When the Inner Racist Starts Talking

When I am alone, which I am right now, I spend time listening to the stream of chatter that is the inner, background soundtrack of my life. But I don't adhere to what it tells me, most of the time. That is because some of the self-talk can be dangerously knee-jerk and needs serious scrutiny and critical reflection.

Take the moment yesterday when I was at the Pine Hill gas station on the Ramah Navajo Reservation in northern New Mexico, where I was doing a dump run. I was pumping gas when the little voices started to tell me how disorganized and slow the Navajo Nation has been in responding to the COVID crisis. The voice, to be honest, was more about "those Navajos" than it was about the crisis. That little voice was part of me that I don't want others to see, the part that is unconsciously racist.

Researchers tell us that we humans have a tendency to group with "likes" and to make up degrading, stereotypical narratives about the "others." Articles like "Are We Born Racist?" by Susan Tufts Fiske have summarized research showing innate tendencies to group in "tribes." A complete review of that work is beyond the scope of this little ditty, but the point is that some people contend that we have racist tendencies that are neurologically hard-wired.

I believe that's what was happening as I pumped my gas.

Now, the important piece here is what we do with that tendency. I could launch off on a long story about how Navajos are managing or mismanaging the pandemic, or I could assess that little nugget of neurological chatter and dis-identify with it, standing back enough to ask, "Is that true?" and "Is that really what I think and want to base my actions on?" "Is that the story I want to feed and to share and augment with others into a social set of biases and behaviors?"

I decided not to feed the flames of fear, separation, difference, and unconscious bias and to make good on my debts to the Pine Hill store. 

So, I finished pumping my gas and went in to pay. (No automatic credit card readers in this part of the world.) There I saw markers on the floor for social distancing, a sign saying "no mask, no service," and a very friendly Navajo woman wearing a mask, behind a Plexiglas barrier, who politely accepted my payment. We made contact without making physical contact. Her eyes said "Hey, I see you. Crazy quarantine, huh?" I hope mine said the same.

I felt camaraderie and connection with this person who is very different from me, but still a beautiful, breathing, bright-eyed wonder of living organism. We are both dealing with crises over which we have little control, but that we can respond to with self-critical equanimity.

A psychological dynamic of racism, I believe,  is, in part, a hard-wired stimulus followed by automatic reaction, but can be revised and responded to by a pause in the automatic response that can lead to empathy, contact, evidence to the contrary, and critical self reflection.

If I watch what I think, and assess it for how it works to create the world I want to live in, I can discern between what is worth keeping and what is trash. I was there to dump my trash, an action somehow fitting for the inner work I was engaged with. It takes some attention to sort through the stream of chatter, but it's worth the effort.

That's my two cents for today.*

* I am very aware there is a bigger context here. We are living in a moment connected to a long history of social injustice, exploitation, abuse of power, and subjugation. As a white male, I have lived a life of privilege that cannot begin to comprehend the perspectives of Americans of color. Racism has also been designed into our social, political, historical, economic, and cultural institutions. Personal awareness by itself will not alter institutional racism. That said, what I am looking at here is this day-to-day, minute-by-minute neurological and psychological dynamic that can be sidetracked by self-awareness and intention. Change the self; change the society. Critical thinking followed by action, political or social or other, I believe, is the best way to redress racism and many other social ills. The personal can also be the basis for political action.

Things You're Not Supposed to Say at the Retirement Celebration You'll Never Have

After decades of teaching, advising, directing, writing, and serving the university and department in many ways, my time has come. I have reached the point where I can no longer work. My reasons are diverse, but one rules them all: I am no longer emotionally capable of condoning the treatment I receive as a "non-traditional," "non-tenure-track," "adjunct," or "career-track" university faculty.

Workers like me are, more and more, the face of university teaching. According to the American Association of University Professors, tenure-track positions are now the minority rather than the rule, only about a quarter of all faculty positions, and we "non-tenure-track" faculty are having to find a way to make what we do more visible, better paid, better benefits, more job security. It has been a hard road.

I have worked well, for the most part, teaching thousands of students, getting excellent course evaluations, earning high scores on annual reviews, directing a branch of the National Writing Project, designing a course for at-risk students, directing a prison writing project that published a literary magazine annually, and publishing a book with the local university press. I chose to make non-tenure-track teaching my career because I did not want to uproot children and spouse by re-locating for the tenure track job. Being a lecturer was my life. And the work has not been all bad. I have been lucky enough to have worked full-time with benefits. There have been some good moments, and I am grateful for those.

I also carry the scars of being the "invisible" faculty member for most of that time. (Very recently, some enlightened colleagues have gone the distance to improve non-traditional faculty contracts, pay, and work loads. Thank you for that.) My path to promotion was blocked by administrators (heads, deans, program directors) who wanted to keep employees like me "in our place," that is, low-paid, over-worked, with little of no job security, "expendable."

I have been told by these administrators that I do what they consider to be "onerous" work, that my position was never intended to be a livelihood but rather a stepping stone to more secure, tenure-track positions, positions which are becoming very rare. When my students have mentioned me to my tenure-track colleagues, referring to me as "professor," these colleagues have been quick to correct them, telling them that, no, he is not a professor, he's a lecturer, or instructor, or, that horrible sounding title, "adjunct."

These administrators have made it their business to increase my workload in times of crisis (like the current COVID-19 downturn), to decrease my job security by reducing my contract from a multi-year renewable contract to one that is yearly and for which I have to re-apply every term. They push to increase the caps of students in courses. They want more from us for less pay, less security, less professional support.

The lack of political clout opens the door for a wide range of academic slights and insults. 

I once asked for subrogation for a book that I was publishing with a university press and was told by the head and provost that I wasn't eligible for that kind of support because my job description did not include publication.

When a course I designed earned national recognition for innovation, I was not invited to the ceremony. The director received the award in my absence. She received applause at the following department meeting. No one said anything to me.

On the bulletin boards with book jackets of faculty, you won't find my book, even though it was published by a respected press, nominated for several awards, and well-reviewed, because I am not tenure track ranked.

The list goes on, and the point here is that the lack of recognition for non-tenure eligible university faculty stings. It gets under your skin as the years go by and no matter how much you pour yourself into your work, you will never be seen unless you organize, make yourself visible, force the governing elites to acknowledge you.

Many of my non-tenure eligible colleagues are stepping into service in faculty governance, serving on hiring committees, taking on administrative duties, getting some power, making us less dispensable. Good on them I say. But my time is up, and I don't have the fight to carry on.

Much of this is what you don't say at your retirement ceremony, if you are even given a ceremony. You keep it yourself, because that's the nature of the dirty little secret that universities keep. They celebrate the stars, the university presidents, the coaches, the high-profile programs that bring in the grant money, but in the trenches, where much of the teaching goes on, these faculty are made expendable, nameless, are living paycheck to paycheck, trying to get by, trying to withstand the pressure of all that is holding them back, doing the best work they can.

You don't say this. You don't say that the university, mimicking the corporate structures around it, is top-heavy with pampered bosses, overpaid coaches, and a need to brand itself so out-of-state students will enroll for the fun. You don't say that much of the production is done by low-paid workers who hold the whole house of cards in place. It makes people uncomfortable, makes them squirm. So you write it. Put it down so the truth is there somewhere in case anyone wants to look for it.