This is probably the fourth or fifth time I have read this particular CCCC's address by Selfe. It's one of my favorites because each time I read it, I'm reminded of our larger responsibilities as scholars, as human beings.
Among other things, Selfe points out the contradiction between the egalitarian rhetoric that often defines discussions of new media literacy and the hierarchical reality of our economic system. In other words, Selfe examines egalitarian rhetoric which says that we will "provide all Americans with an education enriched by technology, and, thus, equal opportunity to high-paying, technology-rich jobs and economic prosperity after graduation" (419). At the same time, she notes the hierarchical reality of our economic system and our education system--which help to sustain an underclass that is disproportionately comprised of people of color. As Selfe explains, "computers continue to be distributed differentially along related axes of race and socioeconomic status and this distribution contributes to ongoing patterns of racism and to the continuation of poverty" (420). Importantly, she understands unequal access to technology and technological illiteracy to be necessary functions, symptoms of our economic system. She explains:
"The economic engine of technology must be fueled by--and produce--not only a continuing supply of individuals who are highly literate in terms of technological knowledge, but also an ongoing supply of individuals who fail to acquire technological literacy, those who are termed "illiterate" according to the official definition. These latter individuals provide the unskilled, low-paid labor necessary to sustain the system I have described--their work generates the surplus labor that must continually be re-invested in capital projects to produce more sohpisticated technologies" (427).
To put this another way, the unfairness is built right into the sytems of which we are a part. Our economic system requires that, in our education system, certain people fail; it requires that certain people remain illiterate; it requires a digital divide.
This is such an important argument to keep in mind. As we all clamor about the perils of failing to teach digital media in the classroom, we mustn't forget what the likely effect of our teaching will be: to reinforce already existing social inequalities. This is not to say that we are bad people; it's just to say that we are functioning in a system that demands that we act as gatekeepers. Jon, in his post, said something that really hit me when he was discussing his teaching at Brown Mackie. He wrote:
"Even though access to computers and internet is (rapidly?) changing, there are still many that would be considered on the lower end of the digital divide. Joe, the plumber, himself may be such an individual. Certainly, many of the women (and men) I taught at Brown Mackie college (demographically 80% female) many of whom were in Section 8 housing and survived off of state-issued food cards did not have computers in their home. These women may be a statistical anomaly or the self-report data I received was unreliable. Nonetheless, it gives me pause (a cognitive dissonance, a felt difficulty) when I read this article. It may be no surprise that many of the women who did not have computers in their homes were African Americans. "
Here Jon reports that many of his students at Brown Mackie were without computers--and adds some demographic information about these people, who were mostly women of color living in relative poverty. As Jon points out, it is no surprise that those "on the lower end of the digital divide" were African-Americans. I might add that it is no surprise that you would find them in greater numbers at a college like Brown Mackie than you would at Kent State. And you'd be more likely to find them at Kent State than you would at Harvard.
Again this is a pattern of inequality that is structural, that is inherent in the systems that we have created. Dr. King used to talk about an "evil triplet" of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. For King, one couldn't try to dissolve racism, without also trying to dissolve the other two members of the triplet. We can add to the list a fourth component: educational inequality. And, like King, we must keep in mind that we cannot hope to transcend this inequality without attending also to racism, economic exploitation, and, yes, militarism.
This leads me to discuss many of the solutions proposed by Selfe. Selfe offers that we start changing the way we do business locally in the academy and she asks that we challenge official versions of literacy in our curriculm meetings and standarads documents. Likewise, she calls on us to revise our professional organizations and facilities. All of Selfe's proposed solutions are important; and I agree with her that we must beigin locally.
But one thing that is missing from Selfe's list of things that we could do is protest, demonstration, and the like. I would argue that the "savage inequality" that we see requires more than curricular reform; it requires that we organize and protest--that we make a stink in front of the public, so that these issues are talked about beyond the walls of the academy. I would also argue that we have to raise our collective voices not only about the reforms needed in English classrooms and English curricula. If we truly want to "address the complex linkages among technology, literacy, poverty, and race" (429)--and I'll throw in militarism, too--then we need to be protesting loudly for change in our economic system, protesting for an end to structural racism and interpersonal racism, and protesting wars which only suck up the resources that could be used for such social progress. In other words, we need to start addressing all components of the linkage simultaneously. We need to start merging our academic selves with our civic selves. We need to bring the lessons we learn in the academy to the public, and make public our political vision.
Such a project would require organization; it would require--dare I say it--consciousness-raising. It would also mean challenging systems in ways that would likely put our reputations and careers in jeopardy.
I wonder if I--I wonder if we--we have the courage to make a stink about what is staring all of us in the face.
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2 comments:
There's really nothing like a good public stink.
John, you wrote: "it's just to say that we are functioning in a system that demands that we act as gatekeepers."
This is a very good point indeed, both in the classroom and in the context of the 'town vs. gown' situation (i.e. the obvious dichotomy between a university and the town in which it resides). The university is the gatekeeper of knowledge (and access to said knowledge), and the town (those not involved in university affairs) may not have full access to that knowledge.
Also, in the university itself (besides the digital divide situations between students based on class, gender, etc), there is a knowledge/power divide between administration and everyone else. At Kent, for example, the president's house is paid for by the University, he took a $40,000 trip to Europe last year (apparently to establish ties with other universities), and I think I remember reading that he received a $60,000 bonus last year (but please correct me if I'm wrong). And yet, he sends out emails asking the departments to be frugal because the economy is, as John McCain put it so eloquently, "cratering."
This sounds like the financial capacity of a CEO, not a university president...it seems like Miller is right on in pointing out that universities are becoming more like corporations than institutions of knowledge. The student is a customer, but as we all know, there are varying degrees of customers. One student may be able to afford the Cadillac, while another is stuck with PARTA. Not to mention the abuse of contingent faculty...but I think I've raised enough of a personal, digitized "stink" for now.
We have to change everything about ourselves. John is right that all of the -isms (including militarism and its ideology of separate nation-states as well as heteronormativity with its ideology of separate homes / families and its attendant binarism of gender) work together and are inherent in the system. Cultural studies have nicely explained this for us for the last thirty years or so, of course, growing from the civil rights and feminist struggles. We have inherited the legacies of these ideologies, every one of us. Sure, there are racist people—KKK members would definitely belong to this group. However, the rest of us practice (unconscious) racist behavior (or, maybe more accurately put—behavior that contributes to maintaining a racist structure that has disproportionate social, economic (including technological), and personal consequences for people of color) in extremely subtle ways through our assumptions, which guide our ways of being and sense of self. The system does not exist without our complicity. This is how personally political (thank you, 2nd wave feminism) marginalization is. We, individually, do it to ourselves, collectively. We have to change everything about ourselves. This is an ethical imperative. Who we are has consequences—even if, and especially if, we plan to have a nice normal family behind a white picket fence and “escape” the public world (like I’ve seen so many gay men and lesbian women do—opting out of the fight for equality for their own “privacy”, which seems, to me, like just another closet [I wonder why opponents of gays and lesbians don’t advocate gay marriage for just this reason—subdue them into privacy and get them out of politics]). Who we are has consequences. We need to change everything about ourselves.
I remember the first protest that I attended. We were protesting Ohio’s so-called Defense of Marriage Act in October 2003 at the Columbus courthouse. DOMA, as it was called, would, and did, define marriage as between a man and a woman. The act of defining marriage in law, not only could bring denotative conformity (as Edward Schiappa claims definitions do rhetorically in Defining Reality) to the rupture of the term “marriage,” but also makes explicit an assumption that we’ve long held. The protest failed to achieve its desired effect—to make sure that the DOMA was not signed into law. Defining marriage as between a man and a woman must now wrestle with the definitional rupture that intersexed (formerly known as hermaphrodites and in the scientific community referred to by sex chromosomal structure such as XXY) and transgendered individuals have brought to the table for the terms “man” and “woman.” In any case, I shared a sense of community and purpose with those at the protest. Maybe this protest failed because its scope was not wide enough, considering John’s call for King’s three-pronged attack. Maybe it failed because the system is too powerful. Maybe it failed because marriage could or should be lower on our list of concerns (which include homelessness, bullying in schools, housing and job discrimination, hate crime legislation, etc.). Maybe it failed because we failed to change everything about ourselves.
[[Here is a historical interlude—a tangent that I went off on while writing this post. I’ve included it here for anyone interested]] Gay persons, as individual identities (contra acts), have only existed for about one hundred years (see David Halperin’s One Hundred Years of Homosexuality). The modern homosexual was born in 1898 by sexologists Havelock and Van Kroft-Ebbing. The Gay Rights Movement, which began in the 1930s with the Homophile (contra homophobe; think hydrophilic and hydrophobic) Movement, gained momentum 1969 with the Stonewall Riots, and came to a screeching halt with the onset of the AIDS pandemic in the 80s (1969-1980 is considered within the community as the Golden Age of Gay)
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