What a fantastic day to start a blog. This first post is first a quick introduction to what will be a semester-long social media project as well as a discussion of the cultural awareness that was recently exhibited by Clarkson University faculty and students. I am writing on this blog to document the experience of a student in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) at Clarkson University. I have been a student here for two years and have evoked responses involving surprise, incredulity, and even slight jealousy for my non-engineering studies here at a technological school. Though the department is small and encompasses many fields - History, Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, Literature, etc. - the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences is a force to be reckoned with through its students, its professors, and its initiatives on and off campus.
My place in the department has always rested with the Social Sciences. Cultural Anthropology was my initial interest, but my interests expanded to include historical and communicative studies. Lo and behold, the department had a double major in History (or some other area of the Liberal Arts) and Communications called Social Documentation. So here I am, drafting a blog for my experiences as a Liberal Arts major at Clarkson.
My place in the department has always rested with the Social Sciences. Cultural Anthropology was my initial interest, but my interests expanded to include historical and communicative studies. Lo and behold, the department had a double major in History (or some other area of the Liberal Arts) and Communications called Social Documentation. So here I am, drafting a blog for my experiences as a Liberal Arts major at Clarkson.
I was lucky this week when the very first Clarkson Town Hall convened to discuss the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. For those of you who have been on any news site or social media lately, the Michael Brown Controversy has plastered itself across headlines and news feeds reporting the shooting of an unarmed African American teenager by a police officer in a suburb of St. Louis. This forum explored the implications of inequality, race, economic stance, and civil rights in the context of American culture and politics. I mean, the topic was titled "Why Ferguson, MO is not about Ferguson, MO". For a school supposedly focused on the hard sciences, the turnout for this community event reflected the awareness and activism of the students and faculty. | Via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRuCW80L9mA Featured in Dr. Anderson's presentation |
The panel assembled for this discussion included Dr. Chris Robinson, Dr. Jennifer Knack, Dr. Jen Ball, and Dr. JoAnn Rogers, experts respectively in political, psychological, historical, and sociological matters. Ferguson was an excellent lens for these fields to intersect. The panel approached the Ferguson controversy with an eager and respectful attitude. This mindset as well as the audience's laid out a framework for some serious social and political analysis in a democratic mode of expression and learning.
The discussion was led by Dr. Warren Anderson, Assistant Vice President of Diversity Initiatives at Clarkson. After going through the chronology of the events from the shooting of Michael Brown on August 9 to Governor Jay Nixon's release of the National Guard into Ferguson on August 18, Dr. Anderson talked about the underlying significance of the events in Ferguson in relation to present American culture.
Why did a police officer shoot an unarmed black man? How did this incite nonviolent protest locally as well as nationally? And after the violence escalated to the point that Ferguson was put under a state of emergency on August 16, what had Ferguson morphed into in the eyes of the public?
The audience was aware that no one had the exact same opinion on whether this was a cultural problem worth examining. For the sake of fairness, Anderson played clips from left and right wing news stations to explain each side thoroughly before getting into the discussion. The discontinuity between Melissa Harris-Perry's argument involving repeated fatal shootings of black men in American police forces and Bill O'Reilly's anger with the bias presented by liberal news sources (view the links below for news sources) was very apparent. However, no student or faculty member felt the need to enforce a homogeneous view of the event, even while all of the panel members saw the shooting as a deep rooted cultural problem rather than one isolated fatal incident.
The discussion was led by Dr. Warren Anderson, Assistant Vice President of Diversity Initiatives at Clarkson. After going through the chronology of the events from the shooting of Michael Brown on August 9 to Governor Jay Nixon's release of the National Guard into Ferguson on August 18, Dr. Anderson talked about the underlying significance of the events in Ferguson in relation to present American culture.
Why did a police officer shoot an unarmed black man? How did this incite nonviolent protest locally as well as nationally? And after the violence escalated to the point that Ferguson was put under a state of emergency on August 16, what had Ferguson morphed into in the eyes of the public?
The audience was aware that no one had the exact same opinion on whether this was a cultural problem worth examining. For the sake of fairness, Anderson played clips from left and right wing news stations to explain each side thoroughly before getting into the discussion. The discontinuity between Melissa Harris-Perry's argument involving repeated fatal shootings of black men in American police forces and Bill O'Reilly's anger with the bias presented by liberal news sources (view the links below for news sources) was very apparent. However, no student or faculty member felt the need to enforce a homogeneous view of the event, even while all of the panel members saw the shooting as a deep rooted cultural problem rather than one isolated fatal incident.
"[Social change] doesn't happen during times of equilibrium." | The amount of respect and thoughtfulness I found in what the panel had to say as well as the subsequent questions was one good thing that came out of the events in Ferguson. The differences in background, profession, ethnicity, gender, and age made it so that every participant in the Town Hall had a different opinion about the shooting of Michael Brown as well as the subsequent upheaval in Ferguson (something a sociologist would call intersectionality). But everyone sat and listened to each other regardless of their cultural upbringing. |
To paraphrase and combine some of what the panelists had to say, Jim Crow-like discrimination in education, the prison system, and simply on the street had been created by an outdated and unreasonable culture with different definitions of citizenship and is still enforced by a society that largely claims there is no more racism in America. The panel widely agreed that race is a social construct rather than genetic. Dr. Robinson also pointed out in the beginning that the lack of prosecution for Officer Darren Wilson - the policeman responsible for Michael Brown's death - is a prime example for what we call white privilege. I was thoroughly impressed by the responses to audience questions from not just the panel, but also from Dr. Warren Anderson, Potsdam Police Lieutenant Mark Murray, and Clarkson President Tony Collins. Dr. Anderson believes that these Town Halls will become a monthly occurrence for the community to keep an open channel for communication. After all, is that not how we can combat social inequality?
The Social Scientific Method will be updated once a week with posts involving the happenings on campus, in the HUSS department, and in my experience as a student. Please comment, share, and enjoy for many weeks to come!
The Social Scientific Method will be updated once a week with posts involving the happenings on campus, in the HUSS department, and in my experience as a student. Please comment, share, and enjoy for many weeks to come!
Melissa Harris-Perry's stance on Ferguson, MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/the-deaths-of-black-men-in-america-318795331819
Bill O'Reilly's stance on Ferguson, Fox News: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3741094028001/the-truth-about-ferguson/
Information on the shooting and subsequent media releases: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/09/05/three-troubling-things-exposed-by-the-ferguson-police-shooting-of-michael-brown/
Timeline of the events in Ferguson: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/michael-brown-ferguson-missouri-timeline/14051827/
Note that these sources are large media outlets with very strong biases.
Bill O'Reilly's stance on Ferguson, Fox News: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3741094028001/the-truth-about-ferguson/
Information on the shooting and subsequent media releases: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/09/05/three-troubling-things-exposed-by-the-ferguson-police-shooting-of-michael-brown/
Timeline of the events in Ferguson: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/michael-brown-ferguson-missouri-timeline/14051827/
Note that these sources are large media outlets with very strong biases.
Note that any writing or opinions on this blog do not reflect the views of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences or Clarkson University.