now it's personal

Not that it hasn't always been. This is going to be a little scattered- a little grace would be appreciated.

News broke today about an attack on two men on Vanderbilt's campus. The attack happened on September 9. One of the men was an undergraduate and the other was a recent graduate of the Divinity school (the professional school that I am also enrolled in). They were getting food at a Quizno's that is attached to a campus dorm. The two men were apparently being affectionate and two other men (well, one is technically a boy at the age of 17-he's a freshman and the other guy was his friend/guest) began to vocalize homophobic slurs. The Div school student asked if there was a problem, and the perpetrators said something along the lines of 'get out of my face.' As the two affectionate men (self-identified as gay) left, the other two followed, attacked the Div student and beat his face while repeating the homophobic slurs. Both the Vanderbilt and Nashville Metro police departments are investigating and charges have been filed. You can find out more here~ http://www.insidevandy.com/drupal/node/4766. You can also see channel 4's coverage of the incident here~ http://www.wsmv.com/news/14135106/detail.html.

I have a friend who isn't a big fan of the phrase 'hate crime.' Truth be told, there are probably a number who take issue with the phrase. But I don't even know how else to respond to this, and the nashville police have labeled it such (even though there is no federal legislation that will back that claim up for crimes where sexual orientation is the motivator). Reading about it, talking about it, thinking about it, I feel violated. It makes that threat of violence so real. I actually feel very similar to how I felt after I was mugged. This crime is not about money or personal vendettas, it is simply about hating someone because of who they are, and feeling justified and empowered by the society around you to express that hatred violently. There have been numerous stories and rumors about such things happening around campus, especially to gay men, but now it's undeniable. And as the co-chair of the divinity school's GLBTQ organization, and as an activist, and as someone who gives a shit, I'm called to act, react, and lead. But I'm struggling to figure out how.

Windhoek

In two weeks I leave for Africa. I'll be in Namibia for about 12 days (with days on each end for travel). First let me say that though this trip is through the Div school, it is not a mission trip. I wouldn't go if it was.

I'm still very wary of the word and concept of mission. A bunch of privledged Christians going to 'poor' areas or nations and bring 'the Word' and 'salvation,' along with their own overpowering understanding of how things should be 'fixed.' Mission, even if some of it's colonizing tendencies have been erased (or just better hidden), is still about us talking and you listening. It's about the missionizer having the answers, and the missionized being put in a position were accepting those answers seems to be the lesser of two evils.

I'm calling this the 'shut up and listen' trip. Officially, it's called a cultural immersion. The point is to listen to as many voices as possible from a culture that will be very different from the one we know and try to open ourselves up a bit to questioning our own assumptions and values. We'll meet government officials, clinic directors, farmers, students, teachers, and vendors just to name a few. There is a hope that we can develop some understanding of what a recipricol relationship would look like for some of these communities between them and a bunch of naive and over-eager grad students. But the understanding is that these relationships are to be defined on their terms, not ours.

Certainly it's not perfect, there are flaws in every system, but this seems to be a way to travel that is less focused on consuming the other than most.

People keep asking me if I'm excited. There seems no way to properly express my feelings about this trip- the whole thing is so big that I have no words or overall comprehension of what the trip may hold for me, my friends, my mind, and my emotions.

Four words

I'm going to Africa.


(More info to come.)

Master's tools, master's house?

A friend posed a question yesterday: can anything revolutionary actually come out of the academy?

This question brings forth a overwhelming myriad of questions for me.
-What did my education provide for me? Why do I feel that its impact was so intense?
-What attitude did I bring into my education?
-What change do I expect to be able to bring out of teaching?
-Am I just feeding the machine and allowing myself to be used as a tool of oppression and capitalism if I continue pursuing education?
-Can change really be affected from the high tower of academics? Or is that a white, middle-class, liberal illusion that we like to feed ourselves?
-Is revolution what I want to inspire? What does revolution even look like?
-Is there really any hope?
-Jeez-o-peets, why is this so complicated?

Audre Lorde writes that you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. Do we have any tools that aren't formed and influenced by the master? What do you do with this idea when you are complicit in the structures that form the master's house-sexism, racism, classism, colonialism, capitalism?

All I've got at this point is questions- more and more questions.

Someone, somewhere told me that the point of further education is really just to increase the questions. So maybe I'm doing something right? Maybe...who knows.

can't be all bad

So, I know that many have heard me bitch about this place, and I think often that bitching is legit, and I'm sure there's more to come. However, I have to give some props to what happened on my birthday.

It was the last day of classes and there was an 'end of the year party' (not a birthday party- that was just a coincidence).
This party was headlined by a band of three of our professors and one of our deans- this in itself was pretty damn sweet.
However, I was taken off guard when the band called me out in front of everyone, announced that it was my birthday and then led a good portion of the Div school in singing happy birthday to me. It was totally unreal, and as my friend Judy put it, it was very 'movie-like.' So, thank you to everyone involved, you made me feel quite special.

I just wanted to take a minute from my usual blogging topics and style to record this pretty sweet occassion. And since I'm off topic anyway, I won tickets to see TMBG this past Friday. The concert rocked; the whole night did actually.