Blogs Elbow Up to Journal Status in New Academic-Publishing Venture

Interesting piece, Marc. Exciting stuff. What Digital Humanities Now is doing is exactly what I’ve been doing with Twitter on my criminology e-zine, CrimeTalk.org.uk. I’m trying to deliver quality in that important space between academic journals/books on the one hand and public experience and opinion on the other. I’ve edited international academic journals but an e-zine offers more possibilities to give full meaning to the concept of public-ation by aiming at the interface between the global public and quality intellectual production. It should benefit both public and research if it can bring university people and the public to see that there is a space between them and they need to enter it, and to be enabled to enter it.

You don’t have to lecture me. My church (predominantly white), was instrumental in helping my single mother raise my sister and I. I know first hand and have benefited first hand from the well meaning benevolence of white people. I get it, I really do. Ironic to your point, my mother is an immigrant from Jamaica and just as you chronicled, experienced her race very different and raised my sister and I with different perceptions about our race relative to my African-American friends. I understand that there are contextual differences to how race plays out. The black community is no monolith where every experience with race relations is just the same.

However, in your response you reveal exactly what I have been saying and the true complexity of race relations. The history of the United States, influences how people of color perceive their world, for better and for worse. Up until college, I was oblivious of race and some people of color will go their entire life oblivious to the fact. Just because they don’t see how race affects them, does not mean that their race is still not affecting them. It’s like the old adage, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? There are some people of color who do see how race affects their lives and they are the ones who raise issue with it. 

You seem so caught up with this notion of black people making up racism. I very much wish I did not have to deal with racism at all. Why the heck would I make this stuff up or be so concerned with it? Why would I make up that security watches me when I walk into stores or that my classmates don’t think I am fit to be sitting in class with them? I can assure you that if these things did not happen, I am not conniving enough to think them up. Are you really into blaming the victim given your profession? Yes, people of color play into, play up and play on race relations. Some with sinister motives and some to take advantage of white people. I don’t support that but acknowledge that it happens. However, you taking it to the extreme and stating that black people make it up, is highly, highly problematic.

I’m glad you can list off instances where you have deconstructed white oppression. I retract my earlier statements, stand corrected and apologize for making a hasty assumption. With that being said, both you (hopefully) and I know that if the actions that you recounted above were indeed happening consistently across our country, race relations would be much improved even beyond where they are today. I always arrive at the question if white people think so highly of themselves when it comes to race relations, then why are they so apt to challenge and discount issues that black people find important? If the black community thinks affirmative action is still necessary and 99% of white people are well meaning, then why is there such an uproar still? Perhaps we have different definitions of “well-meaning.”

Why is it okay for you to discount people’s experience with racism and call them deluded when they say they have experienced racism? 99% of white people are well meaning, right?

Why is gentrification more based off of skin color then SES? 99% of white people are well meaning, right?

Why is Dr. Bell or Rev. Wright painted as a radical by you and others on here? 99% of white people are well meaning, right?

What it seems given your response, 99% of white people are well meaning ONLY to those people of color that they deem fit to or worthy of being well-meaning too. If they are a part of the black panthers, or subscribe to CRT or received a lower score on the MCAT and thus did not deserve to be in the same med school as you, those people of color do not deserve the well meaning actions of whites. I surmise that is not what you meant, but it is sure as heck what comes off from your response.

Please help me see how in just these few instances, the well meaning intentions of white people is on display? That is a sincere question.

Lastly, I actually admire Clarence Thomas. I disagree with him on some of his stances and agree with him on many more. Just like Justice Thomas I think black people need to take more responsibility for our children and communities. I am glad that he so vigorously champions that message. I disagree with him sometimes on how he let’s white people off the hook for their role but overall think his stances are strongly backed by the constitution and are in the best interest of our country. You would be wise to stop trying to box people of color into your stereotypical ”bad, radical, liberal, black person”, vs. “good, international, conservative, thinks just like me, black person” boxes.

It’s not a single concern Dr. Kennedy. All oppression is tied together in a complex web of history, policy and reality. I am actively trying to learn about how my dominant identities of being heterosexual and male contribute to the oppression of homosexuals and women. It’s hard for me to accept that what I do on a daily basis sometimes contributes to the oppression of homosexuals and women, especially when like you, I have good intentions towards homosexuals and women and want them to have a good life experience too. (This is not even adding in the complex layer of my faith belief intersecting with these issues .)

 Like I stated before, I was in part raised by a single mother and an older sister. Because of this I was reared and I have always tried to treat women with the utmost respect and concern. Coming to terms with how I and other men create a context of oppression for women, still, has been quite the task for me to understand and accept. That is why I get why you reject race as an issue. I used to reject feminist issues in the same way and still do on some issues. That is why I understand so intimately why white people wish race would just go away. I have identities that are normal and not oppressed and when I think about the world through these lenses, I am much more sensitive to what you are saying in your original posts. I have been berated by women for holding the door open for them because they assumed that I assumed that they could not hold the door for themselves. WTF? I get having your intentions being ignored or ill perceived, I do.
With that being said though, my understanding  is also what keeps me pushing the issue of race, because you, just like me, contain the capacity to be more sensitive to the issue, just like I contain the capacity to be more sensitive to women’s rights. I am learning how even though I have good intentions or even if I ignore or discount women’s experiences, this is still a man’s world. If I am not aware of how I am contributing to or deconstructing my male privilege everyday, then nothing will get better for women. Yes, women have to play a major role in their own uplift, but so do I. It’s sucks to have gone 22 years thinking one way and then all of a sudden start to add in a new way of seeing the world. I can only imagine how hard the task might seem if you are older then me.  In this particular forum I have keyed on race, but please believe that oppression is oppression through and through. Equality of any kind won’t be realized until  all those with dominant or mainstream  or normalized identities take time to understand the complexity of the issue and commit to continuously deconstructing oppression on all levels.I know there is a fine line that we have to be careful of because no one wants their good intentions to be taken advantaged of or misconstrued (e.g. white guilt, patriarchy, etc.) However, we can’t aspire to a more perfect union without people like you and I taking these risks, continuously, in ways that might be uncomfortable but that we know will lead to a better future. I know it’s pie in the sky, but that’s where we have to head if indeed we are committed to overcoming these issues.

 Dear Mr. Zafft, I’m pleased that you found the article and saw my link to your 1991 Harvard Crimson letter,  Your reaction to Professor Bell’s struck me as an instance of good first-hand observation and genuine shock at the implications of Bell’s views. 

You are surely right that Professor Ogletree was under no ethical obligation to aid Barack Obama’s opponents in the 2008 election. But maybe there is a case that what was ethically permissible wasn’t really good judgment. Professor Obgletree, in choosing to withhold what he knew became one of many establishment figures who preferred that election to proceed without the public being aware of key parts of  Obama’s education and ideological commitments.

Had those been better known, the public might well have elected Obama anyway, and surely some of his supporters would have been even more enthusiastic. Others might have had second thoughts.  But whatever the outcome of the election, we would surely have benefited as a country from a more open conversation (and debate) than we have managed to have in the last four years with one side peremptorily declaring that all the important facts are out in the open, and the other side driven to deep distrust inthe capacity of the mass media to do its job in  fair-minded way.

The news about Bell has crystallized that divide, with CNN becoming the symbol of mass media’s heedless dismissal of any and all evidence of Obama’s decades-long admiration of and involvement with far-left political actors.

As you say, Ogletree and CNN cannot both be right: the tape may not be a “bombshell” in the sense of making something known that was totally unknown before this, but the video footage has certainly renewed interest in President Obama’s intellectual outlook and the people who helped to shape that outlook. 

Peter Wood

No, I have only used them to describe you and, until that last comment of yours, I assumed you were white. It’s shame you can’t see your own paranoia.  The tragedy is the Rev Wright’s church was filled with successful blacks who had nothing to fear but their own demons.