Update: I sent a draft of this newsletter as an email to all CCAD Photography majors and Minors on Friday, May 20. Four days later, another teenager with a gun mowed-down 19 elementary school students and two of their teachers. I have not updated the content of this letter to address the school shooting in Uvalde – we are all mourning – but I have included photos from a memorial in Binghamton, NY, my hometown, where a mass shooter killed thirteen people in the Civic Association Center over a decade ago. The pull-quote below is from episode 812 the Savage Lovecast.
“I ache for the families and friends of the victims, all of them victims of racism, of white supremacy, and victims of Fox News and the radicalized Republican party. Fox News and the GOP (elevated) the ‘great replacement theory,’ the idea that there’s an active conspiracy to replace white voters in the United States with black and brown people from all over the world who will supposedly vote for Democrats. This is the reason this white supremacist terrorist gave for shooting little old black ladies out shopping for groceries. Fox News lifted that poison from the message boards of white supremacist websites and pumped it into American living rooms, and airport bars, and army bases, and truck stops, and sports bars, and into the mainstream of the GOP.”
SAY THEIR NAMES
Last weekend our hearts broke, yet again, to learn of another violent massacre by a white nationalist who drove hours from his home near Binghamton, NY to a grocery store located in a "mostly black zip code" in Buffalo. The young man took his sadistic worldview online to livestream his crimes. I grew up in upstate New York, just a few miles away from where the 18-year-old white-supremacist shooter came from. I went to school with guys like him, and I'm related both to people like those he targeted and people more like him; but, I think we really lose the thread of doing antiracist work when we focus on the reprehensible behavior of individual bad actors without taking a critical look at systems of power/subordination, and intrinsic beliefs that continue to privilege and embolden people like him. I've intentionally not used his name because he doesn't deserve to be remembered. The names of the 10 who died and three who were injured are (Source, BBC News):
Roberta A. Drury, 32, who had moved to Buffalo to be with her brother, who had had a bone marrow transplant
Margus D. Morrison, 52,
Andre Mackneil, 53
Aaron Salter, 55, a retired police officer who was working as a security guard in Top Friendly Mart grocery store
Geraldine Talley, 62
Celestine Chaney, 65, a devoted grandmother
Heyward Patterson, 67, a dedicated church-goer who drove people to and from the supermarket
Katherine Massey, 72, a community activist with a "beautiful soul", according to her sister
Pearl Young, 77, who dedicated her Saturdays to working in a soup kitchen
Ruth Whitfield, 86, who had just been to visit her husband in a care home
The youngest surviving victim, store worker Zaire Goodman, 20, was released from hospital after being shot in the neck.
Jennifer Warrington, 50, has also been treated and released, while Christopher Braden, 55, is in a stable condition.
BLACK LIVES (still) MATTER
Examining root causes of systemic inequity in order to effectively change things for the better requires us to persuade those with entrenched viewpoints to relinquish their claims to absolute authority. As Michael Shermer puts it in the opening paragraph of his January 2017 essay for Scientific American, “Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither.” But this is precisely the mission of higher education, and it highlights the ways in which facilitated dialogue and academic theory may be used to successfully advance DE&I work. Think about what we do in our creative work, and how we assess images/objects in critique: research, close descriptions, critical analyses, and informed interpretations always precede any "judgments" we might make. So, our educational journey together in the classroom is about so much more than job preparation. As John Malesic wrote in his May 13 NYT op-ed, "Because it is students whose educations are at stake, they bear much of the responsibility for remaking their ability to learn. But faculty members and administrators need to give students an environment that encourages intellectual habits like curiosity, honesty and participation in a community of inquiry. These habits aren’t only the means to a good education; to a large extent, they are the education."
OPEN YOUR MIND AND YOUR HEART WILL FOLLOW
In their 2013 book, Changing Minds, If Not Hearts: Political Remedies for Racial Conflict, James Glaser (Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at Tufts University) and Timothy Ryan (Associate Professor of Political Science at UNC Chapel Hill) offer data to show how reframing issues so as not to induce a zero-sum mindset successfully defuses some of the systemic biases faced by people of color. Glaser and Ryan examine how communities in conflict can be persuaded to support inclusive outcomes when issues are explained in more nuanced ways. Examples include creating robust choices to give voters a greater sense of ownership and control of the political process, sharing alternate narratives on justice and equity to engender empathy, and pointing out double standards to appeal to a sense of fairness. Their studies explain how to apply a variety of practical tools to overcome majoritarian ambivalence and opposition to minority interests. In other words, we can make real progress in DE&I work by moving away from debates – which are competitive modes for “winning” arguments – and into dialogic processes for building relationships, discovering shared meaning, and collaborating toward a sense of community understanding. This was the thesis of my 2020 Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil, and has always been at the heart of my teaching philosophy.
Anyone who has taken a class with me knows that I teach students how to think, not what to think. I learn a lot from every class I teach – from each one of you. What we are learning about science, technology, history, culture, politics, justice, and economics is what prepares us to be ethical citizens, good neighbors, responsible leaders, and yes, successful creatives. I think I can speak for my colleagues when I say that we very much want you to succeed, but the person who really needs to want it, the one who must follow through, is you. We know that caring for our students requires us to have high expectations and a willingness to help you all exceed those expectations. In other words, academic rigor = love. We recognize that caring for students means enabling you to thrive. It’s on us to meet everyone where you all where are, of course, and then to bring you well beyond that point. It requires both high expectations and the resources to help you exceed them. And, as you have helped me learn, all of us on the teaching-side of this equation need to think carefully about which benchmarks are really important for your success and continued growth, and which other expectations about “proficiency” and “mastery” may instead be inadvertently based in supremacist thinking. Education is a collaborative journey, and I'm grateful that we're in it together.
Slideshow: The American Civic Association Park and Memorial in Binghamton remembers the 13 people killed in a mass shooting on April 3, 2009 in Binghamton, NY.
FOR YOUR EAR HOLES
I made THIS SPOTIFY PLAYLIST to welcome the start of summer and celebrate some recent new releases by some of my faves, like Kendrick and Bad Bunny. Please just be aware that I've curated uncensored versions of the songs in this playlist, so please consider where you are and who can hear the music if you're playing it anywhere other than in your earbuds. I hope you are enjoying opportunities to rest, regroup, and enjoy the warm sunshine. If you like the playlist, please also consider reading the insightful essay about American Music by Wesley Morris, from Nikole Hannah-Jones' Pulitzer Prize winning, The 1619 Project.
MASK-UP (again)
Regional rates of coronavirus transmission are through the roof, and the CDC is recommending that we all once again wear masks whenever we are indoors with other people who are not part of our "pods," and maintain at least six feet of distance. I could have heeded that advice myself as COVID-19 took me out in the week leading up to CHROMA and graduation. I was deeply saddened to miss the festivities, and I wanted to be there to cheer on our seniors as they walked across the stage. It's been 10 days since I first noticed symptoms, and I'm doing a lot better, though there are lingering effects. My relatively rapid recovery is due, in large part, to the fact that I am vaccinated and boosted. If you are eligible for the booster, please get it. If you have not yet been vaccinated, for whatever reason, please reconsider.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Jamie Hoy was selected as this year's Outstanding Senior in Photography, AND all of the following Photo Majors and Minors deserve a round of applause for graduating this year:
CALL FOR ENTRIES
WIDE OPEN: Excellence in Photography, juried by Coco Conroy, Bela Kotak, and Eli Reed, is accepting submissions until June 30. Enter to win over $10,000 in prizes and have your work exhibited.