Aaacs presentation

I See You Now Changes in the Landscape of Truth-Telling as a Result of the Obama Presidency

Three events in 2009
Dr. Henry Louis Gates
“Sherri”
“Precious”
April 28, 2010 Jo Foy, AAACS Conference, Denver

http ://us.cnn.com/video/?/video/living/2009/07/23/bia.henry.gates.cnn

http ://www.mylifetime.com/shows/sherri/video

“Precious,” the movie
http:// www.weareallprecious.com /

Questions to consider:
Would any of these examples have stood out in 2007?
Would these stories have been presented differently in 2007?

What changed?

President Obama can help us out
http ://www.whitehouse.gov/video/EVR012909?category=9

Observations
Expectations
Among male and female African American children to attain the Presidency
Dr. Robert Franklin, Morehouse College
“ Oh, I’ll tell you, it was an amazing theme that began to emerge that can be summarized in two words: no excuses.” (Educational Broadcasting Company, 2009)

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
“ Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general policies’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true” (1980, p. 131)

Observations
Speaking out
Telling the “truth”
Dangerous truths
Racist remarks

Landscapes to consider
Social or cultural
Shifts as a result of the Obama presidency
Educational
What does education look like today?

April 28, 2010 Jo Foy, AAACS Conference, Denver 83.5% White female teachers ($53,000/yr) 33-73% White students (shrinking) (9% in poverty) 13-47% Hispanic students (expanding) (15% in poverty) 3% Asian/Pacific Islander 0.4-2% American Indian/Alaskan Native (25% in poverty) 10-16% Black students (25% in poverty) Today’s Landscape of U.S. Education

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
Knowledge
Power
Self

Michel Foucault
Knowledge (truth)
Involves discourse
Practices, techniques or rules that concern the speaking subject, power relations and the words themselves (Simola et al., 1998)

Michel Foucault
Truth becomes not only about knowledge (discourse or discursive formations) but also about the individual (the subject)

Michel Foucault
Subjectivity
A person is made into a subject through affiliation (or disaffiliation) as in “the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the criminals and the ‘good boys’” (2003, p. 126)

Michel Foucault
Liberation
“the individual is not something that needs to be liberated rather the individual is the closely monitored product of relations between power and knowledge” (O’Farrell, 2009)

Michel Foucault
Power
“Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (1990, p. 93)

Taken from Push , by Sapphire (1997)
Claireece Precious Jones
Obese
16 years old
Gets good grades
Reads & writes at a 3 rd grade level
Pregnant by her father for the 2 nd time

Precious is at the effect of
Her mother
The school principal
The sexual and physical abuse
Yet, she persists
Learns to read and write
Becomes independent of her mother

Claireece tells the truth about her family situation to the social worker
Not a truth we necessarily want to hear; it does not conform to dominant beliefs
Keep quiet
Deny

The mother also tells the truth to the social worker … and frees Claireece
Not a truth we want to hear in the dominant White culture
Silence
Never admit culpability
Good girls

When Mo’Nique was interviewed on the red carpet of the Academy Awards, she said, “This is a universal story.”
White Mary Johnstons exist
White Carl Joneses exist

Who made the difference for Precious?
Miss Rain (Paula Patton)
Cornrows (Sherri Shepard)
Her classmates
the social worker (Mariah Carey)
the male nurse (Lenny Kravitz)

Emergent Properties
In ecology we talk about driving variables
Climate (rain and temperature)
Organisms (potential biota)
Elevation (topography)
Parent material (bedrock)
Time (geologic? human lifetime?)
What emerged within Claireece?

What emerged within Claireece?
Reading at a 7 th grade level
Journaling (creative inspiration)
Motherhood (both children with her now)
Independence (living away from home)
Motivation (to finish high school)

The Landscapes
Social/Cultural
Truth-telling as exemplified by Dr. Gates and Sherri Shepherd
Bringing into the Light or opening up of racial issues
Educational
Increasing percentage of students of color
“Precious” counter-example to dominant hegemony

References
Bigelow, R., Arthur, A., Hughes, J., & Patterson, M. (2008). The politics of race and gender: Children’s perceptions of discrimination and the U.S. presidency. Analyses of Social and Issues & Public Policy , 8 (1). doi: 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2008.00161.x
Bishaw, A. & Semega, J. (2008). U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey Reports, ACS-09. Income, earnings, and poverty data from the 2007 American Community Survey . Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Educational Broadcasting Corporation. (January 16, 2009). Spiritual voices on Obama administration: Part 1. Religion & Ethics Newsweekly . Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/january-16-2009/spiritual-voices-on-obama-administration/1991/
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews & other writings 1972-1977 . New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: An introduction . Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1997). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison . New York: Vintage Books/Random House.
Foucault, M. (2003). The subject and power. In P. Rabinow & N. S. Rose (Eds.), The essential Foucault: Selections from the essential works of Foucault, 1954-1984 (pp. 126-144). New York, NY: New Press.

National Education Association. (2003). Status of the American Public School Teacher, 2000-01 . location, __. Retrieved from
O’Farrell, C. (2009, October 30). Key concepts. In michel-foucault.com . Retrieved from http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html
Sapphire. (1997). Push . New York: Random House.
Simola, H., Heikkinen, S., & Silvonen, J. (1998). A catalog of possibilities: Foucaultian history of truth and education research. In T. S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (Eds.), Foucault’s challenge: Discourse, knowledge, and power in education (pp. 64-90). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Strange, H. (November 17, 2008). Obama win prompts wave of hate crimes. Times Online, Retrieved from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5172285.ece
U.S. Department of Commerce. (2009). Current Population Survey (CPS), October 1967 through October 2008. Census Bureau . Washington, DC. Retrieved from
U.S. Department of Education. (2009). “Public Teacher Questionnaire,” 2007-08. National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) . Washington, DC. Retrieved from

If you wish to study these materials in more depth go to:
www.slideshare.net/jofoy or
www.scribd.com/jokfoy or
www.vimeo.com/jofoy
April 28, 2010 Jo Foy, AAACS Conference, Denver Thank you!

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