I like to recommend to my undergrads, provocatively yet
gently, two experiences which all Americans should have: time in jail and time spent outside, petitioning
or pamphleteering their fellow inmates, err, citizens. This modest civic “to do list” and all-purpose
manifesto of course elicits gasps and nervous giggles, but the more clever kids
get it. For the others, I ask, “Do you
imagine that your perspective on our democracy would be the same, or different
after a couple of nights in the hoosegow?
And by the way, how many of you have actually ever stood, as I have done
lately, trying to register to vote, persuade, communicate or even make eye
contact with the students, faculty, staff walking, riding, jogging by out in
between the Langson Library and the flag pole at UC Irvine?”
I admit it’s a long, complicated interrogative so maybe that’s why
nobody says anything. The answer is none,
of course, despite the twelve years of public (sometimes private) education,
thousands of hours of television, countless other civic events, functions, pastimes,
hobbies (sports, religion, online virtual events) which have subordinated a
view of participation in our Republic to a kind of embarrassing and archaic
variety of odd performance art or a homeless guy begging for change. So that,
yes, it is difficult to know where to start in telling the following anecdote
about history, resonance, political awareness, whatever (as they say).
But consider me begun.
Indeed, last week I myself was out there distributing helpful “Yes
on 30/No on 32” literature to whoever would take it when, in and among the
between-classes break crowd there marched a trio of young women adorned in
matching tee shirts, each comely coed emblazoned in red, white and blue
stylized eagles or some other forgettable and or boring patriotic icon. It doesn’t matter. Clearly it didn’t to them. Because captioning the flag or the bird image
was the name of our country, I mean continent, with the letter “E” substituted
with the Greek sigma and the letter C
replaced with, I kid you not, the letter kappa,
to read AMERIKA.
Now, it is easy to go on and on about what students don’t
know - which is, to be fair, one of the goals of this blog. (Not that I believe in being fair.) But the more depressing good fun here is that
nobody pointed out or challenged or laughed outright. Nobody referenced the Franz Kafka novel or the
Ku Klux Klan’s usage of that spelling in its early and always nefarious
membership outreach efforts or, if you prefer, pledge week. In the never-completed Kafka book, said to
contain some of his funniest writing, the Statue of Liberty holds a sword, a
clear political attack on US
imperialism, if you go in for that kind of thing. Clarity, I mean. In the days of grassroots and revolutionary anti-war
organizing, the reliably hyperbolic Yippies and other Lefties, when not running
a pig for president, provocatively spelled the nation’s last name as if they,
we were living in the Third Reich.
Unsubtle, but there you go.
Finally, I have myself seen anti-racist publications representing the shared critiques of both
white Trotskyite and Black Nationalist constituents use that spelling.
But, because the so-called Greeks, solipsistic and ahistorical
and politically reactionary – wow, a three-fer! - don’t know any of this, or
care to, it was up to me to notice out there under the olive trees on a
Wednesday afternoon in Orange County. I couldn’t summon
the energy or meanness to ask the young women what they were thinkin', but the moment recalled the work of a fraternity a
couple of years back which expropriated the People Crossing the Freeway sign
near the Mexico border for their own bizarre and clueless appeal to chauvinism and insularity. I commented on a poor dumb kid’s shirt in
class and asked, gently, if he imagined that it might be possible that other students,
staff or even, say a teacher, might choose to take offense at his
organization’s darkly clumsy if not perhaps intentional diminishment of other
human beings’ political and economic and personal hardships.
No, he couldn’t imagine.
Of course, he didn’t understand what he had on his chest, but likely
appreciated that he was now in some kind of awkward situation. After fifteen seconds of gruesome silence, a
sweet, smart little Chicana in the front row said that yes, indeed, she herself
took offense. I asked her if she cared
to explain. It turned out she did. Care, and explain, too. Frat boy never wore the shirt again, though
of course he didn’t immediately resign the fraternity either, which is what I
would have recommended had he asked Red Emma.
