the NCTE, the organization that stages most events in English and Composition studies, posted this in regards to this year’s Convention on College Composition and Communication that is scheduled to happen in Kansas City.
I posted this on Facebook, in response, after seeing the article on a friend’s page.
If it’s too expensive to move the conference, how expensive to NCTE would it be if nobody showed up?
Any of you with me? Let’s have our own conference someplace safe. The field of English studies written wide wants to talk about how much it cares about diversity and inclusion, but it’s funny how when we really need support for that, so many of those loud voices get quiet and worry about the cost of being supportive. Doing the right thing might not be cost effective, but not doing the right thing because of money is simply doing the wrong, selfish thing.
I didn’t go, or present, at the Houston Cs, though I sent help to the people I was going to present with. I felt bad backing out of that event, and I took hell for protesting it, I won’t continue to support our field showing that all it really cares about is money.
Put up or shut up, colleagues. This is absolutely shameful. To say “oh, you might not be safe, but it’d cost us so much to move the event,” is a very Trump-Era way of saying “you don’t matter as much as the money.”
You don’t get a cent of mine until you change up. No dues. No conference fees. If you’ll move the conference, I’d gladly pay more, to see that you respect and care about everyone. Or maybe you should just cancel the conference and do that work online. Bank the money you save to put on a conference in a place that isn’t full of violence and hate next year.
And we come face-to-face with a very serious issue that is like walking on eggshells floating on lava over spikes: this is a real thing, but the discourse around it has to be highly produced and machined. No one is going to say, outright, “well, this isn’t a problem for our white members, so…” but that’s essentially what the sentiment means. I don’t mean that as a crack on the people who organized CCCC this year. I don’t doubt that they share the concerns many of us have about how diverse populations are treated by the organization. But NCTE is built like the classic Ivory Tower of academia. They know they can do pretty much whatever they want, because beyond the need for publication (and they have the most important venue for that in our field, too), presence at NCTE events and being accepted to present and share is part-and-parcel of being taken seriously as an academic in English studies.
But I want to lay some of their methods bare. Three things that happened to me illustrate perfectly how the structure of NCTE doesn’t care about diversity:
- Years ago, I started a race and technology caucus, mainly because I was tired of people saying “There’s Adam Banks” any time I talked about diversity in professional writing/tech comm. There is Adam Banks. He’s awesome. But if you stop your list at one, you haven’t shown me that there’s enough representation, because I can name two white guys that are more highly read and regarded than Adam Banks without going more than ten names down my Facebook friends list. but my caucus was placed in the same meeting time as all the other diversity caucuses and against the diversity awards recognition ceremony. In other words it mattered enough– after I begged– to let us have a caucus and to let us meet, but we had to try to steal people from other events. That caucus died, during the Houston CCCC. More on that in a moment.
- A few years back– it’s been a little while now– the theme of the conference called for ideas that were in-part Indigenous. I proposed what would have been an amazing panel on games and representation and mascots and identity. Except it was rejected. From a CCCC that was chaired by someone who I studied with. Not that she did the rejecting; when I told her, she told me that no one had ever even mentioned my proposal to her. A few years later the theme related to activism, and my proposal to have a panel that was like the sponsored “action” sessions was rejected for not being “innovative” according to the comments. It wouldn’t have mattered, though, because:
- When CCCC was in Houston, it was happening amid the LGBT law issues that plagued Texas that year. I refused to attend, which wasn’t a big deal because all I was doing was a workshop (since my panel was rejected and my caucus was pretty much dead in the water). I took it on the chin from a number of people in my field for lambasting NCTE in public and making a big deal of not going. Apparently non-violent protest should be silent protest, and then, at some point, is it even protest?
Here’s what I posted just before that CCCC:
I chose to skip CCCC, the “big event” in comp/rhet for the year. I made this choice knowing that a group of my colleagues would have to pick up my slack for what I am sure was an amazing teaching workshop (I’m so thankful to them for understanding) and knowing that my special interest group meeting might fall apart.
The theme this year for the conference is “Writing Strategies for Action.” One of the strategies of action—be it considered a way of writing/communicating directly or not—is protest. And one of the best ways to protest something is to not give it your money and time.
I am not at odds with Cs as an institution. I do feel that far too many people I know who do writing for action—particularly people of color — were rejected from the program, but I respect the organization embracing the spirit of generating social action. And while there was an officer resignation that I’d like to hear more about because it troubles me, I still deeply respect Cs as a conference and NCTE as an organization.
I chose not to attend the conference because of the political climate in Houston. I’m not happy at all with the defeat of the HERO bill, which I’m sure many of you have heard about and which I know forces are working to save. But what it represents bothers me more. I’m a Cherokee who is often in the middle of an identity tug-of-war: on the one hand, I’m not “Cherokee enough” for some (including some in our field), but on the other I’m clearly not white. Because of this, I’ve been aware for the longest time of how important it is that those of us who are in any way marginalized or outcast to band together. To see that the diversity communities in Houston are at odds, and that because of that tension a law to protect people who just want to be who they are was voted down, is unacceptable to me. And that people don’t want to protect others because they’re afraid of who will use their restroom is idiocy on a level that I cannot abide.
There was noise about this, on mailing lists and on social media. The majority of people seemed to think “oh, we have to go and try to do our thing.” And that’s fine—I respect my colleagues who made that choice. But I see it differently. And I know that my not attending is a triviality, and that to some I probably seem like a flake for bailing on the conference. I’m not important to the field in ways that will make my absence resonate. I’m not someone that crowds were going to gather for. But still, in my mind NOT giving money and time to Houston was the correct choice. For our conference to pour huge amounts of money into Houston’s economy to talk about activist writing while the city is resisting social justice just feels wrong to me. I could not contribute to that.
I want to stress, I have zero sense of judgment for anyone who did attend– I applaud you all who are there for contributing to the valuable discourse in our field. I just couldn’t abide giving money and time to the city of Houston myself, and at the end of the day, I have to deal with the voice in my own head when I go to sleep, so I obey it.
If you were one of the people who was going to attend the Race and Tech caucus, and no one else stepped up to lead the discussion, email me and I’ll develop an online plan-of-action for us.
And if you were among my colleagues who handled the Indigenous Caucus Teaching workshop, I thank you for understanding my position. You are all amazing people, and I love you.
If you were hoping to see me in Houston, sorry to miss you. I’ll be living on the air here in Cincinnati if you need me. And I’m always here to talk.
12 of my colleagues acknowledged that post. One even responded by pointing out to me that since he was a fellow large man with a beard from MSU people thought he was me. Good to know for me, and for him, that all anyone remembers about either of us is fat/beard/Michigan State. But I digress.
Funny side note: the officer I mentioned in that piece is one of the only people I’ve name dropped here on my blog.
But here’s the thing, for me, in this whole situation. I was still “kind of” in an English department when I wrote that bit about the CCCC in Houston. I needed to be a part of that discourse community for my career.
I work in a College of Creative Arts now, and my actual job description is that I’m an Assistant Professor of Game Theory and Design.
Let me put that another way…
I don’t have to, as Jon Snow refused this past week, bend the knee. I no longer need to show that I’m involved in CCCC to be considered “relevant” as a scholar in my field. That field didn’t want me as bad as another (which is to say that field sort of violently expelled me and I landed on my feet because I work somewhere that “gets” it). I have new things I have to be involved in. But not NEEDING NCTE means that I can be as blunt as I’ve wanted to be. You all need to do better. You just do. The efforts you’ve made to include anything new, anyone different, anything that might make people who don’t gush over classical Western rhetoric feel welcome are pathetic. You need to make people feel welcome.
That caucus I started, the one that you starved out because you couldn’t dream up a way to let it meet at another time… when it did meet, all of the people who came (all people of color other than my wife, and she has to live with me, so she gets to be included) felt three things, universally: 1. Alienated, 2. Ignored 3. Unsafe talking about it.
When people are scared in a room full of people of color to talk about being uncomfortable as a person of color, your organization is close to lethal on the “oppression” scale. Now bear in mind, I’m not claiming there’s a racist conspiracy in NCTE. There isn’t… I don’t think.
What there is, however, is a blind eye turned to the institutional problems created by the field and a wholesale, all-in endorsement of the way things are done.
NCTE isn’t interested in increasing the visibility of diversity. It’s not interested in insuring the safety of its members (unless they’re IMPORTANT members; my understanding is that they cater to the important members). And that’s just sad. I mean they’ll tell you that they are. But look at their actions. Where has it happened? When?
I am going to make myself available to all my friends who are hoping to be involved with CCCC, and I will lend all my tech knowledge and network/remote education know-how and tricks to the cause. I hope NCTE will try to do something to make people feel like they care more about people than they do about money.
But there’s no chance in hell you find me in Kansas City, paying for hotels and food and conference fees. There’s no way I renew my dues with NCTE. Too many people need CCCC for their careers, but I don’t anymore. So I can extend to it the same courtesy it has extended to me. I’ll listen, and I’ll do the absolute least I can do, but I’m not offering any actual support, not going out of my way to help the NCTE, until I see an effort made.
Stand up, everyone. That’s enough lying down on the job.
And if you’re one of the people who told me years ago to “be careful” talking bad about CCCC, kindly spare me this time. I mean what will happen? I’ll make them dislike me, and because of what I say they might not be sympathetic to my cause?