Retarded

My department is in the process of hiring both a junior and senior faculty member in Af Am Studies. Grad students are encouraged to go to the candidate's job talks and then the meet-and-greet with the candidate after the talk. Today was the first of the junior candidates and his talk was fantastic (he's out of Cornell and is, like me, just finishing the diss). Though I usually don't go to the meet-and-greets, I was into his talk enough to want to sit down with him. And so I did and subsequently became infuriated with my fellow grads.

The idea is that he can ask us, in an informal setting, about the department, and we can ask him questions, and its not "colonized" by our current faculty. It's a great idea because then our faculty encourages us to write in and give our general impressions of the talk and the meeting. Fair enough.

So, he sits down and asks us the standard questions: "what do you like about the department?" "what do you wish would change?" I started to get annoyed because some new grad students started bitching about funding and only being able to teach composition courses. Number one, that's not true, and number two, that's STANDARD for most grad programs (we teach the crap comp classes for peanuts--it's pretty much how it's done in academia). I then proceeded to explain how I've TAed for Lit courses and even taught a Lit course over the summer, and how generous profs are with inviting grad students to guest lecture, etc. Then they started complaining about how they don't know how to find resources for publishing, funding, etc. I got annoyed and said, "email professors." Seriously, it's that easy. THEN they went on to say that there isn't much opportunity for activism in Riverside, and I reminded them that there are plently of opportunities for this in Riverside: Habitat for Humanity, Food Not Bombs, The Jeffrey Owens Community Center (a gay/queer/transgender advocacy group and center), etc. But that's not what really pissed me off....

Then he asks us about Riverside as a city to live in and that he's heard that it can be "unsafe." This stupid girl proceeds to tell him that some neighborhoods are "unsafe" and then names some of the areas where you "just don't go."

Now, why did this make me mad?? First of all, because her language was coded with racism, and second the neighborhoods in Riversid to which she was referring are predominantly know to be "minority" communities. My response was to turn to him and say, "It depends on what you consider 'unsafe.' For me, I consider right wing, conservative areas to be unsafe, not communities where people of color live." I don't think she said anything the rest of the time. I thought: this bitch has some NERVE.

It reminds me of people asking Frances, before she left for Jordan, if she was worried about her safety. Her response? "I feel less safe living in Lake Arrowhead, surrounded by conservative, right-wing christians than I do in Jordan!"

Grumble.