28 October, 1998

The Monster Rears Its Ugly Head

This entry is very hard to write in so many ways. Perhaps because unlike many other things I've written about, this one is both ambiguous and sharp at the same time -- meaning that's it's controversial. It's also an uncomfortable entry to write, because I don't think anyone likes to believe that they might have unacknowledged flaws ...

I know these things exist.

I was not brought up in a bubble.

Yet I did have what most would probably call, a sheltered childhood.

Does that make me fundamentally incapable of having an opinion about things I may not have experienced directly?

What about listening to others' stories ... what about imagination?

I don't know.

The class started out ordinarily enough, with an informed discussion about Foucault. For once we were having a real back and forth discussion, not the bounce-off-the-teacher type of discussion which has been all too common in this class. I was in a pretty good mood after the break, ready to listen to presentations and have some fun reading quotes, hearing some new music, watching a hitherto unknown film clip.

Again, everything started out in the usual fashion. Some comments from the professor and then the floor opened up to the week's presenter. He made a few points about the film he had selected and what it had do with history, how it shows a part of history which isn't always acknowledged by mainstream teaching.

The film was a Western about slaves fleeing slavery in the West in the mid 19th century and the wagon-master guide who made this flight possible. The presenter made a very good point about how you could use this film in a history class to fill in those gaps which exist in the mainstream. Even though it is a fictional story, it's a representation of what that exodus from slavery might have been like. The difficulties of being a non-white pioneer.

He concluded his presentation with a clip from the film which showed relations between the black wagon master and a local native tribe. This clip was shown to make a point about who the enemy was from the native perspective, whether or not natives and blacks shared a common enemy in whites.

He was winding the presentation down, showing us pictures of black cowboys and the Buffalo Soldiers of the West when the professor cut in. She wanted him to relate the film to the time period which it was made in. She wanted to know what the context of being made in 1971 meant, how this could affect interpretation of the film. The presenter reiterated his point about missing history. The professor explained again what she wanted.

From there things began to degenerate rapidly, with the professor making comments which were critical of the film, trying to get the presenter to relate the film to the "blaxploitation" phenomenon of the seventies. The presenter stood his ground, continuing to repeat the point about missing history.

The two of them were at loggerheads for about 10 minutes over the whole issue. Two other students got quite annoyed and jumped in to defend the presenter's point. When the floor was thrown open, and several people made different comments. Some simply on the film, one about "increasing sensitivity" in the film industry, which made a number of people sit up and stare in amazement.

The tension in the room mounted, the presenter's face grew more and more closed, the professor's face started to get flushed. I wanted to sink into the floor.

As I left the class in a welter of confusion mixed with fear a and a slightly ill feeling in my stomach, I joined up with the two women whom I car pool with.

One of them, proceeded to jump into a tirade about the professor and what she should and shouldn't have done and linked the whole incident to race.

And that is where I made the mistake of speaking up to defend the professor.

I don't know if it's simply because I'm too naive, or if because I am not a minority my eyes are closed to this woman's point. That's the thing, I guess which in the end, scared me the most. Because I pride myself on being able to imagine, or at least trying to imagine what it is like to be in someone else's shoes, I was terrified by her implication that this was something that I could never do. That I'd missed the boat, that somehow I was a terrible person, because I could defend the professor with the argument that the presenter hadn't completed the second objective in our presentation assignments.

The other woman's point was that the presenter never got the chance to complete that objective because the professor never allowed him to. She argued that it was because of his race and because he was presenting on a racially charged issue that the professor was not inclined to let him speak.

I wasn't listening enough to her, nor she to me and the tension in the car mounted until we were practically shouting at each other.

We talked things out on the Metro and came to some kind of conclusion, but it left me quavering inside, drained and upset.

And I still can't see through to the truth of what was going on.

Was it racism? Was it just a case of misunderstanding, of people hearing only what they wanted to hear? Am I guilty of doing just that? Is the professor wrong to call students on the carpet in class? Was I wrong to try to defend her?

I have no firm answers to these questions.

All I have still, is a lingering sense of dread about class next week, about my own presentation, which contains elements of colonialist racism in cartoons and discomfort about the idea of disturbing this other woman, whom I actually have a great deal of respect for.

I just can't see clearly in this at all ...