Community Colleges Are the True Public Squares Today
When it comes to having those difficult conversations about race, class, and gender that we say we want to foster, there is no other place like community colleges — and some for-profit colleges — in today’s politically, racially, politically, and generationally polarized America. Again and again, research has shown that more and more people continue to self-censor in their social and professional lives for fear that something they say around strangers may be misinterpreted or taken out of context causing them possibly to be harassed or, in extreme cases, to lose their jobs. Numerous hypothesis have been put forward to explain what some call an epidemic of self-censorship and the dissemination of mis- and disinformation, but few of these narratives recognize that at some institutions of higher education — albeit not the elite ones — students and faculty are still having those meaningful conversations that go way beyond the soothing rhetoric of hashtag support or digital activism. In saying this, I don’t mean to deny that social media possesses the potential to raise awareness — which may encourage that most fundamental of real-world activism called voting in federal, state, and, yes local elections — but rather that social media activism has been appropriated — some say even ‘colonized’ — by corporations, celebrities, and yes, some universities and colleges to advance their own brands while the difficult work of thinking through our problems and rejecting zero-sum ways of thinking has largely been abandoned precisely because, well, such work is difficult and may get heads rolling down the public square, so to speak.
I challenge anyone to find me a place in today’s America where an 18-year old, recent high school graduate sits next to a 60-year old recent immigrant from China or Iran working collaboratively to interpret an Emily Dickinson poem; where a 20-year old veteran who has seen and done more in his or her life than most people even will challenges the banality of the depiction of war in some Hollywood blockbuster; where a conservative African-American or Hispanic student confronts those who uncritically assume that the color of one’s skin is all one needs to know about a person’s political affiliation; where students can evaluate ideological claims by using scientific evidence without fear of being attacked for being anti this or that; and where both students and teachers can engage in that essential role playing or devil’s advocacy to really cut through the ossification of found ideas based on platitudes that are just so-many dog whistles that signal to others that Yes, I’m on board whatever the strategic social narrative du jour is, but who knows what I really believe; and, yes, a place where we recognize that ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments are just forms of infantilism that reject basics of human psychology and maintain the status quo. Basics of psychology that show that there are other forms of intellectual intersectionality that allow us to find areas of agreement instead of thinking that there are chasms that separate us or that human beliefs can evolve or that there should be room for public forgiveness if we likely to create spaces for both political, economic, and personal healing.
As the cost of education rises fostering elite university cultures that reflect the social inequalities we see in society today — and let’s be honest create economically homogeneous elite campuses ablaze with socially acceptable tokenism — colleges and some for-private universities allow those non-traditional and socioeconomically challenged students to pursue education in meaningful ways. In saying this, I don’t deny that there is room for improvement with both these sectors of higher education. I am speaking as an instructor whose primary job is to bring texts and questions to a diverse group of students who, outside the classroom, don’t engage with one another in any kind of meaningful way, and, some would say that in the world outside the classroom the obsession with in-group thinking has only exacerbated over the years to such a degree few people move meaningfully in truly diverse circles.
I’ll end with something a student of mine told me recently during class while we were discussing the differences between political and digital activism during class. The student — non-White, politically aware, and active in both BLM and LGBTQ+ issues — told all of us during class that her father accompanied her to a few BLM protests, but was upset when she informed him that she was dating an African-American guy. Her own analysis of this seeming hypocrisy was that this was racism dressed in the language of preserving culture and traditions. We have to wonder how many of the people who protest daily the systemic problems we find around us today tell their children that when it comes to love and marriage, for instance, they should stick to their own. Until and unless we deal with these gaps, I doubt little will change, but my students are asking those difficult questions in their homes where change needs to begin and, yes, this change will come about only through a lot of tears and shouting matches at home and maybe even the banishing of sons and daughters who refuse to live the way we did in the old America.
