Reflexivity

It was a tiny pop quiz in the midst of a comprehensive examination.

First Responders reaching to the Deaf community

During last November’s nationwide test of FEMA’s public warning system, an action research study (#DEMX) was conducted to assess the communication potential of social media. The goal was to find a way to bridge the longstanding divide between “people of the eye” who use American Sign Language and emergency responders who rely on their ears. From the Deaf point-of-view, these “hearing people” are dependent on sound.

A dedicated group of social media pioneers keeps pushing the envelope of public communication within the field of emergency management. Meanwhile, the American Deaf community remains essentially neglected despite generations of struggle and decades-old accessibility rights legislation.

in all of the years of researching and taking courses / training in crisis communications – one group has not been mentioned as much as others.  This audience group is the deaf community. ~ Karen Freberg

Tweeting against Historical Trends

One popular social media tool for emergency warnings is Twitter. It is unclear how many Deaf people know about this timely and current source of information about emergencies of all kinds. Meteorologists are using Twitter to warn populations in their local media markets about serious weather events, and some emergency responders are using Twitter as part of crisis communication and disaster response. Figures 1 &  2 show a key result from the #DEMX experiment run during the November 2011 national “Emergency Alert System” test. Overall, although information about the Twitter-based #DEMX test spread, there was very little crossover between the two groups: Deaf citizens shared information within the Deaf community, and emergency management planners and responders shared the information within their community. This leads to a conclusion regarding how hard it is to stimulate conversation between communities who have an (apparently entrenched) history of ineffective communication.

However, in the course of a short campaign, the #DEMX Tweetstream garnered 163 unique users, and the Prezi explaining the idea (in English and ASL) got 1,500 hits! The information spread, but it was decontextualized from the relationships that need to be built among First Responders and members of the signing Deaf community.

Strategy (Action Research Methodology)

Few Deaf Tweeters "cross over" to the First Responder tweetstream

An already existing Twitter community using the hashtag, #SMEM (for social media emergency management), was introduced to a new hashtag, #DEMX (for deaf emergency management of variable “x”). The #DEMX hashtag was invented for this experiment, so it had no pre-existing user base. A late-deafened blogger and tweeter, Joyce Edmiston (@expressivehandz), spearheaded spreading the #DEMX hashtag among her followers. Using a text analysis software tool, we were able to track the spread of news about this social media experiment in both communities and break down the results.

Findings: A small but dedicated leading edge

In the nine days of monitoring (from November 2-11, 2011, with the test day on November 9), the 163 users in the #DEMX tweetstream gathered 765 tweets, while the #SMEM tweetstream garnered 5,759 tweets, generated by  1,135 unique users. We were interested in the tweets that included both hashtags. Barely 1/2 of 1% of #DEMX tweets included the #SMEM hashtag; and only .01% of #SMEM tweets included the #DEMX hashtag. Research team member Joe Delfino of DiscoverText writes, “Unfortunately, the mass crossover of Tweets that we had envisioned did not occur.” By “drilling down” into the data, however, we were able to generate some findings that, combined with knowledge of the historical basis of the overall challenge, confirms hypotheses worth testing in another round of Twitter-based action research.

4:1 Ratio Hearing to Deaf

In the #DEMX tweetstream, there were 26 unique users who included the #SMEM hashtag. After eliminating tweets from members of the research team there were a total of 28 tweets from 23 unique users. Of these 23 unique users, 20 are not deaf – they are hearing people associated in one way or another with emergency management.  Only three deaf tweeters “crossed over” to the emergency management community tweetstream. Some reasons for this terribly low percentage are explored below.

In the #SMEM tweetstream, there were 17 unique users who included the #DEMX hashtag, again, after eliminating tweets by research team members,  tweets including both hashtags were sent by 13 unique users: 9 hearing and 4 deaf, repeating the pattern in which more hearing people reached out toward the Deaf community than Deaf people reached back to the “Hearing” world of emergency management.

Concerning? Yes. Disheartening? No!

Obviously these sample sizes are too small for statistical significance. However, they do suggest some generalizations that could be formulated into concrete hypotheses and studied on a more robust scale. One issue involves whether the Deaf American linguistic minority of American Deaf Culture can be convinced that the dominant culture actually cares. In promoting this action research project, I created an online presentation, Deaf Eye on Emergency!, which describes the context of the national emergency alert system test using visual imagery, written English and several videoclips of commentary using American Sign Language. The presentation garnered over 1500 views during the nine-day research window and 1,846 as of this posting. English translations of the ASL clips are available now so that non-signers can know and respond to the explanations and ideas expressed in the video clips.

Creating New Relationships

Although good efforts and success stories do circulate, there is no commonly-recognized and widely-used medium of communication (yet) that satisfactorily mediates the sight-sound perceptual distinction between “People of the Eye” and “Hearing” people.  Written English and spreading more information are perceived as “the answer.” While both of these strategies are necessary, without an interaction strategy to cultivate and redefine the inherited perception of neglect, systemic improvements in Deaf preparedness and contribution to emergency response efforts cannot occur.

An Interaction Strategy for Emergency Preparedness

Individual Deaf people often experience being told to wait while someone tries to figure out how to communicate with them, and then (usually) delivered sub-par and minimal information rather than being fully engaged as intelligent and competent human beings who can help resolve aspects of the situation, whatever it is. Historically, the legacies of discrimination and prejudice have convinced many members of Deaf culture that Hearing people really do not care about them. Serious effort needs to be strategically planned and exercised in order to overcome this unfortunate dynamic. It can be done, and if done well, crucial skills, knowledge, and benefits of resilience will flow from the Deaf community into the larger fabric of American society.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Testing tolerance and endurance in Amherst, MA

Half a dozen tents were visible as I gazed out the third-floor window of Bartlett while waiting for discussion to begin in a course on postcolonial literature. My view of the tents was shrouded by pale yellow and brown autumn leaves that refuse to fall, despite the devastating snowstorm that recently wreaked havoc to the trees and, collaterally, the power grid. Or is it the other way around?

Occupy.

Occupation.

. . . “have sexual intercourse with” . . .

Gazing out the window this morning, I marveled at the surreality of the moment: students busily focused on an in-class writing assignment while elsewhere police chase protesters from city squares to college campuses and off of them, too. I wonder what mixture of fear and hope inspires the activists, considering ways I can provide support. My curiosity includes the mindset of bystanders and critics: those who cannot be bothered or see no point, and those who have a problem with the demonstrations of collective action, the insistence on public participation in the guts of democracy.

I remembered that there was something reassuring about people resuming normal routines as soon as possible after snowtober, even though it was also unsettling that most people’s response to disaster seems to be to continue going on in the way one always has.

Life and Debt with No Telephone to Heaven

“That was the worst of being a servant. The waiting around for cuffy-pretend-backra or backra-fe-true while your life passed, the people in the house assuming your time was worthless.”

Michelle Cliff 1987:  19

It is a random synchronicity that I am interpreting an undergraduate course in postcolonial literature while Occupy Wall Street unfolds in biographical and historical time. Nonetheless, I am struck (again) that the descendents of former colonizers are discovering major faults in the system. Now, many white middle-class lives are passing in thrall to a financial engine that eats culture, discarding and replacing human cogs at whim.

OWS: The Defining Symbol of this Generation?

“[Occupy] is bigger than the 2012 elections…this is something that’s going to grow and grow and grow. This is America, this is America bubbling up to the surface… This is something… that is earthquake…you know – seismic.”

Lupe Fiasco on The Stream

A friend working on some Twitter research has created a visualization of  Tweets containing the word “occupy.” Watching the barrage of names, emotions, attitudes, accusations, reports, insults could seep in like a bad dream, the social miasma of our times unfolding in real time. It is too easy to get lost in the public sphere as an impenetrable discussion zone of colliding billiard balls. A privileged few political themes crash and spin off each other in crazy, chaotic directions. I find articulate voices making sense of what’s happening among hip hop artists who are using their art to engage issues of social justice. At AJstream, Derrick Ashong asks Lupe Fiasco and Basim Usmani why the clear point of the Occupy movement – ECONOMIC JUSTICE – is not translating to mainstream media.

“This new generation that’s at Occupy Wall Street . . . coming out of high school now, they’ve got the Arab Spring, they’ve got, seen the election of Obama, people power, I think that my generation could learn a lot from the one that’s coming up, that I see out at the Occupies, I think that those people actually believe earnestly that they can change things.”

Basim Usmani, The Kominas

Navigating through the inertia of the force of old ideas requires calm thinking and the ability to reflect on multiple and diverse perspectives. I take heart from the intelligence displayed both by this hopeful generation coming up now and the results of last week’s elections, which the New York Times opined as

“…an overdue return of common sense to government policy in many states. Many voters are tired of legislation driven more by ideology than practicality, of measures that impoverish the middle class or deprive people of basic rights in order to prove some discredited economic theory or cultural belief . . . . It is not clear that [November 9th's] votes add up to a national trend that will have an effect on 2012 or even the deadlock in Congress. But they do offer a ray of hope to any candidate who runs on pragmatic solutions, not magical realism, to create jobs and reduce the pressures of inequality on the middle class and the poor.”

Kick and Push (a.k.a. Muslim Skateboarding – Building Skateastan! Check out The Stream)

The challenge of this age is whether we – homo sapiens – can harness conversation about the many challenges, obstacles, and perspectives on these matters and turn our talk to collaborative, productive problem-solving. Rather than hard military aggression and police deployment, perhaps it is not too soon to be soft and yielding in order to cultivate collaboration.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Twittersphere
@Deaf_Emergency
#demx

All Communication Coordinators, First Responders, and everyone with duties in the Incident Command Structure as well as reporters, journalists, meteorologists, and news media editors, non-Deaf observers, and digital volunteers are invited to use the November 9th test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to participate in a social media communication experiment with Deaf citizens of the United States.

One of the stated goals of FEMA/Homeland Security’s first-ever, national-level test is to “identify any areas for improvements in the operation of the system during an emergency.”

The #demx research project investigates whether emergency warnings reach the Deaf community in a timely and understandable manner.

Deaf EMergency X

Using the label “Deaf Emergency” is itself a test to see if these words catch the Deaf eye better than current methods. The “X” stands for any variable: sometimes there is advance warning of an approaching hazard (such as a hurricane or winter storm), but part of what makes a crisis an emergency is that it happens suddenly and unpredictably: you do not know you are in danger, or why, until the disaster has already happened.

The practical outcomes of this research study are two-fold.

1. Deaf persons will learn more about the emergency response infrastructure, including the need for self-responsibility for planning and preparing in advance.
2. Emergency Managers, First Responders, and Volunteer Care Organizations will learn more about failures and successes with appropriate and adequate accommodations for communicating with Deaf citizens, including improvements to live captioning systems and the integration of professional sign language interpreters into long-term mitigation planning.

One-Way or Two-Way Communication?

While the EAS test is specifically designed to get the warning out, there are also serious concerns about how well First Responders engage Deaf individuals who have been harmed or are at risk of harm because of a disaster situation.

This research project is an effort to bring the needs of the Deaf community more clearly into view for visionaries within the field of Emergency Management.

Twittersphere
@Deaf_Emergency
#demx

Popularity: 7% [?]

“Are you going to blog about this movie?”
“Absolutely not!”

Yet here I am.

Drive is disturbing.  We debated afterwards: is the hyperviolence unnecessary? Should such depictions be censored to ward off further glorification of violence? Is the film art? What are the ethics of recommendation? Whose responsibility is it to consider the possible effects of viewing this film?

Scenes are consistently overdone. The musical score is outrageously sappy, underscoring the impossible juxtaposition of living a decently social life in the maw of the machine. The un-named principal character combines two extreme masculine ideals: he is both extraordinarily moral and primally violent – a classic hero stripped to the essence, a man of few words and stark actions.

The anonymity of the principal character represents everyone; even the innocent among us could become implicated in one way or another with the criminality of today’s society. At each and every moment we are at risk of being pulled in, taken down, consumed or killed by the impersonal clash of animalistic jockeying for position, power, status in whatever currency holds forth in the immediate situation. What can we do, mere individuals in a vast churning system of impersonalized rules, but drive by our own code?

The film presents no antedote, offers no salve or suggestion of change. The only response is to be driven to beat the course, to instinctively react in the instant, make the right move, face the consequences, turn and turn and turn again, speed up slow down nail the precise pace and time lane selection to come out – how? Victorious yet irreparably damaged. “I’m going somewhere… I won’t be able to come back.”

I am reminded of a scene in Control Room, a short while after the US Central Command’s Press Officer, Lieutenant Josh Rushing, realizes the humanity of Iraqis – the families and friends and compatriots of the enemy combatants – those people on the other side of the war. Lt Rushing muses that, unfortunately, we don’t yet live in a world that can do without war. Drive depicts war at the civilian level. Drive celebrates violence by suggesting its inevitability, and glorifies the performance of violence by cloaking it in a noble character.

Bullshit.

Humanity can do better than be driven by the machine. We built this system; we can re-engineer it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Dance Performance
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Cassandra Jackman is hot. If you are into dance and you haven’t yet heard of her, you will – of this I am sure.

Watching with Untrained Eyes

I had to be coached not to clap at the wrong time, to be appropriately attentive. I was exposed to dance (mainly ballet) as a kid and didn’t get it. Enjoyed an Alvin Ailey show at some point and knew there was something going on but didn’t pursue it.  Wire Monkey got me excited a few years ago. Going in, all I knew about UMass’ annual “Alive with Dance” show is that each number was an original work by graduating dance majors. These seniors selected their topics a year in advance, did research, created the choreography, auditioned and selected dancers from among their peers, designed the set and chose the accompanying music.  I was unprepared for the quality of every performer and absolutely blown away by what I experienced as the collective intelligence of the troupe.

A Visceral Experience

The first three dances washed through me like emotion. Color, motion and sound swirled and merged seamlessly, one piece into another. This was not a fluke: return viewings on the 2^nd and 3^rd night elicited similar responses.  With each show I realized there was so much I had not taken in, either not noticed at all or not been able to retain in the glut of stimulation. On the first night, during the fourth number in the first half of the show, all of a sudden I discovered myself wondering, “Why is that (big black beautiful) man naked?” (He wasn’t actually!) It was not that I hadn’t been paying attention – I was taking in all that I could! It was the surprise of his appearance that rippled my perception at a level of imagery below words.  Everybody needs to see this, I thought to myself. Something is happening here.

The Strategic Use of Body

The fourth piece in the first half of the show, Lateralization by Cassandra Jackman, highlighted an African/African-American couple. For me, it signaled a dramatic shift in the storyline of the show.  Prior to this piece I had not yet noticed individual details of any of the dancers; it was as if I’d seen with soft eyes, taking in only the gestalt. Suddenly, a focal point emerged, casting the previous pieces into the realm of context. I began to marvel at how these young people had orchestrated their discrete works of art into a collective statement about empowerment, including even race relations and suggesting optimism for social change. Parallels and a narrative became apparent in the second half. I almost came out of my seat during the final, closing number when Cassandra, cast in one of her classmate’s pieces, kick-starts a wild profusion of creative resistance to the masks so many people seem resigned to wear. It is as if she throws the switch that changes the game.

Starting with a Silent Bang

The audience’s pre-show hubbub quieted immediately to the Orwellian announcement about emergency exits and prohibitions on the use of technology.  A soloist is illuminated as soon as the curtain opens and begins to move. I found myself waiting, as if expecting something else to happen, and then realize this is it: the show has begun. One dancer becomes three, music swells, a welter of emotions, red leotards, steady rhythm, perpetual motion, different threads of story, expressions of life’s cacophony of light and dark, the soloist isolated behind a scrim, a graceful sense of mourning followed by the emergence of joy. Layer upon layer unfolds but all I really see is pattern and distinction, no details no brown or white only coordinated bodies.

Then the rain begins. Gentle. Persistent. The second dance resonates with the season of spring, moistening and warming the hardened remains of winter, offering salve for wounds not yet healed.  “We walk through the shadows our hearts cast on our minds.” Unless, that is, you are one of the perky pink girls who follows in the third dance – seemingly untouched by pain. Light and carnival-like, an assembly line of frivolous, interchangeable white girls provides an airy release from the poignant plunge of reality.  Give us the Scott Joplin illusion of that happy era between the World Wars!

Lateralization enters a consciousness already stretched to the edges of emotional exertion.  The fourth dance evokes the show’s beginning but with a twist. Like the show’s first scene, the soloist begins in silence. However, in contrast with the brightly illuminated first dancer, Tara Brown is shrouded in shadow, the outline of her body tracing lines of quiet force into empty space. Complication emerges swiftly: two small non-symmetric groups appear in vibrant turn. Their bold blue and striped black-and-white costumes and compelling motions fade into peripheral vision once the couple appears. Soon, Cassandra’s bold embodiment fixes my gaze.

A Catalyst for Movement

I needed to watch the show three times to grasp its structure.  No doubt there are well-established logics for sequencing a dance program of individual works. I’ve since learned some details about the motivations for a few of the pieces: taken individually my read is hopefully recognizable as a viable interpretation of each choreographer’s intent, even if I failed to grasp the exact details of their visualizations. I wonder how they imagined the accumulated narrative, with each discrete piece aggregated into a whole story . . .

The five pieces in the second half of the show parallel the first half’s four parts in a few interesting ways. After intermission Sabra and Faded and Alive present a mix of a varied emotions much as Trouver la Lumiere did to open the first half of the show. Then, the third number in the second half, It’s All About Me, I Mean You, I Mean Me, provides a contemporary commentary on the ‘50’s rendition of the Roarin’ Twenties. These sassy dancers move nearly always in unison, perfect clockwork functionaries keeping up playful appearances despite the harsh and cynical backdrops from Barbara Kruger depicting the ironies of what it’s like to live now.

Gimme Five by Angela Bennett was the most complicated piece. It moved the mechanical behaviors of technological living to the foreground, almost as a counterpart to the sociocultural perspective offered in Jackman’s Lateralization. The psychological fluidity of Cassandra’s piece is counterpoised by Angela’s representation of rote, routine, automatic surrender and recovery.  We watch humans copy copy copy each other, if not in mimicry than still in lock-step: one behavior triggering a reciprocal response in unvarying repetition as if this is the most to which humans can aspire.  Yet something does change in the end, the push-pull of exclusion/inclusion and competing desires for belonging/autonomy moves the singularity of our human being through time, enabling re-orientation should one choose.

I am fascinated by how the first eight dances of the show can be understood as a repeating cycle. The first four pieces in the second half of the show reprise the first four pieces from the first half. Do humans need to witness repetition in order to recognize the social pattern? Once the pattern is realized, the stage is set for the dramatic action of the ninth and final dance.

Un-Masking One Reality to Create Another

A huge benefit of watching the show three times was increasing respect for the quality of all the dancers. Although my attention was riveted by a few at first, each viewing brought more of everyone’s talent into view. My appreciation for these young performers has continued to grow as I’ve sought to find the right words to express their accomplishment. These UMass Dance Majors have embraced art’s highest calling: to use illusion in service of illumination. They have achieved this by disciplining their bodies to perform at the very edge of courage.

The closing dance, Lasciere Me Eliminato, is dense with detail. Most of the dancers begin with masks, only three without. But I don’t notice this until the third time I watch, my eyes rapt in amazement of the sophisticated synchrony of syncopated motion on display from every dancer. There is a struggle. Something prevents forward motion. They reach in yearning and are hauled back as if shackled. “Going nowhere” – this phrase from the soundtrack. One dancer’s mask is removed, re-tied around an arm. Randomly (it seems) the dancers align in precise configuration, there is a slight pause, then WHAM! Cassandra’s triggering move sends an instantaneous ripple coursing with precision through the line, masks come off and all that shit gets wiped away. Free! Free at last! I can almost hear the refrain as the mood turns to peace: quiet, solemn, and graceful.

That a brown person was cast to dance-kick this new gear into motion is likely not pure coincidence. There are white dancers throwing off their masks too, choosing to refuse the current state of affairs. Meanwhile, the three originally unmasked dancers were all white. Were they pulling the strings before? A small percentage controlling the rest? I would have to see the show again to assess that hypothesis.

In the end, one of those unmasked dancers finds herself masked. Alone on stage, there is barely time to adjust before she sees from her new vantage point – and gasps.

Alive with Dance 2011: A Catalyst for Movement

1st Half:

Trouver la Lumiere by Shirah Burgey
Inner Shadows by Sierra Boyea
Ready . . . Again by Sarah Goddard
Lateralization by Cassandra Jackman

2nd Half:

Sabra by Hannah Katz
Faded and Alive by Jonalyn Bradshaw
It’s All About Me, I Mean You, I Mean Me by Emily Jacobson
“Gimme Five” by Angela Bennett
Lasciere Me Eliminato by Kayla Skerry

Popularity: 4% [?]

Dialogue: Identities
Whiteness (Race), Gender, Culture…

Do some suicides matter more than others?

It just so happened that our third dialogue session on identities came on the second anniversary of an 11-year-old’s suicide. Some high school students from Springfield offered a trenchant analysis of why the 2009 suicide of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover received less sustained public attention than that of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in 2010. In contrast with the perception that “people are always bullied” in Springfield – where Carl lived and died – “South Hadley always gets good press.”  The novelty of “something bad happening there” drew the media spotlight. Kamari, Noelani, Tiffany, Jerrico, Allie, Ashley and Tory had no difficulty naming stereotypes associated with area high schools, including those held by others about them.

Frustration and humor poured out of these young people in equal measure, spinning out in multiple directions and toward a range of targets. These high school juniors are in a bind and they know it. Refreshingly, they sense that high school students from other schools in western Massachusetts are also bound up in their own situations. The strangeness of social hierarchies based on assumptions about identity clearly exasperates them; telling jokes to keep each other laughing is a social coping strategy.

Naming the superficial

Most of the contact between high school youth occurs through sports. “You see what people in other towns think and it’s not very nice.” I was discouraged to learn only negative stories, mainly about South Hadley. I suspect South Hadley topped out the stereotype list both because they are hosting the multi-high school Dialogue Summit on April 30 and because of disparities of public interest in the two suicides.

Some stereotypes about students at South Hadley High School are

• “notorious” and “known for being effective at bullying;”
• “bad” in competition, swearing loudly despite the presence of young kids in the bleachers;
• “They gave me attitude – crazy attitude;” and
• “are always talking junk” and “yelling swears.”

The stereotype scenario became more complicated when we asked how these students at Renaissance High School think they are viewed by others. It depends upon where those other high school students are located. There’s one view from outside of Springfield that lumps all Springfield High Schools together: “ghetto thugs, everyone wearing do-rags, swearing, using guns, smoking dope and selling drugs – both at the same time.” This list was generated with the dull verbal tone of routine and placed in context: “This is what is shown in the media.”

Specifically, these Renaissance high schoolers imagine that their peers from South Hadley and Amherst probably assume they’re

• “loud” and “obnoxious;”
• “fight” and “steal;”
• will “kill them;” and
• “Dress like hoochies.” (“How do you spell that?” I asked. “H-o-o-c-h-i-e-s. You can throw an extra ‘o’ in there if you want.”)

These youth face a different set of stereotypes from their contemporaries in other Springfield high schools. This view came up when asked what they wanted others to know that contradicts the stereotypes. “I don’t think we can technically defend our school,” said Tory. Huh? I didn’t understand – “technically”?

“They always have a problem if you go to Renaissance:
‘you’re smart and stuck up.’”

Interestingly, these Renaissance youth don’t display extremely negative attitudes toward the other Springfield high schools. “All the bad schools have something good about them.” For instance, “Sci-Tech is good, it’s just loose.”  Loose meant “30 kids outside” without administrative/adult supervision: “that would never happen here.” Commerce has programs like 1B and 9th Grade Teams (among others), and a legacy. “My dad went to Commerce when it was good… they didn’t play.”

Going in with a Clean Slate

While the students were talking about these stereotypes, I was wondering how addressing these stereotypes directly might unfold during the upcoming Multi-High School Summit. Dialogue co-facilitator Taos asked the important question about how they want to approach the Summit. Kamari responded instantly, “I’m going in with a clean slate.”  They are excited! A little nervous but eager nonetheless.

From their point-of-view, neither South Hadley nor Amherst High School are very diverse. By “diversity” the students meant “not predominately one race” – then they had a bit of debate about whether Renaissance is diverse or not. From one view, “Springfield is 75% minorities,” which “isn’t very diverse.” When asked about the label, “minority,” Noelani smiled:  “We’re the majority here, but not everywhere else.” The slightly more-detailed demographic breakdown (provided by the students) is 36% Hispanic, 25% Black, 26% White, and .03% Asian.
Those block percentages suggest cultural homogeneity, but most of the Renaissance youth participating in these dialogues have parents who do not share the same ethnic profile with each other.

My hypothesis is that growing up in a family where everyone doesn’t look like the same ‘type’ or even behave – culturally – in the same ways has provided these youth with a neat ability of balancing differences. The evidence is threefold (at least):

1. there is no uniformity of identity among students in the dialogue group (most of whom hang together much of the time);
2. their ability to perceive beyond stereotypes, and also to ‘understand’ and be able to explain why people from outside Springfield seem unable to exercise such insight in return; and
3. their refusal to demonize their contemporaries living in Springfield, even though the vise of being misunderstood/misrepresented both from without and within must suck.

Identities are fluid

The communicative skillset demonstrated by these Renaissance juniors suggests an intuitive comprehension that “identity” is not a single, solid, unchanging thing.  We’ve just begun to explore if it is helpful to separate stereotypes associated with the body from stereotypes associated with the mind. Specifically, does learning how to recognize when one is ‘trapped’ by a stereotype based on body help one make the shift to perceiving another based on the consciousness of their brain?  Generalizations about awareness and intelligence can lead to troubled relationships, too, so I am not posing this as any kind of universal answer. I am suggesting that recognizing when a shift from body to brain would enhance a relationship, and then practicing enough to be able to pull it off when it matters, are crucial skills for navigating the increasingly complex mixing and blending of cultural ways-of-being in society today.

Please Note:

A fundraiser for an anti-bullying scholarship in memory of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover will be held this upcoming April 16, 2011. Walker’s mother has become a national leader in the struggle to curb bullying in school, recently meeting with President Obama because of her activism, locally and nationally, to eliminate bullying in schools.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Amherst, MA

Boundaries or Identities?

Lately I’ve been wondering which comes first, or if this is a classic chicken-and-egg dynamic. Talking about whiteness raises interesting identity questions about belonging – to whom, when and where, how much. The privilege of being known on the basis of mind rather than body is one of the core features of whiteness: white people (like me) might notice attractive white people but would consider the physical as an extension of the mental. In contrast, white people (like me) might notice attractive brown people and stop there, as if the physical is the entire package.

You can see how this works by watching the strategic representation co-constructed by Director Hype Williams and Rihanna, as she is featured in the Kanye West video “All of the Lights” with Kid Cudi and a host of others: Charlie Wilson, John Legend, Tony Williams, Alicia Keys, La Roux, The Dream, Ryan Leslie, Alvin Fields and Ken Lewis. The reflection of whiteness back at itself is heavily dosed with gender, too.

The Rihanna thing is intense. The mournful tones of the introduction frame an ominous future for young girls growing up in a body-centric world. Not that the prospects for men are so much better – read the lyrics. We are all under surveillance of one kind or another most of the time, it’s just that the surveillance is so unobtrusive we can ignore it. Ignore it routinely enough and you’ll forget it’s happening!

My Hip Hop Education

I learn through interaction, talking about ideas and observing responses until I locate a stance that reflects the kind of ethos I want to project into the social world. Teaching allows me to test and assess some of the effects of acting consistently within that ethos, especially where it rubs against conformity. This semester, at least a third of the students in a Communication course on Media and Culture are proactively engaged in cultivating their own ethical stance in today’s fast-forward society. Together, we are all working to develop collective intelligence.

My hip hop education merged with my teaching in a surprising way. The cultural anthropologist and digital ethnographer Micheal Wesch – described as the “Head Honcho” by one of my students – commented on three videos submitted as midterm projects by students in my class to his call for “Visions of Students Today.” In one of his comments, it is obvious that he misunderstood something about hip hop, which I – roughly six hours ahead of Professor Wesch on the learning curve, haha! – was able to recognize.

Given a penchant for using my own mistakes to extend the learning process for myself and possibly others, I engaged:

Michael Wesch, thank you for joining our conversation! I am going to drag you into this lesson, too. An interesting coincidence of timing occurred with your comment to Jamar’s video “My Life, My Eyes, My World” and me learning about Hip Hop. I juxtapose our mistakes (!) to see if there is anything to be learned from them.

I shared all the gory detail with my students because it allowed me to provide them with an immediate and non-academic example of the communication phenomena of juxtaposition and articulation.

Juxtaposition and Articulation

In the All of the Lights video, Rihanna’s adult female body – the physical manifestation of her person – is juxtaposed with rousing lyrics and an exciting musical beat in a saccade. The combined visual and auditory stimuli articulates the dark female body as an object of desire. Because the body is foregrounded, considerations of mind fade from consciousness.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Dialogue: Identities
Whiteness (Race), Gender, Culture…

Our second dialogue on identity opened up difficult stuff.  We learned a few painful experiences these high school youth have had with some of their peers, and began to talk about college . . . what choices are available, and what effective communication strategies can they practice now to achieve success at college later? These bright and energetic high school juniors have a clear sense of why they want to go to college, but very little information about what college will be like. “I would rather have a career I pick than a job that picks me.” Lucii won Marissa’s congratulatory “boop” two times for making brilliant statements about the relationship between a college education and meaningful work. Natasha’s ambition to hang with nerds also met with approval. Noelani, Tiffany, and Lucii got in on the action:

“Nerds make all the money.”

“We’re putting a nerd monitor on you to check in five years.”

“They don’t go to NYC to go shopping!”

“They shop for books.”

On the spur of the moment, the only media image they could come up with about college was news-reporting about “what college students don’t know.” These are sensationalized stories that lampoon the Millennial Generation for not having the same knowledge base that was expected of their parents and grandparents. However, standardizing education in today’s Information Age is complicated. The challenge of education today is only partly with the content. There is a lot more information to sort through in today’s time than for previous generations. In the academic discipline of “Communication,”  the effects of constant exposure to media are explored in relation to the development of an individual’s consciousness, showing links between psychological awareness and societal customs.

Who do you want to be?

I’m wondering about identities, because they shift and change depending on who you’re with and what’s going on. For instance, I’m always a white person, but the ways in which I act white isn’t always relevant. I like the idea that I might be a nerd, too, but does a label that categorizes a certain kind of thinking carry the same weight as a label that categorizes an ethnic or cultural background? Again, it depends on who I’m with and what’s going on.

The important skill is knowing when and how to shift identities depending on what’s going on with the people I’m interacting with. If my friend who describes herself as half-Puerto Rican and half Black  is trying to figure out how to confront whiteness, I need to connect with my white identity in order to be able to share information and insight with her that helps her figure out a strategy. If my friend is struggling with chemistry, then I need to put on the nerd identity and figure out how to learn that crazy stuff too!

When it can get tricky is when we’re in our nerd identities and something, somehow, comes up sideways that has to do with ethnic or cultural or religious or national or sexual or some other identity that is a feature of the body more than of the mind.  The thing about learning (as opposed to teaching), is that when you’re learning you are aware that there is so much that you don’t know.  When you’re teaching, you can get fooled into thinking that what you know is all anyone else has to know, which can lead to a failure of curiosity. Just because a certain strategy works for me, doesn’t mean the same strategy will work for someone else.  This applies whether the topic is academic (like chemistry) or social (like which identity matters most right now).

The education young people need today requires more than balance between the social and the academic. They need skills of navigation so that they can know when to switch from one identity to the next in ways that move them further toward the goals they seek. Anyone who can do this socially can transfer that skill to academic or intellectual content, too. If you can make the identity switch that supports the kind of relationships you want with others, then you also know how to learn and problem-solve together on any topic – whether it is about learning in school, or figuring out a project at work, or helping your family and community find the resources needed to sustain itself.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Dialogue: Identities
Whiteness (Race), Gender, Culture…

Ten high school students in the circle.
(Another observing from outside).
Their regular teacher.
Three facilitators from UMass.

“I wanna have a cool name like that!”

“I hated the first day of school. For days, they couldn’t figure out how to say my name.”

“I like my name. It’s different.”

“[My full name] and I don’t get along. I use [a nickname]; it’s short and sweet.”

“I want an extra letter!”

“A vowel on the end makes it girlie.”

“I like writing my name.”

“[With my first and middle name], I have the same meaning twice.”

“My name is mispronounced often and people don’t accept correction.”

“My dad liked Slavic names. I like my name.”

“I wasn’t named by my mom or dad… I’m known as [a nickname].”

“It’s weird to think the people in [that city I'm named after] are my relatives.”

“I literally became a different person when I came to the U.S. because people couldn’t say my name.”

“I don’t like how I got my name.”

“People see my name and think something; then they meet me and I don’t look like what they expect.”

It’s about the structure

Talking about our names brought up a lot of feelings. Some experiences have been good, others not so much.  ”Should names follow the stereotypes?” Most in the group said no or shook their head. “Would you throw [that kind of] a curve ball to your kid?” Hmm.  What values are involved in this kind of decision? What does your name have to do with who you are? What does your name have to do with who other people think you are?

The diversity of names in this small group led us to ethnic and racial differences. The facilitators were curious how much these differences lead to cliques in school. For these young people, hanging out with people of similar appearance is something that happened up until about 9th grade, and they think most of that was because of location. Who they went to school with before was who they hung out with, at least until they got to know each other.

It is a deeper question to wonder if the clustering of certain groups in particular areas is simply coincidence.  Where did you go to elementary school? What section? Which house?  Were you in 16 Acres?  There was a hint of class difference…. and some groups seem to get swallowed up by others…. Dominicans, for instance, get lumped in with Puerto Ricans.  Relations within families are complicated too. “I’ve spent more time with white people, so I get along with my relatives who live in the North more than the ones in the South.”  And this quick exchange: “I’m the darkest one in my family.” “You’re not even dark!” “I know!” Some students aren’t sure “what” they are. “I’m confused. I’m a bunch of stuff.”

One young man was fifteen when a friend pointed to a photograph in his home and asked, “Who’s that white lady?” “Uh…” he sortof stammered, “Grandma?” raising his voice as if in doubt. What was obvious is how deeply he is connected to his Grandma, the pigment of her skin being inconsequential to their relationship.

language plays a part

“I start speaking in Spanish when I want to tell a secret.”

One student (a girl) wants to know: “¿Que? ¿Que? Translation?”

Another one (a boy) lets it go.  “I just walk away.”

That could be the gender dynamic. The boys were described as “a pack,” “they just get each other.”  “There’s no drama.” “They just let things go.”

…and then there is the future

“What happens when you go to college?”

This conversation was brief, but the immediate responses seemed to project a future environment similar to the one they’re in now. What these kids value is the intimacy of their 600-student high school, where everybody knows each other and the Principal knows everyone’s name.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Vernal Equinox

Full Moon Stories

On the night before Equinox I met The Milkman, a non-brown person appearing strange in rural Central America, now sharing lessons with me from Zen Buddhism.  Senor Leche shared a specially strategic communicative move with me from his years of arduous spiritual training, emphasizing:

“They hit you with a stick until you get the nose insertion technique correct.”

I was impressed by how long he could hold the pose. “Practice,” he encouraged me. “Years of practice.”

The Rihanna thing?

The Rihanna thing is a quick reference to an earlier conversation about Beyonce and Alicia Keys.

When I first came upon Beyonce, [in that There-and-Then context], I was figuring myself out as a woman. She was girl/woman/sexy/curvy but still a side character. Then I came across Alicia Keys, who is seductive and very strong.

Her songs are about love and loss…

Alicia gives nothing of herself away.

Alicia is the actor in her videos and the guys are decoration.

Make your move.

Word, word… twice in a lifetime.

“Alright.
I have lyrics.” [study]

So says Talib Kweli
performing with
Jane Doe, Wordsworth, Punchline, and Mos Def of
Black Star.

“Hi-Tek is the guy who
provides the
music in the back.”
[acknowledgement]

Popularity: 2% [?]