[lbo-talk] mayor of Champaign: Obama not an American

[Alan Rudy]

Surely, I should have thought of this, in these specific terms, earlier but,
pedagogically (am I masturbating, commas?), this note made clear how much
these kinds of instances and beliefs are treated as if they are discrete
elements of individuals opinions, isolated statements not associated with
overlapping networks of creepy thought.  This creep doesn't only doubt
Obama's citizenship, doubting Obama's citizenship is of a piece with a raft
of other creepiness.
I think I am so accustomed to seeing the questioning of Obama's citizenship
as part and parcel of a raft of other equally creepy and unfounded
perspectives that I probably (at least, too often) address such issues in my
classes in a manner which only implicitly makes such connections... and, by
not making the connections explicit and speaking in "We all know that this
means" kinds of tones that don't often enough explicitly make the
connections for my students, reinforce their perception that sociology and
politics are largely about pointing out the ways that discrete individuals
have discrete differences of opinion rather than systematically different
perspectives variously rooted in unequally developed logical and empirical
foundations and arguments... and that I am just a liberal, the other person
is just a conservative and that's all there is to it.  Damn.
I know I can't do everything all the time in my teaching but hopefully
serves as a periodic corrective to my own, unintended, contradictions as a
professor.
A

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


>
>  Ok, so he is a total creep. Funny how the questioning of Obama's
> citizenship is a pretty reliable guide to general creepiness.
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319