Aaacs presentation

Editor's Notes

• #2: My name is Jo Foy and I am a graduate student in Curriculum & instruction at Kansas State University. My title today is “I See You Now: Changes in the Landscape of Truth-Telling as a Result of the Obama Presidency.”
• #3: Three events occurred in 2009 that caught my eye: (1) the incident with Dr. Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, Massachusetts; (2) the premier of the sitcom “Sherri” on Lifetime TV with Sherri Shepherd of “The View” as the producer and star; and (3) the limited distribution of the award-winning independent film, “Precious”, through a collaboration between Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. I claim that each of these events builds upon the theme of Hope from the Obama campaign.
• #4: During Soledad O’Brien’s interview with Dr. Gates for a segment of Black in America 2, Dr. Gates explained about the police officer in Cambridge. Gates said that the Sergeant asked him for his identification at the door, but when Dr. Gates reached his kitchen where his wallet was on the counter, the officer had followed him into his home. This was a clear violation of his privacy. When Gates returned to the front porch, “it looked like a police convention out there,” said Dr. Gates. When he stepped over the threshold of his front door, he was arrested. Dr. Gates gave details of what happened inside his home that were left out of the official police report. In addition, Dr. Gates apologized on national television to the Sergeant for getting so upset, but to date, the Sergeant has not apologized to Gates (as far as we know). Dr. Gates details a truth about being mistaken for an intruder in his own home. He explains guarding his civil rights to privacy, and how they were violated anyway. I don’t recall such a telling before. If it has happened before, I missed it. Therefore, I am seeing and hearing this kind of truth-telling for the first time. President Obama intervened on Skip Gates behalf and invited both Gates and the Sergeant to what became known as “The Beer Summit”. President Obama initiated a different way to negotiate problems; by talking them through. It is a gentler way than the pushy, male law enforcement approach used on Dr. Gates. This unique approach is also in keeping with Obama’s campaign theme of Hope. “The Beer Summit” gives us Hope that gentler ways of negotiation might work within other conflictual situations.
• #5: Sherri Shepard’s sitcom distributed by Lifetime is somewhat autobiographical. She did work as a legal secretary while she was also building her comedy career at night. In this episode she and her coworkers planned to play tennis, but Sherri’s estranged husband’s mistress (a White woman named Paula) goes into labor on Sherri’s new area rug! Jane Curtin plays Paula’s bigoted, racist mother who threatens Sherri’s husband, played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner, to take care of her daughter. By the end of this episode a new family has formed. Sherri bonds with the new baby, with Paula, even with Paula’s mother and makes this extended family her own. Again, this sitcom, in my opinion, portrays a Hopeful image of African-American women as caretakers and family-makers. “Sherri” exemplifies the changing human landscape since Obama’s election.
• #6: This is the most popular trailer for the film, “Precious.” However, I’m going to show a different version later in the presentation.
• #9: I believe the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill President Obama signed into law, gives us a hint toward what *may* have shifted in the social landscape. In the clip he says, “So in signing this bill today, I intend to send a clear message: That making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone. That there are no second class citizens in our workplaces, and that it’s not just unfair and illegal – but bad for business – to pay someone less because of their gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion or disability. And that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory, or footnote in a casebook – it’s about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives: their ability to make a living and care for their families and achieve their goals.” In this statement, President Obama clearly envisions a multi-racial, multicultural society. Because of the election of Barack Obama, the expectations of African American boys and girls have changed. Morehouse College is one of the oldest historically, Black colleges and universities in the country. A young African-American man who graduates from Morehouse is a Renaissance Man prepared for global citizenry.
• #10: Dr. Robert Franklin, President of Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia shares comments from an open meeting at Morehouse the day after the election. “ Oh, I’ll tell you, it was an amazing theme that began to emerge that can be summarized in two words: no excuses. I mean, one after the other they got up and said, ‘You know, after this election it means there’re no excuses for our academic underperformance, for our irresponsible behavior—no excuses.” (Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2009) In a study conducted before and during the campaign, Bigler and colleagues reported, “Interestingly, girls, African-American, and Latina participants were quite optimistic about their prospects of actually becoming president. When asked whether they really could be president, approximately 75% of each group responded affirmatively” (p 108). As a White female, I would have thought that having a man of color holding the highest political office in the land would send a message of empowerment like no other. However, when I discussed this idea with one of my African-American colleagues, I found that the phenomena I am observing is much more complicated.
• #11: In this presentation I will use Foucault, a French philosopher and historian, to help interpret or explain what I’m seeing as a result of the Obama Presidency. Foucault says, “[read quote above]”
• #12: Even though I, as an older White female, have noticed these events and believe that I am hearing a new kind of “truth” for the first time, what my African-American colleague proposed is that African-American voices are coming out into the open. What I perceive as an “opening up” of communication is what my African-American colleague describes as “bringing into the light” (B. Stoney, personal communication, February 3, 2010). What we learn from Claireece Precious Jones and her mother, Mary Johnston, in the movie about intergenerational poverty and incest are dangerous truths: a dangerous truth being one which does not conform to the dominant ideology. In addition, my African-American colleague and I both have noticed that racist remarks are on the rise. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate crimes particularly in the Southern states, increased significantly right after the election (Strange, 2008). Perhaps White racists feel like they can say out loud what was once said in private.
• #13: In this presentation I will use Foucault to make meaning of intersecting landscapes: the social or cultural one I have just described as a result of the election of President Obama, and the educational one which “Precious” the movie forces us to define more carefully. Let’s consider a graphical representation of the current landscape of U.S. education. I’ve created a movie of charts and graphs from statistical data. It will move somewhat quickly, but if you are interested in looking at this data more carefully, online links are provided on your handout. Go to the movie now.
• #14: The landscape of U.S. Education today is that approximately 5 out of ten students in classrooms look like (and *may* have similar home lives) to their middle class White female teachers. Another 2 students out of ten are either Black or American Indian and living in poverty. A small percentage are Asian, Hawaiian Native or Pacific Islander. And the remaining students, approximately 3 out of ten students are Hispanic (which is a very large umbrella term) and living in poverty. If my math is correct, somewhere between 3 and 7 out of ten students are living in poverty and are non-White with a middle class teacher who is a White female. This disparity is important because non-White students may be English language learners, they may have different learning styles from White students, and they may come to school with the knowledge that generations of their own family members have been failed by the public school systems in the United States. In “Precious”, the first White person we meet is the math teacher. He pays little attention to the back of the room where Precious hides. The second White person we meet in the movie is the principal who expels 16-year-old Claireece from middle school for being pregnant the second time by her father. The movie provides us with a clearly visible disconnect between the White world and Claireece Precious Jones.
• #15: Foucault’s ideas and points of view are used in education research because educational institutions (schools, colleges, and universities) are similar to prisons and mental institutions in the constant surveillance upon both students and teachers by administrators; and the oversight by superintendents and governmental agencies upon public systems of schooling. Education is a knowledge enterprise steeped in power relations and for students who are not the White majority, classrooms are significant loci of resistance. Knowledge, power and self were Foucault’s primary interests. He claimed that knowledge and power are intertwined. Since power is everywhere, knowledge resides in a particular place and a particular time. Later in his life he reviewed the Greek philosophers and came to believe that an ethic of “care for self” was essential to the maintenance of a free subjectivity.
• #24: Claireece finally knows that she is not the cause of the abuse. She is a free subject. Claireece leaves the social worker’s office refusing the welfare check and taking full custody in that moment of her two children. In that moment she changes the ecology and living environment of her life. Yet this truth is not a truth that African-Americans want to hear either. With the election of President Obama, however, African-American society endures this truth. It isn’t the truth of the Cosby Show, but it is a truth within American society.
• #27: In ecology we talk about driving variables and emergent properties. “The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts.” What emerged within Claireece?
• #28: At the end of this movie Claireece has more than just a “fat, black, welfare, pregnant-teen subjectivity” (J. M. Ray, February 6, 2010). If we look at some of Foucault’s later writings, he suggests that care of self actually produces the subject, and “Precious”, the movie exemplifies this idea.
• #29: To summarize, I see a social and cultural landscape shifting where racial issues are being brought into the Light. I also see the educational landscape in crisis for White female teachers. “Precious” the movie offers a counter-example that might be used in classrooms, along with the book, “Push” to examine dominant beliefs about African-American girls and women. The counter message is that Claireece Precious Jones has Hope. Like the students at Morehouse, there are no excuses. She is choosing to forsake the Welfare system, to take full responsibility for her children, to complete high school and go onto college. Now, let’s watch the trailer and see what others have to say.
• #30: Claireece Precious Jones is the stereotypical Black girl being left behind by the U.S. educational system. If you cannot read, you cannot even take a standardized reading test. Precious was being passed from each school grade with high marks. She was not learning.
• #31: The Hope and the Joy of this movie comes from the possibility, as Oprah suggests, that even one Precious Black girl sees herself in Claireece Precious Jones. Thank you.