What a horrible article (both of them)! The "liberal" one is just a ventriloquist regurgitation of the nativist "scientific" analysis. Landsburg seems a little too happy stating the racist mathematics that he is supposedly critiquing. Where are the immigrant voices? The only valuable part was his last short paragraph. He should've written the article about that! Can other people sense some black- brown native-immigrant coalition opportunities?
anyways... hi everybody! i'm still here! (in cyberspace, that is). I was trying to write you my first brief communique from Ann Arbor to let you know that I'm alive and kicking. I guess the above response might also let you know that thanks to the marvels of the transnational internet, I'm keeping close watch on your every move (at least those of you in the Mellon seminar). I see you guys are doing wonderful work, and I'm a little jealous of the great seminar session you have planned for tomorrow. Ann Arbor. I'm beginning to experience the formation of a new community here in Michigan. Yesterday was probably the first time that I felt like I 'knew' the people in my class, and that they kinda 'knew' me. I thought this would be an appropriate time to write. Ann Arbor has shaken my expectations more than I anticipated. I just began my summer school which is a combination of a class and a broader summer program. The summer program is for most entering Rackham Merit Fellow students (about 80 of us this summer) and it is designed to make us aware of the many opportunities, resources, and pitfalls of graduate life here at the University of Michigan. I'm in the minority pursuing an MFA: most people are beginning their PhDs... mostly in the natural sciences and technology, it seems. My class is called "Introduction to Advanced Inquiry in the Humanities," which is just a lofty way of saying that we theorize about theories--that of history, literature, language, pedagogy, disciplines and disciplinarity, etc. You could call it a class in the metatheory of the humanities, although that might be too lofty as well. The Rackham Merit Fellowship will be paying most of my bills for the next three years. Unlike my experience at Macalester, I won't have to worry about my financial stability in addition to all the other worries of academic life. On the other hand, it also raises some troubling questions about where the money comes from, who enjoys the benefits, and perhaps more importantly, who doesn't. "Diversity" here at Michigan is a touchy word. I'm in a majority- white class when I expected something like the mellon seminar or the IRT environment (i.e. students of color finding commonalities and differences). Students of color do make up the majority of the summer program as a whole, but that is a reductive comment that does not really say much. There is a large group of Puerto Rican students directly from the island (and many other immigrants and international students), many Asian students who do see themselves as anything "Other," Black or Latino students in the sciences who seem mostly concerned with passing as different than 'those other' blacks or latinos, and even a student of color within the humanities who studies race but who repeatedly "admits" to "playing the race card." In addition, many of us are biracial (white and not), some (but not as many) come from relatively affluent backgrounds, and many if not most of these students do not see themselves as "of color": that is more of an institutional/statistical label. The white group is largely composed of local poor whites (from Detroit, the surrounding area, or the greater Michigan), and many immigrants from Eastern Europe. I expected the fight over Affirmative Action to be on the tip of everybody's tongue, and indeed it is, but it never exits anybody's mouth. On the first dinner when I brought it up with my newly-made Puerto Rican friends, everybody first pretended not to hear me, and when I repeated myself, they looked away, mumbled something, and fell silent until somebody else broke the ice with a different topic. The topic is brought up constantly by the older grad students, faculty and administrators in the panel discussions we attend, but I guess us newbies are afraid of alienating ourselves from our cohorts too soon. There is a general silence on the issue. The defused application of "diversity" to anyone who even mildly (even against their own beliefs) fits a loose category of disenfranchisement has odd consequences. What should be intersectional, is instead compartmentalized. For example, the issue was brought up by a white woman of a poor background that we should be focusing on local issues of class and not so much race. Although I agree with the premise, I disagree with the contrast. Aren't most black people from Detroit the victims of class inequality in addition to racism? I was glad to find out that immigration was part of the language of diversity here, but how did all of the benefactors of immigration reform end up being Eastern European, when so many of the car-washers, roofers, back-room cooks, and janitors here in Ann Arbor are brown immigrant Latinos? Despite the bipartisan uproar over an allegedly forgotten "middle class," it seems that the "middle class" is precisely the greatest benefactor of Affirmative Action. What disturbs the right and old left is the shifting demographic of the rising bourgeoisie, not its lack of attention. And so I'm placed in this odd paradox of having to see the humanity and commonality of struggle in all my accidental comrades, while remaining critical of the supposedly progressive politics that put us here. How to balance this? I guess I have been exiled from my comfort zone, and what begins as a critique of "the institution" or of other students ends as a sober contemplation about myself, of my own place in the grand matrix of structural inequity. I begin my MFA in Visual Arts as the art department's sole recipient of the Rackham Merit Fellowship. I am told that the faculty are "very exited" about me, which I figure is in part due to my own achievements and aspirations, and in part due to the place I fill in the institutional mission/mandate of diversity. I AM the art department's "Pillar of Diversity," at least in my year. And yet, despite my multicultural pedestal, I feel whiter than ever. I have been for a long time keenly aware (or else reminded) of my liminal racial status. In Minnesota, however, although I understood differences in terms of class, race, and background amongst Latinos, it seemed at times ok to essentialize my status, because I experienced the immediate way in which my education (my privilege) could be used for greater purposes. I participated in a classroom discussion about the similarities of different types of oppression in the morning, and in the afternoon, I could use some of those ideas in a community meeting on Lake Street. If on Monday I learned how to screen-print, I could make some posters on Friday for a Labor Day march. I felt connected to the community, to the local struggles, in a way that allowed me to pursue my education without feeling too selfish. Here, I feel exiled from myself, from my body, and from my place in the struggle. Ann Arbor, an oasis of economic stability and cultural capital in the middle of the landscape of postindustrial destitution that surrounds us, is perhaps too quick to justify its privileged existence. To the right-wing onslaught on Affirmative Action, the institution cries "we shall overcome!" But who are "we"? We are an imported "we", brought from across the globe to check a box or two in the grand institutional questionnaire. Diversity, in its mutated, overdetermined, debased form, will remain on the agenda. But what of liberation? --aa On Jul 10, 2007, at 10:27 AM, Peter Rachleff wrote: > > > Danni wrote: >> >> I just found this article, check it out, it's about border issues and >> the value of human life. >> >> http://www.slate.com/id/2168060/fr/flyout >> >> >> >> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Mellon Myers Undegraduate Fellowship Program at Macalester >>> (http://macmmuf.org) >>> [email protected] >>> http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html >>> http://macmmuf.org/mailman/listinfo/list_macmmuf.org >>> >>> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Mellon Myers Undegraduate Fellowship Program at Macalester (http:// > macmmuf.org) > [email protected] > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html > http://macmmuf.org/mailman/listinfo/list_macmmuf.org > > _______________________________________________ Mellon Myers Undegraduate Fellowship Program at Macalester (http://macmmuf.org) [email protected] http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html http://macmmuf.org/mailman/listinfo/list_macmmuf.org
