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Short Notes: Build Your Own Independence v.2010

by Jose on February 21, 2010 · 1 comment

in life

Malcolm X, "Our Freedom Can't Wait!"

A suggestion on building your own independence in the new decade, but first, a few notes:

Today, many of my compatriots celebrated the 45th anniversary of the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, or commonly known as Malcolm X. His legacy and works still penetrate and influence so many of us who strive for true equality in this country. While so many remember what many consider his angry and rebellious side, people also need to remember the peace he advocated for, and the man he eventually came to represent later on in his life.

One of his central points of his legacy was his advocacy for independent ownership. Much of his body of work existed precisely because his constituency supported him outright and financially, and that’s an important part of his legacy. When the people who you wish to address support your most revolutionary work or when the monies you’ve earned support your own product, that’s following the compass in the direction of freedom.

In 2010, succumbing to ease of use and style for a small fee of one’s own person has become easier than ever. Free services have a great way of bringing the most random people together, especially ones with a common interest. However, these corporations have a bottom line, and the minute you mess with that bottom line, like asking for a little privacy with your activities or making sure your material belongs exclusively to you, they take a little back. They change your privacy settings. They block your site for “questionable material.” They change the terms of service on you.

So what does someone who wants liberation do? Get their own .com.

That sounds simplistic enough, but let me expound. Not only do you get your own .com / .net / .wtf, you pay for your own hosting, and you get some open-source software, and voila! You’ve established some sense of independence on the web! Now, the next logical step is for those of us on sites like Ning to get our monies together, buy a bunch of great servers, and start our own hosting, but the hosting world, unlike Blogspot / Facebook / etc. are much more beholden to their customers since we’re paying and our ratios are far more favorable.

Whatever your background, we who have Internet access have to consider our roles in assuring that access and equity still exist and that we’re represented in as many arenas as possible. Once we can say we own, we’re truly understood what independence means.

And none of this is free of cost. But freedom is not either.

Jose, who wonders where people get off dissing Black History Month …

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On Why Your Colorblindness Can Strike Me As Covertly Racist ( #EdChat Edition )

by Jose on February 2, 2010 · 4 comments

in life

Damage after Hurricane Katrina, School Bus

Let me make it plain: conversations in too many sectors have this strange relationship with race these days, and by strange, I mean covertly racist. This sentiment is best exemplified by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s latest quote about New Orleans (thanks, Fred Klonsky):

“I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.’”

Classy move there, Secretary. (Your apology’s a little late, which is right on time.) I have so many problems with this statement, I’d be here until tomorrow discussing its implications. However, let me just highlight a few:

1) As I mentioned in the same blog I borrowed this from, the cataclysmic events of the day and the thousands of lives lost and ruined by this disaster only seem to mean one thing to Arne: a rise in test scores. If we get rid of the lowest-performing students through collateral damage and natural disaster, who are we to disparage that as scores rise? The districts with higher performing students didn’t get affected nearly as much. Plus, if we can destroy the public sector of education and replace it with privately funded institutions who only accept certain types of children, then those students who don’t get to go to those schools, in effect, don’t count. They’re on the bottom end of the “outliers.”

Which brings me to …

2) If those voices are silenced, then how does some people’s “color-blindness” affect how this conversation proceeds? Well, his defenders will most likely say, “He doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” “His boss is a Black president!” and “Look at the second part of that statement. Black people DO have to do better!” These statements and others like it already denote a racial tone because it suggests that color is to be ignored in a system that places values on race as is or that the retorts aren’t substantiated because there’s a Black person involved within a 5-mile radius. It also suggests that, when in conversation with a diverse group of people, since there “is no color,” then the dominant peoples’ voice (cultural values, speech patterns, stereotypes, etc.) should be used, and thus nullifying the conversation since everyone’s supposedly on the same plane, even when they’re not.

and …

3) It makes it easier to ignore participants whose experience is different from the dominant populace, and this doesn’t just apply to race, but sex, age, etc. Rather than addressing these issues, too many educators rather run away from these topics because of their limited experience with race or they don’t want to deal with that part of themselves. At the end of the day, it doesn’t just hurt participants of color, but Whites as well, since their opinions hinder true dialogue and embed further intellectual segregation, even when they think they mean well.

I bring all this up because I ran into a conversation online where the chatroom was mostly of one dominant culture, and a few others observed that they couldn’t get into the conversation because it’s mostly ed-tech crap. (Yes, I said crap.) When someone tried to bring up the need for more discussion about pedagogy and / or achievement gaps, these parts were ignored, and that’s the worst part.

Ignorance doesn’t just take the form of hatred (ignorance of fact), but also when one actually ignores the other (ignorance of being).

Unlike my blogger colleagues who discuss race, I won’t seek to validate my opinion by speaking of the myriad of friends I have and who understand this discussion, no matter what race. Rather, I extend this phrase: color-consciousness. It means that true diversity exists outside of the flavors that exist in your spice rack, or the flavor of liquids you used today.

And more to the point, it means people aren’t simply collateral.

Mr. Vilson, who never drank Cristal, but them f***as racist …

p.s. – Dr. Beverly Tatum covered this extensively in Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? Pick it up if you haven’t.

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Short Notes: On The Brink Of

by Jose on October 25, 2009 · 0 comments

in life

Muse: The Resistance

Muse: The Resistance

A few notes:

  • I haven’t done this short notes format because I’ve had more to talk about topically. Now, I have a lot less time but more things happening. Perfect for this format.
  • I’ve noticed that many educators in the digital age have taken on the vision of Frank McCourt, who once said that, when it comes to K-12 education, they never ask teachers, but ask the “leaders.” Not that I think there’s anything wrong with being a thought leader or the president of an educational organization. I’ve met many of those types lately due to this venue that everyone and no one knows about yet. When it comes down to it, it’s important for teachers, rank-and-file or otherwise, document their experiences and publicize their experiences in the name of adding more dimensions to the idea of “teacher.”
  • Funny. Right after I wrote that “I Almost Quit Twitter” post, I found a purpose in staying: livetweeting the Yankee games. People seem to enjoy me talking junk about everyone in the field and making obscure reference to Derek Jeter’s throng of women and Bobby Abreu’s hair product. Let’s hope this lasts into November. Then I can publish that “I Quit Twitter” post in my queue. (You guys know I love Facebook more anyways.)
  • Sometimes, I have this theory that the higher the highs, the lower the lows. For instance, this week, as I mentioned on my Facebook and Twitter, I’ve been mentioned in a couple of spots that got me pretty excited. First, there was Tara L. Conley’s presentation on the promulgation of ideas via Twitter, and then Raquel Cepeda’s CNN.com article on the definition of Latino as it pertains to Latino in America the series. In both, the ladies quoted me and I’m certainly grateful. I’ve also started doing a bit of inquiry as it pertains to writing books and articles, and LANSU, my Syracuse University alumni organization, seems to finally be getting its feet firmly set. Yet, all the other personal things have made it hard to celebrate these events. I love the chaos and anarchy, but simultaneously crave a bit of order and regularity. In times like these, when I need the most reassurance and confidence, I also realize I have to find these qualities within and for myself. Otherwise, who will?

Jose, who’s on the brink of things bigger than himself …

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Does Social Media Mean Social Justice?

by Jose on August 27, 2009 · 4 comments

in life

puzzlemirrorplanet

The World as a Puzzle

In the 1950’s, as civil rights groups of interest (i.e. dissident and radical groups) began to truly penetrate the mainstream thought of America, the FBI developed a program with a series of protocols for disruption and misinformation called COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INtelligence PROgram). By most reports, not only did they intend on gathering as much information about these dissident groups and individuals as possible, but they also sought to produce misinformation within the groups to create malcontent and chaos within even the most structurally sound organizations.

While J. Edgar Hoover’s dream child no longer exists under that name, I have a couple of quandaries I think about all too often. As someone who has run the gamut as far as social networks are concerned, I have to wonder how much of my information I’ve freely given to agencies whose primary function is to silence my voice. On the other end, I also wonder how much of the networking I’ve done online has helped me mobilize and proactively find like-minded individuals across the nation and the world.

On the one end, most social media users I know don’t give away information that we don’t already know through simple conversation with them or through their friends. They’ll post pictures of themselves, their friends, and the events they’ve been a part of. They’ll discuss their thoughts on a certain issue, and usually not too in-depth. They may even post their personal troubles, but again, nothing out of the ordinary in the grand scheme of things. Thus, this information becomes almost redundant for those looking to find information on anyone they’re interested in. On the other end, with the advent of these social networks, it becomes more enticing to reveal more about yourself to distinguish yourself from other profiles in the interest of “standing out” or becoming “most popular.” It’s a temptation a few of us fight, especially if we don’t have people who market for us. Promoting oneself has its positives, but how deep do we take that?

Even deeper is that social media can also be a mechanism for misinformation and eventual separation. For instance, today on Twitter, I laughed when someone wrote “Huffington Post has 18 white men as their featured bloggers,” and immediately called out the lack of diversity at Huffington Post. My questions cascaded as follows:

1) Why should Huffington Post care?

2) We have a few Black / Latino bloggers on Huffington Post and they get featured on the site every so often, so why does a day where they strictly feature whites surprise you? That’s stat quo.

3) If / when people of colors (and I do mean Asian and indigenous people as well in this conversation) have a viable alternative to Huffington Post, will we use it as a platform to converge or to outdo the next? The latter has become customary here on the Internet, if you ask me.

4) Do we somehow believe that the Digital Divide has seized to exist? That really doesn’t even come up on any social media platform I’ve seen. People are so concerned with having Barack Obama’s ears instead of giving “the people” in their communities a real voice.

In all of this, we should already see how social media in and of itself has very disparate consequences on the ideas of information. It can liberate and celebrate the ideas and voices of our generation and future generations to come and make these ideas more facile to build around. We can build whole curriculi and engage hundreds in a matter of minutes without leaving our seats. Some of the biggest campaigns of recent history came via the power of the interwebs. On the other end, if we don’t keep tabs on the sorts of information released out there, the consequences can become much more dire. Instead of a rumor about Lindsay Lohan’s plastic surgery or Chris Brown’s new chick, we’ll get a made-up report about a local activist or an nonfactual tweet about health care reform (is that happening already?).

So, does social media mean social justice? You tell me.

Jose, who just got 2 more projects to work on just now …

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