Offensive tourists.

Sometimes when I've gotten off the subway and am waiting for the bus into campus, there's some tourists there, maps in hand, and I know they're going to this museum near campus.

So, often, I tell them how to recognize the museum (so they don't ask the driver and slow the bus down), but also to be hospitable.

One of the other features of the neighborhood I point out is this really good French bakery, and Obama's house.

This week, there was this fattish blonde white woman who looked very Midwestern, her husband (a big bulky guy in flannel and a blonde beard), and this wide-eyed teenage girl he was kind of gawky.

So, I was nice to them and found out that they were visiting from Iowa, and gave them directions to the museum, and told them about the French bakery etc., then I also mentioned that they could go see Obama's house, though it was a bit of a hike from the museum.

"Uh, no," the woman was like, abruptly, and laughed a few short laughs, and her daughter tittered as well.

I was taken aback, and didn't say anything, and got off at my stop, which the bus arrived at soon after, but as soon as I got off I realized I should have called the woman out for being a racist; even if she wasn't a fan of the president; I was being nice, and there's nice ways to turn that down, like saying they have a full day, or that the walk was probably too far (she was, after all, fat).

On top of that, the tone she had reminded me of the really racist reactions I got from (white) voters when I went door-to-door for Obama back in '08; on top of the refusal, there was this layer of attitude that was just unnecessary, and you just knew that it came from something racial.

So, when I got to the main library and walked in, I saw the (younger) (black) (female) circ desk supervisor, and she was like, "Hey, how are you doing?", and I told her, "Eh, kind of pissed I didn't tell off this racist tourist woman on the bus."

She asked what was up, and I told her the story, and ended by saying like, "You know, she could not support the president, that's fine, that's some people's choice and some people's politics, but there's just this little something else on top of it, and you know she's racist."

"Exactly," the circ desk supervisor was like.

Labor conference!

Yesterday I attended a one-day labor conference that was just stupendous; so inspirational, and the people there are just fantastic. 

As the woman I sat next to said to me, "Teaching is a calling, but so is working in labor, and you know if you have it."

My 2 favorite moments:

1) A (black) woman got up to give a testimony about how bad working at Wal-Mart is. 

"Good morning," she was like.

"Good morning!", people said, the other (black) people most emphatically.

Then, she said something about how nervous she was to get up to speak, since she had never done it before.

"Don't worry, we gotcha!", a (black) woman in the audience yelled out in affirming response.

2) A (young) (white) guy who was talking about how shitty restaurant work is mentioned all the workplace tensions, including how people of color are kept in "back-of-the-house" jobs like dishwashing and make less money, "while smiley white guys like me get to be in front of the house and make more money."

At that, people laughed.

"No, seriously," he was like.  "I'm lucky I was born white."

At that, some people's eyes got big, and like 5 (black) (men) in the office got approving smiles on their faces and started applauding, at his honesty.

Addendum.

I texted my one modern Czech literature professor friend in ecstasy afterwards about how I had just had the best conversation about the danger of eating too much jerk chicken on Valentine's Day.

She texted back -

flatulence or nothing's going to taste as good?

. . .

Great Valentine's Day Conversation.

I was barhopping in a (white) yuppie neighborhood in the city on Valentine's day, and ended up at the bar in a Jamaican restaurant as like my 2nd or 3rd stop of the night.

The place was packed with mostly a black clientele, and I ended up sitting at the bar next to a (middle-aged) black woman and a (younger) black woman beside her.

When their jerk chicken arrived and they had begun eating, I turned to her and was like, "I am sorry, but that is just *criminal* to be eating there when I'm only drinking, that food smells so good!".

At that she laughed, and we started chit-chatting and she started saying how for some milestone one of her girlfriends from work had people go to Jamaica and she went there a 3rd time, and how the food was crap at the resort and this food was better than all of that, except for the one time they went outside the resort to a restaurant.

"And this is my daughter, [her daughter's name]," she was like, after introducing herself.

After that, we started chit-chatting sk e about local restaurants, and somehow we started talking about the dangers of eating too much jerk chicken on Valentine's Day.

"I'm sorry honey," I was like, grabbing my stomach, "Thank you for dinner, but that's gonna have to wait till the 15th!".

We all laughed heartily, and the woman was like, "Look at them in the corner getting it going," she was like.  "He's like, 'Okay, mmm-hmmm, mmm-hmmm, whatever, whatever, let's get this moving over to my place.'  Just look," she was like.

At first I looked at the wrong couple, but then she told me to look at another booth, and there was this older (white) (business) guy and a very young (Asian) woman in a short dress.

"He's gonna be poppin' a Viagra tonight!", she was like.  "You know he has *that* on his nightstand."

"*A* Viagra?", I was like.  "Hell, he's gonna be popping two or three!  He'll be like, 'Fuck, I have to be ready for this!'," and I made a motion of unscrewing a pill bottle and taking a fistful of pills and swallowing them quickly, with a nod back of my head.

2 great student moments (2 of 2): Mainstream mormonism.

For one of my assignments, I have students write research questions according to an assigned format... Though they don't actually undertake the research, I want to help them learn how to frame and present good questions, since that's a good life skill.

As it goes, the format is:

- make an observation on something important/interesting.
- say why that observation's undersubstantiated or questionable.
- ask a specific, answerable question.
- propose feasible means by which your question might be answered.

After the mainstream mormonism unit, one of my students (the read who's pretty much done readings for the entire course so far) had this great question that went something like this:

- the reading on Mormon missionaries presumed that all were straight men.
- however, some are certainly gay, and since they are constantly monitored by each other, even if they are straight, it is like they are in prison.
- how many Mormon missionaries have sex with each other?
- I would conduct anonymous surveys and confidential interviews in order to find this out.

I really think this is a great research project.  If I stick around in the city and my student does too, maybe we could collaborate on that project.  I have some Mormon heretic contacts I could work!

2 great student moments (1 of 2): Fundamentalist Mormons.

The kids in my one class I'm teaching are great.  Of the 17, like 4-6 are pretty stellar and keep me on my toes.

This is one of my favorite moments -

When I was going over source tendencies in new religious movements - e.g. people in the movement may try to deny/minimized abuses -  I had students think whether ex-members also had biases that needed to be looked out for.

Right away, one student brought up that in the chapter we had read from "God's Brothel" (a collection of essays from former polygamist wives), the author had said she was in a lawsuit with the group over disputed property, and she might try to vilify them to aid her case.

That was a great point, but not what I was thinking of, so after a pause, I drew their attention to book's entire title, holding up the book and gesturing to the cover and reading the title out loud:

"God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped".

"How about that?", I was like, and went and wrote the word "TITILLATION" on the board.

At that, some students kind of narrowed their eyes and you could see gears whirring, and one of them, this (slightly husky) (redheaded) (early 20s) (female) with black glasses and a short haircut and a warm, generous nature, raised her hand tentatively.

"Yes?", I was like.

"'Escaped'," she said.  "They didn't just leave, they escaped."

"Exactly!", I was like.

Cultural Sensitivity.

1) Last month I ran into an Israeli sociology grad student I know at a student function, and we began to talk about classes.

"I'm taking network analysis," he was like.  "It's all the rage right now."

"Oh," I was like, "Is that where if you know fat people who know fat people, you're more likely to be fat?"

"Exactly," he was like.

"Gotcha," I was like.  "So, because I know you, and because you know a lot of Israelis, that makes me more likely to spit on Palestinian babies."

"Not exactly," he was like, gritting his teeth.  "That would be a fallacy.  First, you are confusing correlation with causation.   Second, not all Israelis spit on Palestinian babies.  Only some."

Then, as we talked more about network analysis, the tension lessened.

2) A few weeks ago I ran into a Taiwanese grad student I know and told him about the Chinese-speaking undergrad who I saw spitting on the floor.

"She must be Chinese," he was like.  "I'm *Taiwanese*."

I then asked him if he's ever heard of people spitting on the floor in China, since I was wondering if maybe it was a cultural thing in that girl's head.

He hadn't.