Murphy should take a class
I have a dirty little secret. My secret could inspire public ridicule the likes of which I’ve not yet personally experienced. Given the third-class status of intellectual freedom in the state of Wisconsin, my secret could very possibly cost me a job that I love. But, in the spirit of my love for teaching and people, I’m going to share it anyway.
I am a professor in the University of Wisconsin System, and I taught a course on “whiteness” this past semester. I’ll let that sink in for a second.
My students (all 34 of them) and I examined race and racism in text (novels, music, and other forms), institutions (schools, prisons, and others), and our own experiences. What does this mean? It means that we examined our assumptions about race, and the foundation upon which our experiences with race rest. It means we examined racialized privilege and identity development. Which, by design, means we examined whiteness. I warn my predominantly white students in advance that the content we cover is provocative; it is rhetorically powerful. I clue them into the reality that painful emotions might emerge while engaging the kinds of concepts and ideas about race and whiteness that we cover during our 15 weeks together. I remind them that anger, resentment and hopelessness are perfectly normal responses to topics in a course that centers on the experience of race in the United States.
Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville), this is where you come in. It appears that you are experiencing a degree of pain. I understand this. As I have assured my students, responses like yours, to the very idea that a course on whiteness exists at a worldclass institution, are perfectly normal. People like me who have made it their life’s work to contribute to this field of study are prepared to anticipate responses like yours.
Whiteness is an actual field of study, dating as far back as the beginning of the 20th century. I have contributed to this field, by way of research, scholarship and teaching. My own scholarly and teaching contributions, now spanning eight years, renders me something of an expert in this field. I also won an award for my research on whiteness earlier this year. Could you even imagine?
I’m thinking you cannot imagine such a thing. Whiteness? Awards for whiteness?
I would like to respectfully point out one other thing: A course on whiteness is absolutely a commentary on the educational system you oversee, just not in the way you might think.
World-class institutions make these kinds of courses available. Worldclass universities make available the kind of thinking and academic engagements about which you are vexed. And the fact that you are holding taxpayer dollars over the heads of those who educate your state and the people in it as something of an extortionary measure with which to get your way only shows more pain. This is a normal reaction but it is also dangerous.
I conclude with two proposals:
First, your argument is a sound one. You wish to make doubly sure that “there’s legitimate education going on” in the state of Wisconsin. I am as committed as you to this cause. I will donate my time to you, in helping to assign the appropriate people to the task. People with advanced degrees in the very subject matter that you are holding up to the microscope. I can — and will — furnish curriculum vitae from across this nation so that you can see that the credentials of those assigned to this important mission are indeed “legit.” (If we have trouble finding national experts, I know 34 Wisconsin taxpayers who can help us).
Finally, rather than extorting Wisconsin’s educators, students and residents, use your privilege for good. I am teaching this course again during the fall of 2017. Please enroll. We will welcome you with open arms, as we all attempt to come to terms not only with this nation’s past, but with its defective present.
Just ask my students, your taxpayers.
Christina Berchini is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.