The Counterpublic Papers vol. 2 no. 32

April 15, 2017

Flew in and out of Chicago yesterday to attend Mark Sawyer’s services—he was buried in Los Angeles, but as he had deep deep Chicago roots (the Dawson, Jackson, and Sawyer families are the three most important black political families in Chicago) they had a Chicago service, held at St. Ignatius. His daughter all of nine years old was the “co-MC” of the event and she was absolutely wonderful. Best (paraphrased) quote of the event—“some people have a hard time being awesome…my dad was great at it.”

So every political science department—usually the departments that emphasize “science”—has at least one professor who goes out of his or her way to make it hard for black and Latino graduate students to succeed. Every one. Usually this occurs in one of two ways—failing them in a course, or during their qualifying exams. Sometimes it occurs afterward, as professors try to talk students into taking a terminal masters. 

One of the implicit jobs black and Latino professors have in these departments is to identify these professors and protect students from them. 

Had a conversation with one of his graduate students last week at the Midwest. Received a grade he/she/they didn’t deserve in a class, a grade that would’ve severely jeopardized his/her/their status in the program. Realized that this professor was one of those professors. Went to the professor to show him/her that the grade was underserved…the professor was unmoved. Grades are final and don’t change. 

Went to Mark.

Mark “talked” to the professor.

The grade changed. 

If our community was a bit bigger I’d go into more detail. I’ll just write that Mark “talked” to the professor and then “the grade changed”. 

I wrote above that this was an “implicit” job. When I got hired at Wash. U. and then at Hopkins, identifying “those” professors wasn’t written anywhere in the job description. You don’t have to see that part of the job description if you choose not to. And in seeing that part of the job description you don’t have to fulfill it if you don’t want to. The checks won’t stop coming. If you desire them, the accolades won’t stop. 

Mark recognized this was part of the job description…and likely spent no small amount of his time paying for it. You run into a student Mark taught and I’m willing to bet a Moscow Mule that every single one of them has a story, a story about UCLA professors trying to kill their spirit, and Mark resurrecting it. 

….

I’ve been keeping an eye on Tony Stark Elon Musk ever since I realized Tesla was a thing. 

He’s working on the next stage of his hyper-loop project—a project that if successful will make it possible to travel from Seattle to Portland in about 17 minutes. He’s conducting a proof-of-concept event on a two mile track in Nevada sometime in June. He’s boiled down about 25,000 crowdsourced submissions to eleven, among them a Los Angeles to San Diego team, the aforementioned Seattle-Portland team, and oddly enough a Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh team. He’ll then winnow these eleven down to two or three.

Granted, I’ve a smartphone in my hand that fulfills most of the tasks of a Star Trek Tricorder (and unlike the Tricorder can help me find Pokemon). But it seems to me if it becomes feasible to get from Seattle to Portland faster than I can walk the mile from my house to the metro, we’d really be living in the future. 

But as with any technological innovation we have to think about the social costs. And I can think of three off the bat.

These tubes pretty much bypass every small town and minor city on the loop. If there were a Chicago-Detroit loop it’d likely bypass Jackson, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, it’d even bypass Ann Arbor. We know Trump voters aren’t concentrated in metropolitan centers, but in rural areas increasingly left out of the economy. How much do you think they’d benefit if it were possibly to zoom past them so fast that you wouldn’t see them even if the tubes were transparent? And we know that in places like DC and Baltimore, whites tend to opt out of public transportation options if it gives working class blacks too much access. An MIT professor is already suggesting that along with connecting cities to one another the loop should build around cities in order to better connect the suburbs. How might this exacerbate already existing racial inequality? 

Musk is involving the federal government in the project, but he’s the one spearheading it. How does that throw the relationship between the public and private sector even more out of whack? How exactly were the 26,000 submissions winnowed? What was the algorithm? The federal government will eventually have to create the regulations to make the whole thing work, but who’d own the tracks? When we pay, who are we paying? 

….

Only three more weeks to go. 

Two more weeks in the case of urban policy—I’m going to try to get Senator Barbara Mikulski to talk in the last class. When I’d heard that the Senator would be coming to Hopkins after the Senate, I didn’t know it’d really occur. Thought she’d just use the name for a business card, maybe pop in for high profile events, and that’s it. 

But she’s right across the hall from me—or rather she was, before they built a new office suite for her at the end of the hall. 

I ran into her before I went to the Midwest in Chicago…and she clowned me.

“Oh. I bet you’re going to see Rahm Emanuel aren’t you? Valerie Jarrett and her crew maybe?”

I’m pretty sure there’s some type of rule that says you can’t clown a retired Senator back without getting a visit from Secret Service or somebody. So as she was clowning me, all I could do was ask her assistant if she was just going to let the senator keep clowning me like that. And watch as she gave me a slowwwwww nod. 

I’m going to talk about Baltimore next week—right on the tail of the second anniversary of the Uprising—but I think this week given that we’re talking about urban redevelopment I’ll focus on Detroit. Whitewashing stories like this kind of teach themselves. (Although as I’ll talk about next week, gentrification isn’t a cut and dry process of racial transformation—just the other day I visited Blacksauce Kitchen in Remington for the first time. No way in hell a food joint that bangs the Barrel Brothers like nobody’s business is white owned.)

….

Not so random readings and listenings:

….

Happenings:

If you’re around Baltimore on Tuesday, the Hopkins Race Forum is welcoming Carl Hart to talk about drug policy. If you’re able to make it, come. They say the tickets are sold out. Don’t believe them. 

Next week I’m giving my final talk of the semester. The University of Maryland, College Park, is holding a conference in honor of Cathy Cohen and I’m going to be appearing on a panel talking about black freedom movements. Going to use the opportunity to talk about the work they performed at the University of Michigan, work that made it possible for a knucklehead like me to get a PhD. 

And the day before, Eddie Glaude is giving a public talk at hopkins on Ella Baker and Fugitive Democracy. I was supposed to appear on a panel to talk about his lecture, but as I noted last week, if I’m given a chance to honor Cathy (who sat besides me at Mark Sawyer’s services), I’ll take it any day of the week.

On that note from what I understand it’s around 80 degrees outside. And I’ve more work to do before I can take advantage of it. 

See you soon. Unless you see me first.