Typhoon Sendong hits Cagayan de Oro

Take a moment and watch this horrifying video that shows the power of the flooding Cagayan de Oro (CDO). For those of you unfamiliar with this part of the Philippines, it's in the north central section in a province called Misamis Oriental. While the RP is hit annually by a barrage of typhoons and heavy rain, CDO is generally spared due to geography and the jet stream. It's a port city--right on the water--and no one was prepared for this typhoon, which hit unsuspecting residents in the middle of the night. Those of you so inclined can donate to the Philippines Red Cross here: http://www.redcross.org.ph/donate. Please share this message far and wide.

How to Write a Dissertation

Hello everyone,

Recently, my friend Tony Normore and I facilitated a writing workshop for the UCEA Jackson Scholars Program in Pittsburgh. We crammed a lot into a relatively brief session and I think it went pretty well. Doing that session made me revisit a brief book chapter I wrote for Ray Calabrese and Page Smith's excellent book, The faculty mentor’s wisdom: Conceptualizing, writing and defending the dissertation. It's a quick little set of tips for writers written in a lighthearted way, but I think there is also some useful stuff in there that may apply to writers from many walks of life. In any event, here are the points from my chapter:

How to Write Your Dissertation: A Top Ten List!

I offer the following list having reflected on my own experience as a dissertation-writer and on my experiences chairing and serving students on dissertation committees. Admittedly (and unabashedly), I’m having a bit of fun with my charge of offering advice to students in the form of a top ten list. 

10. Know what a high-quality dissertation looks like. Before you begin, take the time to find several exemplars—examples of outstanding works you can use for inspiration and guidance. In particular, make sure to look for exemplars that (a) focus on a similar topic to the one you have chosen, (b) employ similar research methods to those you have chosen, and (c) are considered high-quality both in your department or at a national/international level. Points “a” and “b” will help inform the way you construct arguments, how you substantiate your claims, and how you understand how much detail to include in your work. Point “c” will help you understand what success looks like, both in your program area and on a national-international level. There are many dissertation awards that list outstanding works, but make sure you also ask your mentors and fellow students for good, close-to-home examples that don’t have a blue ribbon stuck on the cover. 

9. There must be synergy between all parts of your dissertation. One of the most common mistakes I see in dissertations is a disconnection between the various chapters and sections. For example, I read about teacher professional development in the literature review and then in the findings I find that all of the sudden I’m reading about gender dynamics of the superintendency. Not all are this dramatic, of course, but I find some level of this disconnection in nearly every supposedly final dissertation draft I’ve read. This is in part due to the fact that students are often encouraged to write chapters in isolation; they write one chapter and then move on to the next. To be sure, this is a completely appropriate and logical way to begin, but there is a crucial step missing if that is all you do—you must seek and create synergy between extant literature, methods, findings and the discussion—they must be in concert. To help ensure this synergy, after you have written a draft of all chapters, re-read them out of sequence; read chapter one and five together, read chapter two and four together, etc. Ask yourself—are there clear links here? Is it obviously part of same study? Am I introducing superfluous ideas that don’t have a logical place in the final manuscript? There should be an overall coherence and consistency throughout the work. 

8. Know yourself as a writer. As writers, we all have strengths and weaknesses and it is important to concretely assess what these are. Some of us are great technical writers, with a firm grasp of mechanics, grammar, and construction. Others are “big-idea” writers, able to synthesize a great deal of information, understand intricate theories, or see the broad implications of the work beyond what is readily apparent. Conversely, some of us are poor grammarians and some folks can write a part of the whole but have a tough time putting it all together. Of course, this list goes on and on—some people write quickly, some slowly; some write well in the morning and others past midnight; some do their best work when they receive constant feedback throughout the process and others need prolonged isolation; some write well with a good cup of coffee and others after a beer. Guess what? People with each of these styles are world-class writers. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to writing and it is important for you to find what works for you. You are unique, and regardless of your weaknesses, if you build on your strengths and find a rhythm that works, you can be a successful writer. 

7. Establish and cultivate a multi-tiered and a multi-purpose support network. It is important to take stock of the forms of support and resources available to you through your university and in your extant support network. Keep in mind that the person you meet over lunch to vent about the week’s frustrations may not be the best person to edit your manuscript. Take stock of your dissertation committee, fellow students and university/community resources. Is there a great editor in your network? Is there someone who understands the literature informing your study? Is there a competent and experienced methodologist at your disposal? Do you know the librarians at your university? Are there writing groups in your college? If you take stock of yourself as a writer (see #6, above) and then take stock of the support network around you, you will likely see strengths and weaknesses—do something about them! As a final note, don’t have the illusion that your dissertation chair is your one-stop-shop for dissertation maintenance and repair. Be clear and critical about that person’s strengths and weaknesses as well, and understand that they are only part of your network, not your entire universe. Can’t find some of these things at your university? Consider establishing them yourself or enlisting support from somewhere else—for example, the “outside” member of my dissertation committee was from another university.  

6. Get organized. This means something different to everyone, but broadly speaking, if you are unorganized you will take longer than you should to finish your dissertation and the quality of your work will suffer. Get a paper filing system, get your computer files into a system that makes sense, make sure your data are in a secure and ordered location, put the date in a header or footer on every draft of your manuscript. Notably, this means that you need to be organized with respect to the document itself and with all paperwork and deadlines for the university, college and department—those dates are your responsibility.  

5. Focus. Print off your research questions and tape them to the wall in full view so you can refer to them as you type. Every single word and sentence you type should ultimately contribute to answering those questions. If you find a section, paragraph, sentence, or word that does not make such a contribution, get rid of it—the delete button is your friend.

4. Don’t just be a scholar, be a productive scholar. Universities are full of smart people who are unable or unwilling to translate their brilliance into scholarly products. If you want to finish your dissertation, don’t work with those people and don’t be that person. Those folks are scholars, but you want to be a productive scholar, and a productive scholar produces. Every time you sit down to work, every time—whether you are reading an article or working on your methodology section, you should have something you can hold in your hand to show for that time. If you haven’t produced something—a paragraph, three pages, a set of notes that correspond to the article you just read, a rough draft, some free writing, etc. then you wasted your time. Sitting in a coffee shop and thinking deep thoughts may be a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but it will not get your dissertation written. If you find you spend your time in an unproductive manner, change your routine, get new friends, write longhand instead of typing—you are in a rut! Do something to get out of it. 

3. Think about the impact of your dissertation on the rest of your life, now and in the future. Some of the best advice I received during my dissertation was from my committee member Bill Ayers, offered over an early-morning coffee in Chicago: “don’t make your family victims of the fact that you chose to be a qualitative researcher.” You can do scholarly work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you let it, this can take a toll on your health, your relationships and your general happiness. Don’t let the dissertation eat your soul or body! Go jogging, take a day off, eat healthful food, laugh, play, appreciate the people in your life, and pay attention to the world outside of those five chapters—these other things are more important than your dissertation. 

2. READ. You must make time to read throughout the dissertation-writing phase and approach that reading with a critical eye. This must be critical reading both of new literature and your own work. Pay attention not only to content, but also to the way in which other authors construct their arguments, support their claims, and make their recommendations. I guarantee you will learn something and you will be able to put it to good use!

1. WRITE. As a former language arts teacher, I’m biased, but I strongly believe that all of the things your elementary and middle school teachers taught you WORK. Use an outline, write a topic sentence and support it with evidence, write something in several ways, use synonyms and antonyms, vary your sentence structure, set deadlines to complete parts of the work and hit them. In part, a scholar’s life is a writer’s life, and there’s no better way to improve as a writer than by writing.

Poverty and Privilege

I'm currently in the Philippines. Malate, a section of Manila near Manila Bay to be precise. The purpose of the trip is business--I'm here to design a research project with Ian Sutherland, a friend of mine who's lived and worked in Manila for many years. What's the nature of the research? There is an (in)famous landfill in Manila called the Smokey Mountains. It's a huge garbage dump where people called "scavengers" pick through the rubbish looking for recyclables or anything else of value that can be used or sold. Here is a video some folks took a few years ago that gives you a sense of some of the basic issues and living conditions. It ends with a pretty moving musical montage:

So...Ian has been involved with some philanthropic organizations who have, over the years, provided aid in the form of various services. Some of the programs are educational, some are feeding programs, others are religious in nature and still others try to address infrastructure of the community. But Ian shared with me that he gets the sense that while the aid programs generally make a short-term difference, they rarely (if ever) facilitate sustainable improvement in the lives of Smokey Mountain's residents. There are of course many reasons this could be--poorly designed programs, programs that are well-designed but that run out of funding, etc. But Ian felt that one thing missing might be a deep understanding of the community's culture--their beliefs, values, norms, dreams, expectations, economic realities, histories and so on. Since these are some of the things I study he reached out to me through a mutual friend and now we're in the Smokey Mountains, trying to design a research project that helps us understand some of these issues.

Here are a few of the things we are trying to consider and that are framing our thinking as we move forward:

1. We recognize that these are a people who deserve to be regarded with the utmost respect and that the purpose of the "project" is not to advance our own careers. It is rather to provide a baseline of research that may help aid workers and policymakers perform their jobs with the utmost care and efficiency. 

2. We recognize that we are not here to "save" anyone, we are here to learn from people who know much more than we ever will about their own lives and to try and represent those perspectives and voices to people whose work should be informed by them, lest they do work AT people (which has been ineffective) and not WITH people (which has rarely been tried).

3. We recognize that we are studying an open glocal system--we are at once looking at a small community in the Philippines while simultaneously learning about larger social, cultural, legal, economic and policy systems that perpetuate inequity throughout the city, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and the world. By intentionally looking at the site through this glocal lens we are hoping to identify a great many points of influence in the multiple systems within the community and the multiple systems that flow into and out of the community in various ways. That is, we hope that this approach yields concrete and useful recommendations and analysis that illuminates some issues and approaches heretofore not explored.

4. People of the Smokey Mountain community (it's actually Smokey Mountain II, as the dump was relocated several years ago) are not the poorest-of-the-poor in the Philippines. They actually, on average, earn a bit more than the poorest people of the Philippines which is part of the dump's attraction for many who move to Manila or are looking to earn a living.

5. As expected, the people we have met are wonderful, optimistic folks. They are, in many respects, typical Filipinos--with an optimistic attitude and warm hearts. They are also people who deserve to live with dignity and in the most healthy conditions possible. There is a lot of work to be done here. 

6. Visiting Smokey Mountain II is a trip into a difficult living and working environment. It's also only a mile or so from the US Embassy and Malate, a modest but prosperous part of Manila. A mile further up the road and you are near Malacañang Palace (presidential palace) and Makati, the wealthiest district of the country full of the latest luxury cars and every creature comfort imaginable. It's difficult to understand why there such inequity...but it's also difficult to understand back home...and it's also difficult to understand back home in Iowa, where there is also tremendous inequity...and it is difficult to reflect on and understand the ways that I am complicit in this inequity, contributing to it...and to what extent we are able to understand these issue in a way that makes a difference.

I could go on an on...and I plan to in future posts. 

Ecologies of Despair: Huge Shopping Malls, Huge Landfills and the ties that bind them

So yesterday I boarded a plane in Des Moines and stopped off in Detroit and Nagoya before finally arriving in Manila at 12:20 in the morning. Ian Sutherland, a new friend (introduced to me by the wonderful Dr. Lisa Kensler of Auburn University), graciously went out of his way to pick me up at the airport. We had a fine chat and then he dropped me off at my hotel, which is overlooking Manila Bay.

It's beautiful, and a new part of the city to me. Though I've been all over Manila, I've only ever stayed in Makati, near the PAEF headquarters--the folks who administer the Fulbright Program in the country. I've been to the US Embassy, which is nearby, but I'm staying up the road a bit in Malate, a part of Metro Manila that used to be known as the Red Light District but in recent times has developed something of a fine cultural flavor, with several little locally-owned restaurants and bars in between Rizal Park, Manila Zoological and Botanical Garden, De La Salle University, the Rizal Sports Complex and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. So...a new adventure for me. But what am I doing here?

I'm here to (a) try and do something important, research-wise, (b) traipse around a huge landfill for two weeks, and (c) do some hard thinking with Ian about what kind of research we can do with the 80,000 or so people who call the landfill home that is helpful rather than exploitative and that might ultimately contribute to better policies, better uses of philanthropic aid, and better living conditions for these "scavengers" as they are commonly called in the RP. Our project grew out of a discussion we started some years ago online about how much money and aid has gone the way of these people but it has never been sustainable and has largely been done AT them rather than WITH them. Our job, put simply (and it isn't at all simple), will be first to listen to them and then to engage in dialogue around issues they identify as important.

There is of course tremendous economic inequity throughout the world and there are three experiences that have compelled me to come back here to begin this work. First, my Fulbright experience changed me forever. It compelled me to rethink and reflect on what I do as a scholar and human being in ways I hadn't before. Many wonderful people opened their arms and hearts to me during my first visit and it touched me in a way that will always be with me. I did research with schools and people in much more dire economic circumstances than anything I have seen to this day. Yet, teach they did and in many instances they taught very well with indigenous teaching materials and little more than determination and instructional know-how. 

Second, I've written a bit about social justice in my work. While I'm proud of what I've done and I think there are a few good ideas in there I feel a space between doing research ON social justice and doing research FOR social justice. I am striving to make this project the latter.

Third, my aforementioned buddy Lisa Kensler invited me to a session a few weeks ago where we discussed ecological systems, sustainability and educational leadership. She facilitated a wonderful session that got me thinking about the ecology of educational systems, environmental systems, cultural systems and economic systems and made me realize that this study HAS to be about BOTH the microsystems within the scavenger community and the macrosystems that create and sustain the conditions in which they live.

Daunting? Yes.

Necessary? Yes.

If we are ever going to understand the ecology that includes the scavengers of Manila, the rural poor of Iowa and the urban poor in the world's largest cities we must develop methodologies for studying them that go beyond our traditional micro-at-the-expense-of-macro or macro-at-the-expense-of-micro and see the complex systems that conjoin them.

This, perhaps, is the beginning of being able to identify the ways we can create change in what seem to be intractable ecologies of despair.   

Unlearn Your Miseducation: A New Beginning

Hello everyone,

My hiatus from this blog was much longer than I expected, but now I'm finally feeling like I can come up from air after moving from Missouri to Iowa. We're now in Ames at Iowa State University. It's been a great move so far but also one accompanied by the usual getting-up-to-speed dynamics...finding a grocery store, getting the kids settled and into various activities, getting to know a new job and new colleagues, etc. 

Now, on the blog...

I have decided to re-conceptualize Unlearn Your Miseducation to a degree. Moving forward it will take the form of a project that will seek to do three things:

deconstruct. reconstruct. lead.

My plan is to choose one topic each month and to look closely at said topic in some detail. Of course, a month isn't enough time to REALLY get into great detail, so without making promises on the level of depth, I'd like instead to just say that...my goal here is to learn, and to share that learning (and my interpretation of the lessons) in this public forum. The topics will include racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, xenophobia, colonialism, and other psychological-social-cultural-political issues. I'm looking to learn here,  and I invite you to come along and teach, learn or lurk.    

Some of these first posts will center on concepts like learning, mislearning, education, miseducation, propaganda and the like. Then, I'll dive into the other topics I list out above.

Thanks to those of you who have hung in here with me while I've been away. Talk to you soon...

Cheers,

Jeff 

Hiatus

Hi Everyone,
I'm currently in the midst of a particularly crazy time. The blog is on hold until August, 2011, at which time  I hope to be back with a vengeance.
Best,
Jeff

Blogging Lessons 101

Well, seeing as this is my first blog attempt, I'm learning a few lessons.

First, a blog is a different type of endeavor than anything else I do, and it somehow bridges the personal and professional. Maybe that's just the way I've conceptualized this, and it's likely in large part due to the fact that I see my development as a human being--and the unlearning I hope to facilitate and experience as something that is all-encompassing. In any event, it means that I haven't properly created time and space in either my personal or professional life to post often enough. That might not be a problem if I was blogging about gardening, I've started blogging about race and racism, with other posts on issues related to gender, sexuality, globalism, learning/unlearning, sociology, and anthropology to come. You just can't throw out half-baked ideas on these issues, you either need to take the time to write a fully developed essay-style entry or post more consistently so people can follow the development of your ideas. My preference is somewhere in the middle, but I clearly need to do some more thinking and doing about this.

Second, as I want this to be a conversation of sorts I think I'm going to invite some guest bloggers to contribute other perspectives/counter-perspectives. Again, I'm not sure exactly how I want to do that, but I have a few basic ideas and need to make some decisions along those lines.

Third, I can see that I need to do a little more work explaining why I am doing this at all. My intent isn't to post from a position of "someone with the answers" as much as I mean to post as someone with questions, hunches and uncertainties. I mean to be vulnerable here, acknowledging that I don't have all the answers and sharing those lessons I do learn as I (hopefully) grow and develop in my understanding of the world around me and my ability to change that world.

More soon.

Hate Sells

Hi everyone,
Take a look at this link, which may interest many of you. You can help take students to see the play "White Noise" in Chicago. It's a timely theme, unfortunately, that shows how the music/entertainment industry packages hate as acceptable and consumable pop culture. If you click on the link above, you will also see that there are many teaching materials that go along with the play.

By the way, more Unlearning your Miseducation on the way. My brain has been simmering on a few issues but is nearing the boiling point.
Jeff

Unlearn Your Racism, Part 3: Look Around You

Look at your city, then look inside your city.

I live in Columbia Missouri. A town of 108,500 people, according to the 2010 Census. Wikipedia describes my city using 2000 census data, and claims that the "racial makeup of the city was 81.54% White, 10.85% Black or African American, 0.39% Native American, 4.30% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.81% from other races, and 2.07% from two or more races. 2.05% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race." Yet, when I used the NY Times Mapping Race Tool (which uses updated 2009 data) to look in a little more detail at my community I found some interesting things. The racial distribution of Census Tract 12 (where I live) is 88% White, 3% Black, 1% Hispanic, 4% Asian, 4% Other Groups. Other tracts are even more white and there is in fact only one that approaches white/black parity, a single tract on the North Central side of the city, where Whites make up 45% of the population and Black/African Americans (sic) represent 44%. When you click on the "View Other Maps" icon and consider the distribution of wealth and the educational attainment data, you get a more complete picture. I also had a google map open that showed me the P-12 schools in each census tract, and I already know how they fare on various educational indicators. In many ways, it's a little micro-map of the United States. In fact, the demographics aren't far off those for the country, which you can take a look at here.

But here's the bottom line--it's a segregated city, and these are only looking at race as phenotype, they only hint at the cultural segregation in the town.

Look at the people around you, then look inside the people around you.

I forgot where it was, but a few years ago I read that you should stop, look around and take note of your environment several times a day. As someone who's constantly sprinting from meeting to meeting and from one of my kids' engagements to another, if I wasn't intentional about this, I would likely only do it once or twice a week. As it is, I do it about 6 times a day, but always in meeting rooms, when walking across campus and when I'm in a restaurant or other service industry business. I'm serious, I just stop and look to the left, look to the right as far as I can scan and see with whom I'm sharing space.

I am struck by how many times everyone around me is White. I'm a coffee shop guy, and it's like that in the coffee shops I frequent, it's like that when I go to most faculty meetings, it's like that when I'm eating my lunch, it's like that when I'm teaching, and it's like that when I'm at the grocery store. That isn't the case when I'm playing soccer, my other great passion beyond education. More on that in future posts.

My point is that it is important to pay attention to the company you keep, but it is equally important that you don't make judgements about them until you come to know them more intimately than Payam the midfielder or Zakaria the playmaker. People are not defined by the way they look--that's essentialism, defining someone by only one characteristic--and it is an incredibly ignorant way to look at the world. Ask people around you what they think about life, about love, about people, about policy, about education, about leadership, about schools, about human rights...and they will tell you what they think about race, if and when they (and you) are ready to speak and listen.

What's the point? The people around you are not having the same experience as you with racism. In my town, the color of your skin goes a long way to determining the kind of social experiences you will have, where you will live, and how much money you will make.

Some white people are allies and some are evil; some black people are allies and some are evil. Of course I'm even oversimplifying things by setting up that dichotomy. But still, all can unlearn their racism, but some want to and some don't.

Look at the ideas around you.

What books are on your shelf, and when did you last open them? Was it last week or twenty years ago? If you haven't opened them yet, why not? What was the last thing you read about racism? A lot of people I know still talk about Cornel West's Race Matters, which is a great book, but was published in 1994. A few things related to race have happened since then. Likewise, Tim Wise's White Like Me (though updated a few times) isn't the last word on white privilege. There are incredible books coming out nearly every week, there are brilliant blogs, research and journalism flying through cyberspace, yet we often rely on a dated foundation to inform our understanding. What happens to foundations over time? They crumble. Keep seeking, challenging yourself and creating your new understanding by challenging what you knew, with new information. Being a dynamic learner--of your own life, and maybe others--is the only way to unlearn racism. In a previous post I asserted that I believe learning is a process. I mean it--it doesn't end, and that should inspire us all.

Look in the mirror.


None of this matters if we don't reflect on our assumptions and knowledge, challenge them and create a new knowledge. This begins with long, hard looks in the mirror and reflections on who we are, who we aspire to become--what good works we do and what good works we hope to create. What do you know, and what do you not know? When are you silent when you should speak? When do you speak when you should be silent? How will you answer the mirror's questions?

Unlearn Your Racism, Part 2: What to Read and Where to Find It

So, you say that you'd like to learn more about unlearning your racism, but you're not sure where to start. I'm not pretending to post any kind of exhaustive list of resources here, but I will offer some that I have found helpful. It would be great if any of you want to comment on this post with additional resources. I find that every time I share resources with folks on this I learn about several more. At the moment, I'm not desegregating this list by the race/ethnicity of the author, or by subject.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to note that it is an unfortunate trend that white scholars such as myself have tended to legitimize the work of other white scholars rather than properly cite the origin of many ideas about race and racism, which were first advanced by scholars of color. This is particularly egregious among scholars who explore white privilege, many of whom are white and cite predominantly other white scholars...when in fact, scholars of color advanced nearly identical (and even more innovative) ideas for many generations, but called it something else or published the works in non-white journals and with non-white publishing houses. Also, race and racism is not only a black/white phenomenon and unfortunately it isn't restricted to the United States, so, as I do in my scholarly work I urge you all to consider race as a glocal phenomenon, one that is most obviously local and community-specific, but also inextricably influenced by and influencing regional, national, international and global dynamics.

BOOKS
Sorry I'm not enabling all these as hyperlinks, but these books are all fairly easy to find.

John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me
Thomas Kochman, Black and White Styles in Conflict
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Martin Luther King, Jr, Stride Toward Freedom and A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Joe Feagin, Racist America and Systemic Racism
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought
Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory
Race and Racism: An Introduction, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban
Cornel West, Race Matters
Richard Wright, The Library Card
bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism
Andrew Hacker, Two Nations
Beverly Tatum, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity
Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children and The Skin that We Speak
Tim Wise, White Like Me
Dalton Conley, Honky
Sonya Douglass Horsford, Learning in a Burning House
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots
Ntzoke Shange, For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf
Mica Pollock, Everyday Anti-Racism
Studs Terkel, Race: The American Obsession
Gary Orfield, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown V. Board of Education
Henry Louis Gates, Colored People: A Memoir
Michael Eric Dyson, Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line
Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well

BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Those of you interested in comprehensive resources can look through the Working Against Racism Bibliography, the Anti-Racism Reference List at Radical Reference, Paul Kivel's Bibliography on Racism, Joe Feagin's Basic Bibliography, APA has a fine Annotated Bibliography of Psychology and Racism, and there are many other fine resources of this kind out there. This is, of course, the kind of activity that scholars love, as it makes life a little easier to have a central location from which to find resources. My only caution is that these are not usually interdisciplinary and many are not international/global, so I would urge you to draw from these, but also explore others that warehouse a variety of sources.


WEB SITES
I love the American Anthropological Association's Understanding Race Project web site. It is multi-media, interactive, and includes everything from teaching resources to scholarly position papers. Race: The Power of an Illusion is also a great resource, and its main points are summarized here. This section of the Global Issues web site is a little thin, but decent site to raise your awareness of racism as a global phenomenon.


BLOGS
Stuff White People Like
Racism Review
Resist Racism
Context of White Supremacy


FILMS
Hollywood Shuffle (satire)
I'm Gonna Get You Sucka (satire)
Eye of the Storm & A Class Divided (Documentary)
Eyes on the Prize (Documetary Series)
List of Racism-Related Films
List of Documentary Films about Racism

This is a start! Please add comments and resources, and I will update this post.

Unlearn Your Racism, Part 1: A Few Basics

Over the past five years, I've begun to study racism as one of my core personal and professional activities. I conducted a large study of an urban high school where race, racism, and race relations heavily influenced decisions throughout the school, often overriding decisions that should have also been informed by sound pedagogy, nuanced educational data, human rights and the law. If interested, you can read about it in a forthcoming book, Racism and Educational (Mis)leadership, which should come out from Teachers College Press in late 2011 or early 2012. I've also written a few articles based on preliminary findings from the study, but enough about my research...I give that only as a means of communicating a bit about my background.

Let's talk about unlearning racism.

To be sure, the first question anyone should ask--the question I ask--is "can you unlearn racism?" You can reflect and answer that as you like, but since this is my blog I'm going to first give you my answer and then explain a few reasons behind my thinking. 

My answer is, "yes," but it's a qualified yes. I need to unpack a few basic points about the phenomena that undergird my understanding of learning, race, racism, and race relations. 

First, I believe that learning is a process. As such, anyone can certainly begin the process of unlearning racism. I am not as certain that it is possible for anyone who was raised in the United States to completely expunge all racist assumptions, thoughts and behaviors. Racism takes many covert and overt forms. There is in-your-face racism, subtle racism, implicit racism, and a racism that lies deep in our assumptions about people and society. Good people with good intentions (that judgement of course being relative) have racist thoughts and (un)intentionally behave in a racist manner at times. Given this, I do believe that it is possible to educate ourselves toward a more enlightened understanding of the way racism shapes our worldview, compels us to behave in a particular manner, and make sense of what other people are thinking and doing.

Second, I believe that educated people interrogate their assumptions, increase their knowledge and change their behavior. People who take it upon themselves to learn and grow must reflect on their assumptions, thoughts and behavior. They are critical of what they "know," how they "know what they know" and how their ideas about what constitutes legitimate knowledge is shaped by racism. Educated people are skeptical--constantly challenging their ideas and other's ideas. They scrutinize not only the message, but the messenger. To be sure, when I say educated people, I do not mean "schooled" people. Schools and universities can (and do) teach and unteach racism in a variety of ways, but since they seldom do that in an intentional manner, much of our education about racism takes place outside of formal institutional settings. We learn (and unlearn) much of what we know about racism in non-school settings.

Third, to unlearn racism you must be critical of everything, all the time. We have all been acculturated, assimilated and indoctrinated into US society (though to be sure we have each experienced said society in a discrete manner) and as such have been taught racism since we were young. Racism is individual, institutional and historical. It is manifest in social, economic, political and cultural ways that permeate all aspects of US culture, from television programming, to the food we eat, the way we speak, the way we dress, the way we think about time, spirituality, sexuality, etc. What's more, racism is intersectional, meaning that it is in constant reciprocal influence with all these things and more--it does not exist as an isolated or controlled factor--rather, it is constantly interacting with myriad personal, interpersonal, institutional and societal dynamics. Racism is not monolithic--it is dynamic, and if we want to unlearn it, our learning must be equally dynamic.

Fourth, we must increase our knowledge to unlearn racism. While I take full responsibility for my shortcomings, I have learned a great deal from insightful scholars, artists, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who have both taught and challenged me. We must seek out and critically evaluate books, blogs, films, programs, podcasts, research reports, articles, speeches, plays, novels, and music that offer fresh insights on issues of race. We must constantly evaluate this new affective and cognitive information and compare it to our extant assumptions, knowledge, beliefs and behaviors and allow ourselves to evolve and grow. Vulnerably sharing our ideas with others who respect and care for us is part, but only part of this process--it is ultimately up to EACH of us to take charge of our education--importantly, it is NOT the responsibility of people of color to educate others, particularly white people, on issues of race. This is a persistent and widespread mistake, which I will explore more fully in subsequent posts about white privilege.

More later in Part 2, but this is a beginning...

The Unbearable Lightness of Organizations: Some thoughts about One Mizzou

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a book that is many things to many people. To me, it is an exploration of how much our lives weigh. Do we, as Nietzsche suggested, come back again and again through eternity? Or, as Kundera asks in his novel, do we only live once and that's it? Both are compelling propositions, but the latter gives us a lot to think about--if we only live once, do our feelings, thoughts, works, and relationships have tremendous importance because we will only happen once, or do they have practically no importance at all, since in the grand scheme of things we won't be here for long?

Certainly, this gives me something to think about as a friend, husband, community member and father...but it also makes me think about who I am as a colleague, both to those I work with on a day-to-day basis and those with whom I collaborate and learn from throughout the world.

I wonder the same thing about the work we do in organizations. In my case this means the University of Missouri, where students and now faculty are trying to stand against hatred and intolerance by making our individual and collective commitments more visible. You can read a little more about One Mizzou here: http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2011/3/22/one-mizzou-set-begin-april-7/. The tag line for One Mizzou is "ONE MIZZOU. A culture of respect and responsibility. Many communities. One family. One Mizzou," and while such a statement in various forms has been in university documents for some time this is a more focused response to the racist crimes that have taken place here over the past two years.

I'm on board with this effort. I recently signed a statement avowing my commitment to these values that will be published in a few places and put up on the Internet (I believe). A few hundred of my fellow faculty members have done the same--several in my department and college, I'm proud to say. But... though it feels like it could be the beginning of an important social movement, I wonder...

What is the weight of my (and our) actions--are they light or are they heavy?

How do we make a cultural change in an organization that is, by it's very nature, transient? Students come and go, faculty come and go, administrators come and go, initiatives come and go--so by what means and to what end do we do the work shifting a culture?

I have two thoughts on that. First, I know there is value is visibly and consistently standing up for what I believe is right, when what I believe is right is in part a counter-culture. Mizzou, like many predominantly white-serving institutions, has come a long way but has not done enough to identify and interrogate institutional racism. Of course, there are other oppressed peoples and groups in such an institution, and the place has work to do in terms of sexual orientation, gender equity, ethnic discrimination, ageism, graduate student rights and many others. As a white man, as an ally, I feel it is important that I go beyond being "sensitive" to "their" issues and instead walk visibly in solidarity, supporting quietly and loudly when required (and I'm still learning what that means). Second, I believe that proximity and redundancy matter. By proximity, I mean that there may be only a few of us doing this kind of work in the College of Education, but like concentric circles rippling from a raindrop splash on a pond, we will influence our students, who will then influence others, and so on. By redundancy, I mean that maybe signing a One Mizzou petition feels in itself like a small thing, but when I saw over a hundred names it gave me heart--I was looking at a potential social network of people who want to, in the words of Ella Baker, "become the change they wish to see."

Mizzou One is a seed, it's up to the rest of us to care for that seed if it is to become a tree, and then a forest.

Back to the concept that I introduced at the beginning of this post, are my actions heavy or light? I think they are both--heaviest to those closest to me, and lighter to those further away. I'm not a tree, I'm not a forest...I'm a raindrop, splashing into the pond of the people in my life and into the organizations in which I work.

The Qualitative Dissertation: A User's Guide

I've posted this before, but as I've moved my blog I thought I'd also put it up on the new site. I gave this lecture, titled “The Qualitative Dissertation: A User’s Guide,” on Friday, November 12th, 2010 in Jesse Wrench Auditorium, Memorial Student Union, at the University of Missouri. The event was hosted by the Educational Leadership Graduate Student Association (ELGSA), a student group in the Department of Educational Leadership and was open to students and faculty across the campus. I've given this presentation for years and update it from time-to-time. It's part guide, part pep-talk and part tips. This will be old hat for many qualitative researchers and there are undoubtedly certain issues on which folks will disagree with what I've done here...but it's meant as a tool for raising basic issues researchers need to consider, not as a definitive statement about qualitative dissertations.

You can access the presentation here.

International Opportunities for Researchers, Educators and other Professionals

A few years ago, I interviewed Dr. Sabine O'Hara, Vice President of the Institute of International Education and Executive Director, Council for International Exchange of Scholars. We discussed the merit of international and global research in general and then more specifically spoke about the programs she administers, which provide opportunities for researchers, educators and other professionals to have fully-funded international experiences. Dr. O'Hara gives tips for applicants and a great overview of current IIE and CIES initiatives.

You can listen to the interview here.

My own experience studying overseas, as a Senior Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines, was an amazing experience. I taught at Capitol University in Cagayan de Oro on the island of Mindanao. I also did a research project where I interviewed some 100 principals, and I've continued to collect data from the region as I work on writing it up. In any event, the experience rocked my world--it made me wake up to issues related to globalization--such as how the US benefits tremendously at the expense of people around the world. It also made me understand "social justice" as something very different from the way I had thought and written about it to that point. I saw such incredible poverty, schools with nothing (literally, in a few cases not even a building), but committed teachers and administrators working hard for the students. And by "working hard" I mean tremendous sacrifices, the likes of which I had never before considered.

In sum, it was a tremendous learning experience, and though I was lucky enough to travel quite a bit when I was young, it meant something different altogether for me to see this all through the researcher's eyes I developed to that point.

The bottom line?

The earth isn't flat, and it isn't round--it's every conceivable shape, and there are contours you and I have never imagined. For those who study schools like me, the opportunity to learn from brilliant and committed educators is worth attending a thousand mainstream conferences or publishing in any peer-reviewed journals. For educators, seeing what you will see in schools--how different cultures, teachers, administrators, students, parents and social institutions support (and ignore) education is an eye-opening experience.

You're never too old and never too young to open those eyes by traveling and seeing how your perspective hold up in a new reality.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Teacher

It's appropriate to begin this blog on a day designated to celebrate the life of a man who spoke so eloquently and passionately about unlearning your miseducation. I was first introduced to King when I read his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in junior high school. Being that I was born into much privilege as the son of educated, White, middle-class parents I first understood it as an abstraction--a curious thing written by someone who lived far away in a distant time. I didn't realize then that the text must have read very differently to many of my classmates and friends who experienced racism as an ordinary and very real terror that shaped nearly all of their social interactions. I didn't realize that racism also shaped nearly all of my social interactions, because it put me into a privileged social space. No light bulb clicked over my oblivious head back then, and if I'm honest the light bulb was quite dull on most issues of inequity, not only racism, but also many other forms of individual and institutionalized violence: sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, heterosexism, homophobia, etc. for a long time. That is, until I began to learn from real teachers--teachers whose names never appeared on my report card.

I could stop off at many critical incidents between middle school and now that mark my growing realization that the emperors-who-ignore-racism-while-reaping-its-benefits-every-day wore no clothes, but on this day in particular one comes to mind: the day I discovered Martin Luther King's book "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story." I read this book when working on my dissertation. Initially looking for a quote, I couldn't put it down and ignored my dissertation for the week it took me to finish. Moving, brilliant, and well-written, there is an amazing chapter in there where King explains his personal journey from Theology to Philosophy to Non-Violent Resistance. It's a wonderfully articulated reflection on our individual potential if we allow our perspectives to evolve.

It is also King's explanation of how the people around him, the great philosophers, theologians and finally the likes of Gandhi all became his teachers for unlearning his miseducation about race, society, culture, economics, and politics--an education he had been implicitly and explicitly taught from birth.

As I mentioned, I read all this while doing my dissertation study, which was largely based on research that ignored the differences that both enrich and make problematic many of our interpersonal and institutional dynamics in the United States. All this stuff on "school reform" or "teacher leadership" or "distributed leadership" and even much that presented itself as "social justice" pretended that the things that most shape our perspectives and experience did not exist, were irrelevant, or could be "controlled."  Dr. King--Noam Chomsky, Neil Postman, Alfred Korzybski, Paulo Freire, Bill Ayers, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir to name a few others--taught me to question these difference-blind "great works" I read to inform my thinking about schools, research, education and leadership, which is what I study to this day. These teachers continue to influence me, and I continue to stride toward freedom of mind and of expression.

This is, of course, not the only (and perhaps not the most important) lesson we can take from Dr. King, but if we take one central tenet of his message--to unlearn your miseducation--and use it to critically deconstruct our extant assumptions, perspectives, and ways of knowing, this great teacher will have inspired an ongoing revolution.