Goodbye and Thank You

This is our final offering of THIS WEEK IN RACE. After more than three years and 165 offerings, we say farewell for now and urge our readers to continue to be meaningfully engaged in issues that reside at the intersection of race, politics and language.

Others Have Stepped Up

Partly because we have never taken advertising in this space and partly because of our interest in collaboration and solidarity with those who share a vision of a more racially just nation and world, we have never been interested in "competing" with any of the other bloggers. To the contrary, we try to promote others in as many ways as we can. Many of of our colleagues write daily or several times a day, and almost all of them have significantly more readers than we do. We have always told ourselves (and each other) that if only one person was positively affected by the work that we did here each week, it was worth it. We still feel that way, but there are so many other places where folks can learn about the complexities of these issues that we do not feel as if we are letting our readers down by bowing out now.

Filling Gaps

Scholarship is all about filling "gaps." Researchers and theorists build off one another's work to push forward the state of knowledge. Accordingly, we started this blog to fill a gap. Those of you who have been with us from the beginning will recall that we used to strive to incorporate the major stories that happened each week so that our readers were aware of what was going on with respect to issues of race and politics. That is something that we feel as if we still do well, but our Facebook Page and Twitter feed serve that purpose today. When Barack Obama emerged as a contender for the presidency in 2007, there was a noticeable spike in online content about race and politics. It is more important than ever to have that compiled in one location so folks know where to turn. In this way, the RaceProject is still unique and valuable, but shifts in the way folks get information have led us to fill this gap in other ways.

The other major purpose of TWIR was to apply scholarship in academic areas as diverse as communication, sociology, anthropology, political science and psychology to current events. While there may not be a precise substitution for that, there are a number of scholars who are making research relevant to folks who are interested in issues of racial justice. We will keep the Resources page of our website up-to-date, and we will continue to update the blogroll on the right-hand column of this space. It is worth noting that when we began writing here in September of 2006 -- five years after the founding of the RaceProject -- there were very few scholars who had blogs, very few blogs about race relations, and almost no Internet writing that featured a combination of both -- certainly not on a regular basis. As we approach 2010, the landscape has changed significantly. There are thoughtful folks -- many of them academics -- who are able to offer thoughtful, informed analysis in a timely fashion. By the time the end of the week rolls around, we are finding that there is not much more that we could add without sacrificing quality (which we are not willing to do). In short, there is not really a need for what we do here on a weekly basis.

We will continue to do what others do not. For instance, we will continue to provide guides to some of the major academic conferences so folks interested in these issues can navigate those meetings. When appropriate, we will write about what others do not, cannot or will not. We will publish here and/or in our space at Op-Ed News, and Charlton will continue to write for theGrio.

Time Crunch

Finally, the reality is that for well over a year, writing this entry each week has been a bit of a burden for us. We enjoy sharing our thoughts, and each note we get from appreciative teachers, students and folks from all sorts of places have helped to propel us along. For that reason, we are a bit sad about saying goodbye. But we spent a good bit of time together in Chicago this weekend thinking and talking about this, and we decided that, even if it does not seem that way now, our contribution to the broader conversation is better served with this decision.

We have our hands full with our traditional scholarly responsibilities, and while we are both tenured, we have professional obligations that must be (and should be) addressed with our full attention. We have a co-edited textbook to finish in the next few months, and we are putting the finishing touches on Race Appeal, the first book from the RaceProject, which will be published next year by Temple University Press. We are both teaching full time, of course, and the Facebook page and Twitter feed have created additional demands for our attention. We very much want (and expect) to finish the compilation of our congressional election database -- the most comprehensive of its kind to be made publicly available -- by 2011 (the 10th anniversary of the RaceProject), and we expect that the requests for us to speak at colleges and universities across the country will increase in the next twelve months with the 2010 election season and the emergence of Race Appeal.

With only 24 hours in the day, we are very concerned about making sure that we are attentive to our families, too -- a concern that increases with each new element of the RaceProject.

This Ain't a Retirement!

We will continue to keep this blog active so that the archives are available and that there is a place for us to write on occasion when we feel that there is a gap that needs to be filled. We will change the name to THIS SPACE FOR RACE, and we will continue to host This GUEST on Race.

We encourage you to stay connected with us by becoming a fan on Facebook and/or following us on Twitter. If you do not use either of those, you can subscribe to the content that goes out on Facebook and Twitter by clicking here and adding us to your favorite RSS reader. Please follow our Twitter friends, fan the Facebook pages that we have "favorited," and visit to the blogs that we list here and on our website. Look for our books next year, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like us to come to speak at your high school, college or university.

We are not disappearing; to the contrary, we may be more visible than ever. It is just that the evolution of online communities and the proliferation of thoughtful discussion about these issues have rendered this space a less valuable place for us to appear regularly.

Thank You

Thank you all so very much for the loving support, which includes your honest and challenging criticism, over the years. Thanks for sharing this blog with your friends, colleagues and family. Thanks for leaving thoughtful comments. Thank you for the re-tweets and for re-posting to your Facebook wall. Thank you for the "attaboy" emails and for the tough questions that forced us to work harder. We wish you all the best and hope to see you soon in these other spaces.

What the %@#& Do We Know?

Few folks feel confident enough to substantively question the writing of scholars in the natural sciences or even, to a certain extent, in the humanities. But in the social sciences -- particularly in those areas related to government -- there seems to be less of a sense of deference to scholars' offerings. In a number of ways, that's healthy because it allows folks without formal training (many of whom have not had the opportunity to get formal training) to weigh in on some of the most important problems of our times. It causes us to wonder aloud sometimes, though, what the %@#& do we know, anyway, and why does it matter?

Particularly in the age of the Internet, it is possible for interested persons to do "research" on a number of topics and feel that they are informed. The cycle can be vicious, though, as the information that is available is not always credible, though much of it sounds quite authoritative. Combine this with the conscious and deliberate attack on intellectualism in academia from conservatives who worry that young adults are being indoctrinated by liberal professors, and we are left with a situation where much of the information relating to politics and society appears to be quite similar.

This blog, for instance, gets about 400 hits a week. There are others who read THIS WEEK via RSS, email, etc., but even so, it's a pretty small audience overall. Each week, we try to apply (sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly) scholarly principles to current events so that our readers see clearly the ways that social scientists (at least two of us, anyway) "read" these issues. We are rarely sensationalistic, almost never call anyone names (remember: the scholarly use of the term "racist" is not an attack, but rather a truism; we use it as an adjective rather than a noun), and, as a consequence, we have a rather limited reach.

In short, we are pretty boring by the standards of more visible media sources (both new and traditional). So why are you reading this? What the %@#& do you know?!

We hope that you read us each week because you value the unique contribution that scholarship makes to public discourse (not just our scholarship -- all scholarship). We know that many of you are academics, but many of you are not. If you are not, you have come to appreciate what we and other social scientists offer to the discussion of race, language and politics because you realize that there is an important process that is in place that separates our writing from the less formal (though often just as thoughtful) writings of those who are not trained as scholars and do not spend their lives working within that framework.

At the heart of the scholarly process is an understanding of the work of those who have come before us and a commitment to the methods that are accepted as valid in the disciplines within which we work.

Training for a doctorate involves both of those areas. The graduate school years in social science programs are spent reviewing and re-contextualizing previous research and learning the nuances of the various methodologies accepted in the field. The creation of new knowledge centers on the double-blind peer review process in which all scholarly publications are subject to anonymous review by other scholars (who are familiar with the history and methodology in the specific area of inquiry) who determine if the work is worthy of publication in a scholarly journal or as a book. This process takes several years from the initiation of research until publication.

So it is disturbing to hear someone like Michele Malkin (left), who has millions of readers each week (as compared to the handful that we have) state proudly on The View THIS WEEK (watch here or below) that she spent six months writing her latest book about corruption in the Obama Administration. Six whole months! From the perspective of an academic, whether we agree or disagree with the "findings," it is quite suspect to rely on any evidence so hastily put together and screened only for its ability to make money (rather than any external intellectual standards). But in the free market, Malkin (who has no advanced formal academic training) is considered to be an "expert" on politics (she was a round table guest on This Week with George Stephanopoulos last week as she promoted her book).



Sour grapes? Sure. We cannot assume that is not part of our frustration, but it is not about Malkin, Beck, O'Reilly and others simply being more wealthy than we are. Most academics certainly have the talent and opportunities to enter professions where we would make more money. It is more about the frustration of being exposed to (and subsequently internalizing) the idea that information is more valid when it is held to scientific standards and practices. That is, something published in an academic journal or from a university press is a "better" source than something published in The New York Times, which (because it has editorial oversight) is better than something published on someone's blog.

For instance, a blogger named budwhite called Frank Rich and others who, like us, believed that there should be a teachable moment in the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. incident "racial hucksters." (We argued that there should be but would not be.) The commenters (and he has a lot more than we have each week!) tended to agree with him, even though there was no evidence that he applied scholarly principles to his opinion. Budwhite has a compelling story (World War II vet, retired LA police officer, starting law school in the fall) that (we feel) provides him with important perspective with which to offer his opinion. While we disagree strongly with his position on this issue, it brings to mind an important question about formal education versus life experience. Both are valuable, but in what ways? Under what circumstances? Do budwhite's life experiences make him equally qualified to comment on race as folks like us, who have earned doctoral degrees in related fields and who have published and spoken widely on the issue? Are we, in turn, as qualified as he is to speak on the nuances of police action? Is President Obama (when he claimed -- and we agreed -- that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" when they arrested Professor Gates)?

How do we weigh the value of such differing perspectives? As college-level instructors, we expect students to understand that there is a difference between writing by academics and non-academics -- no matter how "smart" the latter are. But it is not as simple as reviewing the qualifications of the author(s). Academics are are also human, we are citizens, and we have a right to advance our own personal agendas, as well. Some of us do so in our own social network posts. Sometimes we make a serious effort to adhere to academic principles in these spaces (as we do); sometimes we do not. That is, sometimes we just wear our "citizen" hats. But we believe that, like a boxer who is not permitted to get into a bar brawl, academics should always remain committed to engaging in dialogue that enhances democracy. In other words, though no one can never be wholly "objective," academics have a responsibility to strive for objectivity by holding firm to the process that separates what we do from what those not trained as social scientists do. Being objective is not the same as being neutral, however; that is a distinction that folks need to recognize.

So we take the time THIS WEEK to reflect, but also to ask you: What the %@#& do we know?! If you are an academic, what do you know? If you are not, why do you read our stuff (and/or other blogs by academics)? Do you read scholarly journals and books, too? Why (or why not)?

It will come as little surprise to you that it takes us between three and five hours each week to put this offering together. Over three years, that is a significant time commitment, particularly when you consider that it has virtually no positive effect on our prospects for promotion. If we spent that time engaging in traditional academic pursuits, we might have an additional peer-reviewed article or two, or our books would be further along. We spend this time because we are committed to making the scholarship about race, politics and language accessible and relevant to our readers. We do it to (hopefully) serve as a model of what thoughtful dialogue can look like in the blogosphere. (For more about why we do this, see our last foray into blogger existentialism, "Defining Our Role," from last September.)

We're not going to stop. We know from your feedback that you are out there and that you appreciate our perspective (even when you disagree). But we know that we could exponentially increase our reach if we were to be more controversial. We also know, however, that you do not want that. Earlier in the week, we posted a link to a very disturbing bigoted web site on the RaceProject Facebook page, and some of our "fans" expressed concern -- not over the content of the site (it is expected that such garbage exists), but because they felt it was beneath what we do to engage with such mindless drivel. While we made a case for occasionally posting such material, we appreciate the sentiment behind the complaints. Folks were saying that they are attentive to the RaceProject because what we do is different than much of the other commentary out there. That has been our goal since we started the Project in 2001. Happily, it seems that you feel that (for the most part) we are doing it correctly.

But hey, what the %@#& do you know?!