"These things are always radically contextual; teaching at Wayne State I am certain that the dynamics of your classroom are significantly different from mine, for the simple reason that when you teach African American lit you can probably expect half the class or more to be melanin enriched, while I can expect a quarter or less; and when I teach "multiculturalism", or "workng class lit", or anything else I'll generally have 0-2 black students, out of 35. Being in an 85% white city in a 97% white region (Knoxville is not Memphis) specifies classroom racial dynamics in particular ways."
I know. I've also taught at SUNY-Stony Brook where the racial ratio was like that at U Tenn (or fairly close to it). But the "defection effect" can work wherever you're at. That's the point of it. The "white race" is a monolith or it's nothing at all. You wouldn't expect to get all whites to defect; we only need one-third to jet in order to do the whole thing in. It seems like you're working with a consensus model, i.e. that EVERYONE has to see your defection for it to be successful. That misreads, fundamentally, what the "white race" has been historically and continues to be down to the present.
"So I read your claim that you have a relatively easy time legitimizing yourself as nonwhite through a race treacherous practice as being tied as much to the specifics of Detroit as anything. And let me add that while you may well be doing something right, I'm still skeptical: racial psychologies, and white supremacist institutional and economic structures, are such that I don't think white people can simply "act" nonwhite with the result that we will "be" or "be perceived as" nonwhite. (Have you seen Bulworth? What could be whiter that Warren Beatty writing the line "you'll always be my nigga" and having Halle Berry say it to him? Talk about white male fantasies!) This is way beyond the individual acts of individual subjects to overcome, though we may have genuinely "postracial" relationships to other specific individuals; in most situations, the racial structuration of the academy and the classroom continues. I don't know your age, but its clear that in my age group white people are a significant presence in African American literary studies, and while we may obviously be competent, serious, and good teachers (and we also may not be), we are absolutely responsible to not act like this is simply a good for the world. There is no comparable situation whereby blacks are a significant presence in Physics, or Chinese Studies, or decent and well-funded elementary schools, and as long as that's true our presence as teachers of African American literature really does get in the way of one of the few genuine spaces of affirmative action available at the moment."
I thought Beatty was being the only kind of defector he can be at this stage of his life, given his own intellectual formation. Yeah, it's a fantasy; but as fantasies go--aren't all feature films fantasies??!!--it's a pretty good one: his fantasy is a defection fanatsy.
I agree that we have books to teach first and foremost, that we mustn't substitute "defection" work for good and principled teaching practices. My point, however, is that the two go hand-in-hand. While it's certainly possible to teach Black books competently without getting your "racial" self involved in it, this (to my mind) is a missed opportunity. Plus, didn't you say this was impossible to do anyway? I feel strongly (after eight years of teaching African American lit.) that using the "defection effect" enlarges the horizon on which Black books are read, felt, and understood. It's not "do-goodism"; it's motivating the books we read. For example, a book like John O. Killens' masterpiece YOUNGLBOOD is all about defection. Is the teacher supposed to pretend that the American race drama played out in the novel does not apply to him or her, or to anyone in the classroom? That's very lame to my way of thinking.
"So, in spite of your post, I will continue to say that unfortunately, and in spite of having spent a decade at least trying to undo the problem, and in spite of a genuinely anti-white supremacist ideology, my melanin deficiency makes me "white". And that affects the dynamics of my classroom in very specific ways that can't be eliminated through actions I, individually, take."
Why let white racial ideology interpolate you like that? Isn't the task to always be vigilant in fighting it, exposing it, and tearing it down? Melanin has nothing to do with race. To NOT insist on that as a teacher of Black books is a mark of incompetence, no matter what your melanin level. And this is not an opinion nor an "individual act." That's living, empirical history that you can back up as a teacher and scholar. Lerone Bennett's BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER, for example, is an excellent source; or Theodore Alllen's THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE. But more than anything, the books themselves are always involved in this question, either to assert the principle (that race has nothing to do with skin color) (as in DuBois, Killens, Childress, Hughes, Baraka, Morrison), to grapple with it (James Weldon Johnson, McKay) or to finally opt out of it altogether (as in Hurston and Ellison). That's very schematic, I know. But it's just a departure point in working this kind of argument out in more detail and with greater precision.
Easy,
Jonathan