I certainly agree and have been observing that college teaching is being debased and I do deal with tis in the book. The attitude of other workers to college teachers is complicated, ambivalent. If teachers support other workers actively,not just by theip politics but in their daliy lives (not acting shitty to secretaries, janitors and such on the campus), the most are friendly and really grateful to you. If this stuff bores others, let me know but here is another story from the book.
michael yates
D. "Bowling Alley"
It was a mid-Sunday afternoon in late Winter. We had just finished our match, and I was disappointed with my poor performance. For some reason I could not prevent my left wrist from turning over when I released my bowling bowl, and this caused the ball to hook disastrously to the right. My teammates groaned as my scores plummeted about 40 pins below my average and our chances of winning the league championship melted away. Luckily it wasn't a cutthroat league, so they commiserated as I packed away my equipment and put on my coat to leave. As I passed by the manager's desk, I glanced up at the television set on the wall. A professional basketball game was in progress and since I am a basketball junky, I stopped to watch. The Chicago Bull were playing the Boston Celtics. I hated the Celtics and their rabid fans and arrogant general manager and former coach, Red Auerbach. I was gratified to see that the Bulls' star, Michael Jordan, was playing a spectacular game, on his way to scoring more than 60 points in what turned out to be a double overtime Celtics victory.
Another man was watching the game, along with his young son. I recognized him as an average bowler and delivery truck driver, something of a loudmouth with a higher opinion of his bowling skills than his ability warranted. Normally I would have ignored him, but Jordan's great game was so exciting that I just had to say something about it. So I remarked, "Boy, isn't he an amazing player." This innocent remark sent the man into a tirade. "That n-word's not the best player. The best player is that white guy, Larry Bird." Now Johnstown is a racist town. It is impossible to go into a bar in a white neighborhood and not hear the word "n-word" within 30 minutes. While warming up before a basketball pickup game, one of my students commented that he liked the Boston Celtics because they were the "white team." In 1922 the mayor of Johnstown actually ordered all black residents who had not lived in the town for at least five years to leave. Black men had been recruited to work in the city by the steel companies in the wake of the bitter 1919 strike, and the mayor issued his order after an incident involving a black person and the police. It is not known exactly how many African Americans left town, but the growth of the black population stopped. Today blacks comprise less than 3% of the city's residents.
Yet even though I have experienced open racism numerous times in Johnstown, I was startled by the this man's vehemence. His face had turned red, and the veins on his neck were showing. I said, "What difference does skin color make; Jordan is a great player. --Period." He glared at me and yelled, "Don't tell me about the n-words. I lived near them. I know what they're like. They're no fucking good." I looked down at his son and said, "Hey, you're really setting a fine example for your kid. He'll grow up to be a bigot just like you." At this, he lost his composure completely and said, "Listen, four eyes, I'll knock your fucking glasses off. I don't give a fuck who you are ." I noticed that no one at the desk was making any effort to defuse this situation. So I just said, "Go ahead and hit me if you want to." He didn't, and I picked up my bag and left.
These days there are those, especially on the right, who say that we have overcome racism, and it is time for minorities to stop moaning about it and get on with their lives. I have no doubt whatever that these persons have spent very little time in the bars and bowling alley of our towns and cities. My antagonist's racism was disgustingly blatant, but no more so that of millions of others. A faculty member at my school once complained in the faculty dining room that it was a shame that his daughter could not get free dental care at the University's dental clinic when all of the "n-words" could. At least I helped to deny this man tenure.
Of course, most racism is more subtle, so woven into the fabric of everyday life that most whites just take it for granted. It crosses all classes, but that of white workers is the saddest and says the most about how this economic system deforms our personalities. The man who confronted me in the bowling alley was a delivery truck driver, doing menial labor at low wages. He obviously had been poor as a child. Yet he hated the poorest and most exploited of all workers. He had been led to believe that black people are the lowest of the low, and since he grew up with them, he must be awfully low himself. This filled him with shame, but he dealt with this shame by coming to think that black persons must in some sense be responsible for not only their own misery but his as well. His hatred transformed shame into superiority, a feeling encouraged by other whites, not least of whom were employers who used racism to drive a wedge between those whose alliance would be most dangerous to their power.
It is hard for me to think of the incident in the bowling alley without remembering the minstrel show and all of the other examples set for me by teachers, friends, clergy, and other adults. My college biology teacher, for example, said that if a white woman had a "black" child, there must have been a "n-word in the woodpile." The very geography of my hometown was imbued with racism. I won't deny that progress in race relations has been made, but the white suburban kids who fill my classes are still writing racist graffiti on the bathroom walls and still fuming about welfare as a code for racism in their essays. Just how different is their upbringing from mine? White people are raised to be racists, and it takes a mighty effort to overcome this. I know. I'm still trying.
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> I think that teaching at a community college (even as a tenured professor) is a lot different from the working conditions that you described. My good friend Michael Hoover says, if I remember correctly, that in Florida a state law mandates the *word count* of each community college student's coursework output. As to teaching as exercise of creativity, traces of it still remain, but Hoover says that he has to 'teach' a prepackaged TV course. In general, much more micromanagement of course content, office hours, minimum enrollment, etc. seems to be the norm in the community college land. (Maybe you'll discuss all that in the 'debasement' chapter you mentioned in your post?) I hope Hoover will expand on this.
>
> I agree wholeheartedly with the following statement you wrote:
>
> "As I came to see it, the problem was not that I was in a privileged position but that most other workers were in unprivileged ones."
>
> The only reason I don't quite agree with you on everything is that workers who are not paid intellectuals, in my view, don't see us with 'envy and a lot of hostility.' I'd say that the prevailing working-class view may be affectionate condescension toward Professors (pronounced with ironic emphasis) both in the USA and Japan. (Then again, I never had to experience a conflict with my father over Vietnam.) The reason why I harp on this matter is that the Right has been putting forward their pseudo-populism (which has us believe in the existence of 'workers who don't like PC, Pomo, Multiculti, Literature, etc.' in conflict with the 'Cultural Elite'--except that the Right doesn't say 'workers'--they say 'taxpayers' or something like that). Our lefty angst over privilege usually doesn't help the working class _objectively_ and instead helps the Right by giving them ammunitions with which to destroy the past gains of the working class: wider access to higher education. Of course I!
'm not
> saying there is no objective difference between steelworkers or waitresses and college teachers with regard to time and control over work process. It's just that when we publish our thoughts on the matter in non-left fora, we ought to be really careful so as not to help the Right.
>
> Yoshie
>
> P.S. Our lefty angst kills comradely discussion among leftists too, as in the recent case of Lou, Mark Jones, and Doug.