Jena, Louisiana

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As the rally began to unfold this morning, it became clear that it would attract huge numbers of people, perhaps even the 40,000 that some organizers had predicted. They came to protest the case of the “Jena 6,” black youths who were charged with serious crimes for an attack on a white youth not long after white teens who had targeted blacks were let off with a slap on the wrist. White supremacists reacted with a strange mixture of anger and admiration for the organizing behind the rally.

But the dominant response was violent rage. “I think a group of White men with AK rifles loaded with high capacity magazines should close in on the troop of howler monkeys from all sides and compress them into a tight group, and then White men in the buildings on both sides of the shitskinned hominids shall throw Molotov cocktails from above to cleanse the nigs by fire,” wrote “NS Cat” on VNN. Another poster fantasized about a terrorist attack in Jena today: “Wouldn’t that be sweet? Gosh darn, wouldn’t that be sweet? Good LORD wouldn’t THAT be SWeeeeEET? Boom, Boom, no more Coon! Well? A White man can dream can’t he?”

Mark Potok on September 20, 2007, from Hatewatch

I was born one year after Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas, was integrated with the help of the National Guard. “On the morning of September 23, 1957,” according to the National Historic Place website, “nine African-American teenagers stood up to an angry crowd protesting integration in front of Little Rock’s Central High as they entered the school for the first time.”

I was reminded of this over the last week as I was watching the march on Jena, Louisiana, and reading about the debates it has engendered, and then thinking about the anniversary of the Central High integration. What’s so striking is that it is so easy to believe that Jim Crow belongs in the very distant past, instead of my childhood.

We all want Jim Crow to be a part of the past, of course, and I think people get resentful when they are reminded that in too many ways the legacy of segregation is still with us. There’s nothing trivial about the use of the confederate flag, or making a “joke” by hanging a few nooses in a tree that was unofficially reserved for whites. Calling it a joke is just a kind of wish fulfillment fantasy.

And then I go to Hatewatch and hear about the most virulent forms of white supremacy. I was born in the South, though, and I know that these attitudes– the racists’ macho bravado– is still very common and very dangerous. I’m sure that you could have heard versions of it all over the country after the march last week. I heard a polite echo of that in Reed Walter’s famous threat to the students of Jena High school: “See this pen in my hand? I can end your lives with the stroke of a pen.”

Posted in: Autobiographical, Online Places, Writing

An Interview with Philip Dine: the Sate of the Unions and Higher Education

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You may already know Phillip Dine’s work. According to his official biography, he “covered the labor beat for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for two decades. “ Among his many achievements are two Pulitzer Prize nominations; more recently he won the 2007 National Press Club Edwin Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the 2007 Society of Professional Journalists Dateline Award for Investigative Reporting.

His first book, published this year, is called, State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence. Dine believes that unions need to play a more important role in the U.S. “What’s lacking,” he has written, “is not relevance but rather a way for labor to strengthen itself…” I was curious about Dine’s thoughts on labor and higher education and sent him a series of questions via his publicist. His answers were somethings brief– he has got to be a busy man!–but provocative nonetheless.

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RW: Do you think higher education largely reproduces or challenges class structures in the United States? Has this changed as union membership has decreased? Would it change again if union membership rose?

PD: Higher education largely perpetuates class structure in this country, and that has not changed much as union levels have decreased. Why? Because unlike in countries such as France and Italy, labor in the United States never has challenged the class structure or the economic system. Rather, unions seek to increase the pie and provide a place at the table for their members. They aim to make the system work better and be more fair, rather than trying to dismantle it. There have been a few threads in the labor movement that have leveled more fundamental questions about the class system over the years, but they generally been short-lived. Ironically, the stronger unions are, the better the current system works, because it meets the aspirations of a broader segment of the population.

RW: Do you believe that the union movement in general has an interest in seeing higher education unionized?

PD: Clearly the union movement is interested in seeking higher education — academics, staff, even students — unionized, for the same rationale it wants other sectors of society organized. Moreover, doing so in the education sector would have even a broader impact, given the influence educators have and students will eventually have.

RW: How do you see the role of unionization in American Higher Education? Do professors need unions? If so, why? Professionals often resist unions because they are so vested in individual systems of merit. How can unions begin to change these entrenched attitudes, particularly in higher education?

PD: Complex questions. On one hand, academia doesn’t lend itself to what at times can be the lowest-common denominator, mass-production approach of unions whose emphasis can be on protecting workers who need it rather than rewarding those who merit it. At the same time, the problems created by administrators who are incompetent or worse can sometimes require that professors have some built-in recourse or collective clout to stand up for their rights. There already is pressure for unions to back off their tough stand against merit pay in secondary education, and the questions that poses are not dissimilar to those you raise here.

RW: Some researchers estimate that more than 60% of all university teachers are adjuncts. How might unions help to alleviate this situation?

PD: Good luck. This is happening in various forms in a host of industries or economic sectors, including two-tier structures for journalists. But unions might have more success in education, because the balance of power hasn’t shifted as much and the employers aren’t as profit-driven.

RW: Online proprietary schools are the fastest growing sector of higher education in the United States today, yet many have argued that they represent the ‘Wall-Martization” of the university. Do you see parallels between the rise of Wall-Mart and the more recent rise of proprietary schools such as Phoenix and DeVry? Is it possible for unions to be organized at online proprietary schools?

PD: There are definite parallels. The diffusion of personnel and impersonality of interaction involved here make organizing all the more challenging.

Posted in: Composition, Economics, Professional, Union, Writing

White Flight and the Internet

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Facebook, likewise, is imposing the right limits—it’s almost New Victorian in that regard. It is a connection engine that successfully mirrors how most of us want to live our lives. (Most people live in suburbs for a reason.) If the overall trend on the Internet is the individual user’s loss of control as corporations make money off information you unwittingly provide, Facebook is offering a way to get some of that control back. In Facebook’s vision of the Web, you, the user, are in control of your persona.

“About Facebook”, Michael Hirschorn, theAtlantic.com, October 2007

Parallel transportation networks—evolving out of the time-share aircraft companies such as Warren Buffett’s NetJets—will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily pad to the next.” That elite world is already largely in place, but Robb predicts that the middle class will soon follow suit, “forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security.” These “‘armored suburbs’ will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links” and be patrolled by private militias “that have received corporate training and boast their own state-of-the-art emergency response systems.”

“Disaster Capitalism: The new economy of catastrophe”
Naomi Klein, Harpers Magazine, September 8, 2007 (There’s no public text but the link to Naomi Klein’s website is here.)

After reading these two pieces I was struck by an odd parallel. There has already been some controversy about trying to understand how social networking sites are reproducing class patterns. And, of course, there has been a lot of controversy about Net Neutrality, although that seems to have died down. Social networking has also been criticized for the superficiality of its connections.

What strikes me is that Hirschorn may be talking about the Internet version of the social process described in such frightening detail by Klein. Klein’s argument is that the very same ideological bias towards privatization has shaped both the Iraq War and the ongoing response to Katrina.

That seems obvious, if you have been reading about the contracts the Bush administration awarded a variety of companies in both places. “Shaw, Bechtel, CH2M Hill—all top contractors in Iraq—were handed contracts on the Gulf Coast to provide mobile homes to evacuees just ten days after the levees broke.” Klein notes, “Their contracts ended up totaling $3.4 billion, no open bidding required.” That”s just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Less obvious is the shopping cart full of privatization projects Klein details, from privatized “contract cities” outside of Atlanta to Blackwater’s growing mercenary army. Strangely enough, the same private firms guarding diplomats in Baghdad are now guarding wealthy suburbs in New Orleans. If Klein’s piece doesn’t make the hairs go up on your arm something is seriously wrong.

I am fairly certain that Hirschorn is not suggesting that Internet access be divided along class lines. (Klein reminds us that this has already happened in our medical system.) On the other hand, many have suggested recently that this sort of system– the more money you have the better your access– is inevitable. Indeed, it is already true, given the price difference between broad band and dial up. But Hirschorn’s piece hints that the very same racial and class impulses that created the suburb may well be finding expression in Facebook. Is this the start of white flight on the Internet?

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Writing