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. 

 

My Complicated Relationship With NPR

I confess. I am an NPR junkie. I listen to it in the car, while I cook, while other people are watching the Super Bowl. I use ideas I get from NPR in my teaching. I drop NPR nuggets in conversation with friends. It's the best thing going in terms of intellectual stimulation and reliable news. And, yet, I get irritable with its liberal leaning, romantic meritocracy. When I say liberal, it's not because I am a conservative who sees "liberal bias" of the media everywhere. I say liberal because NPR is not radical enough for me. Coverage of issues on NPR stops short of calling it like it is, that corporations have high-jacked democracy, the the top 1 percenters control the lion's share of the wealth (and the means to get their message out to the masses), that we're going to hell in a hand basket environmentally, that we are a hair-trigger's millisecond from nuclear annihilation. I want NPR to get off its polite, liberal ass and take a stand for the social overhaul that I think is necessary for our survival rather than placate the very corporations that continue to fleece the rest of us, that will suck the last bit of living breath out of the planet to keep from giving their gold to those who most need it. It's time, NPR. It's the eleventh hour.

The Most Important Work

When time opens a window, when the air clears enough to see what really matters, when distractions settle and you can feel your beating heart, you have a chance to get it right. The tools you need for this challenge are imagination and action. Your imagining what might be that is the remedy for what pains you in the middle of the night, for the undone curriculum of your soul. In the still of morning, right before the dawn, you can see it if you look hard enough, are courageous enough to sustain your gaze on what you know needs to be done. The work is to hold that close and not forget as the day gathers momentum and then to take one step, and another, in the direction of that vision, to seek out others who have listened and join them in building a better world.

COVID as AFGO

Crisis turns existing ways of operating inside-out or upside-down, and that, my friends, might have have a silver lining. COVID may contain within it an AFGO, "another f#&king growth opportunity." While not what I would choose if I had a say in how life should go, this pandemic presents us with an opportunity to overcome "separation syndrome," or the idea that individuals are not affected by, and responsible for, other humans and our natural world. COVID, for one thing, underscores the idea that the health of others affects the health of each of us as individuals. The peeing in the pool analogy works well in this case. If we support behaviors that increase infection, that condone people getting sick, sooner rather than later, we too, more likely, will be sickened. We are connected whether we want to admit it or not. We are, as one good book says, our brother's (and sister's) keeper. It's time to re-assess how well the myth of radical individualism, of taking care of me-me and letting the rest of the world go to perdition, serves us, and look to composing a story that values the common good, that restores a social contract, a worldview that bypasses the idolatry of the self. It ain't just about you no more, and that might not be such a bad thing. 

Looking For Stolen Bikes, Episode Three: The Oracle Speaks

(Continued from Episode Two: Our seekers have been sent across the river to the portal of the great tunnel in search of the red bicycle. We resume where we left them at the end of Episode Two, the entry to the underworld.)

His eyes met mine for an instant of question and piercing appraisal before going blank with disconnection.  His look said "nothing to do with me," beneath the thick jacket he wore over his head as a kind of helmet or hood. He looked like Obi Wan Kenobi without his staff and an old Carhartt jacket instead of a robe. 

He kept coming toward us but tacked off to the side to avoid direct intersection. He meant to go around us rather than through us.

The incline from the tunnel to the street was not steep, but neither was it easy. It was littered with the debris of storms and the detritus of apathy. His jacket was off his head now, and I could see an abrasion on his scalp, likely from hitting it on the low ceiling of the tunnel.

He was gray and stooped, with hair that sprouted like uncut grass on his scalp and the sides of his head. He looked strong still and had a confident stride, not much older than I, if older at all.  He kept us in view in his peripheral vision as he climbed up to street grade and took the circuitous route toward the convenience store.

"Mind if I ask you a question?" I asked.

He stopped, looked right through me, and answered, "Nope. What can I do for you?"

He carried himself with a calm humility and alertness. Clearly not a predator, but more like a deer, he moved along the wall of the Quik Trip. But there was something else too, an air of poison, like a brightly colored tree frog, a color that says mess with me at your peril. I could see he was a long time survivor of the streets.

He carried some of the filth that goes with living in a storm tunnel, but he could have passed for a working man on a construction crew. I could see lesions on his skin in addition to the deep scrape on the top of his head. This was not someone who spent time in doctor's offices or dermatology appointments. He had, however, a mouthful of teeth, unlike many older homeless I meet, and a wry smile. OK he seemed to say, what's this all about? 

"We're looking for a couple of stolen bikes. One's my wife's bike and we're trying to get it back. We wondered if maybe you've seen it down there." I pointed toward the tunnel.

"It's a red mountain bike with a white fork," I added.

"What brand?" he asked.

"Gary Fisher."

"Seems like I have seen a bike like that. Is it a double suspension?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, I think I've seen it down there, but I can't say when exactly. People come and go all the time. Some are regulars, you know. But some just pass through. Leave stuff like bikes down there all the time."

He kept looking around me, never directly at me.

"They put stuff in these cavities," he said. That was his word, "cavities." It sounded odd to me, and I pictured holes in the walls, like decay in dentition. "There are these smaller caves, kind of like storage areas, in case they come back or need to hide something. Gotta be careful about other peoples' stuff tho."

"I could go take a look if you want," he said. "It's not too far to the first cavity. Guys leave stuff there all the time. I might have seen it there."

"I'd appreciate it if you would look. I'll give you twenty dollars if you find the bike and bring it back out," I said.

He perked up a little at that, but not so much that it made that much of a difference. He would do this money or not.

The three of us watched him walk back down the spillway into the tunnel.

"You think he'll come back?" asked Sean.

"I'll give him half an hour," said Aaron.

"I think the money might make it worth coming back," I said.

We milled around the parking lot as a County Sheriff cruiser checked us out -- three guys in a tight group, one looking like CIA operative, another like an ad for Patagonia outdoor wear, and a third looking like he should be grading papers.

I waved and the sheriff nodded, apparently deciding we were harmless enough.

The sun was warm, early summer warm. I could feel the change of season coming. I wondered about the people living down there in the tunnel and what they would do when the weather went from hot and dry of Sonoran First Summer to anvil-headed giants of Second Summer and the monsoons that would surely scour that tunnel of anything not welded in place. What was it like to live in darkness under the Quik Trip, the traffic of River Road, and the commerce of Sam's Club?

Absolute darkness, concrete walls and floor, one way up and another down, people coming through your space at any hour for any reason, carrying what they carried to survive and to move. Movement is life. Bikes help you move. Bikes were gold, dragon's gold, worth hiding away, deep in the the lair.

The Oracle emerged as promised but with no bike.

"It wasn't there," he said. "But if you give me your phone number, I can call you if I see it. I can set it aside in one of them cavities. He took it deeper into the tunnel; that tunnel goes almost a mile, maybe more than a mile. There are parts I don't even know, caves and cavities so deep you think you're never going to get out."

The dragon was going to keep all his gold this time. His lair was too deep and we were not ready to penetrate the dark sufficiently to meet him.

Sometimes the dragon wins and the Oracle can only take you so far. 

"No, I don't think so. But thanks anyway."

"You know... I could leave it in the bushes over there.  That way, if you come by to check, you might find it. Nobody would look in there."

"If I come by this way, I might do that," I said. "We'll have to keep looking too."

"Yes, that's right. You have to keep looking. You never know when you might see that bike or the other one. You said there were two. Well I might see the other one too. You never know."

His eyes told me more than his words. It was up to us, but he might cross our path and play some role if the stars lined up. He was willing if we were.

He had his own business to attend to and we had ours.

He offered his hand, and, again, I had to refuse.

"You know. The coronavirus," I said.

He nodded. Another "Whatever."

"Well good luck," he said.

"You too," I answered.

We're all just looking for some space to live our lives and few things to make that life easier and more enjoyable.

The three of us returned to Zappo, drove back across the running river, the exit of the big tunnel, and the bridge, said our good byes and went our separate ways: home, food, and work, still hoping to regain what had been taken, what had been lost.

The search goes on.

Looking for the Stolen Bikes, Episode Two: The Tunnel People

(Continued from Episode One, in which I found myself out of luck and out of quarantine on the south bank of the Rillito River after an encounter with some homeless men. I was told one of the stolen bikes might be found in a tunnel across the river. One of them pointed me north, and I am looking at where we might have to go.)

Across the Rillito River, running clean and cold with snow melt from the mountains north of Tucson, a pair of large drainage tunnels framed a group of men lounging in the desert sun of late winter. Most had shirts off. A few smoked, sitting on the floor of the opening to the tunnel. Theirs was time, time to waste, to wonder, to watch riders roll by, recreating on expensive bikes, bikes worth more than they might earn in a month or two or three.

Must be nice, they might think, to wear tight shorts and colorful jerseys and glide along on a machine that is so light and smooth it almost does the work for you, or has a motor and does do the work for you. So close, but so far. 

Homelessness can make people desperate. These men did not look desperate, but discouraged or demoralized. Baggy pants hung below hips over boxers with waistbands up to abdomens. They were young mostly, the surplus labor force in a holding pattern, outsiders keeping each other company.

At least that's what I told myself as we planned what to do next.

Aaron arrived in Zippy, the '97 Nissan 200 SX that had seen better days. It was missing the rear bumper, had a bungee cord holding the trunk lid closed, and dents from various episodes of bad luck, hard knocks, sharp edges, moving objects, maybe an asteroid or two. It had some antiquated surfer-dude bumper stickers, like "Life's short. Go surfing!" and climbing stickers "Knot now. I'm going climbing."

Zippy had been my car for a while, then it was handed down to Sean, then to Aaron. With each step down the ladder of ownership, it had grown more oxidized, faded, wrinkled, decrepit, and loved. It was a doddering old dog, drooling its way from destination to destination, loyal to the end. We keep things, cars and bikes, rather than upgrade, usually. I guess you could call that a character defect, or grasping pathology, but it was the way we did things, the way we looked at things, had to do with the role things played in making our lives better. People need some things to define themselves, to use as tools and beauty and fun.  

The cars in our family have names like Zippy, Zappo (Sapo, or "toad" in Spanish), Soobie, DeRanger, and others, but we are not particularly a car-crazed group. The vehicles all have around 200,000 miles on them and look worse for the wear. My truck, for example, has been totaled three times, but that's another story.

Suffice it to say, Aaron's car had character. He parked it next to Soobie and Zappo. Now we were three, each arriving in his own vehicle, an embarrassment of riches. All for the cause of finding our lost sheep, the missing bikes. 

Aaron stood incongruously tall from the driver's seat. At six-three, he didn't seem the fit for a mini coupe. He fit better in the trucks he drove on the open road, the big eighteen wheelers he piloted back and forth across the country.

"What's the plan?" he asked, eyes behind black aviators shaded by his trademark black cap and shaved head. "I've got the pepper spray if we need it."

"It's not here," I said, keeping six feet of social distance because of the coronavirus. Even sons are not exempt from quarantine protocols. "We have to go across the river to the Quik Trip. There's an opening to a big storm tunnel there. A guy said that's where the bike is. We'll take Zappo. Oh, and keep your distance... no physical confrontation, and take it easy, keep it low-key, mellow."

So we piled into Zappo for the short drive up to the Quik Trip. As described, there were dumpsters behind the store and next to the opening of a large tunnel. We had driven almost a mile from the mouth of the tunnel, where it emptied into the Rillito. This was a long tunnel.

Walking from the activity of the convenience store past the dumpsters, we left the world of commerce, busyness, and light and gazed into a stooped-over world of cast-offs, makeshift shelters, and darkness. I was hoping that whoever was there would be near the opening. They were not. What was there, were shopping carts, dumpster treasures like old chairs, wood pallets, blankets, and random junk. I swear I saw a flat-screen TV, but that has to be more my faulty memory that actuality.

A smell of rot and piss emanated from the dank, stagnant air inside the opening. If ever there were a vector for contagion, this had to be it.

"I'm not going in there," said Sean.

"Me neither," said Aaron.

I read a sign scrawled on a large sheet of cardboard: "Do not enter this tunnel without a light. It's fucking DARK in here, and we will not save you or come looking for you or care about your screams. Bring a fucking flashlight!"

Fair enough I thought. Don't go in without light.

I peered in as far as I could see as my eyes adjusted, and I could make out a shelter of sorts of tarps and cardboard. It looked like shelters I have seen in slums in Central and South America. It showed resourcefulness in the face of lack. Here too was testimony to the harsh life assigned to those who don't fit, can't fit, or don't want to fit into the role of wage earning consumers. Like the virus, this disease was spreading, if my experience this morning was any indicator.

There were tracks in the sand, bike tracks, and shopping cart tracks. It was clear from the tracks that many people passed by here, that the tunnel was home to several, maybe a dozen, or two, or more, people. I had heard of the homeless camps along the river, that they were growing and that there were more of them, but I did not know people were living in storm drains, tunnels that ran with fury and flood when the rain fell hard enough. This was a harsh lesson about poverty and despair, which I saw here in abundance.

But there were no bikes to be seen. If the bike was here, it was further down the tunnel than I was willing to go. It was clear to me that we would not recover the bike today, or maybe ever.

I retreated to the railing above the opening to the tunnel and considered options. I could come back with a flashlight or headlamp. I could just wait and see if the bike and rider came out.

As I sat with these options, a figure began to emerge from the darkness and entered the light at the source of the tunnel. He paused to let his eyes adjust after turning off his flashlight. He looked at home in the dark, out of his element in the bright light of traffic, of consuming, of high-speed hustle.

He blinked and looked right at me.