2004-12-16 - 12:26 a.m.
Though I hate it when people sing out loud to the music on their headphones on public transportation (though I also secretly respect how into their music they are) today I wanted to be that girl passionately belting,”And after a week of fighting, as more and more it seems the right thing, Do you believe in something beautiful? Then get up and be it,” along to Ted Leo’s new album Shake the Sheets and shaking my ass while I walk home from the train. However, I did plenty of ass shaking and arm flailing at his show on Sunday and I managed a little self restraint. I heart heart on the sleeve rock music.
Today I finished up my classes at Eugene Lang College. Though I have one more class left next week, a graduate class, I am basically done with my academic course work as far as my time at Eugene Lang College is concerned. I am one semester away from graduating and I really cannot believe it. I was almost surprised at the lack of sentimentality and closure I felt as I ran out of classrooms like I do everyday, not thinking in that moment about the bonds that had been formed, and not, and the struggles that had gone on in those spaces. It’s true, I’m ready to be out. I’ve been complaining about school and feeling stuck and having things be repetitive all semester and now its over. And of course, looking back on it I did learn and did forge some new relationships and work out some difficult questions in ways I had not been able to before.
I feel like the the past week or so I have been a part of two dialogues around race, power and access to the academy that have actually felt productive and respectful. Not comfortable, because I think by nature these kinds of conversations must push us out of our notions of comfort (especially for white people). But in these conversations white people and people of colored listened and heard and questioned and responded and brought honesty and emotion into it. This made me realize it is possible to deal with issues around race directly. Of course, I’ve known that for a long time, but it also becomes a fraught discourse and one, especially for white students at my school (and perhaps white liberals/progressives and radicals in general) one filled with fear and a general sense of dread. I felt like that was not present in these conversations, perhaps because they both occurred around activities that have a “practical” side- one took place in reference to the Lang college newspaper I helped start and the other around an after school program at a new, small high school in Brooklyn that I am part of with a group of other students. I also think people engaged in these conversations knew that there was a possibility they would be challenged and also willing to stand up for their viewpoint. I hate to fall back on a simple explanation that honesty and openness can change the world, but I believe that we can’t make the revolution (or even run a good after school program or make a relevant and politically challenging campus newspaper) if we can’t listen to each other and be aware of who has access to power and in what ways and how that plays out in what we do and the relationships between us.
