Yes , Politics and Race are Uncomfortable

9:00 AM, Nov.5th – I stood bleary-eyed in front of 22 18-year-olds who actually looked worse than me. It had been, regardless of political affiliation, a late night. The plan was to have one more conversation about the difference between written prose and prose that is meant to be spoken (their “audio essays” are due on the 7th). That didn’t happen. Out of rummy joy and what I can only call the ‘controlled recklessness’ that defines my teaching personae, I asked a question: “Do you think people voted for Obama simply because he is black?” And I got a straightforward answer: “Of course.” I waited for a minute, nodding my head, convincing the class that these questions had only just occurred to me in the car or the shower this morning. Then: “Do you think that’s a problem?” My normally quiet, too-early-for-human-activity, 9:00am English class erupted. (That may be too strong a word, but the quiet tension behind every face and every uttered argument seems to justify it).

Miami University in Ohio is not necessarily celebrated for it’s diverse student population. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The school often gets called “JCREW U”—there’s a youtube video that reflects this sentiment, unfortunately, fairly well. My three classes at the university are not only homogeneous in terms of race (we’re nearly all white), there is very little economic diversity (we’re all from either solidly middle or upper class families). It’s a far cry different than the kind of classroom I’m used to standing in front of in Chicago or Dayton. Not that there isn’t difference—the more I get to know my students, no surprise, the more those differences arise.

Class the day after the election, to say the least, exposed some of those differences. Here’s a few sample comments from my students: “The most ignorant vote people made yesterday was based on skin color.” “Why should my parents be responsible for inner-city school’s problems instead of sending their daughter to college.” “What, you think that paying more taxes is going to go to black people, like Obama is going to hang on the street corner and pass out cash?” “I’m not upset even though I voted for McCain. I just thought Obama’s speech sounded a little Martin-Luther-Kingy. I hope he knows he has to be president of all of us.” “If you don’t know the policies you’re voting for, you shouldn’t vote. It doesn’t matter what the president looks like.”

Discomfort followed nearly every comment in every class. In my last class, we have two people of color (2 out of 22 may be a good representation of Miami’s student body) and, predictably, that class was the only one that tried to evade my question concerning race. People in each class, however, shuffled in their seats, ran their hands through their hair, brought up California’s gay marriage ban, taxes, television coverage, anything that might move us away from race. We kept coming back.

A few days before the election, a student of mine at Indiana University East started laughing in the back row. What was funny, she shockingly wasn’t afraid to show me, was a picture on her phone someone had sent her: the back of man’s T-shirt that read “N***er please, it’s the WHITE house.” It’s not racist, relax, it’s just a silly joke she said.

I’ve never been more convinced that composition instructors are charged with much more than the proper order of nouns and verbs (not that many of us still actually teach such things). Obama, as president, will help us "expose" the very real impact of our seemingly innocent and mundane language on lives lived in flesh-and-bone bodies for our students (and for ourselves). There is always so much at stake in the classroom, cheers?