Let's Do What We Can Today

Let's do what we can today
as teachers and learners.

We don't have much time today
even though it feels like a drag.

Today we don't all feel great
No juice
Not feeling it
Not on point
So let's do what we can to help each other
and lift each other's spirits.

This is our chance to learn and grow
even if just a little bit.

Let's aim to think a little longer
Think a little deeper
See something a different way
Give that thing a second thought.

Today some of us are tired
Bored
Distracted
Sad
Confused
So let's do the best we can to support each other.

And let's look for pleasure in all of this.
It's there.
We've got to find it...
together.

Let's challenge each other
Respect each other
Maybe even try to understand each other.

And there will be days
when we're happy and silly
and funny and loving life.

Those are the best days.
But all days are days to learn something.
So let's do the best we can today
as teachers and learners.

Author's note: This poem is about the dog days of teaching and learning. It's easy to learn on a good day. But not so easy on a bad day. Those are the days we especially need each other.

Hair In My Food

I’m alone at the deli counter eating my salad.  So close to the window, I’m getting blasted by the sun.  It’s too hot but I refuse to move.  This is Buffalo, there aren’t many days like this.  Looking out to the street I think “What are all these people doing on Hertel Avenue anyway?”  I have no answer for myself so I return to my lunch.  I feel energized by the freshness of the food. 

A thought pops into my head: “It’s as futile as wondering why people are so easily offended.  You’d have to stick a dagger in me to offend me.”  And then an unrelated thought: “Sometimes you just expect an ex-girlfriend to come back to haunt you.”  I’ve never been able to control the thoughts in my head.  When I get back to my salad I notice a hair in my food.  On most days I would throw the salad away, or puke, but on this day I figure a hair won’t hurt me so I eat around it.  It’s time to go so I head for the exit and get in my car. 

I drive by Snowden Mansion on Nottingham Terrace, renowned for its owner’s deviant occupation.  “So this is what a strip club buys you?”  I say out loud, thinking of my little house, and wondering if working a conventional job is overrated.  I quickly decide that it is. 

I drive toward the highway nearly blinded by the sun but manage a glimpse of a super huge cloud with a plane flying through it.  I wonder if this is the world coming to an end.  I also wonder if my tire is about to explode and if I will crash before I reach the highway.  Just more thoughts in my head.

I make it to work in one piece but the energy from my lunch has already worn off.  If life could be Tuesday morning all the time I’d be fine but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.  By the time I get to Wednesday I’m out of steam.  Now I remember why I wrote a play called “Phlegmatic Fever.” 

I walk into my office thinking about freedom.  I believe that freedom is walking your dog in the morning sunshine with no job to go to afterward.  I don’t have a dog but I do have a job that I have to go to most days.  I do have a few hours tomorrow morning before I have to be anywhere.  I guess that’s the closest I can get to freedom.

THE END

Author's note: I wrote this a long time ago. 

Catfish: The Imaginary Other

Allow me to share a passage from Kenneth Gergen's The Saturated Self:

"The technology of the age both expands the variety of human relationships and modifies the form of older ones. When relationships move from the face-to-face to the electronic mode, they are often altered. Relationships that were confined to specific situations--to offices, living rooms, bedrooms--become "unglued." They are no longer geographically confined, but can take place anywhere. Unlike face-to-face relationships, electronic relationships also conceal visual information (eye movement, expressive movements of the mouth), so a telephone speaker cannot read the facial cues of the listener for signs of approval or disapproval. As a result, there is a greater tendency to create an imaginary other with whom to relate. One can fantasize that the other is feeling warm and enthusiastic or cold and angry, and act accordingly. An acquaintance told me that he believed his first marriage to be a product of the heavy phoning necessary for a long-distance courtship. By phone she seemed the most desirable woman in the world; it was only months after the wedding that he realized he had married a mirage" (p. 64 in my hardcover edition, emphasis mine).

When I showed this passage to my Social Psychology class this semester, I enthusiastically pointed out these words were written in 1991. Whenever I read this bit from Gergen's book, I'm impressed about his thoughts on the "imaginary other." 1991, obviously, was long before texting, Facebook, and Twitter came along. Don't we all create imaginary others in the course of our interactions? For example, I mentioned to students that I use Twitter primarily to develop connections with other sociologists. I've never met most of them in-person, so I'm forming an imaginary other of many of the people I follow on Twitter.

As my class looked at the passage, a student recommended I check out a show on MTV that reflects Gergen's viewpoint. She explained the premise of the show and a few students nodded with recognition. This semester, a handful of students in my other classes also mentioned the show--Catfish, a show based on the movie of the same name. Indeed, the show has a lot to do with creating an imaginary other. I've only seen a few episodes, but the ones I've watched were all about falling in love with a mirage. The episodes I watched involved men who lied about their appearances. Both men were physically different than what they claimed. The women who came to love them had fallen in love with pictures of someone else. They didn't only fall in love with the physical; they had fallen in love with their personalities, but the physical component was crucial. Each man portrayed himself to be "in shape," when in reality they were "out of shape." When the women met the men, they were disappointed and let down. They were hurt because they had been betrayed, and were hurt because they fell in love with something that wasn't real.

We must consider the point that people lie and are deceptive in person too. Without phones and Internet, people would still be deceptive and misrepresent themselves. We lie in person, and before electronic mail we could use "snail mail" to send misleading pictures to each other (we still can, by the way). But a show like Catfish dramatically expresses the point that people are not always what they seem. To me, the show tells us something about how desperate people can be to form connections and fall in love. A person who badly wants to find The Right One is susceptible and vulnerable to being misled. That was true before the electronic age, and remains true (and finds new expression) in the electronic/digital age.

I guess we could ask the question: in the current era, is it easier than ever (and are people more likely) to keep it unreal?


Note: See this post on The Society Pages for a sociological discussion of the movie Catfish.

Sociology in Stories: A Creative Introduction to a Fascinating Perspective

Here is some background about my book Sociology in Stories: A Creative Introduction to a Fascinating Perspective.

I set out, quite simply, to write a book that my students would read. For more than ten years, I assigned Introduction to Sociology textbooks in my courses. Through the years I'd notice students flipping through their books during class to catch up with something I'd referenced. So many times I'd see no markings at all: no highlights, no underlining, nothing in the margins. Their books had barely been touched. What a shame that the books weren't being read. Truth be told, I didn't love the textbooks either. So often I'd venture away from the textbook and do my own thing. I'd cover parts of each chapter, but more and more I'd steer in my own direction, rely on my own thoughts and observations, and discuss sociology in ways that weren't happening in the text. Finally, I broke away from the feeling that I had to require students to buy a traditional textbook. I felt free and ready to do something different.

The first phase of writing my book involved me typing many of the things I'd been saying in class. So I began putting my sociology lessons to paper. The book began to take shape, and I worked into creative methods of introducing students to thinking sociologically. My book does not consist of 1,000 definitions. It is not a complete history of the discipline. What, then, is my book? It is about the sociological perspective, brought to readers through a collection of stories and discussions. There are a lot of fictional stories with post-story discussions about the sociological components in the stories. There are also nonfiction stories about everyday life. The stories and discussions are informed by sociological ideas, theories, and research. The writing style is (I hope) fun, accessible, interesting, informative--and I hope it leaves readers wanting for more sociology.

Here are some of the contents in my book, along with a brief description of the contents. Please note this is not the entire table of contents.

"Society Gets on My Nerves Sometimes" (A story about McDonaldized society.)

"My Favorite Tattoo Ever and the Problem with Positive Thinking (Includes a discussion of Barbara Ehrenreich's book Bright-Sided.)

"That's Ghetto" (References the work of Nikki Jones' book Between Good and Ghetto.)

"Circumstances" (A sociological analysis of Jay-Z's song "December 4th.")

"Life Is an Information Game" (Goffman, Goffman, Goffman!)

"My Old Schools" (About educational inequality. Do we live in a meritocracy?)

"Homework" (A discussion of work life and home life, based on Arlie Hochschild's research.)

"(Not a Rich) White Guy" (A reflection on white privilege and middle-class life.)

"Let's Talk about Sex" (A story about hooking up. The story draws on research by Lisa Wade and Caroline Heldman.)

"Drinking Beer and Stealing Money" (A story inspired by differential association theory.)

"A Race I Can Win" (A story inspired by strain theory.)

"Iron Cage Tattoo" -- click here for story (Weber, what else?!)

"Permanent Punishment" (a story based on Peter Moskos'  book In Defense of Flogging.)

"Punishment in Society" (a discussion of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.)

"Dying Wishes" (Intro-level books usually avoid the subject of death. Here I dive right in.)

"America the Beautiful" (A fictional story about the future of society--immigration, social class, physical appearance, media, inequality.) Click here to read story.

"Families" (a nonfiction story about a married couple based on my interview with two men who adopted two sons).

There's much more. The book is not a loose assortment of stories. The stories are tied together by theme and narrative. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me (tas@niagara.edu). You can purchase or request a copy at the publisher's website:
https://www.kendallhunt.com/schoepflin/

Poverty Amid Plenty

What happens when a sociologist crosses a historian in a parking lot? This morning, as my colleague Michael Durfee and I walked into our office building, he told me he wanted to share something that Martin Luther King said about poverty. Michael, a Ph.D. candidate in the history department at SUNY Buffalo, pointed out these words from Dr. King:

"Poverty is a glaring, notorious reality for some forty million Americans. I guess it wouldn't be so bad for them if it were shared misery, but it is poverty amid plenty. It is poverty in the midst of an affluent society, and I think this is what makes for great frustration and great despair in the black community and the poor community of our nation generally."

Michael provided me with background information about this quote. Dr. King appeared at the sixty-eighth annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly on March 25, 1968. At the convention King responded to questions submitted in advance to Rabbi Everett Gendler, who facilitated the event. The answer that you see above was in response to a question about the Kerner Report and how to work towards social justice and equality.  

Michael and I have a shared interest in inequality. Earlier this semester, we both attended a panel discussion about inequality. At the event, a viewpoint was expressed that poverty in America isn't so bad. The basic point was that poverty is much worse in lesser developed countries. After all, poor people in America have TVs, so how bad can poverty be? I strongly disagree with that line of thinking. I don't think that any poverty is good poverty. When Michael showed me these words from Dr. King, he referenced the panel that we had attended. The passage reminds us of how difficult it is to endure poverty in a rich nation. Poverty is difficult to endure anywhere. But there is an extra layer of frustration and strain that impoverished people experience in a land of plenty. If everyone is poor, it's hard to be poor and it doesn't feel good. It sure doesn't feel better (maybe it even feels worse) when you're surrounded by excess.

Source of quote: Clayborne Carson et al. (editors). 1991. The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. New York: Penguin Books. The quote appears on page 402.

Race: A Poem

I hear people say we are a race-obsessed society.

I beg to differ.

We are a race-dysfunctional society.

We don’t know how to talk about race.

We don’t understand race.

We confuse race and ethnicity.

We talk past each other, not to each other.

We wait until a fool says something foolish 
     (“Nappy-headed hos”) 
and then we talk about race, mediated by media.

We ask the wrong questions 
     (“Why can’t I say the N word if they get to say the N word?”) 
and jump to the wrong conclusions 
     (“We have a black president so how can we be racist?”)

We have race fatigue.

We are tired of talking about race.

We don’t understand why people don’t get along.

We just wish people would relax and get over "it."

But we can’t wish race and ethnicity away.

Race and ethnicity are us.

Why are we afraid of honest history?

Do we have to hear about the Pilgrims and Indians again this year?

How about history reduced to glossy magazines?

So much amazing African-American history 
     (amazing American history) 
that is disrespected by a shabby supermarket display.

If race doesn't matter then why does it matter?

Is your school diverse?

Is your neighborhood diverse?

How dare we say race doesn't matter?

Why do we ignore the power of symbols?
How does the Cleveland Indians logo still exist?

Why is it cute for kids to dress "like Indians" on Halloween?

Why do high school kids want to perform a blackface skit?

How dare we say race is no big deal or it's just a joke?

If race is a joke, I'll never get the punchline.

And I'll never find inequality funny.

None of us are perfect when it comes to race.
No one can know everything and know exactly what to say.
Let's start by dropping the claim of being color-blind.
And keep our eyes out for stronger lenses to see arrogance and privilege.

The End.

Author’s note: I took a picture of this display at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY in February 2011.

Author's note #2: I highly recommend Peter Kaufman's recent blog post about racism, which includes his analysis of a blackface skit that took place at a high school.

Breaking Up By Text Message

Here's a sociological question: is it socially acceptable to break up by a text message? Occasionally I hear students comment on a relationship ending with a text message. I'm far removed from breaking up in the first place. If I break up at this point in my life, it's called a divorce. But let's talk about how people end relationships. Is it something that is supposed to happen face-to-face? People break up by phone calls, right? Is there a difference between breaking up with a phone call and breaking up with a text message? A text message sure seems cold and impersonal, but it makes sense if we keep in mind that breaking up is hard to do. Well, with due respect to Neil Sedaka, breaking up is much easier if we do it by text message, isn't it?

What are the rules about using a text message to break up? Is there any follow up required? Does the break up "stick"? Or, like the old Stylistics song says, it is just another case of "break up to make up" (gotta love any song that has a Wikipedia page).

Breaking up can get ugly fast. Many a Lifetime movie has been made about a break up gone bad. Is there such a thing as a good break up? Let's cut to the chase, people. How do we break up these days, and what do the techniques for breaking up tell us about relationship norms? How do people react to a break up by text message? Finally, generally speaking, what insights about our culture can we make if it is acceptable practice to break up with a text message?