A first-person account of race and yoga is making the social media rounds. In it a self-described thin white woman notices a black woman in yoga class and has an existential crisis about envy, big bodies, and race. It’s one of the oddest autoethnographic attempts I’ve read in some time. The title is sensationalist butRead More “Why We Want To Be White Women”
Monthly Archives: January 2014
Academic Cowards and Why I Don’t Write Anonymously
The short answer is that when I started writing publicly I was too stupid to choose to do so anonymously. The longer answer takes a little back fill. There is a lot to be angry about these days. I think there’s even an official book of all the things we should be angry about atRead More “Academic Cowards and Why I Don’t Write Anonymously”
The New Black Codes
That’s all I’m talking about here on NPR in a discussion of David Brooks’ idyllic moralizing on pot and the harsh reality of petty crimes derailing the life chances of African Americans in this country. I talk about this concept a great deal in my undergraduate classes. I also have a paper making the roundsRead More “The New Black Codes”
Eating in School Cafeterias Isn’t Apartheid and Other Things I Shouldn’t Have to Tell Grown People
There is a troubling pattern of racialized rhetoric to education activism. The latest to come to my attention is from Grant Wiggins, president of Authentic Education. He begins the short post with a definition of apartheid and ends it by making a parallel to teachers having separate eating and bathroom facilities from students. I’m notRead More “Eating in School Cafeterias Isn’t Apartheid and Other Things I Shouldn’t Have to Tell Grown People”
Wacky Weed, Tacky Racism: The HigherEd Dead End
I will live a long time and not forgive the Internet for making me read David Brooks’ New York Times weed opus. If you missed it, I apologize in advance. This week David Brooks responded to Colorado’s recent decriminalization of marijuana with a retrospective on his own experience smoking the wacky tobacky. In “Weed —Read More “Wacky Weed, Tacky Racism: The HigherEd Dead End”
Dude, Where’s The Race in Your Class Analysis of HigherEd?
A key status marker of any profession is engagement in fights about the state of said profession. For the past few weeks a particularly public fight about adjuncts and academia has been waged across blogs, online media and social media. I do not want to jump into that debate. I do not have a dogRead More “Dude, Where’s The Race in Your Class Analysis of HigherEd?”