Note if this post looks odd: I’m trying out a new keyboard. So far, I think I like it, but it’s a little odd. It has shorter mechanical keys for a quicker response time. It’s meant to be a typing delight. I’ll report back in a few days on that. I mainly grabbed it because my Black Widow is NOT easy to take on the road (nor is my PC laptop, but… you know how it is).
Today the CCCC executive committee released its “decision” about the conference in Kansas City. Much like the LeBron James decision special, it had the feel of someone who wanted to act like he was doing a good thing but was actually selling out.
Here’s a link to the statement online.
Just a note before I go deeper into this reflection: this is the last I’ll have to say about this topic. The statement the executive committee offered reads like it reads, and it says, in the end, what I think most of us who were opposed to this conference happening as it was planned expected. There’s a lot of pretty words, but there’s no change. I don’t feel like this is a fight worth my energy given the way it has broken so far.
But it offends me deeper, and to explain why it offends me deeper, I want to share a story. As some of you know– like if you read here or talk to me or didn’t somehow end up here by Googling CCCC– I am no longer employed by an English department. I work in a program called the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies, and I primarily teach game writing, game design and digital and visual rhetorics. There might be some debate about why I’m no longer in an English department (I was stolen away, I was given a better option, I was given more respect), all of which are true, but the reality of why I’m no longer in an English department is that the conservative mentality (I don’t mean Trump conservative– I mean actually resistant to change) of English departments and my desire to actually do valuable, productive forward-looking work clash dramatically. I’m made to look as combative as this blog post is, when in reality I’ve always bent over backward to be the best possible employee and colleague in spite of that not always coming back to me.
Allow me to give you the example that reading the statement from CCCC reminded me of. A few years ago, while I was still in contention for a tenure line position in the English department where I worked (it was looking to be a lock; we won’t talk about how that went sideways), I was part of a day-long retreat our department hosted. As a part of the retreat, we were split into smaller action groups. One of those was on diversity and race– I wasn’t in that one. I was placed on the one tasked with re-thinking department governance, logically the best place for the social justice minded Cherokee. The diversity group would later talk about how we needed to cherish the diversity of all the people in our department (from the white one speaking to the three white ones looking at her, to the white one applauding this idea, to the Native guy scoffing in the corner). But that’s not what offended me.
In my group, one of the things we noted as a problem for our governance was that we had too many overlapping or outright outmoded committees. I suggested that we recommend what to prune. Then a full professor in the group said “we really need a committee for that.”
In disbelief, in the sarcastic nature that is who I am, I said “do you realize your innovative way to fix us having too many committees was to form another committee? Isn’t that the problem?”
And no one saw my side. In fact when I raised this issue to the larger body when we reconvened, I got the side-eye and afterward I got a gentle lecture about why speaking poorly of committees is bad form.
That stuck with me, because it still represents the problem with much of education, the thing I want to see the new generation fix. The core mechanics of the academy are to repeat what we did before, over and over and over and over. We are that cliche of the group that doesn’t know its history and is doomed to repeat it. If we failed with a committee, a committee to investigate that failure should lead to crafting the right committee, because that’s all we know how to do. We form committees.
So here’s why that came to mind as I read the CCCC statement. Let me offer you a few quotes:
” In making a decision about the Convention, we have chosen to go to Kansas City and use our commitment to justice, our opposition to inequity and injustice, our passion, and our financial resources to make our presence and those commitments known.”
Translation (a translation– feel free to disagree, as I’m not being generous at all right now and I know it): “we decided to do what we were going to do anyway, only now we’re going to say even louder how much we believe in justice. Like we have before about every issue. But we don’t want to actually change. That would be hard and might cost us resources. We just want to talk about how important justice is to us while going to a place filled with injustice.”
Okay, I’m being hard on them. Let’s take that at face value and assume they have good plans. Here comes the gut punch. Next they wrote:
“This will not be ‘conferencing as usual.’ ”
Good! That seems like a positive move. But what will be different?
Next sentence says: ” We will transform the Convention beginning immediately…”
Alright! Let’s see what new ideas we have!
The sentence continues, ” with the creation of the task force…”
Oh.
We’re making a new committee. A brand spanking new committee.
Because the committees we have did such a great job handling this.
And that’s why this is pointless. There will never be real change with an organization like CCCC, and sadly, most people knew that when we started complaining about the meeting in Kansas City. Deep down, I knew it, too. But I have this weird double-bind where I am outraged but I have faith in people. I thought this might be the time, this might be the moment. I also wanted to see how it felt to verbalize this and see who came to me/at me.
The writing was on the wall– literally on my Facebook wall– when the elder set of scholars started chin-checking me about raising my voice, painting me as being disrespectful and “throwing shade” because I wanted to call out the fact that nothing was being done. This wasn’t going to be a wholesale change, a new leaf, if even the people who should support the idea of change were siding dramatically with the silent majority. I knew that this act if resistance had little traction. I did get the ear of a few people, but not enough. No one cares about a young scholar the field ejected. And almost the second the post hit my timeline people were starting to try to ad hominem me into the ground. Just for reference, if someone hits you with an ad hominem attack, the odds are good that you’re in the right. Otherwise they’d just come for your ideas and not for you personally. Not that all of us who work as rhetoric professors know that and could identify what was happening. I didn’t take it personal. I actually admired that people as relatively important as the ones doing it were scared enough of my words to take the time to attack me. I didn’t think I was that important, and I live in me.
There’s a line in the rap song “Forgot About Dre” that comes to mind:
I ain’t having that/this is the millennium of Aftermath/there ain’t gonna be nothing after that/so give me one more platinum plaque/then fuck rap/you can have it back
Or more to the spirit of how I feel, this line from Run the Jewels, the rap group I used in part to frame the proposal I am certain CCCC will reject (and which I won’t get to present anyway because unlike the CCCC Exec committee, I am not willing to go to Kansas City and pour money into their economy to faux engage with their community and gladhand).
In the track “A Report to the Shareholders,” El-P raps:
It’s all jokes and smoke ’till the truth start schemin’/Can’t contain my disdain for y’all demons/You talk clean and bomb hospitals/So I speak with the foulest mouth possible/And I drink like a Vulcan losing all faith in the logical/I will not be confused for docile/I’m free, motherfuckers/I’m hostile
I sincerely hope that CCCC goes off well, that everyone is safe, and that the field has a chance to come together. And no offense to my friends, to the people I’ve met who I won’t out here that fought the good fight, to the people who shared their pain and confusion and frustration with me. I feel for all of you, I really do, and I promise I’m not trying to be a disrespectful jerk about it. But I’m not going to sugar coat it and pat the powers-that-be on the back. This is a swing and a miss, and it’s the last one I want to be a party to, seeing as there are other places for me to devote my energy.
I’m done. There ain’t gonna be nothing after that, so give me one more panel rejection, then fuck Cs, you can have it back.
I’m going to let English studies be English studies and accept that there isn’t a place for a person like me there. It’s fine. I imagine this is the sound a tree falling in the woods while only my wife and a few close friends are there to hear it. The sound is my anger. It’s a gift.
I have a place where I belong, where no one makes me feel like I should be afraid to speak my mind. And that place asked me to work on helping raise awareness of diversity, so I’m going to do that. I know when I’m not welcome. I’ll show myself the door.
Peace out.