He greeted me again that way today, and we chatted a few moments online, and I taught him what “ttyl” means (talk to you later), and I remain baffled by our different (and yes, classed) communication styles.

Another note: our ten year class reunion is this summer. I’m not sure if I’ll make it to Iowa for that — depends on when it is and how it conflicts with my schedule here. I’m kinda interested in going actually, unlike my five year, which I dreaded (even though I planned it as class president).

As I listened to NPR this morning, I heard Representative Lewis’s acceptance speech, where he talked about Obama’s win, rather than his own, and Jesse Jackson’s reaction as well. I teared up a little, thinking about how monumental this election is being seen as. I wonder what the effects will be. I think it’s a healing election in some ways, but I also wonder whether it will mask over racism in this country. A proposition banning affirmative action passed in Nebraska.

I was happy to see that the bill defining life as beginning at conception failed in Colorado, and that the bill requiring minors to get parental consent will probably fail in California. It is good to see that the country isn’t getting as conservative as I sometimes fear.

However, a few states banned gay marriage, and it looks like California might be among them. It’s still too early to tell, but it looks like Proposition 8 might pass.

I’m worried about the confluence of these events: homophobic propositions passing while the country elects a black man. I’m worried because I am worried with how this will be read by mainstream white gay and lesbian activism, which has already, for decades, said that homophobia and heterosexism is the last great oppression, which ignores the continued racism, sexism, classism, and ableism in this country. That someone could claim that gays are the last oppressed class seems ridiculous given the feminization of poverty in this country, the constant assault on a woman’s right to choose, the subtle racism faced by non-white folk, the many ways in which able-bodiedness is made normal, invisible, and a qualification for participation in so many arenas.

It will be interesting to see the effects of this election as the years unfold. I’m happy to have the hoopla behind us after two long years of campaigns.

John McCain’s concession speech was actually quite good, I thought.

Some important passages:

“[W]hile are students are more or less eager to talk about matters of race or nation or gender or religion, or at least resigned to do so, they are baffled by, or resistant to, talking about class” (211-212).

“I would wager that it [a teacher's sexual orientation] has everything to do with how one teachers: In the classroom, one chooses to pass or not; to name or not name homosexuality when it is in a text or a biography; to ignore or affirm those students who in any way fall outside the narrow definitions of what is ‘normal’ in American culture; to challenge or accept students’ assumptions about ubiquitous and compulsory heterosexuality; to push or not push students to ‘see the familiar in new ways’” (221, quoting Bérubé).

“Undergraduates’s [sic] empathy develops most readily, in my experience, when a text makes visible differences, such as race or nationality, invisible” (222, emphasis Shepard’s).

Shepard, Alan. “Teaching ‘The Renaissance’: Queer Consciousness and Class Dysphoria.” Coming to Class: Pedagogy and the Social Class of Teachers. Ed. Alan Shepard, John McMillan, and Gary Tate. Potsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998. 209-230.

Nowhere is it [the class divide] more apparent than in higher education. This is the realm of the priviledged. For those of us who come from working-class families and who manage to make it into college and who, by some miracle or unnatural act, actually make it into graduate school, the university systems of the United States are filled with the perils of trying to fit in, trying to blend, trying to not be noticed for the interlopers we are. We’re not supposed to be here. Not only do our classmates not understand us and make snide remarks regarding the working class (or even worse, those who have been homeless or who are unemployed), but faculty rarely understand the pressures that accompany a non-traditional student and the struggles that go along with trying to beat the odds to be a part of the academy.

This rang pretty true to me. I’m not so non-traditional, but there have definitely been times where I felt so out of place because I didn’t get the “code” of how to behave or what to say in academic social settings. Dawn says she’ll write more, and I hope she does.

I just visited my family in Iowa on my way to Pennsylvania. I don’t feel that close to many of them, and the whole educational disparity becomes pretty clear to me. My grandfather is concerned that I’ll educate myself out of a job, and no one is really interested in what I’ll be doing as an academic. The world of the university is so foreign to my family that my dad thought I would be teaching all my classes in the same classroom (as an instructor) instead of walking around campus. This is an iceberg tip. I kind of want to come back to this later.