All The Places We Are Not: The Racialicious Roundtable For Facing Race 2012

Much of the panel centered around the growing rate of for-profit colleges in the US and how places like The University of Phoenix (the largest provider of higher education in the country–think on that) have the business model of putting their students up to over 100k in debt. Worse, the debt accrues from degrees in professions where they won’t come anywhere near close to making that in a single year. As Tressie pointed out [sic], “Why should a degree in building security cost $175,000?”

There were several lines like that throughout the panel: short, but to the point. The presentations were excellently communicated and led to a constructive Q&A at the end, revealing several fellow educators in the audience. I think that some people, including myself, were also visibly horrified to have a broken system laid out so frankly in front of us. While some were obviously discouraged by this, I left glad to be more educated about the problem. When one man asked if we’d reached a point where we just needed to tell kids to stop going to college I felt almost as if he’d missed the point.

The level of pressure shouldn’t be what it is, but every American should have the right to an education should they want it. Simply discouraging students from higher ed–while failing to fix the problems pointed out–would do nothing aside from widen the gap between those who have the opportunity to become upwardly mobile because of education and everyone else.

As someone who’s had the higher-ed system generally work well in their favor, this panel was a great alternate narrative of education in the US that I can actually take and use in my day-to-day life. The dialogue prompted by the panel overall was also fantastic and led to the start of some friendships I’m really looking forward to growing in the future.

You can see a full Storify of the panel here.

Joe: I was at part (admittedly) of that session as well, Kendra, and it really made me feel like the whole college education system had treated me the same way a car salesman had. Which might sound harsh, but if I had bought a car instead, I would have an Aston Martin.

Tressie: First, thanks for including me Arturo. I feel like I should also apologize for being such a bummer in my own panel.

I also enjoyed “No Justice, No Peas.” I’ve been a laymen in the urban green movement in Atlanta, and it continues to concern me how structural barriers to autonomy over one’s health are erected and policed.

Let’s talk about Junot Diaz’s keynote speech.

Arturo: I found the energy was weird–muted, at times–after his initial reluctance to read his speech and the Q&A interlude that began his presentation. The content of the speech, once he got rolling in the first non-”freestyle” portion, was there for me. But it was less…rousing, I guess, than you would have imagined, given his position.

I also want to forward this thought a friend threw at me: For Diaz to engage in that behavior at the beginning of his speech was an expression of male privilege on his part.

“If a woman speaker had hemmed and hawed and said she didn’t want to give her remarks, then taken Q&A before saying anything, then her career would be over,” said my friend.

Thoughts?

Joe: Like I was telling you before, Arturo, I actually enjoyed his speech, although I do agree with some of the points you made about the sheer awkwardness of it.

There were a couple of things that stuck out to me: how awkward his introduction was- he was late, which wasn’t his fault, I don’t think- and when Rinku Sen introduced him, she had to fill the time with anecdotes. Her story about her nieces were actually entertaining enough, but it just served as the first delay, because when he got there, he still didn’t want to say his speech. At one point he said some form of “I really don’t like reading pre-written speeches.” so many times that I wanted to shout “Then…don’t!”

The question and answer thing could have gone on for the whole time and would have been inspiring enough for me, frankly. It was his open distaste for what a lot of people were looking forward to that was so off-putting.

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