Archive for the 'Ethnicity' Category

Work, family, culture, and success: some thoughts on Asian and Latino achievement

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 16, 2008
in Academia, Ethnicity, Pasadena City College and Working
. 10 Comments

In summer school, the gap between what I want to do and what I have time to do yawns particularly wide. I’m lecturing five hours a day four days a week, and that doesn’t count prep time. I’m not complaining, mind, just sayin’ that it makes it hard to get the blogging in that I would like. I’m trying to work up a longer post on feminist Christian sexual ethics, but that’s going to be delayed for a while.

Just a quick link to an interesting Times story this morning: Trying to Bridge the Grade Divide in L.A. Schools. Hector Becerra’s Column One offering explores the wide (and, some say, rapidly widening) success differential between Latino and Asian students in California high schools. Becerra visits Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, a famous institution with a large percentage of both Asian and Hispanic students, and interviews both teachers and kids about the “achievement gap.” At Lincoln, Asians are 15% of the student body — and 50% of the enrollees in Advanced Placement classes. Virtually all of the students, regardless of race, come from working-class, first-generation immigrant families; socio-economics alone do little to account for the disparity.

Lots of familiar explanations crop up, with differing cultural expectations usually topping the list. Continue reading ‘Work, family, culture, and success: some thoughts on Asian and Latino achievement’

Loving the whole earth, loving the single place: a long response to Gregory Rodriguez, quoting Abbey and Hauerwas

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 27, 2008
in Books, Christianity, Environmentalism, Ethnicity, Globalism and Traveling
. 5 Comments

I normally like the perspective that L.A. Times’ columnist Gregory Rodriguez takes. But he wrote an op-ed eleven days ago that really irked me: Rootless to a Fault. Here’s a portion of it:

Here in the U.S., highly skilled workers and wealthy entrepreneurs from around the globe contribute mightily to this nation’s productivity and creativity. Their presence in our cities, and ours in theirs, has fostered a greater appreciation of global cultural diversity. It has spawned a vibrant cosmopolitanism that broadens our collective concern for people who live beyond our borders.

But this cosmopolitanism is not without its dark side. Increasingly, many of our big cities’ creative elites — both native and foreign-born — see themselves as citizens of the world. Our intellectuals are exploring the declining significance of place in the new globalized world order. And this brave new world cries out for an answer to the question: Does a person who swears loyalty to all cities and nations have any loyalties at all? I’ve always been struck by the fact that the same people who rightly criticize multinational corporations for having no sense of responsibility to place never seem to express the same concern about the equally “unplaced” creative elite.

A few years ago, I was at a fancy dinner party and found myself the only one at the table who held only one passport.

Rodriguez goes on to make a jarringly wrong premise: those who see themselves as “citizens of the world” are somehow dramatically less engaged in civic activity than those whose horizons are smaller and whose loyalties more narrowly defined. He opines:

Without denying the benefits of globalization, we should remember the beauty and strength of parochialism.

It’s all well and good to love the world, but real social solidarity is generally found on a smaller scale. And it’s not just the unskilled immigrants we should be concerned about. We need to find ways to encourage the highly skilled ones to form a sense of attachment and commitment to their new homes. On top of that, we natives must remember that there is no honor in escaping engagement by becoming a citizen of the world.

First off — and I could be wrong — I smell a tiny whiff in Rodriguez’s piece of an old anti-Semitic canard: the notion that the “wandering Jew”, cosmopolitan to a fault, undermines the stability of whatever society in which he finds himself, because his loyalties are eternally elsewhere. Though that is surely not Rodriguez’s intent, there’s no denying that jeremiads against “jet-setting elitists” who have no commitment to place are not new, and that in the past, many of those attacks have been aimed quite explicitly at Jews. Gregory ought to have known that.

But what I resent about the piece is the notion that loyalty to the world and all of its creatures is somehow incompatible with deep concern for the well-being of particular places. Rodriguez posits what is frankly a monstrously false dichotomy: parochial and engaged or cosmopolitan and unconcerned. Indeed, I assure Greg that there are those among his readers who are devoted to Los Angeles and its well-being without feeling any need to elevate the needs of L.A. above those of the entire planet!

I am a dual citizen, holding UK and US citizenship. My brother, his wife, and children hold a serious array of passports: Mexican, Austrian, British, and American. I have many friends who also have two nationalities, and I have a few acquaintances who have three. And no, we are not all part of some transnational global elite. I’ll be waiting a long time for my invite to rub elbows with the super-rich at the Davos Economic Forum. Of course, my dual citizenship is not without significance to me: it not only gives me and my family options about where to work and live, it reminds me that I do indeed have multiple loyalties and multiple commitments. But my devotion to any one place is not less because of a devotion to many. I have been fortunate to have been able to see much of the world, and am fortunate to have friends and family scattered across many continents. But that sense of belonging to the globe rather than to a country doesn’t mean I am any less passionately devoted to the well-being of Pasadena, or to my students, many of whom have never been on an airplane much less outside of the Western Hemisphere. Continue reading ‘Loving the whole earth, loving the single place: a long response to Gregory Rodriguez, quoting Abbey and Hauerwas’

Sunday night thoughts on whiteness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 27, 2008
in Ethnicity and Race
. 11 Comments

I got home from my run in time to catch most of Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the NAACP convention in Detroit. I’d heard him a few times before, but was mesmerized by what he had to say tonight. I can’t find a full transcript online yet; if someone has one available, I’d be grateful for a link in the comments.

The fellow who introduced Dr. Wright used his first name repeatedly, evidently driving home the point that Barack Obama’s pastor speaks as part of a prophetic tradition that goes back as far — or farther — than the first famed Jeremiah. Those who splutter in righteous indignation at the reverend’s now-ubiquitious “God damn America” sermon would do well to reacquaint themselves with the Old Testament biblical tradition. I’m sure that this point has been made by many others, but it deserves repeating: prophetic language has political implications, but is not the same as political discourse. Only someone with a poorly-formed theology could assume that God will not punish America as he punished His beloved Israel. If God could allow the holy city on the hill, His beloved Jerusalem, to be sacked repeatedly; if he could permit and perhaps even will the first and second temples to both be destroyed, if his prophets could suggest that that destruction was earned and deserved, then it is jingoistic hubris to say that God holds the United States in higher esteem.

Watching Dr. Wright early this evening, I thought about the discomfort so many white Americans have with frank expressions of black anger. I thought as well about this comment by Fred, written in response to this post. Fred:

Maybe it is a matter of semantics, but I do not completely understand your comment on whiteness. “I have willfully refused to reject, renounce, or even seriously reflect upon my whiteness.” Skin pigmentation is an immutable trait, so what is there to reject or renounce. Should people also renounce their “blackness”? Or is “whiteness” some kind of euphemism for being a racial bigot?

When I wrote about “whiteness”, I wasn’t writing about my ethnicity or my skin pigmentation — but rather about a specific kind of privilege. One of the best-known short explanations of what white privilege is comes from Peggy McIntosh: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. (A few years ago, Amp at Alas, A Blog posted his marvelous update on male privilege, riffing on McIntosh’s work.) When I write about renouncing whiteness, I am not talking about rejecting my European-American heritage; I’m talking about doing everything I reasonably can to avoid unconsciously benefitting from the system that McIntosh so effectively describes. Continue reading ‘Sunday night thoughts on whiteness’

Andrea Smith denied tenure

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2008
in Ethnicity, Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy, Race and Teaching
. 37 Comments

Brownfemipower has taken the lead on reporting the story of Andrea Smith’s denial of tenure at the University of Michigan. Read here and here, and see the report in the Chronicle of Higher Ed here.

It’s a strange case. Smith had been given a joint appointment in American Studies and Women’s Studies at the Ann Arbor campus; ’twas the latter department that nixed her promotion while the former supported her tenure cause. She’s also the director of the campus Native American Studies Center. Few of us are privy to the details of her file, and the Women’s Studies department at Michigan has not commented on why it has denied Smith tenure. But to those of us familiar with Smith’s published work, the decision is inexplicable. Her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide is a master-work of both advocacy and feminist scholarship, and is used in women’s studies courses across the country. (It’s on the short list of books I’m considering rotating in to my women’s history syllabus).

At research universities, the proven ability to publish is a critical part of getting tenure. So many assistant professors struggle to get anything notable into print; Smith has already done so by producing a text that is not just interesting but fundamentally ground-breaking. She’s got another book coming up: Native Americans and the Christian Right, which is available for pre-order.

Of course, being able to publish is not the only prerequisite for tenure. Teaching counts for something, even at mammoth state institutions. But the statement released by faculty and students at Michigan (available here, in PDF format) makes it clear that Andrea Smith has immense talents as a teacher and mentor. Her students and colleagues are asking that letters in support of her tenure case (which has been appealed) be sent to

* Teresa Sullivan, Provost and Executive VP for Academic Affairs, LSA, tsull@umich.edu
* Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, LSA, lmonts@umich.edu
* Mary Sue Coleman, President, PresOff@umich.edu
* TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

Anyone who reads the feminist blogosphere is aware that the most painful struggle of the past year, played out in so many places, is over the issue of the intersection of racism and sex. A number of prominent women of color have written, time and again, of feeling marginalized or ignored by white feminists. Whatever your feelings on the issue of race, gender, and intersectionality, it’s disastrous PR to have the Smith denial come at the hands of the Michigan Women’s Studies department. To a community of activist women of color, many of whom are already suspicious of the bona fides of white feminists, the Smith decision can only serve to increase a sense of cynicism about the prospects for real inclusion.

I’ve never met Andrea Smith or heard her lecture. I wouldn’t recognize her on the street. But I’ve read her work and been galvanized by it. I’ve chatted with people who have worked with her and heard her speak at conferences. Anecodotally, everyone I’ve heard from says she’s not merely a competent and inspiring teacher, she’s an extraordinary one. Her more than one-dozen published, peer-reviewed essays, her edited anthologies, and above all, her first masterwork “Conquest“, are building blocks of a tenure file that would put those of virtually any other junior scholar to shame. The Women’s Studies department at Michigan surely has its reasons, but until it makes those reasons clear, the shock and anger and alienation generated by their denial of tenure to Andrea Smith will continue to spread. And that’s bad news for all feminists.

And here’s hoping that if Michigan doesn’t come to its senses, someone else (are you listening, USC?) makes a nice offer. Soon.

Stuff White People Like

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 20, 2008
in Ethnicity and Links
. 13 Comments

I’m late to the party, but count me as a big fan of “Stuff White People Like.” Check it out for yourself; the entries on dogs, divorce, veganism, and marathons are spot on.

In a not-entirely dissimilar vein, here’s my old Happy WASP boy post.

White men teaching feminism to women of color: a post about class, privilege, and the need for humility, curiosity, and flexibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 28, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity, Feminist Pedagogy and Race
. 19 Comments

With the re-emergence of the Full Frontal Feminism discussion this past week, I’ve been called to reflect on the challenges and privileges that come with being a middle-class, heterosexual, Christian white man who teaches gender studies. (I say “gender studies” because, even though PCC still has no such formal department, I teach courses on Women’s History, Men and Masculinity, Lesbian and Gay History, and “body” history.)

I’ve written about the problematic nature of my role as a man teaching feminism before. Here’s part of what I wrote three years or so ago:

I do acknowledge that having a man teaching women’s history to a class filled with women (and always at least one or two other men) is problematic. I know just how important it is that young women have feminist role models who, in both their work and their private lives, can live out feminist principles. But higher education is not just about providing role models! It is about the principle that knowledge itself has no sex, and that all human experience is equally worthy of study by all human beings. When we limit the teaching of women’s studies to women, we send the message that this subject is not, somehow, worth the time and attention of male academics. This does not mean that a male teacher confers a legitimacy his female colleagues do not — though some students may perceive it that way. But it does mean that it is immensely counter-productive to “ghettoize” (I use that term carefully) an academic discipline by suggesting that only some folks can teach it.

… “being a woman” does not guarantee compassion or empathy with other women! Women of color in the feminist movement have spent years having their concerns marginalized by their white, upper-middle class sisters. What makes a wealthy white woman more qualified to teach her Latina and African-American sisters than, say, a Latino man — or for that matter, a white man? Feminists who insist that the oppression of sex transcends racial and economic discrimination do a colossal injustice to the experiences of both men and women of color. My point is simple: if we are going to take a teacher’s sex into account, we must also take his or her race into account — and that sets up a slippery slope towards the extreme Balkanization of academic disciplines.

Of course, most of my critics in the “feminist/womanists of color” blogosphere haven’t said “Hugo can’t teach women’s studies merely because he’s a middle-class white Christian male.” Too suggest otherwise is to erect a straw-woman to knock down. What is clear is that my pedagogical decisions (like assigning Full Frontal Feminism in the way in which I did, and managing the discussion the way I did), combined with my maleness and my whiteness, raises a number of questions about teaching, feminism, sex, race, and power.

I don’t know what it’s “like” to be a woman. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up poor, or to grow up non-white, or to grow up in a religious minority. Sometimes, even in recent days, I’ve made the classic white male liberal mistake of trying to establish my progressive bona fides by the classes I took taught by radical women of color, or by talking about my marriage to a mixed-race woman. That’s a cheap and ineffective strategy, and it tends to infuriate the very people I’m trying to convince. I can recite the books I’ve read, I can name-drop until the cows come home, and it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a tremendous amount of white privilege.

I’m forty, older than most of the folks who’ve been involved in this debate. I’ve been teaching gender studies here at PCC since 1995, my third year at the college. And even after all this time, I know I still frequently “don’t get it”. Unlearning the acculturation to privilege is painful, it is hard, and the hardest and most painful thing about it is it never, ever ends. Every time I start to “believe my own press”, and begin to imagine that I have become a particularly enlightened being, a person who has transcended his class, his culture, and his sex, I am brought rudely back to earthly reality. I have a penis and a Y chromosome, I am melanin-deficient, and my speech and my bearing reflects a carefully-bred confidence that comes from privilege. Whether or not I think my sex or my race or my class matter, my students (almost none of whom share that particularly constellation of privileges) are likely to see me as a very familiar sort of figure: the older white man who knows a lot (or thinks he does) and is eager to enlighten them.

My women’s studies classes average 45-50 students now (before 2004, I taught in a smaller classroom and had only 30-35). I need to cover women’s history in America from the pre-Columbian era to five minutes ago, and I need to cover contemporary women’s issues — especially feminism — at the same time. I have 75 minutes twice a week in which to pull this off; I have no teaching assistants. The room is too crowded to have us sit in a circle, and the size of the class means interactivity will be severely limited. Lecturing, therefore, is going to be the primary pedagogical tool; that’s of necessity as much as of inclination. The students do write journals, they do initiate discussions from time to time, but most of the time, it’s me talking to them. I make my lectures as captivating as possible, and when I’m “on”, I’m a pretty damn good orator. Which is fine, except that having a middle-class white man strut and fret in front of a classroom that is made up primarily of first-generation female students of color doesn’t do much to undermine the patriarchy. The more I exhort, the more I inspire, the more I risk reinforcing something very traditional.

I can’t do anything about the size of the class. (Indeed, because it is a popular class, I was asked to consider moving into a larger lecture room that accomodates 150. I turned down the offer and asked for two smaller sections instead, and was told that wasn’t feasible.) And I can’t do anything about my maleness, my whiteness, or the fact that I grew up in Carmel, went to prep school (though I was kicked out!) and live a moderately comfortable life. But there’s still a lot I can do, even with the limitations of a large class size and my own privilege. And the chief thing I need to continue to do, and to get better at doing, is to remain teachable.

Actually, that’s not quite enough. As I was reminded this week, “remaining teachable” is essentially passive. It asks those who want me to change to do the work of teaching me. Perhaps it would be better to say that I need to work on three things in particular: humility, curiosity, flexibility. The arguments over Full Frontal Feminism haven’t changed my mind about the usefulness of the book as a highly accessible primer. But the arguments have reminded me to be a better listener to criticism, more humble about my role in facilitating learning, and to be more actively curious in seeking out alternative views to provide to my students. I need to better, too, about being flexible. Like most ageing academics, I get attached to the “way things have always been done”, and tend to be loth to update my syllabi.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I teach gender studies courses because I want to raise up young feminists. I want to inspire men and women alike to become informed agents of personal and collective transformation. I want them to reflect upon the past — and upon their own lives. I want the result of that reflection to be a strong sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. I want them to be committed to justice for the vulnerable and equality for all — but I also want them to begin to liberate themselves from self-doubt and self-loathing. I believe that personal happiness and public virtue are, in the end, deeply compatible (as a Christian who grew up listening to my mother’s lectures on Aristotle, I could hardly believe otherwise!) And in the end, I want my students to be happy, free, kind, independent, and good. That has been my goal for a very long time.

My male body, my family background, and my white skin have opened many doors for me. I cannot close those doors retroactively. I’m not ashamed of my masculinity, my heterosexuality, or my class. (See the OKOP post.) But I’m not inordinately proud of these things either. Privilege is not the consequence of virtue. It’s simply a fact, and it’s one of which I have to remain perpetually cognizant. Sometimes, privilege will blind me, and I will need help to see the right path. But in the end, privilege is both an advantage and an obstacle to good feminist teaching. And as long as I am aware that it is a double-edged sword, and as long as I remain committed with evangelistic zeal to my students’ growth, I’ll do a good job.

That is, if I work harder at humility, curiosity, and flexibility.

The “Full Frontal Feminism” controversy again, and a call for suggestions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 26, 2007
in Blogging, Books, Ethnicity and Feminism
. 61 Comments

I’m grateful to the Reproductive Health Reality Check blog for reposting this morning my little piece on early motherhood and “false intimations of tragedy.”

And while I was away for the holiday, Jessica Valenti put up a short link at Feministing to my post from several weeks ago, one in which I reported on my students’ enthusiastic responses to her Full Frontal Feminism.

Many of the prominent “women of color” bloggers in the feminist blogosphere clearly don’t read my blog regularly. They do read Feministing, however, and starting on Thanksgiving a number of folks began to weigh in. Old criticisms of Jessica’s book reappeared, as well as strong words about my pedagogy. See here, here, here, here, and here.

I suppose another post is due sometime soon on what it means for a middle-aged, middle-class white man to teach women’s studies to mostly female, mostly non-white, mostly working-class students. I’ve dealt with that topic in previous posts, but I’m happy to bring it up again, and I will do so this week or next.

I did want to respond to one particular challenge that appeared in this comment. Michelle writes:

IMO You need to directly connect your students to the discussions that have gone on about this on the web.

IMO you need to do this by actively, directly and respectfully collaborating with the actual people who have offered these critiques. You know who they are, yes?

So. Ask them: What specifically would they like your students to read and in what format? Ask them and then assign it. What questions would they like your students to discuss based on this situation? Ask them and have those discussions in your classroom (with respect, not to discredit them and you know what I mean). What kind of follow-up, if any, do they want to see? Ask them and do it.

It is indeed too late for me to revisit FFF this semester (I have only four class meetings left, and every second of those is packed). But I’m going to accept Michelle’s challenge for the spring semester, beginning in February, when I will once again be assigning Full Frontal Feminism to my classes. In the spring, I will teach the book again. I will also assign a packet of criticisms of the book — indeed, I will do what I have been taught to do since I was an undergraduate, which is to “teach the controversy.” Assuming that the critics of FFF leave up their posts, I will provide links to those pieces, and actively encourage my students to participate in the broad discussion that this book created. That discussion will take place in the classroom, but also — I hope — online.

A few of my students read my blog, most don’t. Perhaps I erred in not informing my students about the controversy surrounding Full Frontal Feminism. Though I am absolutely convinced that my students’ generally enthusiastic responses to Jessica’s book were both genuine and uncoerced, I think it makes sense to expose them to other voices. I’m going to continue to assign and recommend FFF, but I’m very interested in “teaching the controversy” — which means collaborating with vital and interested figures in the blogosphere (Jessica herself, BlackAmazon, Brownfemipower, and so on).

My main syllabus for the spring is already set, folks, so please don’t ask me to change my assigned readings. But suggestions on how to structure a rich, civil, and productive exchange with my students about race, sex, feminism and the controversy that this one particular book has generated would be very, very welcome. You can email me at dochugoboy(at)hotmail.com, or put comments below here.

Denial and recognition: some long thoughts on the Armenian genocide resolution

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 18, 2007
in Ethnicity, Politics and Teaching
. 10 Comments

I have this post about “Nice Guys” (a subject about which many in the feminist blogosphere have written over the years) percolating in my head, but it will have to wait for tomorrow or Monday.

As most know, the House was scheduled to vote soon on a resolution concering the Armenian Genocide. It now appears that vote may be put off.

Mr. Bush, who as a candidate in 2000 criticized what he called a “genocidal campaign” against the Armenians, said lawmakers had better things to do than be caught up in the past, pursuing legislation that has unsettled an important ally.

“With all these pressing responsibilities, one thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire,” Mr. Bush said. “Congress has more important work to do than antagonizing a democratic ally in the Muslim world, especially one that is providing vital support for our military every day.”

Backers of the resolution said they would push ahead despite mounting opposition and try to rally support for the declaration, which they said was essential to deter future genocide and protect America’s credibility in speaking out against brutality in places like Darfur and Myanmar.

I teach and live in the heart of one of the largest communities in the global Armenian diaspora: hundreds of thousands of Armenian-Americans live in the Glendale-Pasadena region. My congressman, Adam Schiff (no relation to the fictional Law & Order DA) has been one of the chief proponents of a genocide resolution. Here at Pasadena City College, we have a huge number of students of Armenian descent; I have heard one administrator, speaking off the record, suggest that nearly 65% of “white” students on this campus are Armenian. (My students, who tend to assume that “white = Northwestern European” rather than literally “Caucasian”, generally don’t label Armenians as white. The college does.)

Since 1993, I’ve taught Modern European history here. Every semester, I cover World War One in considerable detail. But when I first started teaching at PCC, my focus was entirely on the causes of the war — and on the catastrophe that was the Western Front. I talked about the Somme and Verdun, and skipped over the eastern campaigns very quickly. World War One was not my primary field (my training was as a medievalist), and my inclination was to focus on the better-known Western story. My second semester at PCC, a very bright and vivacious young Armenian-American woman named Lori came to my office and challenged me: “Why aren’t you teaching the Armenian genocide when you teach World War One?” Lori was in her second semester with me, and had been in the first women’s studies class I ever taught, and had no trouble confronting me about what she regarded as a serious oversight in my syllabus. Continue reading ‘Denial and recognition: some long thoughts on the Armenian genocide resolution’

Vulgar ostentation or justifiable pride: a reflection on hanging academic diplomas

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 8, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 31 Comments

On Friday, I wrote in my post about the perceived preference for Ph.Ds at the community college:

I’m glad I have my Ph.D. (My diplomas are all in a box somewhere, mind you. Our Kind of People never put degrees on the wall, after all; it seems showy and aggressive.)

I’ve been thinking about this issue of not putting the diploma on the wall. One of my senior colleagues here is a woman from, as she describes it, “an Irish working-class family where no one went to college.” One of six children, she was the first in her family to receive a B.A., and after years of hard work, a Ph.D. Her undergraduate and graduate diplomas are framed and hang on the wall in her office. She does insist that her students address her as “Dr. Sullivan” (not her real name).

Dr. S and I are good friends, and after I got my Ph.D. in 1999, she said to me “Now you can hang a new diploma on your wall.” I told her I didn’t think that was going to happen. “Why not?”, she asked.

I told Dr. S (who, among other things, has expertise in sociology) that “in my culture”, “my people” tend to see the display of diplomas as “showing off.” Both my parents had Ph.Ds. from Berkeley; I have no idea where either one of their diplomas is hiding. For them, putting a diploma up in the office would have been like hanging a marriage license on the wall after getting home from the honeymoon! It’s one thing, I told Dr. S, to be privately proud of an accomplishment; it’s another thing to wave the proof of that accomplishment around.

I don’t know which football coach it was who said it, but some grizzled old veteran who counseled against exuberant celebration after a score always said “Act like you’ve done it before and intend to do it again very soon.” In other words, drawing attention to one’s academic accomplishments (and hanging diplomas on the office walll is certainly drawing attention) suggests that one views the acquisition of the doctorate as vaguely miraculous. It also, I told Dr. S, seemed to be inviting admiration. OKOP, I told her, are trained to downplay “that sort of thing.”

Dr. S and I were and are good enough friends to have this sort of “cross-cultural dialogue.” Dr. S wasn’t in the least offended by my reluctance to hang my various diplomas, or by my willingness to confess to her my reasons for keeping the damn things tucked in a drawer. But she also offered her own perspective:

“Hugo”, she said, “I don’t display the diploma to show off for myself. My mother and father worked terribly hard to put me through school. My husband sacrificed enormously so that I could work on my doctorate while our kids were small. No one in my family or my husband’s had ever gotten a Ph.D. before. And after all that collective effort, if I act as you do — as if a Ph.D. is ultimately not important — it makes it seem as if I don’t appreciate all that they did to help me achieve this goal. When my eighty-year old mother comes to my office, she gets to see that diploma and it makes her feel incredibly proud. Your mother, Hugo, already has a Ph.D, and though I’m sure she’s proud of you, she doesn’t need to see it the way mine does.”

Dr. S reminded me that the “OKOP dislike of ostentation” is in part a manifestation of privilege. When everyone in the family goes to college, and lots of people get Ph.Ds, and parents don’t have to work double shifts at the factory to pay for graduate school for the kids — then the newly dissertated and hooded ones can afford to be nonchalant and self-deprecating. Dr. S argued that in her case, as a woman from a working-class Irish Catholic background, she was both entitled to a greater degree of display and indeed required to “show off”. To do any less would be to disrespect the extraordinary sacrifice of her loved ones.

I’m also aware of something that Dr. S didn’t mention. We teach on a campus that has a high percentage of non-white students, as well as a majority of folks who are first-generation college students. These students need reminders that a Ph.D. is possible for them too. Those professors who hold the doctorate — and are themselves members of ethnic minorities or were, like Dr. S, first-generation college students — thus have, perhaps, an obligation to display the diploma in order to inspire the young.

I have another colleague in another department; like me, he holds a Ph.D from UCLA. He is also African-American, and he began his academic career right here at PCC. On the wall in his office, he has diplomas from each stage of his career in higher education, starting with the associate’s degree from Pasadena all the way up to the doctorate itself. Those diplomas, which hang behind his desk and stare his visitors in the face are not just there to swell his head — they are there, I suspect, to send a message to those students who look like him (but not like me) that academic success is possible for everyone if they work hard enough. Though I’ve never discussed it with this man, I suspect that this is his reason for displaying the evidence of his academic prowess so boldly. What OKOP sees as aggressive and vulgar showiness, others may see as much-needed inspiration for the next generation.

I know my diplomas are somewhere in a box in the garage. I last saw them in 2002, when I was packing up after my divorce. I have no intention of throwing them out, of course. But in all honesty, I’m not really sure what to do with them. I don’t want them on the wall in my home, or on the wall in my campus office. Perhaps I’ll just keep them tucked away forever, in the same sort of place where I keep old tax returns and insurance papers. But let me be clear that I no longer cast aspersions on those who choose to hang the evidence of their achievements for all to see. For some, perhaps, it isn’t ostentation or insecurity that drives such display: it’s the desire to honor all those who made the achievement possible. And it’s the desire to inspire a new generation to achieve similar goals. In the end, there’s nothing vulgar or showy about that.

A note on white privilege

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 27, 2007
in Ethnicity and Race
. 8 Comments

Thanks to Barry (Ampersand) the 16th Erase Racism carnival is up. It’s there I found a link to this powerful post from Naima: “It ain’t privilege, it’s injustice”. It begins:

a particular phenomenon in the immensely white Leftist circles at yale is a rhetorical and ideological obssession with the notion of White Privilege.

it is not uncommon to hear a white liberal campus organizer at yale say something along the lines of, “we white students at yale walk around enjoying a great deal of privilege because of the color of our skin - it is because of this privilege that we must work to uplift the citizens of new haven.”

…as a blactivist at yale, i have found it rare to emerge from an organizing conversation or meeting with a white peer without a guilt-stricken or self-righteous allusion to “White Privilege.”

I have a hard time believing that in 2007, any “white liberal campus organizer” would use the verb “uplift”, unless they did so with tongue planted firmly in cheek!

Still, I smiled when I read this. I had impeccable liberal credentials during my undergraduate years at Berkeley in the mid-1980s. My freshman year, I participated in anti-ROTC and “divest from South Africa” demonstrations. Later, I worked with groups that sought an ethnic studies requirement for graduation; that mandate was eventually put in place my senior year. In my ethnic studies classes (where I was often one of the only white men), I alternated between being adversarial and apologetic. Both served a purpose. When I was adversarial, I provided a helpful foil; when I was apologetic for my white privilege, I was demonstrating my good intentions, if nothing else.

I grasped quickly that white privilege manifested itself in a variety of ways. It had never occurred to me to question why it was that store managers never followed me around, worried that I would shoplift. It never occurred to me that it was unusual to have the first police officer to pull me over for speeding (when I was 17) address me as “sir” and let me off with a warning. It never occured to me that it was a huge confidence-booster to have most of my classes taught by professors who looked as if they could be my uncles or aunts. Realizing that the color of my skin gave me this unmerited privilege was eye-opening.

Of course, I quickly became adept — as many well-intentioned and earnest young white liberals invariably are — at bringing up my white privilege as often as possible. I said things like “I’m really becoming aware of how privileged I am” or “I never knew how many things I could take for granted because I was born with white skin.” I also began to believe that if I pre-emptively apologized for having this privilege, I could redirect the anger of “people of color” away from me and towards those “other white people”, the ones who weren’t as enlightened as I.

It’s almost axiomatic on college campuses that a significant percentage of white progressives are eager to expiate real or imagined guilt. One rather simple (and to many people of color, exasperating) way for white people to prove their progressive bona fides (and get rid of that pesky guilt) is to throw some acknowledgement of their own white privilege into virtually every sentence. It’s similar to what some young men do when they first start discovering feminism. These anti-racist newbies (of which I surely once was one) imagine that approaching virtually ever situation with an “I’m sorry” on their lips is one road towards the acceptance they crave.

The problem is that many young white liberals value expiating their own guilt over really getting rid of race-based privilege. Naima:

if the world were organized by “White Privilege” rather than “Racism,” a police officer might be especially kind to white people while nonetheless providing people of color with legal protection, aid, fairness under the law.

and so the white Leftists who think they are down because they have got the courage to lamentably declare, “We’ve got White Privilege,” it would be more accurate and truthful to say instead, “We are beneficiaries of racism,” or “We participate in a racialized system of oppression.”

how much more reluctant is the race conscious white activist to admit that his “privilege” has a consequence, that his whiteness is more than merely a personal reality about his own social power but is also an agent of violence.

Bold emphasis mine. That was me for a very long time. Talking about one’s own “white privilege” and, better yet, claiming to “renounce” it (as if that were genuinely possible), is immensely satisfying. It’s also more than a little self-centered. Reading this post, I’m reminded that all too often, the language of “white privilege” serves to re-center the discussion of racism away from its victims and back on to the sensibilities of the privileged and the powerful.

I don’t make apologies for my cultural whiteness any longer (see my “Happy White Boy” and first OKOP post on that subject). But of course, no one was ever asking me to apologize for preppiness or a long-term subscription to Town and Country. What the activists of color I’ve worked with have asked me to do is, first of all, be honest as North Star asks the white Yalies to be honest. It’s not enough to cop to white privilege — we who benefit from that privilege do so at the expense of others. In this case, privilege is a zero-sum game.

And of course, the real problem is that talking endlessly about “white privilege” reinforces its power. Endlessly lamenting something you think you wish you didn’t have simply makes it seem all the more potent.

Newsweek article: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 18, 2007
in Ethnicity and Links
. 3 Comments

The Newsweek.com piece is up here. I’m quoted very briefly on the second page.

UPDATE: And an InsideHigherEd article too.

Wishing Cho Seung-Hui had been Billy Bob Johnson: the VA Tech shootings and anti-Asian stereotypes: UPDATED (Again)

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 17, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Ethnicity and Men and Masculinity
. 81 Comments

It appears as of this morning that yesterday’s horrific shooting at Virginia Tech began with a young man killing his girlfriend before moving on to massacre dozens of fellow students and at least one faculty member. As has often been the case in the past, a mass shooting seems clearly linked to one man’s colossal rage at an individual woman or women. There’s a long and evolving discussion of many aspects of this event at Feministe. Here’s the post I wrote after last year’s awful Amish school shooting; as the facts unfold about what happened in Blacksburg, these words may or may not prove relevant once again:

As a pro-feminist gender studies prof, if there’s one topic that depresses me more than almost any other, it’s just how widespread male rage at women seems to be in our culture…We live in a culture where rape remains ubiquitous; where sexual harassment is a nearly-universal experience for many women in the workplace; where pornography that features the narrative of teenage girls being raped, overpowered or even murdered is ever more available and popular. I don’t know what specific factors inspired these two three shootings, but I do know that they are, in some as of yet inexplicable way, emblematic of a larger cultural problem…

The shooter has been identified as a young Korean-American man, Cho Seung-Hui. My first thought upon hearing that the killer had been described as “Asian” was “Damn, why couldn’t it have been a white boy?” Please understand, I don’t think the race of the shooter played a vital role in these tragic events. If he had been white, the horror of what happened would be no less (and no greater.) But I teach at a campus where over a third of our students are Asian or Asian-American. Pasadena City College awards more AA degrees to Asians than any other junior college in the United States. And I am deeply concerned about the possibility of anti-Asian backlash, particularly in those areas (and on those campuses) where Asians constitute more of a minority than they do here in the San Gabriel Valley.

In my men and masculinity class (I’ll be teaching it again in the fall after a two-year hiatus), we spend quite a bit of time talking about race. We talk about deeply-held stereotypes about men of various ethnic backgrounds (I’ll bet my readers can think of a few in a matter of seconds.) And over and over again, I’ve listened to the anguish of more than a few Asian male students. We live in a white-dominated culture that exaggerates the athletic and erotic capabilities of black males at the same instant that it denigrates those same possibilities within Asian men. We know the nasty stereotypes: Asian men are invariably near-sighted; always slight of build and small of penis; good at science and math; emotionally inarticulate (even more so than white men); inscrutable. These painful, cruel, inaccurate assumptions do real damage.

One other stereotype that may have a very small bit of truth within it is one I hear repeated quite a bit on my campus: young Asian men, particularly from competitive Korean and Chinese families, may be under tremendous pressure not only to do very well academically but also to keep virtually all emotion repressed. The last time I taught my men and masculinity class, a young Chinese-American fella said something like this:

Prof. Hugo, you ever wonder why Asian guys like video and role-playing games more than anyone else? It’s because black, white, and Hispanic guys get to express their anger so much more than we do. We’re supposed to not get angry. We’re not given the same outlets, not encouraged to play sports as much. So we — I — like video games. And I really like the violent ones.

This led to heated discussion — there were a number of Asian-American men and women in the room, and some vehemently disagreed with what their classmate was saying. Others vigorously supported him.

It’s obvious from the history of mass shootings that most killers — the Dylan Klebolds, the Marc Lepines — have been white males. And we almost never attribute their murderousness to their whiteness. We focus on their misogyny, their alienation, their easy access to guns. But whether or not there is any truth to the stereotype that young Asian men are often under particularly great familial and cultural pressure to succeed (and to do so without expressing any rage or frustration), I am very worried about the legacy of Cho Seung-Hui. I am worried that on many campuses — particularly those where Asians are a very small minority — other students will begin to shun their Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese male classmates. I can hear the jokes now, the ones that have an ugly edge to them: “Hey ____, did you bring your gun to class today?”

I saw what was done to many of my Muslim students after 9/11. And though what happened yesterday was no 9/11, these murders in Virginia are receiving an extraordinary amount of attention. “The worst mass shooting in American history” has a terrible resonance to it, and it will be all most of us talk about for the next few days. For some within our society, the temptation to displace some of their own feelings of anger, sadness, and powerlessness onto others will be overwhelming. And I am deeply worried for my students who share the shooter’s ethnic heritage and outer appearance. And though it wouldn’t change anything in the long run, I am wishing this morning that the trigger had been pulled by a good ol’ WASP boy named Billy Bob Johnson rather than by the late Cho Seung-Hui.

UPDATE: Please don’t devote your comments to a discussion of how white men are actually as victimized by stereotypes as men of other ethnic groups. If I were to do this post over, I would have titled it Wishing Cho Seung-Hui had been William Robert Johnson IV, in order to avoid the sense that I was stereotyping working-class white southern men. I’ve read through a lot of Colombine coverage (most folks are comparing this event chiefly to Colombine); I haven’t found many folks talking about how whiteness played a part in what Harris and Klebold did. I’m already seeing some anti-Asian commentary showing up in my comments section and elsewhere.

Folks, emotions are raw. Be kind, be judicious, and take a second before hitting the “publish” button. I’ll be moderating.

UPDATE II: I just checked my stats. At 2:10PM PDT, I already have more unique visitors and hits than I have had on any single day since I started this blog. Welcome, all of those of you who typed Cho Seung-Hui into a search engine.

UPDATE III: I’m done arguing in the comments section, at least for today. I just did a lengthy phone interview with Newsweek, and my comments may appear in a story there in the next couple of days. I’ve got a gym to hit and papers to grade…

More on white privilege, reparations, and the sins of our ancestors: a rambling response to Carl

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 27, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity, Family and Memories
. 38 Comments

Carl at Young Anabaptist Radicals found several things troubling about my “Dukes don’t emigrate” post last week. He posted a couple of comments below my piece, and then wrote his own lengthy response here.

In my comments section, I had written:

We need to be honest about the mistakes of our ancestors. We also need to see those mistakes in a historical context, and avoid the tendency to mythologize and glamorize those who were the victims of colonization. Cruelty is a human universal, and sin — at least the capacity for sin — is found in every tribe and nation under the sun. Collectively, some have inflicted both more harm (and perhaps more good) than others.

Carl, politely but firmly, found that response wanting:

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard something along the lines of “cruelty is a human universal” from white people as a blanket dismissal of the idea that Euro-American culture might have anything significant to learn from indigenous people. Same goes for the tired bit about “don’t mythologize the victims of colonization.” You don’t have to be a romanticizing, mythologizing, self-hating fool to be willing to simply look at another culture and say, “You know, I value many of the things my ancestors taught me. But I think these folks have some things figured out about how to live on this earth that my ancestors once knew, but lost somewhere along the way.” In my experience, the resistance to this idea is huge - and the cliches in your paragraph are a key piece of that resistance.

That’s fair enough. I’m quite prepared to believe that indigenous groups in the Third World had “ways of seeing” nature and reality that were — and perhaps still are — immensely valuable. I don’t know how well I live out that conviction in my own life, however. Sure, I go to the health food store and stock up on homeopathic, “natural” remedies that were (so the advertisers say) the secrets of indigenous peoples. In recent years, I’ve spent lots of time with my wife’s family in rural Colombia, enjoying their “simpler”, more “pastoral” life. I’m never allowed to do any actual work when I’m on the finca, however. Despite my often sincere attempts to pitch in, my status as a guest (and perhaps, my status as a — comparatively — staggeringly affluent white man) means that despite my protestations, I’m generally waited on and catered to and told to lie in a hammock. Generally, I get a week or two to observe and to witness a different way of being. I come away appreciative for the tremendous hospitality of those who have so little, and filled with gratitude for the extraordinary privileges I have.

I’ve also been on a number of “mission trips” to Mexico, doing the usual things affluent white Christians do down there. Lots of short-term bursts of hard work (hey, I learned how to use a cement mixer in rural Sinaloa a few years ago), lots of prayer, lots of pious and hackneyed sentiment about how we Americans had “so much to learn” from those who “have so little.” Forgive a touch of cynicism, but after you’ve done a couple of these weeks south of the Border with a group of earnest teenagers, it’s hard not to poke a bit of fun. I’m aware, deeply aware, that no matter how much I try to humble myself, I’m still going to be the affluent white man waltzing into an impoverished community for a few days, bringing a bunch of chattering teenagers who come to do just a little bit of work. It’s easy to find oneself slipping into the role of the munificent bwana, filled with self-congratulation because I’ve left behind the air conditioning and the high-thread count sheets for a few days of sweat, dirt, ranchera and frijoles. I do make a sincere effort to avoid that role, but it invariably seems to be thrust upon me. Perhaps I unconsciously insist on playing it.

Carl also deals with the issue of reparations for the “sins of the ancestors”:

Many people talk about privilege and “working for a more equitable society” entirely in the present tense, without any reference to the critical role of accepting _real responsibility_ for the sins of our ancestors. Responsibility in this case means recognizing that we benefit from our ancestors’ sins (i.e. owning slaves, stealing land), and then making things right. This choice has very practical implications. Here in South Dakota, there are plenty of well-meaning white folks who will say, “Yes! Let’s work towards a more equitable society!” The unspoken implication is: become a part of my society, on my terms, and I’ll try to help you get your piece of the pie. There are far fewer white people who are willing to hear Lakota people say “We don’t want your society - we want you to give back the Black Hills that you stole, and then leave us alone.” Doing the latter requires an understanding that the theft of the Black Hills is not ancient history, it’s of critical present-day relevance. Same goes for slavery - it ain’t ancient history, folks. We don’t just need “a more equitable society” - we need to make actual, physical reparations! Until there’s been real recompense, the wounds of the past are still open and bleeding - they are, in fact, the continuing wounds of the present.

I’m not familar with the Lakota struggle (beyond a cursory knowledge from American history classes.) I am curious to know how many of the living Lakota have European ancestry themselves, however. When one is descended from both colonizer and the colonized, isn’t it cherry-picking to identify with only one aspect of your heritage? Isn’t it odd to demand reparations, when that means your mother’s side of the family ends up paying your father’s? Perhaps it isn’t odd at all; I’ll admit I’ve given it remarkably little thought.

As for reparations for slavery and other injustices, fine. On my mother’s side, my ancestors certainly owned slaves. (Though one branch of the family first came to California in the early 1850s, selling their plantation in East Texas and freeing their slaves, following the patriarch’s sudden revelation that slavery was immoral. That’s a feather in our family cap, one we periodically display.) Whatever modest wealth my mother’s side of the family was able to generate was at least in part built on slave labor. Here in California, my great-great grandfather made a living as a lawyer, serving as counsel for the railroads, “foreclosing on widows and orphans”, making money, I acknowledge, on the backs of Chinese laborers. Some of that money (not much) has trickled down to my generation.

Do I feel guilt because my ancestors owned slaves or served as hired legal guns for Southern Pacific? No. Do I admit some of my material benefits may have been connected to those acts of exploitation? Yes. I tithe on what I have and on what I inherit. I vote Democratic and support affirmative action. I am willing to support, with my money and my vote, programs that seek to redress historic inequities. But what else am I supposed to do? Shall I play amateur geneaologist, track down the descendants of slaves my ancestors owned, and send them a check? Shall I demand that we sell the small piece of land my family has owned in the Northern California hills, bought well over a century ago with money derived (in part, not in whole) from the largesse dispensed by the railroads? It was once Ohlone Indian land, and there are no Ohlone left. Shall we find the one or two folks who still have a drop of Ohlone blood, get on our knees, and make a personal and abject apology?

I’m not trying to offend, but I’d like some clear-cut clarification of what is asked of me. I give my first fruits to God and his work. I support government and private programs that seek to offer redress. If you want to raise my taxes to fund a massive reparations program, sure. I’ll write the check gladly. What else is there?

My favorite spot on earth is my family’s ranch in the hills northeast of San Jose. My family has been in those hills since Rutherford B. Hayes was president, and though most of what we once owned has been given to the public park system, a few very small parcels remain in our hands. In our old ranch house, pictures of my great- and great-great and great-great-great grandmothers and fathers hang on the walls and sit upon desks. I love looking at those people I never knew, knowing that they were the ones who crossed the plains in covered wagons, came around the Horn in storm-tossed boats, who longed for something new and bigger and better and different. There is a restlessness in the northern European, WASPy soul; a restlessness I see in my family’s history and in my own life. The longing for the new and the different runs deep in some of us. Call it the “pioneer spirit”. And it is, I fully acknowledge, a mixed legacy. Lord knows, that restlessness runs deep in me.

I love these ancestors of mine. I don’t worship them, but sometimes — as unChristian as it may seem to do so — I talk to them. I walk the hills and canyons of my truest earthly home, and I feel a cloud of witnesses hovering nearby. I talk to old “Albert Alfonso”, who first built the ranch houses. I talk to “aunt Jacqueline”, the family’s near-legendary matriarch. They died before my mother was born, and yet I still feel them to be a part of me, and I feel them most when I am on the land that they loved. Do I judge them perfect, blameless? No. Do I think that the means by which money came into their lives to have been so sordid that it vitiates any other good that they did? Of course not.

Do I know that the land I now call “mine” and “ours” once belonged to a native people, long since wiped from the earth? You bet. Do I grieve that? Yes. But will renouncing my heritage, giving up that land, right an ancient wrong? No. I don’t believe it. Perhaps I don’t want to believe it.

“Dukes don’t emigrate”: more OKOP/NOKOP reflections, and wincing at the use of the term “upper-class”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 22, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity and Pasadena City College
. 29 Comments

Here at Pasadena City College, we have an excellent theater department. Here’s the press release for the newest production:

Follow a year in the lives of six upper-class friends through a series of holiday-themed parties as the Pasadena City College Performing and Communication Arts Division proudly presents “The Country Club,” which opens on Friday, March 23, in PCC’s Sexson Auditorium.
Playwright Douglas Carter Beane’s comedy-drama tells the story of a young and charmingly neurotic woman who retreats from a failed marriage and decides to go back to her upper-class hometown in Pennsylvania. There, she finds love, friendships, and tragedies. The play consists of nine scenes and evolves around different holidays.

“This ‘dramady’ reflects the typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant domain of the upper-class,” said Duke Stroud, PCC professor and director of the play. “It’s a portrait of dysfunctional relationships, which are funny and dramatic at the same time.”

(Note: I’ve explained OKOP and NOKOP here, and I now have a whole specific archive dealing with class.)

I know nothing about the play, and I doubt I’ll be able to get a chance to see it. But the press release, which I read yesterday, got under my skin instantly. You see, I hate the use of the phrase “upper class” to describe American families.

I grew up in culture that described itself as “upper-middle class”. And in the WASP circles of my youth and my family background, I certainly encountered plenty of remarkably well-to-do people. I know the world of “clubs” fairly well, and though that world holds relatively little interest for me today, it’s still quite familiar. (Or as John Bradshaw would write it, family-ar). And here’s the thing: if there’s one maxim “our kind of people” all agreed on, it was that talking explicitly and publicly about class was prima facie evidence that you lacked it. Nothing could be more more NOKOP than to describe anything, be it a social gesture or a fashion accessory, as “classy.” Once, while at a family luncheon, I used the term “classy” to describe the play of one of John McEnroe’s opponents (we had just watched a Wimbledon match on television.) From the reaction of a few of my older relatives, you would think I had dropped the f-bomb. “I think you want to say that his behavior was ‘gentlemanly’, dear” one of my elders advised me. Another suggested that “sporting” would have been an even more appropriate choice. I was about 14, and just starting to get the picture: we don’t talk about class.

And even worse than calling something “classy”? Referring to the existence of an American “upper-class.” I was raised to believe that the only authentic upper-class that exists is to be found in Europe. As one hired geneaologist famously told my great-aunt Carmen when she speculated that we had many aristocratic forebears, “Mrs. Starr, dukes don’t emigrate.” “Dukes don’t emigrate” became the standard bon mot we all used (and still do) whenever anyone speaks of an upper class in the United States. As far as we’re concerned, we maintain the satisfying fiction that almost all are middle class: there’s lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle. And the less said specifically about these strata, the better.

To be really honest, I feel protective of the very sort of people the press release from our theater department seems to disparage. I’ve reread it a couple of times, and it’s not particularly offensive (save for the wince-inducing use of “upper class”). But here’s the really blunt truth: there are very few folks on this campus — faculty, staff, students — who come from a WASPy upper-middle class background. On at least one side of my family, I do. And part of me feels as if this play (about which I know zilch) is going to caricature a culture that I value. And those doing the caricaturing on stage will, on this campus that is over 80% non-white, be those who know little or nothing about the culture they lampoon.

It’s embarrassing to cop to this. Frankly, I’m prepared to believe that there’s a certain element of both classism and racism in my response. And Lord knows, despite years and years of teaching at a diverse urban community college, despite living in a glorious, successful, interracial marriage, I still struggle with my own bigotry, my own elitism. I am not proud of it, and I continue to work spiritually and psychologically to overcome whatever vestiges of prejudice remain in my soul.

The “WASPy country-club set” don’t need me to defend them. Yes, I continue to maintain quite seriously that we don’t have an authentic “upper-class” in this country. I continue to feel uncomfortable when others discuss what sort of behaviors or clothing choices are “classy” or not. But my intellectual and political training tells me that there’s no point in defending those who have had the greatest access to power and privilege in our nation’s relatively brief history. My commitment to justice and equality tells me that there is much in what I call my heritage that is ugly, oppressive, elitist, emotionally stunted and whoppingly superficial. There is also, as I’ve posted before, much that is joyous and good. (Read my “Happy WASP boy”.)

And I may have to swallow my own issues, and go see this play.

UPDATE: I’m reminded that nearly a century ago, my great-great grandfather wrote and privately published his memoirs. Speaking of ancestry, he wrote something lovely that is quoted as often as the “dukes don’t emigrate” line. A.A. Moore said in 1915:

Children, let your modest pride be this: you come of sturdy stock.

I love that. Even if I suspect it’s a reference to the fact that many of us are big-boned.

A very long post about Los Angeles, an Eagles song, nationalism, history, self-reinvention and the “club versus country” debate

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 30, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity, Favorite posts 2007, Memories, People, Politics, Race, Sports and Traveling
. 7 Comments

A week ago Sunday, my buddy Leo and I ran up the El Prieto trail and the Brown Mountain fire road. Though we’re usually part of a larger group, we were alone that day. Leo was recovering from a marathon, and I was feeling well-rested, so I was actually able to keep up with him for a change. (In his late 50s, Leo still regularly runs marathons just above the three hour mark and has finished his share of 50 and 100-mile races).

We talked about books, history, ideas. When I run with some friends, we talk about love and marriage and family; when I run with others, I argue politics or theology. A few friends, like Leo, are interested in all of these topics and more. In an early morning chill, we began by reflecting together on the burden of the past.

Leo was born just after the Second World War into a Polish refugee family. He was raised in West Germany. Much like my late father, a dozen years his senior, Leo has that sense that many war refugees have — a sense of never quite belonging, a sense that perhaps at any moment, he might have to pack his bags and leave again. My father, born in Vienna, raised in rural Berkshire, spent nearly fifty years of his life in California without ever truly feeling at home here. He didn’t feel fully at home in Austria or England either. Leo and my Dad knew each other, and were fond of each other. When I got married a year and a half ago, they spoke German together at our wedding.

But we didn’t just talk about my Dad or about Leo’s similar sense of not quite belonging. We talked about the San Gabriel Mountains we both love so much. As we neared the Brown Mountain summit, I said to Leo “Isn’t it interesting to think we are the only members of our family ever to be here? None of our ancestors ever stood where we are standing right now.”

“Yes”, Leo replied, “it’s liberating.”

And I’ve been thinking about that for nine days now. I’m a historian by trade, of course; I have devoted my scholarly and professional life to the study of the past. I’m a dual national, holding a UK passport, and am a regular visitor to the land that gave my father’s family shelter and the land my brother calls home. I love to visit what some folks call “old places”, filled with a rich sense of history. When I tramp through the hills of Devon, or run through the streets of Vienna, I feel as if I am surrounded by ghosts. Not evil spirits, mind — just an extraordinary cloud of witnesses of all who have lived and died in these places. And when I am in those places where my ancestors lived, I feel the weight of their fears and their hopes and their expectations all around me. It’s not always unpleasant, but it’s always there.

Even when I go home to Northern California, I feel surrounded by a sense of family history. On my mother’s side, my family came to the Bay Area for the Gold Rush more than a century and a half ago. We’ve had a country place in the hills northeast of San Jose since Rutherford Hayes was president; by the standards of this state, that’s some ancient history. My maternal great-grandfathers both went to Berkeley, and when I was a student at Cal nine decades later, I felt them all around me. Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is a wonderful feeling to feel so connected to a place. But at other times, it is exhausting in ways I find difficult to describe.

What makes me a Los Angeleno in my mindset is my fascination with self-reinvention. I love that I am surrounded by hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, who call somewhere else their truest home — but have nonetheless come here, to this basin with its beaches and valleys and hills — in order to start something new. They’ve come here to escape the burdens and obligations of the past, the sort that linger in the old places even after the old people have gone. They’ve come here to escape the “things are the way they are” mindset. They’ve come here to replace the fatalism and superstition of the old places with a relentless optimism about their own potential and the possibility of global transformation. They’ve come here to get away from the ghosts of Holocausts and World Wars and rigid class distinctions. They’ve come here to run on mountain trails upon which their ancestors never set foot.

(I’m listening to the Eagles “The Last Resort” right now on Itunes. Appropriate.)

As I’ve said, I love to visit the old places. My doctorate is in medieval history, for heaven’s sake; I spent many happy hours doing research in the shadow of my favorite building in the western world, Durham Cathedral. But it’s not just the damp and gloom of old Europe that makes me glad I live in this sprawling, metastasizing megalopolis. It’s the sense that I always get in the old places that humans and animals are limited and constrained by the story of the past. (As the Eagles sing in the song to which I’m listening: “where the Old World shadows hang heavy in the air.”) Their sense of themselves is related not only to place, but to the past story of the place. And just below the surface, there often bubbles a raw xenophobic nationalism that I find fascinating but repugnant.

Leo and I talked a lot about nationalism and place and history. We both love soccer, and we both are World Cup fans who go pretty nuts every four years. But especially after this last World Cup, I’ve begun to have some misgivings about “country” based sporting events. In professional football of the world kind, one great conflict that always comes up is the “club” versus “country” debate. When English players are playing for Premiership teams and training for a major international event, it’s hardly feasible for them to be 100% present for both sets of obligations. (Think of how angry folks in Newcastle are over the injury that an overworked and exhausted Michael Owen sustained last summer while playing for England in Germany.) The traditional wisdom is that athletes should put country over club, national pride over transitory professional obligations. I disagree completely.

I watched the England-Portugal World Cup quarterfinal match last summer in a state of grief and rage. My father, whose family had been rescued from Hitler by English generosity, had died days earlier. And England played a piss-poor match that they deserved to lose. But I, a dual national in SoCal, found myself working myself up into a nationalistic frenzy while watching the game. Under my breath, I said several embarrassing things about the entire Portuguese nation; my rage at a certain Cristian Ronaldo turned quickly into a temporary fury at all things Lusitanian. I calmed down within minutes, but from reading the BBC’s message boards after the game, I know that others were not so restrained. The racist bile that flowed last summer was appalling.

I’ve decided I prefer “club” soccer now. Though I am no fan of Manchester United, I love that Wayne Rooney and his nemesis, Ronaldo, play together. I love seeing a Premiership side take the pitch with eleven players with nearly as many passports. In the mercenary act of playing for pay rather than for national pride, these men do more to advance the cause of peace and understanding than they do when they wear their country’s jerseys on a global stage. Even when nation-based matches are played with mutual respect between the players, the fans themselves are often whipped into emotional frenzies in which ancient bigotries suddenly and shockingly reemerge.

I have my allegiances in sports. I “hate” the Dallas Cowboys. I “hate” Arsenal (of the London clubs, I support Spurs). But those aren’t ethnic hatreds. To put it bluntly, there’s a world of difference between cursing “those f-ing Gunners” after another loss in the North London derby, and cursing “those f-ing wogs” after England loses to a nation whose players (for the most part) have much darker skin than those who wear three Lions on their chests. Club rivalries have notoriously led to violence, but not to wars. In a club rivalry, you shout insults at another fan because of what he wears; in national rivalries, you shout insults because of who he is. There’s no question that the latter is more dangerous. (Now, OKOP don’t shout insults. Our disappointment is subdued, masked, drowned behind thin smiles and private tears. NOKOP rage is public, ours is sublimated.)

(Parenthetical aside: One of the things I love about Los Angeles: we don’t have an NFL team. Here’s an American football fan hoping we never get one! How delicious to live in a city where everyone’s allegiances are elsewhere! I get a smug satisfaction from living in a place that doesn’t need a team to call its own, but can rely on quirky whims to select which club to root for. My youth group kids are holding a Super Bowl party; some will root for the Colts and others for the Bears, but their allegiances are based on uniform colors or affection for a particular player rather than a loyalty to place. I like that.)

But even as I write this this morning, I know better than to claim that I live beyond history. My fascination with “personal growth” and transformation, my longing for new beginnings, my personal narrative of starting over — this is part of my own family’s legacy. What prosperity and success we have had comes from good luck (we got here first and stole more), but also from something that may be coded into our DNA: a longing to go further and further west. Pioneers and survivors are in my blood; I am descended from those who were willing to leave rather than stay. (This brings to mind a snippet from a Caedmon’s Call song: “I come from a long line of leavers.”) I am descended from those whose fascination with the new trumped their loyalty to the old. It would be hubris to suggest that I am the first in a long line to want to start over somewhere new, to liberate myself from old rules and old obligations and old animosities.

Leo and I had a good run that Sunday. And yes, we talked about all of this and more.