Leaving Anhedonia

Why I Teach Jim Crow in My College Composition Class

In today’s political polarization and troll culture, there is a popular thought propagated by political opportunists that teaching about racism, slavery, and Jim Crow is in all its forms is Critical Race Theory: radical indoctrination into the wrong-headed belief that America is a hellscape and the CRT minions are obsessed with rubbing our faces in the racist stains of American history. Such a grotesque oversimplification and caricature of what it means to teach racism is a Straw Man, a misrepresentation of the aims of teaching racism in a classroom. For example, for the last decade in my college composition class, we have a unit on Jim Crow. I do not teach Jim Crow to rub people’s faces in exaggerated notions of America’s original sin or to promote some radical political agenda. I teach Jim Crow as a countervailing measure to the revisionist mythologies that replace its real history. Such revisionism leads to immoral acts. For example, the revisionist history of The Lost Cause, which outlandishly claims slavery was a good thing, results in over 200 public schools being named after America's worst racist Jefferson Davis, and today revisionism has caused millions of Americans to praise the criminals involved with the January 6 Insurrection as "American Patriots." I teach Jim Crow because the racist ideas that fueled Jim Crow are alive today in the form of social media white nationalists who are spreading weaponized misinformation. I teach Jim Crow because Jim Crow gave inspiration and instruction to racists throughout the world, for example, Hitler learned segregation techniques from America’s Confederacy creator Jefferson Davis. Finally, I teach Jim Crow because a moral inventory is essential for society’s moral reform, a process that the post-World War II Germans have successfully done in a form of soul-searching and atonement for the sins of the past, a process they call Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung. 

A Defense of My Writing Class

I’ve taught writing at El Camino College in Southern California for nearly thirty years. One of the welcome surprises of my job is that the overwhelming majority of you are kind and affable. This surprises me because you must feel like fish out of water for several reasons. For one, my writing courses are not electives; they’re requirements, so you have to be here the way someone with a speeding ticket is forced to attend traffic school. Secondly, most of you are on some kind of financial aid and work full- or part-time jobs, so you are not exactly showing up to class with a surplus of sleep and free time. A small number of you are international students who often don’t work but have serious challenges with the English language. As a result, you come to class with an understandable amount of anxiety. 

Another factor that makes you feel out of place is that you have spent most of your lives on smartphones. A life of texting, looking at video clips, and reading only writing fragments, never book-length works, makes your brains maladapted to dissecting a nonfiction book, a novel, and a 5,000-word argumentative essay. 

To add to the strain on your brains, you are being asked to learn a brand new language to help you conceptualize argumentation and informed opinions such as ethos, logos, pathos, counterargument, rebuttal, irony, bias, active voice, passive voice, correlation, causation, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and ad hominem. The way a beginning piano student has to learn chords, scales, and arpeggios, you have to learn the basic pillars of logic and argumentation.  

English majors in my composition classes were rare in previous decades. Now with the popularity of STEM majors in our hypercompetitive job market and underpaid teaching careers about as appealing as steak gristle, I don’t get English majors anymore. 

I would be remiss not to mention the cost of education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a college education when I attended in 1980 has skyrocketed 173% today. I didn’t live in an age when college debt and living with my parents well into my thirties was a serious possibility. 

And yet in spite of all these hurdles you face, you are for the most part kind, intellectually curious, and eager to learn. In spite of all the doomsday prophets who say America is turning into the movie Idiocracy, you have always been a living rebuttal of that claim.  

Not only are you eager to learn, but you are also as tough as nails. Many of you drive great distances to get to class, work long hours, take care of children, live on a modest income, and claw your way up the economic ladder. Your courage and fortitude humble me. 

But being humble before you is not enough. I feel compelled to persuade you, with the zeal of a hungry vacuum cleaner salesman, why learning the tools to develop informed opinions and credible arguments requires an overall metamorphosis of your personality, a moral core, and a strongly-defined identity that is essential to success and happiness. So indeed, that is precisely what I will do. 

Trying to persuade you that my required writing class is as vital as the oxygen you breathe and likely one of the best things that ever happened to you is not an easy task. There are several challenges I face when presenting such an argument. The first challenge is that of sanctimonious cliches. When people defend writing classes and the humanities in general, they too often rely on lazy cliches: The humanities enrich your soul, make you cultured, make you literate, give you critical thinking skills, and help you find a life purpose. Even if all these cliches are true, they are so overused, pompous, saccharine, self-indulgent, and vague as to be useless. 

The second challenge is the absence of objective measurement. In the sciences, you can objectively show your proficiency in calculus, computer coding, chemistry, biology, and physics. In contrast, in a writing class, we don’t have objective measures for things like “enrichment of the soul,” “meaning,” “purpose,” “literacy,” “linguistic acquisition,” “self-expression,” and “authorial presence.” We can all agree that well-articulated self-expression, literacy, and life purpose are essential and desirable; however, there is disagreement over whether or not college is the place to develop these qualities. There is a sentiment that says, “Find meaning and self-expression in your own free time but don’t waste your time and money in college developing those qualities. College is for real subject matter, and we all know the only real subject matter that counts is STEM.”

This sentiment speaks to the third challenge about my writing class and that is the charge that my writing class is irrelevant. Whereas STEM courses can be tested objectively and result in financially-rewarding careers, humanities courses such as my writing classes are considered at best luxuries for the privileged class and deadends for careers. Many will say, “If you want to improve your writing and grammar, study a few YouTube videos, but meanwhile, take real college courses that will be worth your time and money.”

This sentiment speaks to my fourth challenge: The subtle or flagrant contempt for writing and humanities courses. When students tell people they’re majoring in a humanities subject, they are often looked upon as second-class college students and fakers. “Real students major in STEM. The pretend students major in everything else, and the proof is in the kind of jobs they land after they graduate.”  

This adulation of STEM majors combined with a disdain for humanities majors speaks to my fifth challenge: The notion that studying writing and humanities is not cost-effective. “Why waste your time working on the intangibles of writing when you can focus your energy on the STEM courses that will bring you real money?”

So my writing class appears to have much against it. Champions of the humanities may feebly defend my class with lazy cliches, a lack of objective ways to measure literacy, an inability to prove my course’s relevance, powerlessness in the face of mass disdain for humanities courses in general, and what looks like a failed cost-benefit analysis. But this perception of my writing class as a Loser Course is rooted in ignorance and a superficial grasp of what my writing course truly is. To grasp the essence of my writing class and the very way I teach it, we must look to perhaps the greatest American in American history--Frederick Douglass. By studying the arduous literacy, writing, and oratory journey Douglass embarked upon, we can see that Douglass embodies the kind of person who undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis from his exceptional literacy and intellectual prowess. Even if we don’t come close to attaining the literary genius of Frederick Douglass, we can look to him as the correct path to developing an appropriate orientation and philosophy that life’s conflicts demand. To study the kind of intellect Frederick Douglass became is to understand the benefits of a humanities course such as my writing class. 

Born a slave and forbidden to read and write, Frederick Douglass was a genius who saw that the white man was withholding literacy from him as a weapon to deny him his humanity. He would have none of it. As a child, he taught himself to read and write by studying scraps of discarded newspapers and magazines from trash bins. He was so committed to developing literacy, he preferred to starve, giving his food to poor white children in exchange for reading and writing lessons. Even as a child, he was a living lesson of the principle that it is wiser to enjoy long-term gain over short-term gratification.

Over time, Douglass became the country’s greatest orator, traveled the world, and became an international hero for championing human rights. As a writer, orator, and abolitionist, Douglass lived from the beginning to the end of the 19th century, a span that made him a witness to slavery, Reconstruction, Redemption, and Jim Crow. The forces that would enslave, emasculate, and dehumanize him were from a cesspool of bad ideas. Douglass realized that he had to counteract these malignant forces with the only power he had--language and his power of persuasion. For Frederick Douglass, learning to read and write and to give his communication the highest levels of oratory and rhetoric was not a luxury or an indulgence; it was a matter of life and death, not just for him but for all the oppressed people he represented.  

Part of his resistance to the dark forces of dehumanization was the cultivation of his persona. This cultivation was largely achieved through his use of language. Language is the mother of invention. We read in David W. Blight’s magisterial biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom that as a child hanging out with the master’s son on the plantation, Douglass used his wits and insights to grasp that he could use words to transform himself. In the words of Blight: “In afternoon competitive repartee, the future Douglass may have first experimented with the magic of words and unwittingly wielded the tools by which he would invent his life.” 

Most people sleepwalk through life, but Douglass had no such luxury. He learned at a young age that invention and reinvention were essential to survival and that the bricks of invention were words, language, rhetoric, and argumentation. Word by word, Douglass began to use language to create his persona. 

His cultivated persona was not limited to his linguistic acquisition. He was also photogenic, handsome, and by many accounts the most photographed man of his time. It is also true that Douglass had no illusions about the power of image and he refused to let white people “touch up” his photographs, for fear that they would distort his features to make his visage conform to ugly Jim Crow stereotypes. What’s most true of all is that Douglass knew the power of media long before the age of social media, and he used his language, his strong identity, and his image to create what in today’s parlance is called “a brand.” While the term is too often crassly used, the word brand is an accurate way to describe the maturity we go through by embarking upon an intellectual journey and refining our notion of self the way a machinist uses molten metal to refine steel. 

How important is language when it comes to forming and defining the self? Douglass’ biographer David Blight observed that slaves owned nothing: tools, clothes, beds, not even their own children, but they did own one thing: language. The slaves could create rhythms of speech, certain tonalities in their speaking and singing, and idiosyncratic expressions that belonged to them. Their use of language, poetry, and song became who they were at their very essence. They had nothing else to define them. Frederick Douglass grasped the importance of language as a child and embarked upon an obsessive quest to develop his own and to use it as a sword against the forces of injustice. 

If you admire Frederick Douglass and you think his attributes are worth emulating, then you will be motivated to learn reading and writing to be like him: To have a strong personality, to have strong writing and oratory skills, have a strong moral core that hungers for justice, and a desire to make a lasting impact on this world. 

But let us not have any delusions. Not everyone wants to be like Frederick Douglass. Some people just want to get by and live a provisional, self-insulated existence. They want to make enough money and live a life of fine eating and fine entertainment, what the ancient Romans called a life of bread and circuses. If we want to distract ourselves with tasty morsels and scintillating entertainment, then all we need is enough money to quench those appetites. In that case, we will define our existence by the quality of our consumerism. To devote our lives to consumerism is to eventually become Philistines. 

It is very likely that the Philistine Mindset is in direct opposition to the Frederick Douglass mindset. It is also very likely that the pressures of society to conform to lifestyles that appeal to others so that we are popular and attractive to others will create a gravitational pull to the Philistine Mindset and repel us from the Frederick Douglass Mindset.  

In a writing class like mine, it is not my place to tell you which mindset to embrace. I can only give you the lay of the land, so to speak, define the landscape, and argue that the Frederick Douglass Way is the True Way, but ultimately let you decide which path to take. 

Having said that, I would be less than honest if I didn’t make the case that if you reject the Frederick Douglass mindset, it is most likely that you will choose the alternative--the Philistine’s Mindset. And here I must make a warning: Even if you find materialistic success, if you adopt the Philistine’s Mindset, as most people do, you’ll find that such an orientation will result in misery, self-complacent mediocrity, low self-regard, self-induced bondage, and moral entropy. 

What is so dangerous about the Philistine Mindset? Such a mindset rests on mindless consumerism, which leads to addictive behavior. We eventually become attenuated to the pleasures of consumerism until we become numb. Psychologists call this the “anhedonic response” or the “anhedonic treadmill.” 

A life of consumerism is a life built on short-term gratification. Feeding on confectionary pleasures, we will always be malnourished and hungry, waiting for the next shiny object. 

A life of meaning and struggle, the kind of life embodied by perhaps the greatest American, Frederick Douglass, is a life that looks at the long game, is more mature, more philosophical, and more rooted in language, philosophy, and history. It is the more desirable life, but I can’t force you to believe that. The choice is for you to make. 

The Brawler Vs. the Peacemaker

I tell my college writing students that we achieve an emotional connection with the reader by having a strong tone or voice. This tone or voice is often called a rhetorical style. 

We adopt a writing style the way a musician adopts a musical genre: jazz, classical baroque, rock, pop, bossa nova, hip hop, country, folk, psychedelic, underground, rave, indie dream pop, etc. 

However, if we are beginning writers, the above analogy doesn't work because we don't have expertise in all the writing genres. 

What is the solution? Be yourself. If you don't know who you are as a writer, I suggest you look at two basic writing tones: The Brawler and the Peacemaker. 

The Brawler is dramatic, bold, bombastic, and powerful. They "take no prisoners." The advantages of being a Brawler are that you will be more entertaining and you are more likely to win the readers' attention. Some famous Brawlers over the last several decades are H.L. Mencken, Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Stanley Crouch, and Molly Ivins. 

However, there are disadvantages. You may come across as pompous and arrogant. Your writing may lack fairness and nuance, and your ego may cause your self-aggrandizement to eclipse clarity and attention to the subject at hand. A Brawler can too often become a needy navel-gazer, a grenade-thrower thirsty for attention. You find that many on Twitter and other social media platforms are attention-addicted Brawlers. Over time, their act wears thin. 

On balance, a disciplined expression of the Brawler can make for effective, entertaining writing. 

The Peacemaker is a writer who is self-possessed, demure, calm, clear-eyed, reasonable, polite, and fairminded. Their security and confidence prevent them from lobbing bombs and grenades at others and this self-confidence gives them quiet power and wins our credibility. 

However, the Peacemakers have their own traps: They can come across as meek, mealy-mouthed, insipid, prevaricating, inscrutable, and cagey. Their calm and reserve can make their arguments come across as weak tea. We may lose patience with the Peacemaker whose politeness strikes us as just plain boring. 

On balance, a writer who combines cogent insights with calm reason and nuance can be a persuasive Peacemaker.  Notable writers of the Peacemaker variety include A.N. Wilson, Hua Hsu, Jill Lepore, and Elizabeth Kolbert. 

Which style is better, the Brawler or the Peacemaker? Neither. What’s important is that your style is an authentic expression of self. Brawlers shouldn’t bend themselves out of shape to be Peacemakers and vice versa. In a world teeming with BS and chicanery, finding your authentic voice will go a long way with the reader. 

 

George Packer Warns Against Being Seduced by the New Fatalism

George Packer has written a wise and instructive essay, “A View of American History That Leads to One Conclusion,” published in The Atlantic. 

He remembers as a child learning that history was “taught as a series of triumphs over wrongs that belonged to the past.” Racism was bad, a sinful stain on America’s past, but racist institutions were abolished as America marched forward. Additionally, America was worthy of exceptionalism with its spread of democracy throughout the world. Its “mistakes” didn’t disqualify America from being the Shining City on a Hill. 

But this story of America’s progress has been replaced with a new narrative, Packer argues, a gloomy narrative mired in fatalism. 

The “golden age of fatalism” is welcomed with the fervor of virtue signaling and self-flagellation. There is a publishing industry devoted to it.

What’s most striking about this type of fatalism is that it “draws a straight line from the past to present.” 

Packer argues that fatalism is a claim against the idea of change. Nothing really changes. The sins of racism persist. Jim Crow lives on in different iterations. America is not a “flawed experiment.” It is an irredeemable hellscape. 

Packer concedes that there are understandable causes of this fatalism: inequality, police brutality, and Trumpist authoritarianism, to name a few. 

What Packer will not concede, though, is the eagerness and zeal that fuels this fatalism, which “crosses from empiricism into metaphysics.” Such zeal compromises the search for truth. Historians search for facts that support their preconceived biases. 

Packer gives us an example of such zealous fatalism in Jefferson Cowie’s book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. The book is “a gem of the new fatalism,” and I interpret rebuke in Packer’s praise. The book is a chronicle of white racism and greed from the 19th century to the current day. Packer writes: “Cowie’s theme is how the sacred American creed of freedom serves to justify racial domination.” The very tissue of America is saturated with racial sin to the point that redemption is impossible or if it is, mountains would have to be moved. 

Packer is skeptical of this damning of America. Cowie chose or cherry-picked, the most virulently racist and brutal area on the United States map to rub evil in our faces.  Cowie could have chosen a cosmopolitan or diverse city where there are examples of the American experiment working well, but to do so would be an inconvenient cog thrown into Cowie’s fatalist mythology. 

Packer reminds us that “Politics is a competition between stories--and it’s as politics that the new fatalism leads to a dead end.” Cowie is painting an ugly moral identity to push his fatalist mythology. He wants us to experience shame, but Packer writes: “Shame is a shaky foundation for any project of renewal. You can’t tell someone that he’s made a mess of his life because of his own bad character and then expect him to change.” Quoting the philosopher Richard Rorty, Packer reminds us that we need self-respect for self-improvement. 

But the danger of the new fatalism, Packer argues, is that there is no self-improvement, only hopelessness. The new fatalist writers are earning relevance and fanfare for their gloomy dives into America’s original sin and the price we pay is one of learned helplessness and stagnation.

Packer wisely wants us to go through the slow process of redeeming ourselves from our past sins, not through a masochistic deep diver into fatalism but through “organization and persuasion.” We need to see the tangled web of American history. Packer cites Timothy Shenk, author of Realigners. America is a place of contradictions. There are no easy mythologies that can ascribe America as good or evil. We must neither be cheerleaders for American exceptionalism nor champions of the new fatalism. We must look forward. The new fatalism is a step backward.