Again it happens

We're at a faculty party with a somewhat different crowd than usual. More of the multiculti-oriented folks. All humanists of some sort or other. (Perhaps you've noticed that my graduate training didn't provide me with much in the way of a modern theoretical understanding of race, or class, or gender, or sexuality? Well, it didn't. Neither did Beaker's.)

Person A says something about Granolaton with at least reasonably honorable intent, but somehow sadly flawed: perhaps they justify it using something that's simply not true, perhaps it's more hurtful to some group they don't usually worry about (e.g., middle class townies) than they realize.

Beaker jumps in, perhaps a bit too directly. To correct the factual error. Or to explain why what they've just said could be painful.

But Person A won't back down. They feel their honorable intentions are what's under attack: why would someone try to correct the facts, or point out negative consequences, unless that person disagreed with the underlying statement?

Beaker, who almost certainly agrees with the underlying sentiment, feels that they're actually undercutting the case for it by getting details wrong and/or needlessly offending people. He won't back down either. The conversation degenerates.

What I find frustrating, aside from the awkwardness at the time and the presumably reduced number of invitations to that crowd's parties: that the content of this blog entry could be seized upon as evidence for the closed-mindedness of faculty on the left at liberal arts colleges. That sometimes, there are little hints that all those accusations might be true.

Also: it's because Beaker is more involved in the community outside the college that he generally knows more about whatever facet of town life is under discussion than Person A, the one with the critical stance. Who despite self-consciously maintaining a certain distance from the community, (often even more effectively in real life than in rhetoric), believes that he or she knows, and knows better than most, how to address whatever problem is under discussion.

It's all fine when we discuss, e.g., national politics; we all read the same papers, and the same blogs, and have about the same biases. But Lord help us when our kids all hit school age.

Comments

[leslie]

ugh. You're right too - the faculty kids and the locals will not mix much if that's the set of attitudes. I've been assuming I know where you are from hints you've dropped (I won't post it!) but if so, I did part of my undergrad there and it was definitely a weirdly separated kind of existence even as a student.

These days I live in a small, largely blue collar town just outside of a university town and I see that set of attitudes constantly. I feel like I live with a foot in each place and it's definitely weird and limiting for the intellectual community to be dismissive of the rest of the area, especially when they are so separated as to have no idea of the veracity of their ideas.

[Jody]

It's hard to know what to think about future school issues, not knowing the specifics, but yeah: public school can throw all sorts of unspoken divisions into sharp relief.

Didn't you write once that a lot of Granolaton faculty spouses were going the homeschooling route? Further dividing the town's residents?

That seems to be less of an issue here, because professional folks so dominate the local schools. But there's a town-county divide that probably replicates precisely the sorts of issues you hint at.

I really loathe faculty parties. Too stressful by half.