught by the first two, and traveled to Oxford University with the ex-wife of the third, Dr. Naim Akbar, who was also the mentor of my greatest teacher, Dr. Dana Dennard. It’s important that you know these things John, before you allow my content knowledge to be called into question. It would behoove you and your cohorts to reassess your own.
It is upon the foundation of my training, and with full knowledge of the 9th grade curriculum’s parallel shortcomings, that I took it upon myself to unpack some of these issues in February’s Black History Month treatment. I received mixed reviews for stepping out on such a ledge. Susan and Mary Anne of TNI happened to enter along with some corporate representatives on the day of the lecture. The shock on their faces was apparent despite my attempts to ease the tension with light humor. “I always thought Cleopatra looked like Liz Taylor,” I jibed after a student slowly uttered her shock at the revelation that the ancient Egyptians were black. To this retort I received awkward but good-natured laughter. Later on that day Mary Anne stopped me in the hall to tell me that the corporate execs said that it was the greatest thing they’d seen all day. Note that this was the second time I had received such a report, that at NOCCA, one of the most reputable art schools in the country, that my lesson in particular was the most outstanding thing a visitor had seen that day. I would soon find out, however, that Mr. Smirk, among others, was not completely enthused.
Notes on a Scandal: Part II—A Most Questionable Report
Notes on a Scandal: Part II—A Most Questionable Report
When I received my Performance Appraisal at 11pm the night before I was informed of my dismissal, I immediately knew that something was wrong. In the original meeting around performance appraisals, the academic faculty was led to believe that these appraisals would follow the same methodology that all critique at NOCCA had for students and teachers alike, with an assessment of strengths and then an addressing of rooms of area for growth. The first comments I read on my performance appraisal however led with several negative comments about my performance in the area of technical grounding and seemed to only concede one or two acknowledgements of my strengths. It was said that I had failed to successfully implement the “learning by doing” model, for one. I found this incredibly inaccurate seeing as how my primary means of dealing with literature this year have been through dialogical methods, like fishbowl or jigsaw activities, both processes that Mr. Smirk himself had advocated.
I was even told at one point during the first semester that a TNI board member who visited the classroom during one of these activities, later on boasted that the class I taught that day was some of the most fascinating work she’d seen in a classroom in years. This might ring a bell with you John as that board member happens to be the wife of your friend who is the CEO of a major charter operation in the city. She made this comment to my mother who you already know works as one of your friend’s premier principals. It’s odd that in all of his observation of my teaching that Mr. Smirk never had such an experience. I find it equally odd that of all the “anecdotal” reports of a negative nature that allegedly made their way back to you, that you never heard and took seriously positive accounts like this one.
Mr. Smirk made several other critiques of my technical grounding but one of the many that I found most salient and inaccurate was his accusation of my planning suffering due to not having a long-term plan or a syllabus. I have already covered in detail what my original long term plans were (see last entry, “Sketchy Beginnings”) and how he reacted to them so I won’t rehash that piece. I’ll just say that that particular critique was simply false. My plans are well documented in not only the class syllabus itself, but in the several unsolicited Google docs and MS Word docs that detail my major unit plans and their subsidiary lesson plans. Mr. Smirk may have not understood my plans, but that does not mean that they were nonexistent. He also said that I failed to meet recent expectations regarding weekly planning. This I took as another cheap inaccurate shot at my work ethic.
Mr. Smirk has made several attempts to micro-manage the work process of team-teaching between Mr. Lindner and I in attempts to aid the cohesiveness of our planning. His request that we make an additional Google doc in addition to the one that we already had been using with the assistance of the Humanities department at large was another example of his trying to monitor our work and ensure synergy. Despite the redundancy I was compliant with this order. I missed one submission when my internet was down. This just so happened to be the time that Mr. Smirk checked for my submission and did not see it there. This is the reason he says that I failed to meet expectations.
It is of course my position that my “failure” to comply should be based on my own will or lack thereof and not a technical difficulty. If anything, half of the submissions that I made to these mandatory Google docs seemed to go unchecked by him, as they never received comments or responses (even in our 1:1 meetings). It is this kind of excessive micro-management and nitpicking that ultimately becomes a bane to a teacher’s fluidity and simultaneously further fuels one’s suspicion of those who are supposed to be aiding one’s success, especially if one’s initial interaction with an administrator is as toxic as mine was with Mr. Smirk.
The final and most specious of critiques that I will address in detail is one that was basically reoccurring in different forms throughout the rest of my appraisal and it is the one around content knowledge. It is the most important of all because it is the most contingent upon extenuating circumstances that Mr. Smirk and I spoke about repeatedly throughout the year and to which he failed to adequately respond in a timely fashion. The most important issue around content knowledge is this: my knowledge of the interdisciplinary curriculum was inextricably connected to what my co-teacher’s knowledge of it was. I have already mentioned (see “Sketchy Beginnings”) the fact that Mr. Lindner struggled with condensing all of that varied and far-reaching information within the first few weeks of orientation. Unfortunately, that became a pattern that trended throughout the year and I was left on the receiving end of it.
As my lessons were ideally supposed to match and even be integrated with the history lessons that Mr. Lindner was developing, that was virtually impossible in the first year of a developing curriculum where the co-teacher is still learning his content. I find it ironic that I, as the English teacher, was faulted for not knowing the history component more thoroughly, when the fact of the matter is, I watched Mr. Lindner develop lesson plans on the fly all year, struggling to conduct the necessary amount of research, formulate it into a lesson plan, structure that plan for a classroom of high school students, and deliver it only days—sometimes one day—after its preparation. Half the time I’d find out what the lesson was on the very day of its delivery. At best, I might have received a few sentence synopsis from Mr. Lindner days before the lesson rolled out as he planned it. Neither did it help that I was never invited to participate in conference calls with curriculum advisor Mitchell Washington, and was rarely given information on his curriculum planning meetings with 10th grade History teacher, Dr. Phoebe.
While I found this behavior on the part of my co-teacher somewhat questionable, I simply hoped for the best and trusted that he had his reasons. I did however voice my grievances to Mr. Smirk and Mr. Lindner himself, several times throughout the year. On other occasions, I merely offered ideas on how the communication could be better shored up. Some of these were even heeded in a meeting with Mr. Smirk in which Mr. Lindner admittedly took responsibility for the vast majority of communication problems that our team was having. The inadequacies in this process were remedied with minimal success however, because no matter how much the communication was improved, when it was, there simply was no cure for the fact that Mr. Lindner was still learning and developing his units as we went along and was minimally communicative much of the time to boot—which made co-teaching incredibly difficult. Towards the year’s end, the communication improved along with the synergistic pre-planning and we saw much more success than we’d seen throughout the rest of the year. However, I still take extreme issue with the fact that the totality of the blame for our past shortcomings was entirely heaped upon me when it was clearly a two way street that started with Mr. Lindner’s side of the curriculum and his inadequate communication thereabout.
I don’t remember ever being told that I had to master the history side of things, though it was completely my intention to get more caught up to speed once I too, had less on-the-go planning and grading to attend to. Further, I specifically remember being questioned by Mr. Smirk on one occasion as to why it was that I was teaching a unit that pertained to history, as this was apparently Mr. Lindner’s job. Such an assessment of my teaching flies in the face of the interdisciplinary approach that the Academic Studio claims to aim for. Meanwhile, if it is the case that subjects should be held in isolation in this way, an assessment of my technical grounding (amongst other things) as being insufficient because of a perceived “gap in content knowledge” is equally fallible if it is the case that I’m not supposed to dabble in history at all.
I find this whole assessment of my content knowledge shortsighted if not insulting, especially considering 1) the aforementioned extenuating circumstances around communication (along with the extreme constraints on my own time due to planning and grading on the English side) that it fails to take into account and 2) the fact that the texts that I introduced this year were works that Mr. Smirk himself was not familiar with and struggled in assisting me with planning on. I could cite the racially loaded nature of making such an assessment of my work as well especially when juxtaposed with comments that applaud my enthusiasm and ability to engage students (based on showmanship and delivery) as if they were my only perceivable assets, but again, perhaps that speaks to my own subjective bias and lies outside the scope of what is presumed appropriate for this discourse. But perhaps, more accurately, it isn’t my biases that it speaks to. That aside, on the issue of race, I’ll speak more directly to the matter. And in this case, we will first revisit the aforementioned history lesson that I presented, as it has implications for not only Mr. Smirk and I’s engagement, but also race at NOCCA as a whole.
I could begin by delineating the parameters of my own internal struggles in dealing with being the lone African American member of an all-white academic faculty at a school that was formerly black, founded by black people, but that has been gentrified into whiteness over the last decade and a half or so. I could speak to the psychological blockade and moral dilemma that that served as for me as an educator and a professional, but perhaps then I would be stepping out of the realms of what is considered appropriate for this discourse. I could speak to the internal conflicts that arose within me upon discovery of the sordid details of NOCCA’s history. But those conflicts would perhaps be deemed personal issues rooted in my own subjective bias that should have no bearing on my ability to conduct myself as a professional.
The problem is that I cannot do justice to, nor provide appropriate context for any discussion of my eight months at this illustrious institution without discussing the nature of its history and how that has subliminally affected my perspective, and perhaps overall engagement with this job. I will address these issues piecemeal throughout my letter. Ultimately however, all the aforementioned extenuating circumstances that tested my peace of mind around my daily work notwithstanding, it is my relationship to Mr. Smirk and his decision to not renew my contract that has resulted in the end of my tenure here. So it is this that I will primarily address as the focal point of this discourse.
My first memorable engagement with Mr. Smirk was a troublesome one that gave me much cause for concern about my future prospects at NOCCA. While we had sat down for one conversation at a coffee shop prior to official orientation, we had little direct communication once orientation got underway. When this finally did happen, it was to discuss my ideas for the syllabus that was coming together very slowly for the 9th grade humanities team. Much of this was contingent upon my co-teacher Mr. Lindner ’s struggles to compile in a short amount of time, a document cohesive and at the same time all-encompassing enough to represent the vast swath of time that the freshman curriculum calls for. In short, 14 billion years was very difficult to put into a time capsule in just a couple of weeks. But for my end, I was pretty clear about wanting to deliver three specific texts, which I thought best spoke to our themes of deep time and ancient cultures. Those texts were The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, and Siddhartha.
In addition to the three texts, I wanted to apply a mythological framework to the literary engagements for the year. I felt that was most appropriate considering the time period of our study. Each text was to be appropriately fit to the era that we studied by matching it either chronologically or thematically. I chose Gilgamesh as the first text, for example, as it is the oldest recorded myth and it also derives from ancient Mesopotamian culture, which was the first region that we were to engage during Era 3 of our studies. I also planned to have students read various cosmogonies (creation myths) and regular myths of various cultures, create cosmogonies of their own, and write literary critiques of their own cosmogonies. With the advice and mentorship of the founding faculty team, namely Dr. Judas, these were some of the plans that I developed within the first week or so of orientation. They seemed to go over pretty well with the 10th grade team. Mr. Smirk wasn’t so enthused.
It was a Friday when we met. He had been trying to have a sit-down with Mr. Lindner and I for that whole week. Then the end of week showed up and Mr. Lindner happened to be absent that day. I took it upon myself to remind Mr. Smirk of the meeting that he had seemed so anxious to have all week. At this point he granted me access. Throughout the meeting, his tone was obstinate and abrasive as he questioned my unit plans from top to bottom repeatedly. I would explain the plan, he would question it, I would answer his questions, he would decry my answers as being unclear, at which point I would explain the unit again and the process would repeat itself all over again. This went on for approximately 30 minutes. At one point, Mr. Smirk's frustrations with what he deemed to be my inadequate explanations of what I thought was a pretty simple unit plan reached such a climax, that he slammed his hands on the table in agitation and tucked his head beneath it, mockingly as a whining child would.
It was at that point that I realized that whatever my suspicions were about some communicative tension between the two of us, they were no figment of my imagination. Further, I realized that what I had perceived as a subtly disrespectful commandeering of our discourse had at that point manifested into full blown blatant disrespect. I was most concerned because I knew that I was dealing with a supervisor that I had no perceivable method of recourse in circumventing if this disrespect was to continue. And even if I did, I really would have preferred for us to be on agreeable if not amiable terms seeing as how we had to work together for the rest of the year and perhaps much longer. But the prospects that Mr. Smirk set out by way of that conversation were anything but promising. They were daunting to say the least, and they set the tone for what I could expect for the rest of the year.
I know I wasn’t the only one who felt the tension of that engagement. Dr. Ezra, the only other person present in the room at the time, gave me a look once Mr. Smirk finally left the room as she literally asked me, “What was that!?”, as if to imply, “What was his problem?” The inappropriateness of it all was not lost on Mr. Smirk either. He apologized to me publicly at the next morning’s faculty meeting. While I accepted his offering, I can’t say that it changed much about my perception of him as a manager or a person. I have never, in all my years of working in education, been openly disrespected by a supervisor like that. I can say that what Mr. Smirk did successfully do that day, was totally breach the trust I had in him as my director, and shatter the confidence that I might have placed in him as an advisor. This only served as an added insult to the injury of the extenuating circumstances surrounding race and the history of NOCCA that I mentioned at the beginning of this letter.
So suffice it to say that theretofore, I received every comment that Mr. Smirk offered in terms of critique throughout the year with the proverbial grain of salt. One cannot help but be a bit skeptical of someone who has openly shown blatant disrespect for you. That is unless one views oneself as being inferior and/or worthy of disrespect. I certainly do not. Hence my offense taken at the fallible critiques of my work that Mr. Smirk documented in my end of the year Performance Appraisal.
