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What Mountaintop Are You Climbing? What Story Do You Have to Tell (MLK DAY)

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[photo by Hans Gedda/Corbis in Mandela: The Authorized Portrait; edited by Kyra Gaunt-Palmer with picnik.com]

Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.   Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

WHAT MOUNTAINTOP ARE YOU CLIMBING?

Today marks the 26th anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday. On the 25th anniversary I celebrated by releasing a book of racism op-eds highlighting structural inequalities that touched the lives of 27 students who participated in a racism course I taught in the fall of 2010 at Baruch College-CUNY. The student represented 14 different countries. The group unanimously chose the title Could You Be the Bigger Nigger? which eventually was salvaged into Could You Be Bigger? with a few slashes here and there thanks to then-Facebook-friend (now husband) author Jim Palmer.  That title was a mountaintop for many readers. To accept the n-word as a possible access to something more powerful than the word.

I cautiously opened the issue and came away strengthened. (anonymous)

As a professor of hip-hop, anthropology and black studies and as a trainer, I've taught several courses, workshops and events for over 15 years that have been devoted to up-ending socially constructed notions of race-as-human-difference and I've constantly encountered a similar phenomenon or reaction in participants that is racial and is not racial at all. It's human fear at work. Whenever I meet someone who is not from the U.S. (from Europe or even Canada...but never South Africa), to be precise, it happens whenever a participant is not from the U.S. and happen to NOT be of African descent, 90% of them always feel the urgent need to assert to me, as facilitator, that they are interested but that where they are from there is no racism. After the workshop or event, they begin to question their pre-existing thought.

Racism is not just a U.S. thing. I prefer to redefine "racism" as anything that separates the oneness of humanity--not just skin color preference, housing discrimination, or U.S. race relations. The poorest, the disenfranchised, and darkest in other nations and the inequities felt by those countries and islands that are not part of the U.S. and other "first-world" nations, they all tend to be aware of facts that suggest that "racism" does exist--various social and/or economic disparities that leave them out of what is considered real, viable, available, and/or "civilized" to those who have privilege of one sort or another. Skin color is often part of that privilege but it is not always present in the abused.

WE ARE ALL UNTOUCHED BY SOMEONE

We all, each and every one of us in this world of 6.9 billion, are some kind of "untouchable" to someone else at the level of individual, group, community and/or nation. The paradox that we all came from the same genetic source is mostly lost of too many individuals at all levels. There is no question in my mind. We are one.

In January of last year, I was preparing to embark on my first journey to Scandinavia with my friend I met on twitter wedding photographer Parris Whittingham. My trips to Europe, China, and Scandinavia since I became a TED Fellow in February of 2009, have changed my listening of who I am as a person of color, as a black woman, and who I am as a person committed to the transformation of conversations of race and racism such that those superstitions disappear without changing a thing about you or me.

The photo above of Mandela is similar to the one I share in the story below. A story that has sat in a draft email since February of 2011. Here I salvage that story in honor of MLK day. In honor of my own growth and development which could only begin when I left my comfort zone of blackness and began to notice how those who are not-black-like-me also have stories and connections just like me to figures like Mandela and MLK. Jr.  This is my story. What's yours?

I wrote this right after a woke from hearing words speaking in my dream. This is essentially unedited; exactly as I wrote it to myself a year ago.

AWOKEN BY A DREAM

There's something about the power of telling a story, the sharing of which is not about accuracy or whatever really happened. It's about a wisp of life apprehended or a thread that weaves awareness into some random moment. "There is something about the power of telling a story" was the line that awoke me at 12:30pm Norway time [I was living in NYC back then]. It was my 8 hour alarm clock for I had hoped to sleep 8 hours my second night in Trondheim. 

My eyes opened on a image hung on the wall beyond the foot of the bed. I had not noticed it before. Hilde Iglebaek, my Norwegian host, is bunking with her housemate while I have her room to myself. The image is sepia-toned, a black and white photo. It's beautiful, slated to the right. Nelson Mandela beams. His eyes nearly closed with aged fingers like some inverse tripod gently upholding of his chin. His hands foreground the beginnings of a glorious smile as if his lips were the horizon of some bursting sunrise. His teeth peek through, beginning to show. 

The close-up shot was captured on some kind of newspaper print. The size is almost perfectly 8 x 11. Unframed, there was deep crease sloping down across the middle of the paper in the space between his teeth and his lower lip. The crease marked a happiness. The traces of Hilde's happiness. The print was at some time ago handled, gripped without a care, perhaps from some rally or event honoring South Africa's King [She later shared it was a rally and she was mesmerized and held the paper tight].

How do you describe the power of what I glimpsed in that moment...in words? How do you write about an encounter with something so new [being in her room discovering myself through a photo on her wall that reflected my life back at me? How do you write that] to others who are at such a distance from the experience that it cannot be measured in kilometers, nor translated into miles. [Brooklyn was a millennia away. Black Brooklyn even further.]

There is something about the power of storytelling, of sharing one's discovery of another's learned ways of thinking, feeling, believing and behaving in terms that are not their own and yet my own and theirs. Translation cannot get you there. But we anthropologists must begin to write it anyway. Tell one story. One story at a time. [Martin and Mandela did theirs. What is mine?] No matter where [...our story] begins. I hope to captured some of that during the trip to ISFiT.  [Written 2/20/2011; Rev. 1/17/2012]

 

On the repetition of blackness and difference in time and space

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | KyraocityWorks
Voicing the unspoken through song, scholarship & social media
2009 TED Fellow, Author, Tele-Coach, Singer-Songwriter and Professor of Listening
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com


KyraocityabtRacism #51: How can you be different without changing a thing?

The answer is in the video recorded by my dear friend from Brooklyn, artist Hanifah Walidah.

 

KyraocityAbtRacism #50: Black Twitter & How Obama Ain't Gangster Enuf...or is it me?

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Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | KyraocityWorks
2009 Inaugural TED Fellow
Voicing "the unspoken" through song, scholarship & social media
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com
_____________________________________________________________________
 
I started tweeting seriously just after Obama was elected. I began with a series of tweets that were questions confronting social constructs of race and racism. Here's one: "Why do we confuse cultural selection w/ natural selection in matters of race/racism? Preference is cultural." Thus began my curiosity or KyraocityAbtRace tweets in a numbered series (which I've lost track but I know I was up in the forties, so let's just start at an even rounded number for a new one).

Kyraocity abt Racism No. 50:
Is it wrong to question and/or challenge President Obama's administration if your black and/or a democrat?
Note: If you stop reading this because you cannot identify with conversations about blackness or because you are not a democrat, then shame on you. That's exactly why our participatory democracy isn't working they way we'd like. I ask questions to open up the possibility of uncertainty without playing it safe. So stay with me, I think I can deliver a payoff in the end.

I ran across a blog on the big and small screen titled Shadow and Act (On Cinema of the African Diaspora) that pointed to one of those #blacktwitter moments. Don Cheadle was the celebrity who created the commotion.

One of the great things about Twitter is when celebrities or public figures get into hot water with their words and/or actions, it affords them the opportunity to quickly, and effectively, clean up any misunderstandings which was the case for Don Cheadle recently.

On Friday (Dec. 30th), he felt the need to clarify and give perspective on his use of the word "gangster" regarding President Obama in an upcoming article.  Apparently, some people took the term out of context.

I invite you to read the whole of Cheadle's comments and perspective on "gangster" but I am interested in what happened when the dialogue, the actual moments of social media, ensued in the comments on the post relative to being for/against Obama and how we choose to represent what is good or productive dialogue and engagement. It surely might go a different way if greatness was law in the universe.

Cheadle was articulate...why do we feel the need to say that about black folks still...and brought some breakthrough insights to the table in my book. After posting the link on my Facebook wall. I got a couple of immediate comments:

Stephen (an African brother wrote): I love that line at the end "I'm glad he's at the wheel and not me. I would have swung at someone by now." I totally agree Don Cheadle. How President Obama maintains his cool in the face of such vehement opposition baffles me and should be a college course by itself.

Stacy (a business prof and friend from grad school wrote): I appreciated Don Cheadle's comments but I also really liked Bondgirl's--she was pretty tough as well .


I enjoyed Cheadle's unapologetic response to his use of "gangster". He called attention to some key issues particularly the lack of attention to the economic struggle of ordinary folks out there today that is not part of public debate in any significant way...which leads to the idea of why POTUS ain't going gangster yet. Cheadle wrote:

I still have a fevered dream of the POTUS smacking up John Boehner in a public forum in middle America and making him defend support of tax cuts for the super rich. I want to see somebody go to jail over the financial crisis and not just black, brown and poor whites over humbles and minor drug beefs. I want the president to bail out homeowners who fell for the okey doke from predatory lenders and are two seconds from living on the streets or are already there. I want to see industrial polluters who are killing all of us slowly by poisoning our fragile environment swap places with the kid doing 15 years in Chino for shoplifting shoes. I want him to stand in front of the haters and go all Bill Duke on them and say, “You know you done fucked up now, don’t you?” I kinda want a gangster president.


The comment section featured its own smackdown by bondgirl with Cheadle signing in as "Troy" with his own comebacks. The two had a heated exchange which called my attention further to how we do democracy as individuals around our elections esp. in this case expressed by #blacktwitterati.  I follow them both Cheadle (aka Troy) and bondgirl on Twitter:
 

  • Troy | January 3, 2012 

    What the he'll is @bondgirl talking about? Every opportunity I had to speak in public about my support for him, I did and still do. He is the clear choice in my opinion for 2012 and I will again support his re-election but those facts doesn't mitigate what I earlier expressed about gangster, they coexist side by side. The last time a black actor demanded something on the Iron Man set he was replaced.

  • bondgirl | January 4, 2012

    No Troy (aka Don), they don't coexist side by side. You either support him or you don't. Snide remarks to a national publication is support he can do without, thank you. Save it for pillow talk with your baby's mama, not Jet Magazine where the GOP can snicker and use it against him at their TeaBagger rallies to show his own people can't decide if he's doing what's right. Liberals try and use freedom of speech to shroud their own turncoat behavior and I'm not buying whatever you're selling... Don has plenty of opportunities to do exactly what he is asking POTUS to do, with Stan Lee or the Showtime producer who didn't hire a black actress to play co-lead. So I'm gonna need him to take the buckshots first before telling someone else to do so.

I often used the academic writing of Deborah Tannen, a colleague in linguistic anthropology, on the discourse of battling in U.S. cultural and political debates. We US folk are so prone to getting personal to make our points. But Cheadle and bondgirl left me with something I had to comment about. I chose to share my comment here because I think we TEDsters could share more about the structural inequities that lead to so much of the armed political and socio-economic conflicts we love to be privy to in a great TEDTalk from afar.

I wrote:

I went looking for a quote to sum up the ambivalent reaction I had to @bondgirl's comments or moreover her venom towards Cheadle aka Troy. There seems to be something off IMBHO with not being allowed to voice criticism, a critique, or offer your POV as part of your being human as well as citizen. It seems to me that's not only what makes participatory democracy work for each and every one (not agreement or absolute consensus -- an oxymoron if ever there was one).

Cheadle is not one part of himself (an actor or a "husband"). He doesn't sell out or [sell] off his power to speak his truths because others don't like his grind or his beef. He speaks his truth and for that Obama would, I hope if he's got any gangster in him, accept it as one citizen's view and even perhaps take head that one man's POV [could] resonate [with many others] in [some] way (good, bad or indifferent). [It could resonate] with the bottom 99% like me who is recovering from bankruptcy (for the first and hopefully last time). There is no shame in my game and none in Obama's or Cheadle's. But, if we cannot agree to be offended and stay connected not just to Obama [AND] to Cheadle [all of who he represents and all he doesn't], then what I see is a failure to freely participate in [our] democracy.

[I have learned something here at Occupy Nashville about consensus building.] "Consensus is a process designed to create better ideas together not to compromise on mediocre ideas; modified consensus is an attempt to hear all voices while working strategically toward concrete solutions") [http://occupynashville.org/principles-and-practices/]

There is/was something brilliant in Cheadle's incorporation and signification on a trans-local black concept like "gangster" not just to inspire thoughts about Obama but about ourselves as citizens. We need everything we got to inspire each other to take actions to empower a great citizenry. And we also need not diminish the power of linking those actions to a voting process that is and never has been ideal. I appreciated Cheadle's clarification and his stance for re-election. I for one have been wavering in my support. But Cheadle's comments and response has inspired me to rethink my lack of support as the glow of electing someone like "us" whatever that meant dimmed [significantly for me]. I have been mad at the lack of attention and interest in generating a GANGSTER move like MLK did with the Poor People's Campaign. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign [I'd be for us...all people...each and every one of us...considering what that would mean in the next election.]

So ultimately I [reposted] my own words ...to own up to my own smallness around quitting as @bondgirl [implied, quitting on Obama]. I think bondgirl was talking to someone like me, not Cheadle. Can't always judge [an actor by his appearances], baby... I can truly say I got something from [Cheadle and bondgirl's] conversation that wouldn't have been available without [social media like Twitter and] Facebook, [without] posting the Cheadle event on my wall, [without] reading the comments ... [which] finally [led me to take] 30 mins to reflect on my own position.

I am not as active as Cheadle was though I did my part for the election with my students. I am not as active as bondgirl is on a many a Twitter tip AND YET I thank [them] both for reminding me of my responsibilities to my own citizenship. This could only happen this way [through] the power of social media--the 21st century version of the grapevine.
Peace, Power and Votes!!  Signed kyraocity


Martha Runette, a friend of mine who joins me in a commitment to transforming conversations of race and racism as someone who is white, said this of my comment:

Martha: I liked how you used the string of comments as an opportunity to look at your own participation, @Kyra. IMHO, both Cheadle's and Bondgirl's comments were valuable, and I'd like to see more even more sides to it. Will be tracking back to see how the convo develops. Thanks for sharing. :)


What if the inquiry mattered more than being right? What kinds of conversations would truly make a difference in being in action (rather than thinking) about the next presidential election. Finding agreement or standing in complete disagreement is getting us nowhere. Faith in Obama without acts as citizens ain't gonna do, either.
 
So back to the top question: Is it wrong to question and challenge President Obama's administration if your black and/or a democrat? And what are the limits of our democratic participation as citizens if we cannot critique those we support in our own words, and in our own ways?

I don't have the answers...not for anyone else. But I did find some quotes to reflect on it all that might assist you in your conclusions, if any:

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country.
I make up for lost time when I come home.” -- Winston Churchill
I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.” Frederick Douglass

 "...i wanted to be a new person
and my rebirth was stifled not by the master
but the slave." - Nikki Giovanni

Thanks for checking this out and if you got this far, let me know if this blog post worked or why it didn't. I promised to get something up today and it would make a difference if you shared back. Peace, Power and Voting Grease!

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer
http://kyraocity.wordpress.com

 

 

VIDEO: Are you a Divine Nobody?

 Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | KyraocityWorks
2009 TED Fellow, Author, Coach, Singer-Songwriter and Former Associate Professor
Voicing "the unspoken" through song, scholarship & social media
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com

My brand name is curious. It is a portmanteau of Kyra-of-the-city and the city once was NYC and then Brooklyn and now Music City, Nashville. It also spoke to a mission I've never fully pursued which is to have questions be an access to growth and development. In other words, expanding your capacity for curiosity. KyraocityWorks was branded in me before I became a TED Fellow in 2009. But it was TED talks like A.J. Jacobs' year of living biblically that opened up new questions about religion for me as well as Karen Armstrong's TED Prize talk. Ultimately, I am looking at spending 2012 asking one question, asking others to look at life through one question small and large instead of having answers all the time. What one question would make a difference in higher education, in your classroom, around matters to race and racism, or around the power of learning online?

December in the U.S. always draws our attention to questions of religion in curious ways, like it or not. Like a mousetrap set to catch a prey, the holiday season can spring into questions about conspicuous consumption, what real gift-giving means, or a harder question why many Americans are so troubled by closeness during the holidays in a society that constantly begs we pay attention to our individuality rather than our connectedness.

My husband of nearly 6 months (June 11 was our wedding day) is an ordained minister who left organized religion and began writing about his journey in ciritically aclaimed books.

This post is a gift for the season to Jim Palmer, my husband, who has been helping others shed religion (with a capital R) to find God in themselves and unlikely people and places since 2006 when his first book was published. 

In invite the TED community and my followers to listen to the impact of his work in this video and ask yourselves:
Are you a divine nobody?

Would love to know how being a divine nobody is showed up in your life this year. Share your stories!

 

See the World in One Question: How Much Does $199US Buy in Your Home Country?

 Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | KyraocityWorks
2009 TED Fellow, Author, Coach, Singer-Songwriter and Associate Professor
Voicing "the unspoken" through song, scholarship & social media
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com



Discover the power in one question.
Kyraocity Works

 

A Short Story for the Steve Jobs in You. #higheredreform #beingadult
Dictionary_-_student

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | KyraocityWorks
2009 TED Fellow, Author, Coach, Singer-Songwriter and Professor
Voicing "the unspoken" through song, scholarship & social media
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com


SNEAKING INTO PRIVILEGE - LEARNING MACINTOSH

In 1987, the computer lab at SUNY Binghamton was a setting that had an unspoken segregated code in my music major world -- this area is off limits to anyone but geeks in math or science. A clunky, second-hand electric typewriter I inherited from my grandfather was my word processor. He found it during his days as a janitor working in upscale Chevy Chase, MD. while throwing perfectly-good "trash" into the incinerator. All my life, I seemed to inherit or luck upon "new" technologies second-hand incl. finding a SONY cassette walkman in 1979. 

Remembering my first day with a personal computer is not hard. I snuck into the lab. Was surprised that all I needed to enter was my student ID. (Students off don't go beyond what they already know. Such a shame.) The other students there were so engrossed in their MacIntosh that my entrance didn't even register. Plus they knew nothing was wrong with being there. Something was wrong in my silence. I didn't even know it was a MacIntosh. Had to ask a neighbor how to turn it on after minutes of hesitation. 

Being a "minority" is sometimes all about hiding ignorance. Privilege was not something I inherited. It is only now reminiscing about that moment that I realize how Steve Jobs made it possible to level the playing field in so many ways for me, for us. Crazy, isn't it!

I dared not speak to anyone or ask for help, something I embrace fully as a social media geek now. Back to my memory. I was a masters student in vocal performance. I quietly flipped the switch on the back of the MacIntosh, its iconic burp startled my ear and my musical heart, and the next thing I knew, I was a Mac baby. 

I visited the lab daily and taught myself to use MS word and discovered other programs like hypercard. By the time I got to grad school at Michigan I had acquired a second-hand Mac SE. I won't even get started with what it meant to be able to teach myself how to use Finale, a music notation program. Steve Jobs affected my life in ways that are kind of crazy in hindsight. In ways I still take for granted. 

My addiction to Macs and now my iPhone was not paralleled by an addiction to study and learning in my music history classes or in my ethnomusicology courses in my Ph.D. program at University of Michigan. Now, after 15 years of teaching at top-ranked U.S. colleges/universities including Michigan, Tufts, U.Va., NYU,  and Baruch College-CUNY, I left academia because I was crazy enough to think we in higher ed owe it to the world to bring that original concept of being a student back into learning. I've said this before in talks and posts but it bears repeating that oldest definition of "student" (just before "stupor") in the Oxford English Dictionary means "engaged in or addicted to study" (1398). In all my years as a professor, this is not how 99% of students enter my classrooms whether it was anthropology or racism, but that was always present in my hip-hop students before they opened a course book.  


HERE'S TO THE STEVE JOBS IN YOU

With all the Steve Job's quotes being hurled about the blogosphere and circling around the Internet, I want to sneak one in that struck a chord for me about what is missing in higher ed today. My husband also was attracted to the same quote, I discovered after writing this post. He quoted it in his 2nd book on shedding religion long before we met this year. Jim read it in a magazine ad for the MacIntosh computer back in 2007:

”Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. they inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy.
 
How else can you stare at an empty canvas  and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been writen? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for those kinds of people. Where some people see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
 
(Check out the Steve Jobs’ voiceover in an unaired Apple commercial featuring Virgin’s Richard Branson and read more quotes).


I GOT JOBS TO REPRESENT
I left a job in New York City to create something completely different. I got married and moved to Nashville without a tenure-track position in hand.  I am one of those crazies. One of those former profs who thinks that I can use my G5 tower and my blogs to empower change in higher ed.

I have been the one who looks at students who are late to class or turn in their work late and and see greatness with barriers. In the silence of that quiet student who never talks, I hear the possibility of empowering what never gets said or written academically that could change the world in my classroom and in their lives right now. So I make a different set of tools than Jobs made with the Mac -- it's a technology of language and listening that I think can change everything just by listening student-as-adult. 

Yes, it was crazy to leave the power and privilege of being one of 3% of the U.S. professoriate who are people of color. But if obtaining a degree for most people of color means larger disparities between white wealth than just having a high school diploma, we all should get crazy. I am pursuing creating tools that unlock the possibility that higher education can fulfill on -- what matters to each and every student's human potential and to eradicating the perceptions that racism at the institutional level is leaving on folks...even white folks as evidenced by my first coaching client who I'll call "Wonder Woman."


DOING THE JOB RIGHT

About four weeks ago, I got an email from a prospective client following  a few failed attemtpts at launching my personal brand outside academia as a coach and a blogger (an area I still could use help in, BTW). "Wonder Woman" came to me wanting to work on many of the divergent interests I represent (ethnomusicology, anthropology of race and gender, and racism).

Her email was a god-send to discovering there was at least one student out there looking for exactly what I had to offer. My anthro brain says where there is one, there is a culture of more  On top of that she wanted to pay me for it. My PhD brain often gets in the way of seeing that is possible. My new coaching business is dedicated to the transition into emerging adulthood and gettin' educated in life and school in areas that truly matter to you. 


"Wonder Woman" found me by word of mouth. Then did her homework online. Read all my blogs -- and I have a few in a number of divergent arenas: ethnomusicology, success with the opposite sex, racism, and empowering students in higher education. Then and only then did she draft a robust request for coaching that began:

Dear Professor Gaunt,

I heard your name for the first time a few weeks ago while I was teaching <music> in Haiti. The girl who I was rooming with studies ethnomusicology at <a-prestigious-university-not-to-be-mentioned here> and had been very inspired by you, and so I looked you up as soon as I was back in the States with a reliable Internet connection.  I am twenty-five years old. I graduated in 2008 with a degree in music. After that, I studied in Rio on a Fulbright scholarship. I realize that I probably sound very successful, but things have not been so great since I got back.


"Wonder Woman" came to me disappointed, embarrassed, ashamed, angry and confused. She's been belittled by her professors, none helped with her Fulbright app, but she is such a seeker. Seems to me that Ken Robinson's The Element also needs a companion book on how to be the listener for "the element" in each student we encounter. There is little tp no possibility in how we listen each and every student at least not in ways that empowers their greatness from orientation to graduation.  She wrote further:
 
I couldn't decide whether or not to go to graduate school (in fact, I was quite disappointed with my undergraduate education, and I have really enjoyed watching your TEDx talks and blog videos about how you think higher education could be different),

"Wonder Woman" found herself stuck between deciding to go to grad school or being a musician. Where do you go when you land in "adulthood" and all the conversations in your head and around you have only prepared you for a "sophisticated  adolescence"? Where "I might be wrong" and "I dont know" are the safest solutions. There are tools missing, communication tools, tools of speaking and listening to Self and parent and teacher that would dramatically alter how reality occurs for them and for us as professors and parents. 


READING BETWEEN THE LINES - BEING ADULT

The email from "Wonder Woman" could be viewed as indecisive but I actually read it as courageous and authentic--something we avoid or disavow in the classroom today and in conversations surrounding students still living at home.
 
I couldn't decide whether I should go back to school for music performance or ethnomusicology...so I wound up working at Kinko's and living at home. Working at Kinko's was easily the worst experience of my entire life...so when I was invited to go teach music in Haiti for two months, I decided to use that as my launchpad to get out of Kinko's. Now I am back in the United States faced with the same dilemmas that were facing me when I left, and as much as I am a little bit embarrassed to be seeking success coaching, I really need some transformation, and at this point I don't know what else to do.

Here was the best part, saved for last:

I also see that you have taught a lot of classes on racism. I don't know if you are willing to work with individuals on this...especially white, middle class, privileged individuals like myself...but I have had zero diversity training except the reading I have done on my own (most of it on the Internet where people don't care who they hurt or offend) and my experiences studying in Brazil and Ghana, plus my time in Haiti. I have a lot of anger and confusion regarding my racial identity and what exactly my responsibilities are as a white person...anger at both other white people and people of color (I have had some negative experiences with forced diversification...I hope my admitting that doesn't offend you, but maybe you will be willing to stay connected, anyway).

Who does this!?? As a black and female professor committed to transforming social inequities in all places and spaces, I found this amazing and inspiring. This was being-adult!  Being adult in the socially fucked up world we inherited. It's not our fault but it is our responsibility to take care of others and ourselves, first and foremost. So, maybe we are in a new era. Not a post-race era but an era of being-adult.


RESULTS IN 3 WEEKS OR LESS

After 3 weeks of successful and magical coaching for her and for me, "Wonder Woman" phoned me on one of her "get of jail" 15 minute calls to say that she thinks she's crazy. And she had evidence for it.  Even after several setbacks this past week, she impresses me in ways that make me wonder why others cannot see such possibility in each and every college-age student or child. She's bot crazy at all. Students today are disappointed with the education they got left with but paid for anyhow. I want to empower their greatness.

"Wonder Woman" gave me permission to blog about our process to elicit other clients. But what most concerns me from all this is how we, as professors, as parents, and as a society, can keep allowing 4 years of higher education to lead to such resignation in a Fulbright scholar, in a young, white privileged female or in a young adult like I once was--underprivileged, underserved and scared to own the privilege of entering a computer lab to learn about new technologies?

My cause is not just about those we label "dropouts."  It's about each and every student whose voice is denied, whose ownership of their life and their world is denied by our current system of "education." How can we produce great citizens and human beings -- in other words, adults -- this way?

I'm looking for partners and I need a business coach to reach the 40% of 16 million students who are leaving academia every year. That's 7.9 million folks who are missing contributing to themselves and their society because they were deemed "dropouts" or simply lost their passion along the way. "Wonder Woman" and I have begun that process and we already have seen miracles happen in just 3 weeks.

Wonder Woman's email made day! And our conversations are making a huge difference in my life. She's funny, courageous, competent and a go-getter and a little coaching was all she needed. I wish professor were trained in this as part of their teaching demands.

Perhaps that is the higher ed remix I am looking for, I am standing for creating. Coaching students and coaching interested faculty. Instead of teaching for better jobs, I want to create more Steve Jobs. And how would we know if we had a Steve Jobs in our classroom? Perhaps we should listen each and every student as if he/she was a Steve Jobs in the making. 


The answers to what's wrong in higher ed are sitting right in front of us. It's not in the books. It's the people!

So, here's to the new Jobs we can collectively create!

I'll let one of my students have the last word. He was one of 95 students in my anthro course last Fall. He speaks to what can be accomplished in a nonlinear, divergent thinking context where the students are the books to be learned:

She has an entirely different, yet, peculiar teaching style. I was skeptical. But without a doubt it works! It was absolutely striking how many students raised their heads from the boredom, the sleep, and the frustration they have been accustomed to. To my eyes, I saw a work of art. –– Michael Thai (Baruch College-CUNY, Fall 2010).
 

A Call to Greatness...Your Productivity in College Now
Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D. | kyraocityworks
2009 TED Fellow and former Associate Professor voicing "the unspoken" through song, scholarship & social media
Tweet Me!   Friend Me!  Become a Blog Fan!   Email me!  http://kyraocityworks.com


Could the majority of adults in any classroom rule it? In many other contexts in U.S. culture, the "majority" rules. Why not in higher education?

Consider this. As a professor I bring 48 years of observation and experience to the classroom. If I add to that what 30 students, averaging 20 years of age, bring to the classroom that amounts adding 600 years of observation and experience. I taught at one of the most ethnically diverse colleges in the nation, too. 

I could also look at it from the POV of the value of one human life. If one student has a network of at least 20 people in their lives including people at home and at work, then I am also potentially reaching a percentage of 600 people by inspiring each and every one of my 30 students. One student, one human life inspired to learn and share, means I could probably reach 20% or 120 additional learners if I learn to play my cards right as a professor.

But all this could only be possible if we listened college students as adults rather than as kids, as nuisances, or as disinterested young people who better shape up.

Most college students, perhaps even the "teacher's pets," are rarely engaged like they are adults as a group. Students often are required to prove they deserve attention or profs think they are not performing up to expectation (i.e., a student doesn't talk when called on, turns work in late, or gets a B- or lower consistently). These students are failures, not great ones with barriers to their expression of themselves.

I met a another professor at a hip social networking event in NYC last summer. He taught at NYU. He was a professor of color, too. When I shared about the greatness of students, he stated, like a badge of honor, "I don't even teach to anyone who isn't getting an A or a B in my class." {{ jaw drop silence }}. And proudly he went on and on about it even as I tried to challenge my peer. When adults pay as much as students are paying today for an education (and most are paying it themselves in public schools), at the very least, it requires listening each and every student as if they will get what they paid for--like a promise...from each of us. 

Professors who think like this cheat students out of their education. And that one prof does not realize that each and every one of his students, especially the A and B students, are being taught, by example, that some people are worthy of attention and to hell with the rest. (Think Wall Street here!). Higher ed and the business world should take note. Where else are we churning out 10 million adults who learn that the perspective of the haves and have-nots is justified. It only takes ONE professor to replicate social inequities found throughout our nation. 

A CALL TO GREATNESS NOW!

Last weekend I started a greatness call for students to empower themselves with my coaching. The first beta call began Sunday August 21st.

This is a call to the 18 million great ones who are starting back to school this week and next.  A call for them to lead this learning revolution from their seats. 


This is for you!! Yes, YOU! All you need is a space to realize the greatness you were born into. This call is to empower your own thinking and voicing your own greatness in every class,  with every teacher, and moreover with your colleagues and with your family. 

Here's a video to share with friends and family in college: https://bitly.com/bundles/kyraocity/1
and you can watch the videos in two parts below:

<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GAdstEFm61k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FOTGvdY2m3U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

HEADER
It's time to empower students--each and every one--to become consumers of their own productivity. My posts to professors this year have targeted techniques that work to empower that possibility. It all begins, I assert, with listening to student-as-adult and listening each and every one as great from the start. Every day we meet, I greet them with "Good afternoon, Great Ones!" And I wait for them to respond. I listen them into what's inside of them. I am not giving them anything but a space to show up in.

This begs some questions: When and where does the learning happen in the classroom in an old model of teaching (knowledgeable teacher to empty vessel students) and in a new model (engaging each and every one as great)?  And with whom does learning begin (the teacher or the students)? Shouldn't greatness be present BEFORE you graduate? I say it starts right now and I am on that mission!

STOP CHEATING STUDENTS!

People who graduate from high school at 18 and go straight through 4 years of college are already a tiny minority of all young Americans [in the U.S.], around one in ten. Pulling [the U.S.] out of its educational slump requires designing programs flexible and supportive enough to reach the 44% of students who currently drop out of college and the 35% who drop out of high school. These programs have to provide socialization, personal development, and critical-thinking skills, not just job training. 
                                                                           - Anya Kamenetz, DIY U (2010)

How I started launching my mission was with my students and by blogging since December 2010. I am delighted to say most of my posts have been read by 3000 to 7000 readers and they've gotten a number of engaging comments and subscribers. My husband reminded me a couple of days ago that most of my higher ed posts were directed towards educators and not students. So there is something to think about relative to being sure I am reaching students. More about that in a second. It's also important to get the message to parents, businessmen, and innovators who also need to rethink where education happens.

I am for that learning revolution. I quit my tenure-track academic job as an Associate Professor last September. I wasn't reaching enough students whether in my anthro classes, my racism classes or my hip-hop classes. All my interactions were a conduit to teaching greatness. Traveling and speaking to higher ed students since then in China, Norway, and Moldova, really unlikely places than I thought I'd ever find myself as an African American woman and professor, has led me to inspire a global conversation for transforming higher ed through students.

What if college students were empowered to transform education themselves? Would that radically alter the possibility of swapping higher resignation for an authentic higher education where each and every student was honored for their participation in every thing they do AND don't do? Being "educated" in higher ed often means waiting 4-6 years to be an adult or to benefit from your own passions and what truly matters to you. Just another delaying tactic to being your own person. 

WHAT NEXT? AND WHY NOW?

Whether it's Ken Robinson's inspiring TED Talks, Assoc Professor Mike Wesch's brilliant collaborative YouTube video of students today made with his undergrads in Kansas, Salman Khan speaking of his pervasive influence at TED2011, or SkillShare a new offline classroom project run by friend Mike Karnjanaprakorn, the revolution is happening BUT not in most of the classrooms in the 6500 institutions of higher learning in the U.S.

Today, while one in four college-ages students, that's 150 million adults today, are enrolled in some kind of education beyond high school, in the U.S., 44% of our 18 million students are dropping out. Superpower beware. That's 7.9 million people. That is the same number of active users on Facebook today. See Anya Kamenetz's DIY U  and the National Center for Education Statistics for more data.

Something's gotta shift to transform these numbers and that shift in context is simple but I would bet money that it won't come from faculty or curriculum changes. It will come from students. Empowering students to demand that shift in thinking about who they are and what they are up to right now. 

 

Inspired by Treasure: Listening for Greatness in Higher Education
Listening

I watched the latest TED Talk from Edinburgh by Julian Treasure on listening today.  

The talk resonated with something I've been out to master since I did the Landmark Forum in 2002 especially as a professor--actually being present and learning how to share with my students being present to each and every no matter what class or class size. 

We hear so much more than just what is sonically happening around us when we are present. Sometimes I can anticipate, from the pattern sensing we have as sentient human beings, what is about to happen in keen ways that seem magical.

BEING THE ORACLE
One of my students said after the first week of classes two years ago, "You're the Oracle!" with great fanfare and mystification behind his expression like he'd been trying to figure out who I reminded him of. The Oracle from The Matrix. Actually, it's not magic or some prophetic skill. It is just really listening. And as a professor I expect, no actually I demand, that each and every person listening in my class of 20, 32 or 95 be responsible for hearing not just the professor but to each and every person who shares in the classroom. I also expect them to listen to what is "unsaid but communicated" in our communication.

I'm not talking about listening to lectures and guests like TEDsters RuthAnn and Bill Harnisch who both captivated the listening of my anthropology students at Baruch. Bill is an alum who shared an amazing rags to riches story so quietly and eloquently. I will never forgot it and neither have they as I have been told by many. They listened that day like no other. That was a few weeks after  attended TED2009 in Long Beach so my normal listening of what's possible and what being in the world actually could be had altered dramatically. So I truly appreciated Treasure's gift today.

FIVE WAYS TO LISTEN BETTER IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM
This TED Talk really had me reach back and listen to what I've gotten from enrolling my students in the practice of listening with integrity. Mostly students are taught not to listen since most professors don't listen to them. We model "not listening" rather than the opposite. "I don't wanna hear your excuse, do your work!" vs. "I got what your clinging to about being late, but I promise you your excuse is getting in the way of your greatness, great one!" The latter creates a much different .... listening for work and for being great and for...listening for what's truly possible.

When students in an anthropology, racism, or hip-hop class (I teach all three), first start interacting in my classroom, I often remind them of what listening with integrity means. Treasure's TED Talk inspired me to list ideas I have never articulated clearly before. 
  1. Listening to what someone says without adding or taking anything away.
  2. Listening without interruption in a dialogue or debate
  3. Listening without judgment or without judging a book by its cover (an essay by it's limited words, a book by one chapter, a student by one comment, a teacher by one conflict)
  4. Listening for what's below rather than what's wrong
  5. Listening for questions not answers to find your own answers.
Pick any one to practice in any class session and you'll see a difference. What you get will not be the same as your neighbor. It's your listening, not theirs and not the teacher's that matters. This is the difference between hearing and listening and I can say more about that. read more...

COME LISTEN!: Kyra Gaunt-Palmer will be voicing off on students-as-adults and higher resignation at 2pm on Aug 3rd at the 92nd St Y in NYC / #140EDU

 

Brooklyn's in the House: The Festival of the New Black Imagination

Jimandkyrajuly4th

 

Hi all! The new Mrs. Gaunt-Palmer here. Fashion & portraiture photographer Stephen Gilbert captured a photo of me and hubbie Jim Palmer on Independence Day downtown in my new home of Nashville (see attached). Since I am talking art and imagination, I thought it was a great pic to include with this post. 

My friend and Twitter buddy Rob Fields (@robfields) is author of the blog Boldaslove.us and he is the voice for black rock music and audiences on and off-line. (Check out his “6 Things To Know About The Black Rock Audience.”) Rob, along with the Black Rock Coalition, is curating a major inaugural event in Brooklyn this October.  The event is called the The Festival of the New Black Imagination. An event of this kind has never been done before. #nokidding. 

REFLECTIONS OF A BLACK TED FELLOW
Last year, as part of being a TED Fellow, I had the sheer delight of taking a field trip with about 20 other fellows to Jay Walker's Library of the Human Imagination. I marvelled as the first thing I discovered was the negatives for the first flight to the moon right below the radio transcript of JFK's assasination. Jay reminded me that JFK was the one who declared we would go to the moon before the technology even existed. His library has all kinds of Escher like connections like this. But as I look back, there was very little that was obvious at-first-glance, that represented African American achievement or cultural imagination. I did see an amazing set of photographs of African tribes by Nazi photographer Leni Riefenstahl, whom I had never heard of before. 

In hindsight, I am now left with the question: How do most people in the TED community, the real movers and shakers, actually learn about the black imagination and innovation, alongside all these other libraries and museums, when the ways most in the U.S, at least, have been trained formally and even informally suggests that black imagination is not represented on par with say "dominant" and/or "mainstream" forms of cultural production, even at TED. I have noticed, and this is a black woman noticing what I am about to share with all the incumbent biases involved, though I think I am pretty "enlightened." (Hmm...funny way to say that given the context of race--the unsaid but communicated strikes again). What I have noticed is that Africa and Africans have more of a novel appeal than African America or black folks from the U.S. in most of these social innovation contexts. That's just what seems to be from my not-the-whole-picture perspective. My view is not the truth but it is a valid perspective from a "broad-minded," "outside-the-box" thinker and doer. I am as a scholar-teacher, student of life, and an African American artist and TED fellow. 

What I can count on at 99% of social innovation events I attend is that the one or two African Americans on stage will be dancing, singing or reciting a poem or that they are an artist of some kind. Rarely do other kinds of thought leaders dominate the minor representation concerning  imagination, intellect or other. #justsayin. So, The Festival of New Black Imagination is a really important event I'd like to invite TEDsters to participate in.

STARTING FROM BROOKLYN
Brooklyn is the epicenter of a cultural movement that drives almost everything that’s exciting in black global, convention-defying art, music, theater, literature, film, and game-changing social innovation.

Rob wanted to bring together, in a TED-like fashion, the forward-thinkers in Black arts, culture and society to explore new possibilities, new meanings, and new directions through performance, lectures, and conversation. The goal is to celebrate those who are driving 21st century urban culture and inspire and empower those who may not be as familiar with us at all. 

KICKOFF/FUNDRAISER
The kickoff "Creating A Revolutionary Aesthetic" is sponsored by Soul of Brooklyn this Tuesday, July 12 at 7pm. It takes place at Brooklyn's Mocada. Suggested $10 donation. The Festival is conceived as a space for provocative and inspiring discussion on what’s new and next from progressive black culture and how we can use this great energy to expand notions of black authenticity for the 21st century.

"Revolutionary" here is meant more in the sense of a turn of history's wheel, and a new understanding of our circumstances, than as an overthrow. We hear from three thought-leaders about what they think the next revolutionary aesthetic will be; who is creating it; and how blackness shapes and relates to it.  The panel includes:

THE BIG EVENT IS:

Saturday, October 15, 2011.

Where

Littlefield (littlefieldnyc.com) for the concert 
Long Island University (Brooklyn campus) for the symposium

Components

To start, the Festival is conceived as a daylong program that will include:

A symposium during the day comprised of panels and up-to-the-minute talks. Confirmed participants include: 
  • Greg Tate, journalist, cultural critic, co-founder of the Black Rock Coaltion, and bandleader 
  • Farai Chideya, award-winning multimedia journalist and author
  • Renee Cox, celebrated photographer
  • Howard Duffy, architect, designer and Principal, HTD Studio
  • Nona Hendryx, music icon
  • Dr. Nat Irvin II, noted futurist and professor at University of Louisville College of Business
  • Tyehimba Jess, award-winning poet
  • Tamar-kali, singer/songwriter, hardcore warrior soul goddess
  • Vernon Reid, Grammy Award-winning guitarist of Living Colour, and
  • Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, Ph.D., ethnomusicologist, edupreneur, singer-songwriter and inaugural TED Fellow

Later that same day, there will be an evening concert featuring artists, such as: 

  • Tamar-Kali (confirmed)
  • Imani Uzuri (confirmed) and more.

Fiscal Sponsor

The Festival of the New Black Imagination is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

Contact

Rob Fields | Boldaslove.us
917.687.0704 | rafields@gmail.com | Twitter @robfields
 

Introducing my new blog on Wordpress...New post on Sir August Wilson
Wilsonbanner

I decided to move my blog from posterous to wordpress. But I am keeping them all active for now. 

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” - August Wilson

I just finished being the mistress of ceremonies for the National Black Writers Conference Biannual Symposium honoring the work & life of August Wilson. My dear friend and author Jim Palmer of Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God likened my writing in this post to the McNeil-Lehrer Report. "Your writing provides substance" on racism, learning and more. What a compliment to me and my writing. Jim and I have a mutual admiration club. In any case, I hope you enjoy the latest post!

SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEW BLOG
Please follow my wordpress blog and share it with those interested in how I voice the unspoken through song, scholarship and social media about racism, gender, generation and transforming students in higher education to student-as-adult. I am looking for my tribe!! I found my element.

My element involves two things:
  1. To transition out of academia come May into a new kind of thought leadership for higher education (damn! I lost my intro to TED-ED and just now remembered that I still need to do that! SMH). This includes a major move.
  2. To share my voice with those who look forward to what I have to say (thank Jim!!). I will be blogging regularly from now on.
I'll close by saying some amazing changes happened and are happening in my life. I created a countdown to my release date on all this. 3 days, 9 hours, and 29 minutes. I will announce the details of all that is happening on Friday 'cause I'll be wrapped up in the new development til then. lol

Peace, Kyra

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To Posterous, Love Metalab