Monday, 3:15 p.m.

“Okay, that’s it for today’s class.  Please review Chapter 5 for Wednesday.”

A hand goes up in the front row.  “Mr. Scholar?”

“Yes, Aubrey?”

“Thursday’s Thanksgiving.  Are we having class Wednesday?”

Requiem for a Spectre

If you’re under forty, you were raised to fear Middle Easterners and Muslims.  For my generation, the bogeyman was communism.

This week marks the centenary of the October Revolution.  Strangely, the anniversary has attracted little comment in the media which is funny when you consider how large the U.S.-Soviet rivalry loomed over 20^th century history.

The Cold War was, in retrospect, more about national rivalry and global power politics than ideology.  While it’s true that the collectivist ethos of the former socialist states was inherently antagonistic to Americans’ individualistic worldview, the East-West standoff was really about global hegemony on both sides. 

Still, throughout my childhood and youth my teachers and the media played up the threat evil communism posed to our freedoms.  Atrocities such as the Cambodian genocide were offered up as proof of the ruthlessness of communist rule and what might befall us should they succeed in their goal of defeating the United States.

This statement, which seems overly dramatic from today’s perspective, would have been credible to a number of people when I was a kid.  Once, in a high school history class, the teacher asked us what was the goal of the communists.  A student in the back of the room promptly answered in a loud, emphatic voice, “The goal of communism is world conquest!”  No one disputed him.  The teacher appeared pleased.

This was in the early 1980s, when President Reagan was doing his level best to antagonize the Soviet leadership.  Anticommunism had become conflated with “patriotism,” and the popular rhetoric ignored realities on the ground.  The Sino-Soviet split had occurred twenty years earlier.  The recently concluded Vietnam War was more about national sovereignty than communism, a truth recognized by many scholars from its start though clearly not by most Americans and their poliicians.

We have a tenuous relationship with truth that goes back much further than the current debate as to whether we’re living in a “post-truth” era.  Our thinking tends toward either/or, black and white reasoning.  We categorically reject any evidence which contradicts our narrative, however manifest it may be to a less partial observer.  This tendency becomes pernicious when it results in defining ourselves not by what we are but by what we are not.

This is a recurring theme.  In our first century or so, we were not those corrupt, rotten Old World aristocrats.  During the Cold War our alliance with the Soviets against the Axis was forgotten as we proclaimed to the world that we were most certainly nothing like those godless commies.  Today, we are not those Muslims who hate our freedom, but this is a topic for another time.

Back to the dialectic between a free, virtuous America and a totalitarian, evil Soviet Union.  If you were with us, your country was a “democracy” and part of the “Free World.”  If you were not, your country was either enslaved or untrustworthy.  This fiction ignored two things.  First, many of the regimes in the so-called Free World countries were in fact corrupt and repressive.  Secondly, whenever the people of one of these countries dared assert their right to self-determination the U.S. and its allies would step in to stymie the attempt—witness the examples of Guatemala, Iran, Chile, East Timor, and Nicaragua.

All this sidesteps the question of the merits of the Soviet experiment, however.  Putting aside the chaos of the Civil War and the totalitarian excesses of the Stalin years, there were aspects of it which compare favorably with the capitalist West.  Many of the ills of capitalist economies were less manifest, such as fluctuating business cycles and unemployment.  The regime at least made the effort to attend to its people’s essential economic and social needs.  The state ideology encouraged the collective welfare over narrow self-interest. 

That last item probably doomed the system in the end.  The citizens of the Eastern Bloc were less interested in political freedom than in Levi’s and rock music.  During the so-called Era of Stagnation between the mid-1960s and the advent of Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s economic planners struggled to meet popular demand for consumer goods.  Appeals to the collective good fell on deaf ears when people stood on line for soap and razor blades.  Some Soviet clients, most notably Hungary, managed to satiate consumer demand.  Others, like Romania, were economically inept and politically crooked.

Watching from afar, the fall of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath did seem breathtaking at the time.  The West was vindicated.  It wasn’t long before the downside became apparent, however.  Ethnic conflict in Russia and other former Soviet republics.  Terrorism.  Economic turmoil.  Organized crime.  Vladimir Putin.

The Soviet Union did not fall for the reasons we use to congratulate ourselves.  It wasn’t the absence of freedom or because of the Reagan administration’s military build-up.   It was that our comparatively free market was more efficient than their planned economy.  What was portrayed as a clash of ideologies ended on a disappointingly prosaic note.  Then again, it doesn’t matter as we’ve long since moved along to newer, suitably evil enemies.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar

My Pal Trigger

An article in the New York Times Magazine this week addressed a frequently recurring issue in the educational discourse of late.

Namely, anxiety and its “triggers.”  It appears our youth are crippled by it.  Competition with peers, pressure to perform and succeed, and the specter of the future have converged to make them miserable.  Their parents and teachers are at a loss to help. 

Then again, maybe they’re doing too much already.  The article went on to say high school students with anxiety fear the prospect of college, which, unlike their schools, doesn’t have “safe spaces.”

Fear not, precious young ones.  At my institution, “Safe Space” decals have proliferated on office doors all over campus.  Guidance emails from the dean on this topic land in our inboxes with maddening regularity at the start of each semester.  The mental health services folks give the same tedious talks on warning signs a student may be in trouble at every in-service training.

Naturally students have taken full advantage of this climate of concern.  The number of them claiming learning disabilities and mental health issues requiring accommodation has soared in my classes and in those of my fellow proffies. 

We swap horror stories in the faculty lounge.  There’s the kid whacked out on prescription pain meds, and the one who suffered violent seizures in class and became hostile when anyone tried to help.  Both were covered by accommodations issued by the college.  I have a young man in one of my classes this term who will get up from his seat from time to time and wander the classroom muttering under his breath before slipping out the door not to be seen again until next class.  Same situation.  At least he’s harmless.  I hope.

Certain afflictions seem to come in clusters, as if there’s a vogue for them in a given school year.  Last year, it was autism spectrum disorders. 

In one section, I had a student given to random, disruptive outbursts and odd, even inappropriate questions in class.  He had difficulty with metaphors and allusions, forcing me to speak in an unnaturally literal, just-the-facts style which the other students found excruciating and made lectures dull and lifeless.  We had several class cancellations due to winter weather conditions; after each one I had to distribute addenda to the syllabus to reflect the changed schedule because he took the original schedule at face value and couldn’t adjust to the changes without a written revision.

When I went to my dean hoping for some kind of relief, she cut me off flat and insisted I comply with the young man’s accommodation order.  The result was that my class of roughly 30 students became a tutorial for just one.  It goes without saying that I took a hit on my course eval.  Because, you know, it was my fault this kid chose to take my class.

After listening to me tell this story, a colleague sympathetically exclaimed, “We have rights, too!”

Yes, but not in the eyes of the careerists in the college administration.  It’s true we’re the adults in these situations.  But it’s not just the kids acting this way.  What do you say to a thirty-year-old who lashes out at you or at classmates and then defends herself with the excuse that she’s “stressed,” practically daring you to challenge her?   

I’m not saying these afflictions aren’t real.  But there has to be a line where faculty and staff have to say, “Enough.”  Anxiety is a fact of daily life.  I’m anxious, too, and so are my colleagues.  But there are ways of handling such situations which don’t involve acting out or whining to the higher ups.

Not long ago, I was working in my office while evening classes were going on.  An EMT course was using the hallway with the student teams assessing accident cases on practice dummies.  The team nearest my open office door were working the problem of a victim who had suffered a serious injury very closely resembling the one which hospitalized me for nearly two months and left me physically disabled for life. 

I was disturbed by the reminder of it.  I was triggered, if you will.  It got to the point where I could no longer concentrate on my work.

So, here’s what I did.  And, more importantly, what I didn’t do.  I did not run into the hallway demanding the students stop what they were doing.  I did not confront the instructor.  I most certainly did not make a beeline to the dean’s office seething that my rights had been violated.

Instead, I calmly got up and quietly shut the office door and went back to work.  Problem solved.

I don’t consider myself a particularly strong or resilient person.  And yet, I was able to handle my emotions in this situation.  I see and hear things that disturb me all the time, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at me.  How is it that I can manage this and you can’t?

Students with disabilities and issues ought to be accommodated within reason.  However, if the accommodations hinder the instructor’s efforts to instruct or the student poses a threat to others then it’s time for the instructor to draw the line.

Sadly, no administrator would ever allow this.  Enrollment and retention concerns have led to a customer service mentality. 

There is also a rising tendency I’ve noticed which takes advantage of the customer is always right principle, both in and out of the classroom.  Some people, rather than seeking satisfaction politely and rationally, instead take the bull in a china shop approach of angry, accusatory confrontation. Catch your opponent off guard.  Make him question himself whether or not he’s in the right in the heat of the moment.   

It’s bad enough when some jerk pulls this crap to grift a meal or a discount from a hapless manager.  It’s worse when professional standards are lowered as a result of such behavior.  When used to get unreasonable concessions from college administrators at the expense of other students, it casts a shadow of skepticism on those who legitimately need help.

I’ve encountered situations like this a couple of times in my career, and I expect to face more before it’s over.  Worse, colleagues, and damned good ones, have walked away from college teaching because they’re sick of the bullshit coming at them from both ends.  For my part, I’ve come to question our administrators’ commitment to quality. 

Naturally, they would hotly deny this and cast aspersions on my character into the bargain.  Like my friends who have left teaching I’m just a name on the schedule to them, my many years of service notwithstanding.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  If any of us quit, we’ll be promptly replaced and forgotten. Only administrators (and the dwindling number of tenured faculty) are forever.

Only administrators, and the hordes of students with no shortage of angles to work.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar

The New Normal

When the headline first hit my newsfeed, I’ll admit I ignored it.

I ignored it until a cascade of related stories made it clear that this was no run of the mill mass shooting.  It’s been almost a week, and the media furor over the deadliest gun violence incident in U.S. history so far has yet to subside.

The Las Vegas shooting has many of the hallmarks of such incidents, and a few baffling twists.  All the usual tropes have been invoked—heroic law enforcement, firefighters, and EMTs, equally heroic vets who ran toward the gunfire as everyone else ran away, devoted couples tragically meeting with the death of one or both partners, and family members wringing their hands awaiting news about the fate of loved ones.  And, of course, the endless speculation over what made the shooter do what he did.

Stephen Paddock fits some of the stereotypes of the mass shooter.  He’s white.  He’s male.  And, he’s been described as a loner.  So far, so good. 

But, he was older.  Affluent.  Successful at business.  He had no past history of violence.  No known mental health issues.  No extreme political or religious convictions, either.  All this has us scratching our heads, because there was nothing at all to lead anyone to believe Paddock was capable of such an act.

Unsurprisingly, rumors and conspiracy theories hang thick in the air.  The ever-opportunistic Islamic State took credit for the shootings, claiming Paddock had converted to Islam months ago.  Even though the FBI quickly debunked the claim, that didn’t stop a couple of my students from using it to argue in class that them Moozlems are a threat to ‘Murica and they should all be rounded up and deported. 

Such reactions are par for the course.  Americans are prone to hysteria, and not just over the jihadists hiding under every bed.  The shooting has brought the never-ending debate over guns, always simmering, back to a rolling boil.

One of the few sensible gun laws we have forbids private ownership of fully automatic weapons, though there’s a grandfather clause which means that such weapons obtained before the ban are available for purchase albeit at a steep price.  Not to despair, though.  The so-called bump stock device can enable your inadequate semiautomatic weapon to produce a similar rate of fire to that of a full auto.  Hence, the particular lethality of the Las Vegas massacre.

For once, congressional Republicans and Democrats appeared open to a discussion over gun laws.  The NRA, which seemed similarly open earlier in the week, retreated to form and has since come out against an outright ban on bump stocks.

The Second Amendment argument is weakest when it comes to private possession of automatic weapons and conversion kits for legally sold semiautomatics.  Automatic weapons are not practical for target shooting or hunting.  Even the military has very specific uses for automatic weapons and machine guns, and most members of a standard infantry squad are riflemen trained in making well-aimed single shots.  Anything else is a waste of good ammunition.

If I haven’t made the point clear by now, it’s this: Automatic weapons have no logical purpose except to indiscriminately kill large numbers of people quickly.  Which then begs the question: Why would any rational citizen want an automatic weapon?

The discussion now returns to the logic, if you can call it that, of gun politics.  I am partial to the argument that it is not so much the presence of firearms in our society, but the culture surrounding them that is the problem.  To put it bluntly, guns are a phallic symbol for certain males insecure in their manhood and eroding socioeconomic status.  They’re basically a substitute dick. 

This fixation expresses itself in its mildest form in the lobbying for liberalized concealed carry laws.  Essentially, it’s an argument rooted in the man-as-protector ethos.  It goes something like this: If only I had a concealed gun, I coulda stopped that maniac shootin’ at everyone. 

This assertion doesn’t account for the likelihood of the would-be hero being mistaken for a bad guy by yet another would-be hero packing heat.  Or by the police.  It also doesn’t account for situations such as last Sunday’s where a handgun is a useless countermeasure against a guy firing a rifle from a 32^nd story window.

The fixation’s most troubling manifestation arises from our cultural celebration of violence.   A real man teaches his enemies a permanent lesson.  And the thought of apocalyptic vengeance is appealing.  It’s the ultimate form of dominance over other, lesser people.  It’s like playing God.

Most of us sublimate these fantasies by watching action movies or playing first-person shooter games.  NPR this week profiled a venue in Las Vegas which offers patrons the simulated experience of firing an automatic weapon.  A soundbite featured a couple of them telling the reporter how exhilarating it felt.

How did Stephen Paddock feel as he fired into the crowd of concertgoers below him?  If it was anger, it was an anger no one had noticed until then.  He carefully planned and methodically prepared for the shootings, and thus can be assumed rational enough to have known what he was about to do was wrong.  Had he not been cornered in his room at the Mandalay Bay and forced to commit suicide to evade capture, Paddock had planned an escape from the scene further demonstrating he was compos mentis.

Maybe he did it because he could.  Capability is motive enough for some people.  We probably will never know for sure, and it really doesn’t matter. 

The one certainty is that another mass shooting awaits us in the not too distant future.  Get used to them if you haven’t already.  It’s the new normal.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar

Once More into the Breach

It’s the week before classes begin and I’m in the faculty workroom at my “other” college, Verdant Fields, when my colleague Jesse shuffles in looking just a little depressed.

Actually, he looked thoroughly, disconcertingly abject.  Jesse is normally an outgoing, even charismatic guy.  His students love him, and last spring he received the college’s annual excellence in teaching award.  Trying to engage Jesse, I ask about his summer. 

Shrugging, he tells me he taught a summer class.  He mutters something about not being ready for summer to be over before sinking into a chair at one of the workstations, putting in a set of earbuds, pulling a sheaf of papers from his briefcase, and commencing to type into the computer.  I don’t take the rebuff personally.  My outward affableness aside, I’m in a similar mood.

I typically feel a sense of loss as the fall semester begins.  I used to jump into the new year feet first with hope and anticipation, but now it’s with a sense of regret that maybe I hadn’t used the passing summer to better advantage. 

Like Jesse, my summer was as much work as vacation.  My academic year officially began ten weeks ago with an online summer class at Snowflake College.  This virtual class allowed me a couple of getaways which should have reinvigorated me, but it wound up with one of those incidents that have made me dread something I once loved.

Back in June, I was at once self-congratulatory and apprehensive.  The last academic year had been trouble-free, even pleasant.  There wasn’t a single troublemaker in any of my classes at any of my campuses.  Verdant Fields gave me a teaching award of my own last spring, albeit division level, and it assigned me an additional section for the fall.  I wondered how much longer my luck would hold.

Not for long, as it turned out.  There were 39 students in my summer online class at Snowflake.  Of those, 37 passed with a “C” or better.  One failed for not participating in the class after the first week.  The other neglected to submit any of the required writing assignments, which made up 1/3 of the coursework and therefore 1/3 of the final grade.

A week after final grades were posted, I get a panicked email from the latter student, whom I’ll call Devin.  Not surprisingly, Devin’s singing the blues.  He claims he uploaded all the writing assignments.  He said Whiteboard gave him a successful upload message each time.  He just can’t understand why the Whiteboard gradebook says the assignments are missing, he just can’t.  He’s transferring to Big State University, and I just have to give him a good grade.

Ah, to be young, lazy, and entitled!  Luckily for Devin, he’s just the kind of student Snowflake College nurtures.  And so, the following exchange ensued:

I answer Devin saying it was his responsibility to make sure the assignments were in. 

Devin replies that he meant to have them in, reminding me, with no proof of course, that he had uploaded all the work on time.  He closes with a gratuitous assertion that he doesn’t want me to think of him as a dishonest person.  (Too late for that, bud.)

I email Devin with a vague promise to look into available options, informing him that submitting late work for credit after final grades were in was, well, a trifle unlikely.

And then, silence.  For a day or two, anyway.  The next email missive came not from Devin but from Regina, the administrative assistant to our academic dean.  She informed me young Devin has submitted a grade change.

Now I’m beginning to see red.  In twelve years, no student has ever had the gall to challenge a grade I’ve issued.  I consult the Snowflake College faculty guidebook concerning the grade change policy.  My blood pressure ratchets even higher when I find that a grade change is issued only in cases of instructor error, bad faith, or incompetence.

I shot Regina a reply telling her in no uncertain terms that none of those criteria apply to my assessment of Devin’s efforts.  

Regina was unimpressed, though as a classified employee one can excuse her indifference to the spirit rather than the minutiae of academic regulations.  She answered with a tersely worded request to send her the corrected grade when ready.

The college allows a full year for grade changes after the end of term.  Young Devin is in for a wait.  While I’m sure I’ll catch no end of flak for dragging my heels, I plan to hold out against that lying little shit for as long as I can get away with it.  Screw him and the cayuse he rode in on.

If you’re unfamiliar with contemporary higher education, this story might seem confusing.  If you’re like me, you believed you got the grade you earned.  No more, no less.  So why is Snowflake College siding with a student who’s so obviously in the wrong?

Retention and completion rates, that’s why.  These are the excuse for any number of depredations committed of late by college administrators.  They will do anything to gain and keep students, even if it means condoning academic dishonesty and besmirching the motives and reputations of faculty.  (Well, the motives and reputations of adjunct faculty, anyway.)

We adjuncts have to take it because their jobs are secure, and ours are not.  Snowflake has been on an institution-wide quest to maintain enrollment and boost graduation rates in the face of a declining college age population in its service area.  In furtherance of this end, some clever grant writer managed to finagle a seven-figure dole to create a program to do just that.

Of course, any new program needs staff.  And so, Snowflake has created two new executive dean positions, touted as “temporary” even though everyone knows goddamn well they’re here to stay, to streamline its academic and job training programs.  And where you have administrators, you have to have a bevy of classified staff to do their bidding.

This push has been in the making for the past couple of years, supported by a public relations campaign to get faculty buy-in.  Last spring, the college even condescended to invite several part-timers, myself included, to brainstorm potential pre-packaged academic tracks for students who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. 

We submitted our recommendations and were politely thanked by management.  A few weeks later, they released their initial plan.  It bore little resemblance to any of our recommendations.  I doubt if anyone bothered to look at them.

The implications for us in the trenches are grim.  We’re hanging on by torn and bleeding fingernails as courses and programs are cut or whittled down.  Meanwhile, the bureaucracy gets larger, or at least it’s holding ground.  No wonder Snowflake’s administration is so imperious.

They see themselves as the good guys, naturally.  More than few of them take pains to create rapport, or its simulacrum, at any opportunity. 

It doesn’t fly with me.  Nothing peeves me as much as a dean or vice president who rushes to point out that s/he too was once a part-time instructor.  I don’t care; the operative word in that statement is “once.”  We are not friends, and we have nothing in common.  I am labor; you are management.

The strange thing, and the saving grace, about the situation is that my best moments in the classroom and my successes in motivating students to learn still make up for any resentment and frustration.  There are lots of days when I find satisfaction and even pride in my work.  Sadly, those days are becoming fewer.  It’s like I’m locked in an abusive relationship where my abuser constantly reminds me of all the good times we had together to keep me from leaving.

Observing my friend Jesse, this sense becomes even more acute.  Finishing my prep work for next week, I try to wish Jesse a good day as I leave.  Engrossed with the computer monitor and lost in whatever sounds were coming through his earbuds, he doesn’t hear me.  I wave my hand in front of his eyes to get his attention.

Turning to me with a morose expression, Jesse merely nods.  I go away with a heavy heart.  Classes start Monday.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar

Heritage? Or Hate?

We’re told the victors write history.  This was not the case with the American Civil War.

But first, a digression.  I lived and worked in the Southeast during much of my twenties and early thirties, beginning with a stint in Alabama immediately following college.  It was an adventure for a West Coast boy, living an hour’s drive from the nearest freeway.  The slower pace of life aside, I quickly adjusted to my surroundings.

I remember a sense of trepidation in the weeks preceding my move.  I’d never been to Alabama or anyplace else in the South.  The civil rights upheavals of the 1960s were then recent events in our collective memory and I envisioned burning crosses and police dogs lunging at protestors.

I needn’t have worried.  Everyone I met was nice.  Folks you didn’t know would wave to you as you passed on the road.  Perfect strangers would greet you with a smile.  Store clerks would strike up conversations if no other customers were waiting.  When I left three years later, I found I missed the place and the people.  I still experience the occasional pang of nostalgia, though I couldn’t imagine wanting to live there again.

Their pleasantness notwithstanding, there was plenty of support for certain stereotypes of rural Southerners and their sensibilities.  Confederate flags appeared everywhere you looked, flown from private homes and public buildings and adorning the back windows of pickups.  Monuments to Jeff Davis and Bobby Lee occupied more than a few town squares and main streets, not to mention those dedicated to lesser champions of the Lost Cause. 

When people did mention it, they faithfully described it as the War between the States.  Oftentimes they would take pains to make sure you understood that the conflict concerned the South’s defense of the sacred principle of states’ rights and not the unsavory reasons given by outsiders.  And, to punctuate the public relations effort in furtherance of an image of a benign Confederacy, T-shirts and bumper stickers emblazoned with the Battle Flag and the slogan, “Heritage, not Hate.”

The events of the past few days have made me think hard about this particular conceit.  The Confederate flag has been brandished as a symbol of white nationalism and resistance to equal rights for people of color at least since the middle of the last century.  Since the November election, the fringe right and its white nationalist comrades have been emboldened to raise the movement's public profile.  This week’s tragedy in Charlottesville was foreshadowed by the increased media attention right-wing agitators have received since Donald Trump’s election and the semi-respectability such attention confers.

The angry young men with their bulged-eyed shouts of “White Power!” we see on TV are interspersed with the occasional calm, soothing talking head telling us that they’re not really racists.  They’re just standing up for their rights as European Americans in the same way African Americans and Latinos and Asian Americans and Native Americans have.  They just want their own civil rights.  And the Confederate paraphernalia?  That’s heritage, not hate.

None of this would be comment worthy if it wasn’t for this point of view resonating among mainstream whites.  Over the past months I’ve heard veiled approval from acquaintances not just for Trump but for the increasingly high-profile opinions of media figures belonging to the fringe and “alt” right.  The gist of their attitude is that while some of the agitators are rough around the edges, they’re saying what has to be said in the face of political correctness.  

Such low key murmurs of approval among ordinary people surely have not gone unnoticed.  The public pronouncements of our leaders haven't done much to discourage, either.  The President’s bizarre and muddled initial response to the violence at this week’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville can be interpreted as further license by the extremists.

But by now we’ve become desensitized to expressions of extremism.  James Fields, the man who drove his car into the counter-protestors in Charlottesville, openly expressed Nazi sympathies in high school.  They were probably dismissed as drivel from an attention-seeking misfit, but in this case Fields’ thoughts eventually had awful consequences.   

However, most loudmouthed jerks don’t end up committing violent acts on this scale, and murdering whackjobs like James Fields are mercifully rare.  It’s the quiet, well-spoken apologists, the “heritage-not-hate” contingent, who present the greater threat long term. 

Their task is made all the easier because of our collective amnesia.  Memorials to Confederate leaders and the Confederate dead saturate the South a century and a half after the guns fell silent.  Public school history textbooks treat Jefferson Davis as the near moral equivalent of Abraham Lincoln. 

Ditto for Robert E. Lee versus Ulysses Grant.  As recently as the 1980s, a school district in Texas seriously considered adopting a high school history text which insinuated that the slaves were content with their lot.  (Which sounds a lot like claims we’ve heard lately from the far right that African Americans were better off as slaves.)  The subtext that the Confederacy and all it stood for was not all that bad and perhaps good or even noble permeates prevalent views on race and of race relations.

The implications of the current discourse are unsettling.  Charlottesville will fade from memory as time moves on and other, newer tragedies befall us.  But the attitudes which are gradually polarizing the public will have lasting and possibly dire consequences if we don’t craft a compelling counternarrative. 

Because in addition to failing to define a viable alternative to the economic immiseration of the neoliberal epoch, the progressive left is quickly losing what may be its last best opportunity to convince the white mainstream that racial equality is in its best interest.  The lesson from Charlottesville is that time is short. 

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar

Postcards from New York

This past week was my last before the fall semester begins, so I went to New York City for a short vacation.  It was six days well spent, but the trip was not without its interesting moments. 

Here are a few.

Waiting for a Ride

It was nearly two hours after my flight had arrived in Newark, and counting.  I was beginning to despair of ever getting to my hotel.

I’d flown into EWR on the advice of a certain airline with public relations issues.  It touted Newark’s closeness to Manhattan as a selling point.  I took the bait and was coming to regret it.

I had booked a shared shuttle to take me into the city.  I’d given my flight number and arrival time and figured they would be waiting.  How could I have been so foolish?

I quickly learned EWR was an even worse destination than it was a connection.  Following the directions of one of the bevy of red coated guides scattered about the airport, I and my luggage navigated the maze of corridors and escalators and trains to the hotel shuttle waiting area outside the terminal. 

And I waited.  And waited, as various hotel vans came and went with no sign of one from the service I’d booked.

After 45 minutes, it finally occurred to me to ask another redcoat whether I was in the right place.  I was not.  The first redcoat had been in error.

Convinced I would have to swim across the Hudson to get to my destination, I dejectedly made my way back through the maze.  Following the conflicting advice of several more redcoats cost me twenty more minutes before I finally arrived at a customer service desk at the airport taxi stand. 

I presently found myself waiting in line for one of the three customer service reps with one customer ahead of me.  I silently prayed that I wouldn’t get the surly young woman on the far left, who had just run off a guy who asked for clarification of the directions she’d given him with a snarled, “Do you want me to hold your hand and walk you there?” before she resumed playing with her phone.  I could see her point, I guess.  After all, that candy wasn’t going to crush itself… 

The fellow who waited on me called the shuttle company for a van.  He told me the van would arrive in fifteen minutes.

An hour and twenty minutes later, my ride suddenly materialized.  The driver was a gentleman of uncertain south Asian ancestry with limited English.  I was the last passenger and the van was jampacked. 

After a lengthy argument between the driver and a passenger from New Zealand who had reserved her seat by phone on the flight over and lacked the requisite paper receipt, we got underway.

The drive to Holland Tunnel took us through a bleak industrial landscape straight out of the opening credits of The Sopranos.  We crept along in bumper-to-bumper traffic until we finally surfaced in Manhattan.  I’d chosen my Tribeca hotel specifically for its closeness to the Holland Tunnel exit and its presumed ease of access for transportation.  Another mistake.  Despite (or perhaps because of) the aid of GPS, the driver got lost immediately and we spent still another quarter hour meandering through lower Manhattan.

Surrounded by yellow taxis whilst stopped at a red light, I couldn’t miss the ads on the cab roofs.  They were all from the Devil’s Airline touting the convenience of its service to and from Newark.

Ah, the irony…

Chugged

Walking down a street in Tribeca I heard a shout behind me.  Then another.  Someone was trying to get my attention.

Specifically, the guy calling after me was trying to hail me with a rude comment mocking my appearance.  I’m aware of my aesthetic shortcomings, but I still get annoyed when they are pointed out to me. 

So, I turned around and let out an audible groan.  The shaggy Millennial twit accosting me was a charity fundraiser.  You know the kind, lurking on urban street corners intercepting unsuspecting tourists as no self-respecting local would ever respond to their come-ons. 

If you’re not familiar with the phenomenon, large charities have taken to hiring fundraising firms to get pedestrians on city streets to give up their credit card numbers for one-time or (preferably) recurring monthly contribution to the cause.  The people engaged in this practice aren’t idealistic volunteers.  They’re mercenaries, some of whom work on commission.

This particular tool was huckstering for an animal welfare organization.  “You really think you’re going to get money from me this way?” I asked him pointedly.

“Aw, c’mon, bro, you gotta admit it’s funny.  I mean, c’mon!”

“Am I laughing?  Bro?  Think I’d give you anything after that crack, even if I did support your charity?”

Shaggy suddenly got serious, dialed it back a bit, and tried to rescue his spiel.  “Do you support us?  Don’t you like puppies?  Everybody likes puppies.”

“Yeah,” I said, turning away.  “Roasted on a spit for dinner.” 

Shaggy was momentarily speechless.  Finally, he sputtered, “Dick!”

“Takes one to know one,” I said over my shoulder as I walked off.  “Happy hunting—bro!”

#Trumpocalypse

Stepping out of the St. Regis Hotel after lunch, I headed west on East 55^th Street, then turned right and started walking up Fifth Avenue towards Central Park.   

There was a small crowd of tourists clustered on the sidewalk in the middle of the block.  Curious, I joined them to see what the fuss was about.

It turned out we were gathered outside Trump Tower.   What a commotion…a riot of phones and selfies and pointing and oohs and ahs.   Never mind the RoboCop-like police officers with carbines slung across their chests standing next to the doormen.  Never mind the dark-sunglassed suits lurking nearby with fingers pressed to their earpieces.  Never mind the trappings of incipient fascism.  We were basking in the reflective glow of the Narcissist-in-Chief’s gaudy monument to himself.

A celebrity building.  Only in America.

The Connoisseur

Most evenings during my trip, I ended up at a nice little Italian place in the West Village.  The food and service were good, but its main virtue was that it was open past eleven.

Over the course of the week I’d struck up a friendly, bantering relationship with the bartender.  I’ll call him Raffi.  Raffi’s in his mid-twenties, handsome, with freeflowing shoulder length blond hair.  His accented English is charmingly idiosyncratic.  I’m sure the girls all swoon over him.

I was finishing my dinner one night when a customer strode into the bar from his sidewalk table.  He was not happy.  As soon as he set foot indoors, he bellowed at Raffi, “Hey!  Hey!  I wanna talk to you!”

With an entrance like that, I just had to get a look at the guy.  A first glance confirmed my suspicions.  The bellowing man was decked out in the regalia of The Asshole, middle aged white male summer edition:

Flat cap concealing a balding dome? Check.

Salt-and-pepper half beard intended to convey the message that while he’s mature, he hasn’t completely lost touch with his youthful wild streak?  Check.

Two-tone guayabera straining against a noticeable paunch? Faded khaki pants and sandals? Check!

The following exchange ensued:

“The wine you served me and my guests was disgusting! There was sediment in it!”

Raffi smiled appeasingly, “Sir, every bottle has a little sediment.  We can’t—”

“There was sediment!  There was an unacceptable amount of sediment!  It spoiled my palate!  I’m gonna be tasting that sediment all night!”

Raffi tried again: “Sir, we can’t avoid a little sediment—”

“You’re debating me!  Don’t debate me!  I know what I’m talking about!  I know wine!  I’m a connoisseur!” 

He paused a second, his rant momentarily losing its footing.  “I used to be a bartender,” the man continued, hoping this was the cherry on the sundae.  Still, he figured he’d get in a lick or two more.

“I know what I’m talking about!” the man went on.  He paused again, searching for a forceful finale.  “That sediment spoiled my palate,” he finally sulked, just in case Raffi hadn’t gotten it the first time.

“Maybe it was the way the glass was poured,” Raffi ventured cautiously.  “Would you like a new bottle, sir?”

“Yeah, I want a new bottle!  You shoulda offered me one in the first place!”

Bellowing Man had his victory.  And yet he just couldn’t let things go completely.  He still wanted to know why there was so much sediment in his wine.  Raffi, frustrated and seeking to defend his establishment’s honor, strained the remaining contents of the original bottle through a bar sieve to show it wasn’t all dregs.  Raffi was vindicated, but Bellowing Man insisted on the last word as Raffi uncorked a new bottle for him.

“Look, I know you’re just doing your job.  But you debated me.  You shouldn’t have debated me, you know?”  Raffi nodded, knowing any answer might be construed as further “debate.”

Bellowing Man’s tone softened.  “Sorry we got off on the wrong foot.  We can be friends, can’t we?  Friends?”  He then shook Raffi’s hand in a classic bully gesture.

After the guy left, Raffi said to me, “Sorry you had to see that.  I’m sorry he spoiled your meal.” 

Raffi’s apology made me feel even worse for him.  “He shouldn’t have acted that way,” I said with consummate understatement.  “It wasn’t your fault.  He could’ve handled it differently.  Besides, you were right.  Every bottle has a little sediment.”

“Thanks.”  Raffi refilled my glass.  “Let me make it up to you.  This one’s on me.”

I finished eating, paid my tab, and ventured out into the late evening warmth.  I made sure I left Raffi a generous tip.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar

The Algiers Motel Incident: Part 3 - The Aftermath

Public awareness of Algiers Motel Incident emerged slowly. 

By July 29^th, Congressman John Conyers’ office had been informed of the killings and the Detroit Free Press had interviewed at least some of the people present.  By the 31^st it was common knowledge.

The nature of the survivors’ escape had a lot to do with the confusion.  The two older men present, Charles Moore and Robert Greene, went separate ways.  Moore claimed he left in his car to drive home while Greene, not wanting to risk further police contact by breaking curfew, holed up in the motel’s front office.  The younger men scattered, while Juli Hysell and Karen Molloy stayed put in their room.

Michael Clark made his way to a phone booth to call Carl Cooper’s folks, informing them their son was dead.  Roderick Davis and Larry Reid were arrested in the adjacent city of Hamtramck for violating the curfew order.  James Sortor and Lee Forsythe arrived safely to the Cooper house, where they corroborated Michael’s story.

The first published eyewitness accounts were all over the map.  Greene told reporters Warrant Officer Ted Thomas was the main shooter.  As the story developed Patrolmen Ronald August and Robert Paille, likely in an effort to simultaneously ease their consciences and cover their asses. went to their superiors and gave formal statements.  Paille pointed to David Senak as the instigator of the raid and subsequent killings.

The police and prosecutor’s office investigators then sought out the other witnesses.  Juli Hysell and Karen Molloy were so shaken by their ordeal—Juli suffered a head wound requiring seven stitches as well as a concussion—that representatives from Conyers’ office acted as intermediaries to arrange the meeting with the investigators. 

The prosecutor’s staff, all of them white men, made a show of intimidating the witnesses during the interviews to the point where the identifications of the culprits were less than certain.

At this point another witness came into the mix.  It was a woman named Lawanda Schettler, who lived near the Algiers Motel annex.  Mrs. Schettler was sitting in her car across the street from the annex.  She saw two black males with either rifles or shotguns walk past two white girls sitting on the porch steps.  The girls seemed frightened and skittered away. 

The men entered the annex.  Mrs. Schlatter heard angry shouts, then gunshots.  She hurriedly drove away, not seeing what happened afterward.

Schettler’s account left open the possibility that Carl Cooper died at the hands of someone other than the police.  However, there was no corroboration.  Also, Mrs. Schettler had been drinking that night and had in fact been on a beer run when she stopped in front of the motel.  (It seems the authorities enforced the curfew selectively.  Mrs. Schettler, who was white, was not so rule conscious as to have stayed indoors.  What’s more, she had planned to purchase her adult beverage from the very kind of unlicensed “blind pig” which had been Ground Zero for the 12^th Street uprising.)

Even more damningly for Schettler’s account, her husband, who had a reputation as a neighborhood law and order type and a couple of citizen’s arrests to his credit, was later quoted on the record as saying he was sick of liberals whining about civil rights.   For their part, the police hinted that maybe Carl had a “contract” out on him, but nothing came of the story in the end and the raiders remained the focus of media scrutiny.

Robert Greene’s accusation of WO Thomas was another account convenient for the police and their accused officers.  So was security guard Melvin Dismukes’ participation in the raid.  In his book, John Hersey mocked Thomas’ desire to avoid blame while not implicating the cops.  Thomas admitted later he was unsure during the multiple questionings he was subjected to exactly who he was giving evidence for.  Nevertheless, after several lineups of police officers Thomas and another Guardsman present at the Algiers that night, PFC Wayne Henson, identified David Senak and Ronald August as the officers who beat the prisoners and fired their weapons.

While Wayne County prosecutors dithered over charging Senak, August, and Paille, they wasted no time bringing charges against Dismukes for assaulting James Sortor and Michael Clark.  Dismukes’ exact role in the incident, like those of everyone else involved, is unclear.  He was the only civilian and the only identified African-American in the raiding party, which probably factored into the decision to charge him first.

Dismukes’ story has become even more tangled in the present and has been recently subjected to a large dose of spin.  A trailer for the newly released dramatization of the Algiers Motel Incident, Detroit, portrays Dismukes (played by John Boyega) undergoing a hostile police interrogation after the shooting.  An extended version features Melvin Dismukes himself discussing his treatment by the police and how he had wanted to clear his name from the start.  The film also claims the first two victims died before he entered the annex, which is unlikely given the commonly accepted timeline of events.

As for avoiding the consequences, he needn’t have worried.  The all-white jury deliberated a scant 13 minutes before pronouncing Dismukes not guilty.

But was he innocent?  Kathryn Bigelow’s telling of it makes it seem so.  As a matter of fact, she makes him out to be the unsung hero of that long night and a protector of the victims into the bargain.  (In one scene, Melvin even whispers to one of the youths, “I need you to survive the night.”  Very moving.  Very dramatic.  And probably bullshit.) 

Dismukes undeniably had a hard time of it in the years following the incident, experiencing death threats against him and his family.  But his decision to join the raiding party and his presence in the annex even after it was no longer needed do not balance his pleas of guiltlessness.

Justice remained elusive for the victims and their families.  Senak, Paille, and Dismukes were charged with conspiracy, charges which were ultimately dismissed.  The U.S. Attorney’s office then brought their own conspiracy charges against the three defendants in the aborted state trial, as well as bringing charges against August.  Two years and a change of venue later, all four men were acquitted. 

Paille’s confession to shooting Fred Temple was tossed because the officer hadn’t been first read his Miranda rights, so he was never prosecuted.   In the end, the only participant in the raid ever to actually go to trial for murder was Ronald August for shooting Auburey Pollard.  Predictably, he was found not guilty.  In the end, the only convictions handed down in the Algiers Motel Incident were from a mock court convened by civil rights activists.  The four “defendants” were sentenced to death.

If it was common today for law enforcement officers who kill black citizens in the absence of a credible threat to be convicted, the Algiers Motel Incident would be a distasteful memory of a less enlightened time.  Instead, it’s a bitter example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same.  What is even more chilling than the fact that the motel murders happened is that David Senak was found to have shot and killed two other men the previous day for which he was never held to account.

The reasons are pretty clear to anyone who has even casually followed the news for the last five decades.  The raiders’ evasion of justice in 1969 was no different than that of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for his shooting of Michael Brown.  The consensus among middle class whites then as now was that the victims weren’t victims at all.  If they had been conducting themselves lawfully, they would never have attracted police attention.  No one entertained the notion that Carl Cooper’s crime was poor judgment by firing the starter pistol, while the others were guilty by their association with Carl.

It didn’t help the prosecution that the survivors of the incident had led less than stellar personal lives.  The Detroit Free Press lamented in December 1968 that while the police officers and Mr. Dismukes had yet to go to trial, their victims had been arrested and convicted of myriad offenses.  Lee Forsythe, who had been afraid of Carl Cooper’s starter pistol, received a 20-year sentence for the armed robbery of a furniture store.  (The take: $190.)  Karen Molloy and Juli Hysell were each placed on probation and fined for soliciting and prostitution.  Michael Clark and James Sortor also compiled police records along the way.

Considering people’s tendency in such cases to conflate an individual’s behavior on other occasions with their deserts of abuse during the incident in question, it’s unsurprising nothing was achieved in the end.  The consequences for the members of the raiding party were mixed.  

For Melvin Dismukes, this meant threats and verbal abuse over the years.  He continued in his security career, ultimately working for the Detroit Pistons.  

Ronald August remained with the Detroit police until he quit in 1977.  

Theodore Thomas receded into the obscurity of private life, working for Stanley Door in Flint until his retirement.  His 2007 obituary mentioned his service in the U.S. Air Force and the Michigan National Guard, his widow, his five children, 13 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.  There was, of course, no mention of his part in the Algiers Motel Incident.

Robert Paille left the police and worked at various jobs.

And what of that heroic defender of law and morality, David “Snake” Senak?  He, too, left the police and operated a construction business for a number of years.  He lives in a small town upstate, where he serves on a local zoning appeals board.  He’s also active on Facebook, where he posts about his grandkids and his faith.  (It always seems that some of the worst people are also the most overtly religious.)  All in all, a nice, bucolic life with nary a care.

If they ever think (or thought) back to that night in July 1967, I wonder if any of the raiding party ever experienced any true regrets over their actions.  Dismukes considers himself as much a victim as the people he helped detain and abuse in the motel annex.   Thomas was torn between his duty to report what he saw and his loyalty to the system.  Paille and August only came forward about the raid to soften the blow of the consequences that never befell them. 

The first two men, while their actions and omissions cause us to question the orientation of their moral compass, were caught up in circumstances beyond their control.  The latter two were run of the mill products of American law enforcement culture and its ingrained racial and socioeconomic prejudices.  At some point, they should have said no and did not.

Given what’s known of his record, David Senak is in a category of his own.  A violent, misanthropic man placed in a position of authority is a recipe for disaster.  His actions have been duplicated in various forms over the years albeit less brutally and in a less calculated manner.  The as yet unlearned lesson of the Algiers Motel Incident and the untold number of police shootings before and since is that as long as societal mores effectively sanction such killings, they are doomed to continue. 

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar 

The Algiers Motel Incident: Part 2 - Three Dead

Inside the Algiers Motel manor house annex, Carl Cooper, Michael Clark, and Lee Forsythe had been listening to music with Juli Hysell and Karen Molloy.  A sudden gunshot from outside broke a window, causing the occupants of the annex to retreat to what they thought was safety. 

What happened next is rife with conflicting statements and conjecture, as the aftermath of traumatic events inevitably are.  The ad hoc team led by the cops stormed into the annex.  The first casualty was Carl Cooper, who was shot dead in a first-floor room even though he was checked in to a third-floor room. 

Responsibility for Carl’s death was never established, though he was felled by a shotgun blast in which the shot was consistent with the type of shotgun then carried by the Detroit police.  No one in the raiding party ever admitted to being the first to enter, claiming Carl was already dead when they arrived.

The group advanced into the building, rounded up the occupants, and moved them into a downstairs corridor.  The officers lined them against the wall and struck each in turn, demanding to know who had fired the shots and where the gun was. 

Pulling Roderick Davis from his brace position along the wall, a patrolman threw a knife to the floor and ordered Roderick to pick it up.  Understandably wanting to avoid being shot by the police in “self defense,” Roderick refused.  After beating Roderick, they moved on to Michael with the same result followed by Lee. 

It got uglier pretty fast.  Patrolman Senak was enraged that Juli and Karen, two white women, were socializing with black men.  Senak forcibly stripped the two, and shouted abuse at them: “Why you got to fuck them?" he demanded.  "What’s wrong with us, you n----r lovers?”

Senak then decided to ratchet up the terror.  Roderick Davis was pulled away from the wall and hustled into a nearby room.  National Guard Warrant Officer Ted Thomas went with them.

After shutting the door Senak ordered Roderick to lie face down on the floor.  Senak fired his weapon into a wall, then winked at Thomas.  Thomas stepped out of the room.  A patrolman asked him if Senak had killed Roderick, and Thomas said yes.  Michael Clark was led into the room next and told to lie on the floor.  Depending on the account, either Thomas or Senak fired into the ceiling.  Returning to the corridor, Senak bragged, “I killed them two motherfuckers!”

At this point the girls urged their companions to tell the officers where the gun was, and told the officers that its owner, Carl, was already dead.  According to later court testimony this was about twenty minutes after the police and soldiers had entered the annex.  Challenged as to why it took her or anyone else so long to mention the pistol and its late owner, Juli Hysell responded simply that they were scared.

That’s reasonable enough.  Patrolman Senak was not appeased, however, and asked who wanted to go into the room next.  Naturally, there were no volunteers.  Patrolman Ronald August was handed a shotgun, and he then pulled Auburey Pollard from the line.  They started toward the room where Roderick and Michael had been taken, when WO Thomas, not wanting to give away the game, said to go to a different room.

Accounts differed as to whether August actually knew what had just happened was a game.  Thomas, whose trial testimony established much of what occurred in the annex, recalled that Senak said something to August as he handed him the weapon but wasn’t certain whether Senak had made the situation clear.  In any case, Thomas went with August and Auburey into the room.  Thomas saw August fire his weapon and Auburey crumple to the floor dead. 

Although Thomas testified he was frightened by the shooting, other witnesses have him leaving the room grinning.  “That n----r didn’t even kick!” he crowed.  That said, Thomas would testify he decided to take his team and leave the motel at that point, telling Senak that what the police was doing inside was their business and not his or his men’s.  Using renewed gunfire on the street as an excuse, most of the raiding party hastily left.

Except Thomas ended up staying after all.  We next find him in a room with Patrolman August, Juli, and Karen.  One of the patrolman in the annex asked Thomas and security guard Melvin Dismukes to escort the girls, who were injured and mostly unclothed, to their room in the main hotel building next door, where they were told to stay put until curfew ended at 5:30.

As for the remaining prisoners in the annex, the police, their own curfew notwithstanding, ran them off with the threat that if they stayed they too would be killed.  They were led out past Auburey Pollard’s lifeless body; up to this point, the youths had thought the execution game was simply a sick joke.  Told to run for their lives, they did.  A couple of them ran several miles away from the Algiers without shoes.

Fred Temple, however, wasn’t afforded the chance to escape.  Patrolman Robert Paille shot him dead, allegedly in a struggle over Paille’s gun. 

None of the deaths at the Algiers Motel were reported to Detroit police homicide detectives by the patrolmen, despite this being required by regulation.  Instead, it was the motel’s own private security who found Carl Cooper, Auburey Pollard, and Fred Temple and contacted the authorities.  

The coroner’s office removed the bodies in the early morning hours of July 26th, but the detectives called to the scene decided that with sporadic gunfire still going on in the street it wasn’t safe to stay.  A knife was found in the annex, but no firearms or expended cartridges.

That morning, the news media were told by the police only that the boys had been killed in an exchange of fire between snipers and themselves.  It would be several more days before hints of what had actually taken place began to surface.

Next: The Aftermath

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar