Walker and discovering our own part in racism

I must comment of Joyce Walker's peice, "Textural Textuality: a personal exploration of critical race theory."

I found myself navigating through the "interwebs" of this text like a splunker exploring further and further into the cave...without a map to get back to the fork in the road of which I had decided to diverge. Maybe this is what Borges meant to discuss when he wrote "Garden of the forking path."

In any case, I do think that the text that I was able to navigate speaks clearly of our postmodern connectitivity and separation from and to others. But something even more strange occured while reading this text that I need to address.

While reading Dr. Walker's personal experiences of encounters of racism in her own life...I began to think about my own upbringing. I too was from a small town (in the South which may or may not contribute any complexties to my experiences) where we prided ourselves on the concept of community. However, I first learned about racism about three months after I began middle school. Then in the seventh grade, I began noticing that the white girls that were "going with" African American boys were teased a lot. This disturbed me because I was developing a crush on one of the drummers in band class. When I asked my aunt (a teacher at the middle school I attended) if she would disown me or not like me if I dated an African American her response left me very confused. Afterall, she and her sister both were considered very liberal thinkers in our town, and they always harped on me about how we should never judge anyone too quickly...they lectured me for hours on the ills of racism in our society and the destructive nature of it. She told me, in the midst of curling her hair that morning, that she would allow me to date someone outside of my race, but she would worry about me and feel sorry for me...the way she saw it, relationships were hard enough without adding the outside pressure society places on interracial relationships. I often think of how I have distanced myself from African American male friends once I thought they held romantic interests in me, and wondered if I too were contributing to racist attitudes by adopting the same viewpoints of my family.

But then, as I was contemplating all this, I heard a knock on the door...which is strange since no one ever just shows up at my place. But I decided to answer it and came face to face with a young African American male. He explained that he was a Norfolk State student and was applying for a scholarship and needed to collect signatures and get people to sign up for subscriptions to books or magazines. But in his introduction, he stated that one of the requirements of the scholarship was to get the signature and also to get the person buying the subscription to fill out a quick survey stating that they were not frightened by him...he even lifted his sweater slightly to show that he was wearing a crisp white shirt and tie. Naturally, I felt bad saying no to this young man, but I'm a college student as well and have limited funds...but I started thinking about it after he left. Why had he gone out of his way to assure me that he was not dangerous and why did he want to get documentation that I did not feel intimidated by him? And what scholarship program would want their recieptients to document, "Hey, this person was not afraid of me when I talked to them." I mean, I can understand if we were in GA or AL in 1890 this being a concern...but why would people be afraid to open their door to a young African American in dress pants and a cardigan in 2008? What type of message does that say about race issues in America?

"Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war...Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters." ML King, Jr.

I found this quote on Danny Schechter's blog entitled, News Dissector. http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/

It just got me thinking about new media and how new media can help someone express themselves without using the written word. In a way, it helps someone in an out-group express themselves more freely so that they can criticize the government or be an outspoken dissenter without coming under as much scruitny as, say, Ward Churchill of Univ. of Colorado...if he had made his composition, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" in a multi-media platform, would he have gotten as much scruitney?

project 2 reflection

Ella Shaffer
Reflection on Sound Project
This sound project grew out of our class exercise. I decided that I wanted to do a piece about a friend of mine’s most recent relationship. Since I was and still am friends with both parties involved, I wanted to try and include both perspectives of the relationship. I also was constantly around both of these people as they both lived with my boyfriend. They have since split up, and Janelle has moved back to FL while Ricky has stayed here and is continuing to live with my boyfriend, Brian.
Janelle and Ricky met randomly one night while Ricky’s boat was in Port Canaveral, FL. Janelle was leaving a bar with her friend and Ricky was in the parking lot under a street lamp and called out to the girls to come talk to them and offered to buy them a drink. They talked on the phone for a couple months and then decided that Janelle should move up to Norfolk so that they could be together. Like all whirlwind relationships, they had a very tumultuous relationship of highs and lows. They even broke up for a few days over Christmas and eventually, Janelle decided that she had rushed into the relationship and decided to go back to FL and pick up the pieces of her life there. As I stated, Janelle and Ricky are both people I would consider good acquaintances, if not friends, and she is doing very well. She has gotten a job, sounds over the phone (something that I wish I could have captured in this piece) like a totally different person—relaxed and full of joy and energy. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Ricky. He puts on a good face at home…acts like nothing bothers him, but his actions over the last month show otherwise. He has been out drinking a lot and the latest on him is that he was caught by Brian and two junior officers huffing on the boat while they were underway. While Ricky has always been a thrill seeker, his actions have turned more self-destructive since Janelle has left.
As a writer, and avid and varied music fan…I wanted to create a sound essay interpreting their relationship. I used several songs in my iTunes Library. Unfortunately, some of the CD’s that I had added to my Library where MPEG4’s and would not transfer to Audacity (at least, I couldn’t figure out how to convert them). Also, I tried to just use songs and mix them together, although, now that I think about it, the project would have probably been better with some primal screams and slamming door sounds…since that happened a lot throughout the time they were living together. My audience would be people that are considering jumping into a serious relationship or moving in together before establishing a strong relationship first.
At first, I was really excited about this project, but as time went on, I became more and more frustrated with the editing aspect of the project…I felt like I kept having to fade everything in and out which became tedious. I also had to try and get the snippets of sound very precise which was pretty cumbersome over time.

Sources used:
Dire Straits: “Romeo and Juliet”
Rusted Root: “Beautiful People”
Sheryl Crow and The Dixie Chicks: “Strong Enough”
The Beatles: “Here Comes the Sun”
The Grateful Dead: “One Toke Over the Line”
Alice Cooper: “School’s Out for Summer”
Good Charlotte: “My Bloody Valentine”
The Clash: “Should I Stay or Should I Go”
Joaquin Sabina: “Quien Me Ha Robado El Mes de Abril”
John Coltrane: “In A Sentimental Mood”
Gypsy Kings: “Samba”
Pablo Neruda: “From Twenty Poems of Love” http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/from-twenty-poems-of-love/

the importance of teaching multi-modal discourse

"Listening is an art, a conscious process of observing and defining sound. And like the art of writing, it is affected by one's place in and knowledge of a particular sonic environment as much as one's previous experiences with sonic forms” (Comstock and Hocks 2). How often do we ask students to listen? Yes, we expect them to listen to our lectures, our podcasts, etc., but how do we teach (and do we teach) our freshmen how to dissect spoken discourse? How can we expect them to develop this skill, unless we ask them to create arguments in spoken discourse? Just like subliminal messages, our students listen to types of music that do in fact over time change the way they think and feel about certain issues. Our students can say, “Man, that Wyclef song is tight!” But do they really know what Sweetest Girl means? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PxBGHjABnU) [Or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zryvBnCaShc, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aj1sznTdLM, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un2dbprtZFE&feature=related] They may listen to the nightly news, or a politician’s speech, but can they really decipher the rhetoric and manipulation of language? Would they be able to do it if we taught them how to construct multi-media texts that included sound? Plus, we have to take into account that visuals lend to meanings (as in music videos as displayed above). Each time we construct new sounds as a composition, we are redefining what we believe to be our own “truth,” and we are revealing a part of who we are as individuals because of the choices we make in constructing the compositions. Simply put, “our ideological location regulates the relationship between what is audible and inaudible, imaginable and unimaginable” (Comstock and Hocks 2).

“illusion of realism” (Comstock and Hocks 3). This is yet another concern with written texts and the ability to transfer our notion of rhetoric from what a student sees on paper to being able to transfer those ideals to other types of media discourse. Students cannot yet (usually) listen to a song, or watch a segment of news, or listen to a speech and decipher reality from illusion (this may be due to the staged reality TV that has become ever so popular). One of the struggles we face as composition instructors is trying to get our students to not only decipher fact from fiction in the research they do (what is a good source to use in a paper) and make that lesson true to life. We can’t just say, “politicians are sneaky, don’t believe them.” or “all news casters are biased and stretch the truth.” We have to somehow get our students thinking about dissecting written, spoken and visual literacies. My philosophy is, if a student can do it, they can recognize it—so I think that teaching multi-media discourse and rhetoric certainly has a place in general education.

My Audio Remix

So in German..."Ich bin haben freunden" means "I have no friends." "Scheize" means "shit"
So the effect I was trying for was a lonely woman that is getting ready to committ suicide...a little dark, yeah, but it was what I was thinking.
NEVERMIND...next blog

Writer Strikes ending and New Media

I saw this article from the 10th of Feb...actually, my student wrote about the BBC and CNN articles for an assignment and the quote they used grabbed my attention. Here is an excerpt from the BBC article followed by my thoughts on it...

"Writers Guild of America (WGA) members discussed the settlement plan at meetings in New York and Los Angeles on Saturday.
"We had a very lively discussion. I'm happy with what happened," said Michael Winship, president of the WGA, East, after the meeting in New York.
Earlier, Mr Winship and his West Coast counterpart, Patric Verrone, told their members the proposed deal was "an agreement that protects a future in which the internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery".
"It creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, 'When they get paid, we get paid'." "

This is a debate that has been on the minds of scholars for a long time. Questions of "Who owns the internet?" "How do you police the internet to make sure that copywrighted material is protected, etc." Since everyone, including Hollywood writers are beginning to question this, it validates all the studies and papers and theories we are learning. It validates our field.

I can't really decide if I am happy the strike ended the way it did or not...Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad that Lost and ER and Grey's Anatomy and 24 will continue without interruption...the new seasons are kind of the highlight of my winter. But at the same time, I have to question accessability. Are they now going to make us pay to gain access to movie and television scripts? If that is the case, there are going to be some that cannot afford to pay for them, and the great thing about the internet is having free (for the most part) information at your fingertips. When we start restricting information and charging for it, could it not lead to further class division in this country?

Final draft Photoshop Remix!