The Black Studies answer to TED Talks is here!

Season 1 of Blackademics Television features 12 presentations on "Education, Performance and Youth Empowerment" by Black Studies scholars from around the nation. The show will initially air on KLRU PBS-TV Austin starting on Sunday October 13, 2013 at 1:30 pm and will be made available on-line after that.

Dealing with garden variety racists on social media

In thinking through and attempting to stay on top of things for the Black Studies in the Age of Social Media class I'll teach this fall, I've encountered instances where, after some national event, a few dozen racists will broadcast racist tweets. A cute Hispanic kid in a mariachi outfit beautifully sings the national anthem and a bunch of people go nuts with the name calling. Same thing when a New York born Hispanic sings the national anthem at another national sorting event. Xenophobes come out of the woodworks with idiotic expressions of racism.

I've tried to think of this in context though. There are 400 MILLION mundane tweets every day, coupled with DOZENS (or sometimes HUNDREDS) of publicly shared racist tweets. How should one respond? If you ignore racism, it can take root and grow like an all-consuming weed. On the other hand, when you point out the kooks, you give them free publicity and the opportunity to convince others of their warped perspectives. Working through this conundrum will be one of our class tasks for our Black Studies in the Age of Social Media.

Now, all that having been said, next up, Part 2 (the one where I go ahead and call out a racist asshole since he is an elected official of influence) ...

The on-line launch of Blackademics

Two months after their recording on April 26, 2012, the first 12 minute installment of Blackademics went live. Our first four talks were filmed in the KLRU studios and on the historic Austin City Limits set. The event was an overwhelming success with a live studio audience of over 200 students, faculty, staff and community members. A write up in the Daily Texan captured the essence of the event as did this interview on KUT radio.The first talk, "Sista Docta" was by Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones. was released Thursday June 28, 2012 on the ICUSP Youtube Channel.

Over the next few months we'll upload three more talks: "The Bus Stops Here" by urban planner Dr. Talia McCray; "Black with a 4.0" by educational psychologist Dr. Kevin Cokley; and my own piece, "The Life and Times of a Community Engaged Scholar." The goal of the larger project is to bring Black Studies to broad audiences via public television and social media. The four talks will get the ball rolling; Blackademics 2 will comprise a set of five more talks and be recorded in the late Fall.

Along with being shared via social media, the talks will also be shown on TV. The first four talks will air as two shows on KLRU public television. The eventual vision includes going national, with the central Texas Public Television episodes as an extension of our proof of concept and a teaser for PBS stations nationwide.

So look out for Blackademics, coming to a twitter feed, a Facebook Page and a YouTube channel near you. Again, that first release date is April 26, 2012.

Oh, and if you like what we are doing, share it, like it, friend it, subscribe to it. Give us feedback and help us spread Black Studies scholarship far and wide.

Dr. Kevin Michael Foster
Executive Producer

The Honorable Deployment of White Privilege

Odd reality: on racial matters, I don't require allegiance from friends or family. My relations - both kith and kin - span the racial and political gamut, so if I expect to stay in relation, there are several from whom I simply don't hope for much. That having been said, while there are some for whom tough racial conversations are too much, there are others with whom I am impressed and to whom I am grateful. I speak especially of white allies - folks who have every invitation to blissful, ignorant privilege, but who insist on moving through their privilege and into solidarity, understanding, voice and action. 

Over the last months I have been commenting on the neighborhood treatment of black male youth. My commentaries were inspired by incidents with my own son - incidents that were infinitely less horrific than the current tragic circumstance surrounding the murder of Trayvon Martin. All the time that I have spoken up and spoken out, I have been encouraged by an overwhelming majority of my neighbors of various backgrounds. White neighbors who step into difficult conversations and are open to the possibility that racial biases are still present, powerful and dangerous are especially important. The reality is that they enjoy more space to call it like it is and yet be heard without suspicion or resentment.

The greatest U.S. example of this is, of course, that of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her classic Uncle Tom's Cabin. The serial story turned novel wasn't perfect, but it was critically important. Near immediately translated into dozens of languages, and second only to The Bible in sales, this book turned northern public sentiment against slavery. The engaging book drew northern Christian readers off the fence and invited them into to the fold of those actively and vocally opposing the enslavement of African descended people. Of course it could go without saying that Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas and other Blacks risked more and took bolder stands. But their white allies were critical as well. Even when putting less at risk, they likely had broader impact. It may seem perverse, but it is simply another odd aspect of our racial order.



Given all this, we can ask two questions of ourselves. The first is this:  "What privileges - even if often unacknowledged - do you benefit from?" In my case, I am a light skinned, educated, heterosexual, African American male who was born a citizen of the United States. This embodiment and identity carries great privilege as well as leaves me open to some expressions of intended or unintended prejudice. The second question is: "what do you do with your privilege?" In the last months, many of my neighbors having taken the opportunity to stand for nurturing neighborhoods instead of creepy surveillance neighborhoods - and to stand for kids generally. Many of them, white and richly privileged, have acknowledged that race and racial biases likely account for many of the surveillance patterns and assumptions that characterize our neighborhood message boards and Facebook pages. Importantly, when these white folk call out problems, they often have more credibility than me. They are assumed to be unbiased observers, unlike myself. Their whiteness has them viewed as neutral and unbiased; while my blackness has me read as biased. In short, their alliance is critical. Things that take me months to move forward, they can move forward with a single well placed utterance. So to my white allies, thank you. We'll call your work the honorable deployment of white privilege. Now please don't rest on these laurels. I now ask: "what more can you do?" Or better yet given your privilege, how about this: "what more should you do?"

This post is dedicated to the memory of Trayvon Benjamin Martin, to the hope for justice, and to the hope for whatever measure of solace is humanly possible for his mom and dad.

Tenured at last ... time for a new tat.

Thursday, December 15 was a darn good day. Ten years after receiving my doctorate I was granted tenure at the University of Texas at Austin. What is nice about the situation is that I earned tenure without betraying my sense of who I am to be as a scholar. I staked my career on the importance and viability of community engaged scholarship and was ultimately rewarded by my university.

We don't talk about it this way, but one way to look at tenure is as a ritual hazing process that threatens to render academic freedom irrelevant. While on the tenure track, junior faculty are continually discouraged by caring senior colleagues from engaging any methodologies, publication venues, communities or activities that could be seen as controversial, experimental, untested, or not properly deferential to established norms. There is of course irony in this. We academics are supposed to be in the business of generating knowledge, not regurgitating what already is. Nonetheless, the overwhelming message is to use traditional methods to engage research that is solid, easy to conduct and write up, and to crank out as many publications as possible. The extent to which the publications chart new territory is nowhere near the point. Rather the point is quantity of publications in rigorous publication venues.

While the messages on how to achieve tenure generally come from folk who are genuinely concerned with your success, the critical by-product of the heads down, stay in your lane, nose to the grindstone approach they have been taught to advocate is the production of tenured scholars who are unable to push boundaries, unable to challenge established wisdom, unable to rock the boat. And with apologies for the string of metaphors, for some us, this is an unsatisfying approach to intellectual life.

I am excited beyond words that in the end, my university chose to reward rigorous, purposeful, productive community engaged scholarship. I took a leave to serve in the Federal Government when I was told not to, published in venues that I was told wouldn't count as much, took stands in local controversies when I was told to wait until after tenure, and after amassing the first dozen or so publications I began co-authoring with my advanced students (and allowing them lead authorship!) so that they would be more viable on the job market once they finished. And in the end, it turned out just fine.

While words cannot express my gratitude to the university that signed off on the work I've done, there were also two senior colleagues, Ted Gordon and Doug Foley, who were outliers in their support for taking the stands that I felt compelled to take, and for pursuit of activities and methods that I felt most appropriate. They were, in many ways, the bridge between my work and acceptance by the academy. Words cannot capture my lifelong gratitude to them both.

Along with the wonderful feeling of relief, the congratulations from friends, and the humbling recognition of all the folk who have supported me for years, the biggest lift this gives me is that I can continue to be full-throated in my advocacy for a community engaged approach to scholarship. I can now speak, write and act not as someone who calls for others to do what he would not, but as someone who chose a path because it felt like the right thing to do and then was rewarded. Thanks UT Austin, for your support of a scholar who seeks to be defined by his community engaged intellectual work.

Back at UT-Austin

Wow. time flies. I tried to get rolling with a blog while I was still going back and forth between DC (temporary home for a year with the NSF) and Austin (base for my UT-Austin academic appointment). Looks like life took over and the blogging didn't happen. A year and a half has passed and I'm back in Austin full-time -- back to my family, back to my academic position and back to my community. It has been a busy year with tenure among the major priorities. We'll see in a few days how that turns out.
In the meantime, I've been working with a great crew of students (grad and undergrad) on a project to be purposeful about the dissemination of black studies scholarship via new media ... We've all been tweeting, the department has a couple of Facebook pages going and we are moving towards a spring event to record and the share clips of professors doing their thing. ... More soon; should be nice.