Tag Archives: racial politics

Monday Musings: What’s Next?

Today is Juneteenth, of course — a (now) federally recognized holiday commemorating the emancipation of slaves in 1865. And I wish all of you a wonderful day of celebration and reflection. As proud as I am of Joe Biden’s push to make Juneteenth (finally) a national holiday, I am also deeply ashamed to say that my Congressman, Scott DesJarlais (R-TN4) was one of only fourteen members of Congress (all of them Republicans) to vote against the establishment of the holiday. I’m sure he came up with some excuse to justify his vote, but the fact is he catered to the worst instincts of his overwhelmingly white, hyper-conservative constituents. Shameful.

But that is beside the point. Again, I hope you have a wonderful holiday. I plan to, and I plan to take some time as well to think about the progress we have made as a nation, and the great distance we still have to travel on the journey toward racial justice.

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David and Nancy
(Photo by Cat Sparks)

Here in our little corner of the world, the life I share with Nancy is about to go through a significant transition, one that I believe will be good for both of us. After eighteen months as acting president of the university here, Nancy will be transitioning back to a supporting role and helping to welcome the newly appointed next president of the school. This has been the plan from the start of Nancy’s tenure as acting president, and her role as a special consultant to the next Vice Chancellor (that’s what they call the president here) was even written into her appointment letter eighteen months ago.

My feelings about the coming shift are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, I know she will be happier and more relaxed. She will sleep better, I am sure. She will go back to working 40 to 50 hours a week instead of 55 to 65. She will no longer have to worry about midnight calls from campus security and the Student Life Office. She will no longer have event after event after event, week after week after week. Life will slow down for both of us, and I welcome that.

On the other hand, she has had a remarkable tenure as acting president that saw her steer the school through a period of unexpected upheaval. She presided over a record-setting admissions cycle and the two most successful annual fundraising days in the school’s history. She continued and deepened the university’s commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. She was a terrific ambassador and fundraiser for the institution. And she instituted practices to make communication from the administration to the other university constituencies more candid and transparent. All this while also serving as a trailblazer and role-model: She is the first woman in the history of the school to serve as president.

As much as I have worried about her lack of sleep, her constant workload, the effects of being the most visible person on the campus and therefore having a political and emotional target on her back, I have also loved watching her shine in this role. She is a superstar. I’ve known it for more than thirty years. It’s been fun to see others figure it out as well. I am so proud of her achievements, her class, her integrity, her compassion, her remarkable strength, and her incredible skills as a leader, I can’t even put it into words.

The new president comes from another institution, but he was an undergraduate here and served in various roles at the university in the first two decades Nancy and I were here. His younger child and our older daughter went to elementary school together, swam together, played soccer together. The new president’s wife taught ballet to both of our girls. They are wonderful people and will serve the institution well. Nancy and I wish them every success.

What is next for us?

Well, as I mentioned, Nancy will be helping with the transition through the summer and the 2023-24 Fall Semester. On January 1, 2024, she will go on sabbatical for the calendar year. Sabbaticals in academia usually come every seven years. Nancy’s last sabbatical ended in August of 2006. So, yeah, she’s due . . . .

I have no plans to change what I am doing. I will continue to write and edit. But I also expect that during Nancy’s sabbatical we might travel more than we usually do, and I look forward to having a few adventures. We’ll see our girls — lots, I hope. And, of course, I will enjoy having time with my sweetie. Quiet evenings, relaxed meals, unscheduled weekends — all of that sounds lovely. Beyond the Sabbatical and whatever Nancy’s next step will be as a returning member of the university faculty, we don’t know. But that’s okay, too. A little mystery and uncertainty never hurt anyone.

Enjoy today’s holiday, and have a wonderful week.

Monday Musings: Challenging Ourselves

I will admit that my first impulse for this Monday Musings post was to write about something other than race and politics. Not because those things aren’t still on my mind. They consume me. But rather because I was thinking, “I’ve written about White privilege two weeks in a row. I don’t want to seem like I’m harping on it.” [Here are links to my post from two weeks ago and last week.]

My next thought, right after that one, was, “Why the hell not?”

College Town Protest March, David B. CoeThis past Friday our little college town had a peaceful protest march followed by a rally on the college quad. It was a terrific event: somber, but also uplifting. Several people spoke, including my wife, who is provost of the university. Most of the speakers were Black; Nancy is not. And her message was directed at the many White allies who were in attendance. Showing up is great, she said. But it’s not enough. We who consider ourselves allies of those fighting for racial justice, but who also carry enormous privilege, have to challenge ourselves to act, to fight every day for a better world. And she, in turn, challenged us. Think of things you can do. Commit yourselves.

She and I have been making donations to organizations that fight for racial justice. We are committed to voting, to supporting candidates who will help put an end to systemic racism. We have reached out to our Black friends to make sure they’re doing all right. We are more than willing to have difficult conversations with family and friends. We would be willing to have those conversations with our daughters as well, but, frankly, we have more to learn from them than they have to learn from us.

But after those things, I found myself wondering in response to Nancy’s challenge, what else I could do? The answer came to me pretty quickly; it should be obvious to anyone who knows me.

I write.

That’s what I do.

I’m not saying that race and racial politics will be the subject of every Monday post for the rest of time. But one of the great problems with American politics is that we as a nation have no attention span at all. We become obsessed with the issue of the day, the tragedy of the week – a mass shooting prompts calls for serious conversations about gun control. Until the next police shooting exposes for the thousandth time the need for a meaningful conversation about race. Until the next ridiculous or outrageous Tweet from the Infant-In-Chief prompts renewed obsession with the campaign and the latest polling numbers. Until a new spike in Covid-19 cases reminds us of the devastating toll the virus is exacting. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.

My thoughts about this post are symptomatic of that short attention span. Two weeks in a row writing about race? Yikes! Time for another post about my five favorite rock ‘n roll albums.

And more to the point, that short attention span is an expression of privilege. I have the luxury of being able to turn away from the conversation about systemic racism if I want to, because I’m White. Because I don’t have to worry that my next traffic stop could prove fatal. Because while the unemployment rate among my people is high, it’s not at 16.8%, as it is for Blacks. Because my health care is affordable and readily available.

I can eventually look away after the next shooting sparks a new debate on guns, because while gun violence should concern all of us, Blacks are (according to the Giffords Law Center) ten times – TEN TIMES – more likely than Whites to be murdered with a firearm.

I can be distracted from the pandemic, because while Whites get the disease and die from it, preliminary data indicates that we are proportionally less likely to get sick than are Blacks, and we are far less likely to die from the illness than are Blacks and Latinos.

We in the White community can afford to lose interest, to get distracted, to move on to other issues. But we, as White allies in the struggle for racial justice, can’t. Just this weekend in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by Atlanta police in an incident that began with him sleeping in his car. I guarantee you, that is a sentence that has never been written about a white man.

And so, yes, I am writing about race again. Because once we open our eyes to the prevalence of bias and bigotry and harmful stereotypes (and it is another expression of lifelong privilege that we have the choice of whether or not to do this) we can find them everywhere. The only way to avoid them is to ignore them, or to be utterly oblivious. Race creeps into everything. The next time you’re watching TV, pay close attention to the commercials. Look at how race is treated. Watch for the racial sub-narratives. Be attuned to the archetypes. Once you start to see them, you can’t stop. Listen to sports commentary (if and when we ever get to watch sports again). Pay attention to the adjectives used to describe White and Black players. How many times are Whites referred to as “hard workers”? How many times is Black success credited to “natural athletic ability”?

“Why,” we hear people ask, “do they have to make everything about race?”

And the answer is, because people of color in this country – and throughout much of the world – inhabit a different reality from the one we Whites live in. In their world, racism is omnipresent. It is unavoidable. It is the knee on the neck. Being an ally means looking and seeing, listening and hearing, discussing and speaking out. It means answering my wife’s challenge by pushing ourselves outside of comfort and complacency, and committing ourselves.

And for me, it means writing.

Wishing you a wonderful week.