Yesterday, I made a couple of cartoons. I don’t need all that many, but I did need two for the first week. I won’t need another before the 20th, so that gives me some slack. And did y’all see the breaking news comment in yesterday’s OT? Or did you get the news elsewhere? Are the able bodied among you dancing in the streets?
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The Conversation – This course uses science fiction to understand politics
Quote – What does the course explore? We explore issues of racism, gender, anarchy and the end of civilization. I chose books that encourage students to focus on the political aspects of each work. At the beginning of the course, I ask students how closely they connect science fiction and politics. At the end of the course, students have the opportunity to revisit and revise their response to that question. By that point, students have participated in discussions, written papers and completed short assignments that ask them to explore and articulate political themes in each book. Click through for details. If Beau sees this, he’ll be tickled. He’s a big fan of using science fiction to understand, not just politics, but much of the human codition.
The Atlantic (no paywall) – My 6-Year-Old Son Died. Then the Anti-vaxxers Found Out.
Quote – My grief is profound, ragged, desperate. I cannot imagine how anything could feel worse But vaccine opponents on the internet, who somehow assumed that a COVID shot was responsible for my son’s death, thought my family’s pain was funny. “Lol. Yay for the jab. Right? Right?” wrote one person on Twitter. “Your decision to vaccinate your son resulted in his death,” wrote another. “This is all on YOU.” “Murder in the first.” Click through for full story. This is no way to run a civilization. This kind of harassment needs to be made a felony in all states and all territories (and, as I think I may have said before, there will be plenty of room in prisons if we just release all those convicted of personal use drug possession and breathing while black.)
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I remember “The Bookdocks” from print newspapers and always found it enlightening. Certainly it pulled no punches.I actually never knew that there was a TV series – not really surprising, as I never subscribed to cable or satellite. But based on what I saw in the papers, I’m not surprised that a very interesting course indeed can be developed from it. I can’t even count how many times I have thought and said and written that people do our best learning through storytelling – that it is far more influential than rstional argument, because it touches, not just the brain, but also the heart – and I could go on – But instead I’ll let Professor March do the sharing.
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Why I use ‘The Boondocks’ TV cartoon show to teach a course about race
A character from ‘The Boondocks’ is depicted in street art in Los Angeles during the time of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Chelsea Guglielmino via Getty Images
Unusual Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.
Title of course:
“Why Are We Still Talking About Race?”
What prompted the idea for the course?
I am a huge fan of the animated TV series “The Boondocks,” which aired from 2005 to 2014. The show chronicles, through biting sociological and political commentary, the adventures of two boys: Huey Freeman, the older brother and self-described revolutionary left-wing radical, and Riley Freeman, Huey’s younger brother, who embraces and represents the gangster lifestyle. The Freeman brothers grapple with having to move from Chicago to the suburbs to live with their grandfather, Robert Freeman, an easily angered and self-proclaimed civil rights icon. A series of events gave me the idea for the course.
The first was during a faculty meeting that felt as if it were going in slow motion because colleagues were going on and on about one item on a full agenda. I had to fight to keep my alter ego, 8-year-old Riley Freeman and his stereotypical “gangsta” lifestyle, from coming out and shouting “shut up” and “let’s move on.”
At that moment, I thought, maybe I should teach a class on “The Boondocks.”
The second event took place a few semesters later. While training police officers on implicit bias, I felt a burning desire to drop some Huey Freeman-type knowledge on the officers. Ten-year-old Huey is highly intelligent and knowledgeable beyond his years.
Finally, in the summer of 2021, while on a golf course collecting data for a research project on navigating racism, sexism and classism as a Black golfer, I met a Black golfer who was not familiar with “The Boondocks,” but whose family calls him Uncle Ruckus. Uncle Ruckus is another character from the show who is notable because of his disdain for Black people and enjoys dissociating himself from other Black Americans. At that moment, it became clear that I should teach a class using “The Boondocks.”
We watch episodes weekly. All of the episodes either directly or indirectly deal with various race-related topics. For instance, through an episode titled “The Story of Gangstalicious,” we debate societal views on Black male masculinity. Through an episode called “The Garden Party,” we discuss xenophobia and related implications post-9/11.
Trailer for “The Boondocks”
Why is this course relevant now?
This course explores if and how discussions on race and racism have changed since “The Boondocks” first aired in 2005. The premise and potential relevance of the course lies in the title: “Why Are We Still Talking About Race?” That question refers to 17 years after the first season of “The Boondocks” aired.
Students are also challenged to look at racism as a phenomenon that is structural and systemic and not just something that happens on an interpersonal level.
Students should be able to connect the episodes to broader and relevant sociological terms and concepts, such as power, privilege, status and how those terms and concepts are related to race and racism.
What’s a critical lesson from the course?
To be clear, the class is not just fandom for “The Boondocks.” Students are actually encouraged to critique “The Boondocks” and how some of the racial commentaries in the episodes are slippery and messy at times. For example, in the “Return of the King” episode, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot but did not die. He was in a coma for more than 30 years.
When King emerges from the coma, he is disappointed as well as upset at how Black people are acting and chastises them. However, the episode seems to admonish Black people and Black culture for their current status without a clear nod to anti-Blackness in social institutions. The lesson for students is to contemplate where they fit into the debate and how their views are shaped and informed by their standpoint and perspective.
What materials does the course feature?
Tuesdays – following the advice of my graduate students – we watch the episodes on our own time. This protects students to make sure no one is offended when their classmates are laughing at aspects of the episode that others might not find funny.
Thursdays we discuss and submit summaries of the episodes we watched on Tuesday. The discussions and summaries should include both a sociological term, concept, theory or idea and a related current event. This requires students to engage with sociological literature and other scholarly readings.
At the start of the course, students sign an agreement that prohibits hate speech, harassment, derogatory language and racial epithets or slurs. The agreement also includes a safe word for students to use if they feel uncomfortable at any point in the classroom.
What will the course prepare students to do?
The course gives students the vocabulary and the ability to discuss race and racism on both the individual and structural levels. The course also prepares students for conversations about race and racism both inside as well as outside of the classroom. For example, we discuss the unacceptable usage of the n-word, and all its derivatives, by non-Black speakers and the links to history and privilege, as dealt with in “The S-Word” episode.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, yeah, I should have featured this last month – but it was not yet available. And besides, the lines between all the various forms of racism, misogyny, LBGTQIAphobia, and all other forms of othering, are as fine as spider webs and as fragile. Humans are capable of breaking right through them – if only we want to. Help us want to!
Yesterday, the weather prediction was for snow today – and very cold – with a high below 32°F. Since I start shivering and my teeth chatter at 72°F, I’ll be staying in (not that I don’t anyway.) I also received confirmation to visit Virgil Sunday (and snow is NOT predicted for Sunday.) Also too, I learned that last Saturday was the 100th birthday og Charles M. Schulz. Here’s a link to a page of cartoons, which starts with political ones, but also includes more birthday tributes to the creator of “Peanuts” than you would probably think possible (and one or two are conspicuous, to me at least, by their absence.)
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Short Takes –
Axios – World’s largest active volcano starts to erupt in Hawaii
Quote – Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano — located on the Big Island — began erupting late Sunday night, the U.S. Geological Survey said…. “Based on past events, the early stages of a Mauna Loa eruption can be very dynamic and the location and advance of lava flows can change rapidly,” USGS said…. Webcams for the volcano can be found at https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mauna-loa/webcams Click through for developing story. It appers when that say “largest,” they are talking about its perceived height, not the amount of damage it can do world wide. The latter would probably be Krakatoa. And the danger isn’t lava, but volcanic ash particles released into the air, whoch can block sunlight for years, sort of like a “nuclear winter.” Look up the year 536 CE (or “Worst year to be alive.”) Also, I don’t remember the year, but it wasn’t that long ago, when an eruption caused enough particles in the air over Europe that planes couldn’t fly for weeks. You may remember that too.
Wonkette – Buffalo Gunman Pleads Guilty To Hate Crimes, Will Spend Rest Of Life In Prison
Quote – This theory, whether it’s been called that or not, has been around for decades. Most people will date it back to the work of French crackpot Renaud Camus’s 2011 essay “Le Grand Remplacement,” in which he claimed that white citizens of European countries were being replaced by Black and Middle Eastern immigrants, or back to the “White Genocide” nonsense of 1990s white supremacists, but it’s always been there. A major feature of early 1900s antisemitism and racism in the United States was that Jewish people were supporting Black civil rights struggles because they wanted to replace WASPs with Black people and then take over the world. Click through for more information. Today’s FFT summarizes my thoughts on this pretty well (it ain’t just Mexicans).
Yesterday, this email notification was in my inbox:
So that is done. Although, as John Pavlovitz points out, on November 9, when we wake up, the world is still going to be there. And many things will still be the same. (And hope will still be there too.) Also, yesterday was World Opera Day, which I had not known existed. There’s always something to learn. As trivial as this is, I also learned (by looking them up) that the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is 5’5″ tall, one inch taller than James Madison, and six inches taller than Robert Reich. What’s that saying, good things come in small packages? (No offense intended to tall people.)
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Short Takes –
PolitiZoom – Talent Agency Drops Kanye West For Anti-Semitism, But the Real Story Is Misogyny-to-Fascism Pipeline
Quote – But that’s not the real story. Before all of this blew up, Amanda Maricotte at Salon wrote a piece that got to the roots of what is troubling West and why he’s even worth taking a look at. He’s not just an isolated rich dummy, an over the hill artiste who hasn’t gone on tour since 2016. He’s part of something a lot bigger and a lot scarier, in addition to his particular brand of mental illness. Click through for article – which looks to an article by Amanda Marcotte for Salon here, which in turn looks back to two earlier articles here and here, and just like that, the light dawns. It isn’t coincidence that these things go together, or, at least, it isn’t any more. It’s the conscious, deliberate use of misogyny to turn people, particularly men, into extreme fascists. And I can’t get into words how dangerous this is.
The Daily Beast – Pelosi Has a New Plan That’s Going to Make Putin Really Pissed
Quote – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is slated to attend the Crimea Platform parliamentary summit in Croatia this week as part of a forum to discuss kicking Russia out of Crimea and returning the peninsula to Ukraine. Her visit is meant to show the United States’ “ironclad solidarity” with Ukraine, the Democrat said in a statement. But while it may seem like just the latest expression of support from the West, the trip could reverberate all the way to the Kremlin. Click through for details. I don’t think pissing Putin off is necessarily a bad thing. This is not actually an escalation in any way, but a reiteration of what our position has been since at least two years before Trump** moved in.
Glenn Kirschner – DOJ indicts Head Proud Boy Tarrio for seditious conspiracy. Now indict the Proud Boy’s leader -Trump (but see my comment on Rachel below)
Meidas Touch – Michael Cohen EXPOSES Donald Trump’s Strategy for the Jan 6 Hearings
CNN – Bernstein identifies the ‘real sleeper’ of the January 6th hearing
MSNBC Maddow – I’m posting this just for the first 5 minutes. It made me wonder – are the Seditious Conspiracy charges against the Proud Boys and others possibly trial runs (no pun intended) to make sure they get the evidence on the big boys right and get convictions? Tha might also explain a lot of the delay in DOJ going after the big fish.
Al Franken – Potential Jan 6th Hearing Bombshells (Not IMO his funniest, but still Al, and not terribly long)
Guy Tries To Befriend A Stray Cat For Over A Year
Beau – Let’s talk about masculinity and whether it’s toxic….
Glenn Kirschner – Two Standards of Justice: Fed Worker Jailed for Mishandling Classified Docs, While Trump Golfs (Apparently, that was the only crime in the completed case. It does take limger to write a term paper than it does to write a 500-word essay. Just a thought.)
Yesterday, I got boosted – yippee! There was virtually no snow on the ground. but there was a lot of ice on the glass, and between the windows steaming up and my glasses steaming up, it was terrible. If they decide on another booster, or if they come up with a universal vaccine, I surely hope it is in the summer.
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Short Takes –
Crooks and Liars – Colleyville’s Synagogue Hostage Crisis And White Supremacy
Quote – The fact that millions of Jews watch in horror, generational trauma triggered, the oldest bigotry still raging, as four innocent Jews are held captive by someone we recognize we’ll need to protect once it is over — even while it is going on — is a mind-f*ck of epic proportions. Click through. Every person in the United States needs to read this.
Huff Post Fringe – How Hatred Of Women Is Fueling The Far-Right
Quote – McLeod’s case is an example of the ties between misogyny and easy access to guns that Everytown for Gun Safety highlights in a new report this week, which was shared with HuffPost ahead of its publication. The group documents at least six high-profile misogyny-driven mass shootings in the U.S. since 2014, and the ways that guns and hatred of women have served as a unifying tie for many far-right groups online. Click through for more. We, at least we on the left, have figured out that pointing out that racism exists is not itself racist. But we don’t seem to have figured out that pointing out that misgyny exists is not itself misogynistic. Well, we need to. Because misgyny is even more prevalent than racism, has a much larger persentage of the marginalized who buy into it themselves, and will destroy the country if we try to elect a woman President before the nation is ready, even if she walks on water.
Medium – Restoring the Senate to Protect the Freedom to Vote {Op-Ed)
Quote – If the Senate cannot even begin to debate and vote on something as foundational as voting rights, we must reform Senate rules and restore the chamber to its rightful place as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Protecting the freedom to vote should not be a partisan issue. In 2006, for example, the Senate voted 98–0 to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. The Help America Vote Act passed 98–2 in the wake of the chaos of the 2000 election. One of its primary proponents was Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Click through for full letter. Nine former Senators have signed it, including Doug Jones (who sent it to me) and Mark Udall (IMO the best Senator Colorado has ever had – at least since I have lived here.)
Glenn Kirschner – House Postpones Flynn & Luna Testimony; Flynn Should be Returned to Active Duty and Court-Martialed (I’ll bet Miles Taylor could tell us what a “body man”s duties were – and I’ll bet it had something to do with adult diapers.)
The Lincoln Project – Pearl Harbor Rememberance Day
CNN – Meadows SPOOKED, Subpoena Coming Next? (If he thought he could “make a deal,” he has no idea who the committe members are.)
RepresentUs – This Is What Corporate Welfare Looks Like
politicsrus – Democracy Is Hard Earned
Six13 a capella – West Side Chanukah Story (I really do think Lenny must be smiling down. BTW you can close it when they start talking – pitching – at the end.)
