seeing Ward Churchill
Poking my nose in for a minute… I’m still doing much more blogging over at Critical Studies of Schooling.
Had the opportunity to see Ward Churchill last night at Reed College. It was closed to the public, meaning I had to wrangle with a friend to find a way to get in (since I don’t know any Reedies). We both got in with a friend of hers from community radio station, KBOO, which meant that we sat in the “reserved” section for media - second row center. The auditorium was packed.
Churchill talked for about an hour and a half, mainly about U.S. atrocities around the world the past 150 years. Nothing I didn’t already know, but he’s a powerful speaker and it was a potent talk. He did spend some time on the subject of Consitutional rights and his being vilified and discredited by mainstream media and certain officials in Colorado, where he teaches. Of course, he touched on the context around his controversial essay.
The Q&A afterwards was really wild… The lineup for the mic was about 90% young, white guys and most of them asked questions that revealed a complete blind spot as far as their privilege was concerned. If they weren’t being ethnocentric and even racist, they were being painfully and irrelevantly intellectual in the phrasing of their questions (like the student who asked Churchill about the “distinction between theory and practice” and found a way to work Homer into his question). I mean, what the hell?
It was horrendous. For example, one guy asked whether it was still relevant and fair for the U.S. government to have to honor land treaties with Indians that the gov’t broke since “most Indians on reservations have more European blood than native blood these days”. Another guy started off with the phrase, “I have a few Navajo friends…” and went on to ask how best to deal with the “immense loss of culture Native Americans have undergone”. Mind you, this was coming from a 20-year old, rich-looking white student. Another asked in a whining voice what white people like himself were going to do if Indians were decolonized as Churchill suggested - “if they get their land back, where are we supposed to go?”
Churchill didn’t mince words with these people at all; he was justifiably cutting and precise in his replies and the students would walk furiously away from the mic, shaking their heads, and grabbing their friends for the door. They couldn’t stand to listen to someone who didn’t coddle them.
Whatever you think of Churchill (I think he’s completely right on), the white privilege on display in that line of male Reed students was shameful. I forget sometimes in my little radical group at PSU how unlearned the rest of the white world of students is when it comes to racism and U.S. jingoism… I guess I stupidly expect more from students or something.
April 17th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
dang, I would really love to have been there. I hope the event gets put online at Radio4all.net or somewhere. I have been listening to a lot of Ward’s stuff that is posted there, and he really is a dynamic, straightforward, no-bullshit speaker - exactly the kind of person we need to cut through the cultural blindness (something I myself am not immune to) and the political BS. It’s no wonder the powers that be have been trying so hard to silence him.
April 17th, 2005 at 11:01 pm
The entire Churchill speech, including the Q&A, is posted for download at http://indytorrents.org/. You need a BitTorrent client to download. 103 mb. total, split into the speech and the Q&A.
I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet. The sound quality is not the best, but easy to hear via headphones.
April 18th, 2005 at 12:15 pm
I know what you mean about the incredulity that results when you hear educated people respond to critical thought with either self-serving, or self-preserving rhetoric.
I would have loved to see Ward Churchill — good score, Emily!!
April 19th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
I’ll try to download the clip and listen to it on my flight home.