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Patrick Seaworth - Ohio State University

The Selective, Subjective Studies of a Sociology Professor

by Patrick Seaworth - Ohio State University on April 23, 2013

That you’ve never heard about how President Barack Obama represented a slumlord who evicted poor people in the dead of winter from low-income housing in Chicago during his stint as a “civil rights” lawyer in Chicago in the 1990s is understandable; that morsel from Obama’s past only surfaced in news reports last summer.

But how does that story escape the attention of a sociology professor from Northwestern University whose primary focus for a decade was the study of race, class and gentrification in America – and in particular – within the city of Chicago?

Professor Mary Pattillo’s recent hour-long presentation at Ohio State University was titled “Race, Class and Gentrification in America,” during which she talked a lot about the Chicago-based North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood, “a predominantly black area that was one of the poorest in the city in the 1980s, but now is a place with million dollar homes, a new park, and an upscale coffee shop,” the university’s website stated in advertising the guest lecture.

“Why do some neighborhoods go from being ignored and starved of resources to being ‘prime real estate’ and the targets of redevelopment,” organizers asked in touting her visit.

As Pattillo gave her speech at Ohio State’s African-American Community Extension Center, presenting her decade-long study of gentrification – the purported process of relocating poor (read minority) tenants out of low-income housing, to the benefit of (you guessed it) wealthy, white developers – she never mentioned our president’s name, that great civil rights lawyer, nor the various slumlord developers he represented as a lawyer in Chicago against the interest of these very people she claimed are being taking advantage of by wealthy whites, who by the way are also racially motivated.

Her speech was based on her 2008 book titled Black on the Block, described on Amazon as the exploration of “the often heated battles between haves and have-nots, home owners and apartment dwellers, and newcomers and old-timers as they clash over the social implications of gentrification.”

“Along the way, Pattillo highlights the conflicted but crucial role that middle-class blacks play in transforming such districts as they negotiate between established centers of white economic and political power and the needs of their less fortunate black neighbors.”

That’s one way of looking at it. But after her lecture, Pattillo was asked point blank by The College Fix about Obama’s tenure in Chicago as a slumlord defender. Nope, sorry. She said she hadn’t heard that one.

In particular, Pattillo also said she hadn’t heard of one Chicago case, that of Bishop Arthur Brazier, a Chicago political force and preacher, a Man of God, a black man, who in the mid-1990s evicted his tenants during winter temperatures that dropped below zero, and who was defended by our President, Barack Obama.

In his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father, Obama recalls this time a bit differently. He was a “civil rights lawyer … to lend meaning to a community suffering and (to) take part in its healing.” According to the Washington Examiner, however, most of Obama’s clients from this time “were in real estate, construction and finance.”

Which brings us back to gentrification.

In 1994, Obama chaired the defense of Bishop Brazier, described by some as a South Chicago Slumlord.

“Brazier’s… had failed for nearly a month to supply heat and running water for the complex’s 15 crumbling apartments,” reported the Washington Examiner last September. “On Jan. 18, 1994, the day the heat went off, Chicago’s official high temperature was 11 below zero, the day after it was 19 below. Even worse, the residents were then ordered to leave the WPIC complex in the winter chill without the due process they would have been afforded by an eviction procedure.”

Even Chicago’s city government was upset by this (which is saying something), explicating: “The levying of a fine is not an adequate remedy.”

But our president was so adept at his defense, that Bishop Brazier paid only a $50 fine. This property then became a profitable real estate venture for profit-driven men.

The story represents the typical horror portrait painted by individuals who claim these crimes are committed only by white men. Yet it wasn’t white people that evicted these poor families, it was a black man, defended by a black lawyer.

Now, this perception of racist gentrification is so well covered within Chicago, it even makes an appearance in the lyrics of Patrick Stump’s “This City” – a popular pop song describing the artist’s love for Chicago:

“Sorry my brother can’t let you in, ‘cause the property value might go down to a level that’s economically unacceptable, and socially taboo for us to live around you… Actually mine’s just a fair education and gentrification, despite all the above, I love my city.”

This is to say, the youth of Chicago grow up with the ingrained belief that wealthy white developers wish to move them out of low-income housing, so that whites can live there cheaply, by stealing their property, with complete disregard for individuals of different skin tones.

Yet, the very lead of this discussion within Chicago itself, a distinguished Northwestern professor – the Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies – said she could not recall any of our president’s time as a lawyer representing these wealthy developers.  Nor even recall this case, although she said she does know of Bishop Brazier.

A curious condition, given this is the region in which Pattillo lectures, and has spent most of her adult life combing through decades of these horrendous acts of racially motivated victimization.

The point here being, that if one is so concerned with the belief that individuals of certain skin tones are being evicted in order to make room for wealthy individuals of a different skin tone, we, as students, can rightly demand that the speaker holds all parties accountable for these racist acts, or that she begin to view her work from a new mindset, and not the one that furthered her agenda, here at the cost of the OSU student.

Perhaps that is asking too much of the academic left, and expecting too much as to where and upon whom our tuition and fees are spent.

Fix contributor Patrick Seaworth is a student at Ohio State University.

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Required Reading: Campus Bookstore Spin Uncovers Leftist Bias

by Patrick Seaworth - Ohio State University on January 28, 2013

Beyond classroom lectures and homework assignments, what professors assign as required reading is a clear indication of how they slant their classes.

With that, The College Fix presents the results of recent visits to two campus bookstores associated with Ohio State, a quintessential example of the modern-day public university. Each book listed below correlates to a course this spring at Ohio State:

In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age

Its online book description notes it “offers a ringing rebuttal to the rhetoric of ‘family values’ … including a strong new case for legal same-sex marriage.” A review declares the book acknowledges “concerns about the disintegration of the traditional family, while attacking the efforts of right-wing conservatives to reinstate the family of the 1950s through fear and advocacy of male dominance. Using studies of blue-collar, low-income families, single-mothers and gay and lesbian households, (it) illustrates that far from being examples of failure or despair, these families are models of ingenuity and flexibility.”

The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy

Its online book description says it recalls the “shocking redistribution of wealth that’s occurred during the last thirty years,” then states “but economic changes like this don’t occur in a vacuum; they’re always linked to politics.” Who’s to blame? The book points the finger at neoliberals, loosely defined as a negative term for those who support economic and political policies that tout the benefits of free market systems.

Racist America: Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations

Need we say more?

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

Well-written expose on Big Oil. Spoiler Alert: They’re the bad guys who pull the strings.

What a Girl Wants? Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism

Here’s a snippet from its introduction: “What a Girl Wants? is about a popular culture that has just about forgotten feminism … To the extent that she is visible at all, the contemporary feminist appears as a narcissistic minority group member whose interests and actions threaten the family.” Postfeminism, the antithesis of the “shrill” feminist, is the solution this book proffers.

Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality

The haves and the have nots. It usually involves a guilt trip.

GenderSpeak: Personal Effectiveness in Gender Communication

Secular views on what makes a relationship solid and successful.

Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women

The true story of Nevada prostitutes and their plight.

The History of Sexuality: Volumes I, II and III

Written by the late French philosopher and social theorist Michael Foucault, the books focus on the history of modern sexuality, and where and how it was derived. Special attention is given in parts to the ancient Greek’s obsession with man-boy love. Another section observes “if one wanted to assign an origin to those few great themes that shaped our sexual morality (the idea that pleasure belongs to the dangerous domain of evil, the obligation to practice monogamous fidelity, the exclusion of partners of the same sex), (it would) be a mistake to attribute them to that fiction called “Judeo-Christian” morality … (but rather) a history of “ethics” understood as the elaboration of a form of relation to self that enables an individual to fashion himself into a subject of ethical conduct.”

Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers

The online book description notes after oodles of research and interviews, the author concludes “religion may influence adolescent sexual behavior, but it rarely motivates sexual decision making.”

Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice

The book is written “against the backdrop of the … radical right agendas,” its online description notes, adding the work attempts to explain why so-called women of color supposedly want and need reproductive rights (a.k.a abortion on demand). “The book details how and why these women have defined and implemented expansive reproductive health agendas that reject legalistic remedies and seek instead to address the wider needs of their communities,” the book description states.

A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory

The book provides “a detailed overview of the complex ways in which queer theory has been employed, covering a diversity of key topics including: race, sadomasochism, straight sex, fetishism, community, popular culture, transgender, and performativity.”

Other titles found on the shelves included: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; Memoir of a Race Traitor; The Psychology of Prejudice; Intimate Relationships; and many others along those lines.

Fix contributor Patrick Seaworth is a student at Ohio State University. Assistant Editor Jennifer Kabbany contributed to this report.

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How My German II Class Devolved Into ‘Dinner For Schmucks’

by Patrick Seaworth - Ohio State University on January 3, 2013

When I enrolled in German II at Ohio State University in the fall, I expected to learn the intermediate measures of the German language. As it turns out, that was hoping for too much.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The class delved into instruction now and again, but it quickly became apparent I was the lone conservative in a classroom in which learning German took a backseat to discussions on the prowess of Barack Obama, American narcissism, the virtues of socialism, the sad plight of Chicago’s teachers, and why the U.S. military is the reason the American education system is broken, just to name a few tangents I endured over the fall semester.

I made the early mistake of participating in a classroom discussion on the Chicago teachers union protests shortly after the course launched. I pointed out to my esteemed professor – who felt compelled to defend the poor, embattled Chicago Teaches Union instead of focusing on teaching us how to conjugate verbs in German – that the average teacher in Chicago makes more than $80,000 a year. My professor reminded me that was just the average. So I reminded her the average taxpayer with a college degree makes roughly $48,000. It was all downhill from there.

In another example of a classroom lecture way off the beaten path, my medically based opposition to veganism as a broadly prescribed diet for the American public led to a peer asking me: “What, did a vegan pee in your coffee?” Where veganism fits within the German II syllabus I still have yet to ascertain. 

As an aside, as the son of two Air Force veterans, I felt compelled to inform that same classmate that her zealous belief that the cost of one F-22 Raptor could fix the entire education system was something drawn from a leftwing fairytale.

But the professor, far from discouraging this manner of conversation for the sake of an education in German, prodded these classroom digressions on. She even came up with plenty of her own.

Keep in mind much of this course unfolded during the height of the presidential election season, so perhaps it’s no surprise that at one point our professor asked us to compare our intelligence to that of President Obama. Yes, you read that correctly. Our educator made it a habit of seeking to reinforce the infallibility of our Commander in Chief’s wide-ranging vision for America.

For a bit of extra fun, we were asked to compare the intelligence of George W. Bush with Angela Merkel’s. To our professor’s credit, we were asked to do so in German.

Tax rates were another hot topic of discussion. Not so much that the German citizen faces incredibly high tax rates, but rather that Germany’s high tax rate allows for an orderly state, the kind of order that places young children into differing schools based on perceived capability. Taxation that gives free healthcare, welcomed by a collective refrain along the lines of: “If only we had a freer President to give us free healthcare.” Germany, a country that “actually does something with their tax dollars” in the words of one classmate.

Obama’s sound bite during the third presidential debate about horses and bayonets allowed for yet more American criticism in German II. The German state, that peaceful nation, was applauded for being a country in which the flying of its national flag is still taboo. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden’s laughing fits during his debate made him my professor’s new favorite politician, as she informed us the next day.

To be fair, German II is not only meant to teach students how to engage in lengthy discussions in the foreign language, but it also aims to teach “cultural knowledge for effective communication,” according to the university’s course description.

As such, Germans were praised not just for their high taxes, their highly structured state, and their oh-so-rich history (Nazism was largely avoided), but also for their advanced civil culture, which includes a hatred of what we in America would refer to as patriotism, which they see as simple-minded jingoism.

We were taught the German state is not yet perfect, though. They have yet to remove their broadly evident racism toward Turkish workers who, invited in following the conclusion of World War II to aide in the rebuilding effort, have yet to leave Germany. 

Now whether or not the average German hates the values of the American Right is something that would be difficult for me to ascertain, as asking that question would require the use of the entire semester on a topic the course was intended to cover, rather than the “Dinner for Schmucks” I attended four times per week.

Fix contributor Patrick Seaworth is a student at Ohio State University.

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Professor: Ignoring Global Warming Akin to Manslaughter

by Patrick Seaworth - Ohio State University on December 6, 2012

A prominent UC Berkeley professor recently linked ignoring global warming with watching people die during a guest seminar at Ohio State University.

Citing monsoons and other extreme weather phenomenon on the other side of the globe, Kirk Smith, a global environmental health professor, said climate change is “a moral issue.”

Smith told an anecdote to the audience of a professor who ignores a drowning child on campus as he rushes to teach a class. He then tells his students about ignoring the child, and they are aghast. Later at home, the hypothetical professor opens his mail and throws away a letter from the United Nation’s Children Fund.

“No one thinks that is immoral, and why not,” Smith said of throwing away the UNICEF letter.  “What’s the moral distinction? … Today climate change is a sin of omission.”

What’s more, Smith argued, those who ignore global warming and climate change are not just guilty of a sin of omission, they’re also teetering on the verge of a sin of commission.

“Every time I come back from a site in the Third World, and a $16 pizza would feed a family in Guatemala for an entire month … we’re not going and shooting kids in the head, but we are moving in the distinction a bit to the commission side,” he said.

A sin of commission is, generally and secularly speaking, purposely doing something wrong, while a sin of omission is considered standing on the sidelines and not doing something that’s right.

“There is this connection to the land, the land is a very broad, shared thing,” he said.

Smith is a highly decorated professor who “serves on a number of national and international scientific advisory committees, including the Global Energy Assessment, National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, the Executive Committee for WHO Air Quality Guidelines, and the International Comparative Risk Assessment,” according to a biography posted on his website.

Smith’s Ohio State seminar Nov. 16 was titled “Global Warming, Public Health, and Human Futures; Thoughts on Scheffler’s ‘Afterlife’ Thesis.”

Samuel Scheffler, a philosophy professor at New York University, has penned books such as “The Rejection of Consequentialism” and “Human Morality,” and is currently giving a series of lectures around the globe titled “The Afterlife.”

“(Scheffler) argues that, in spite of evidence that people disregard the future beyond themselves … there is even more powerful evidence that we actually act in ways showing that we regard a continuing human future as more important than even our own personal survival or anything else in the present,” Ohio State University’s website states in announcing Smith’s visit.

During Smith’s seminar, hosted by Ohio State’s Center for Historical Research program in health, disease, and environment in world history, the UC Berkeley professor said that something’s got to give for the planet and humanity to survive.

Citing the 2011 Fukushima, Japan, nuclear disaster for context, Smith said that “in our hubris as modern humans, we think we can control anything with engineering.”

Clearly, we can’t, Smith argued.

“I think this energy transition has to happen, because there are too many potentially catastrophic events of the things that we are relying on to run and to keep these seven billion people thriving, at least in keeping our Western Industrial Complex going,” Smith said. “We are exploiting resources that are not in our best interest, nor in the best interest of the future after we’re gone.”

Fix contributor Patrick Seaworth is a student at Ohio State University.

IMAGE: Morak Faxe/Flickr

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Halloween Costumes Create Stigma, University Campaign Argues

by Patrick Seaworth - Ohio State University on October 31, 2012

Better think twice before you dress up tonight for Halloween as a belly dancer, nerd, gangster or other caricature – underneath the costume you might be a shallow, ignorant college student perpetuating a stereotype.

That’s essentially the message behind an Ohio State University student group’s annual Halloween poster campaign called “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume.” For the second consecutive year, the group, which calls itself Students Teaching About Racism in Society, or STARS, has advertised its message to peers locally and nationally to inform them that a little fun with their holiday get-up is probably misguided and possibly racist.

One of the student leader’s only regrets, she noted in an email to The College Fix, is that the group is too small to really tackle all of the stereotypes perpetuated each year. Chairwoman Laura Hyde said she would like to expand the group’s poster campaign in the future to include more costumes than this year’s eleven.

STARS “focuses on race, but we do strive to be inclusive and discuss other forms of oppression as well,” she said, adding that’s why the group included an “Appalachian stereotype” this year. “We believe that this is not addressing a group that is marginalized by their race necessarily, but by class and dialect.”

The 10 other costumes tackled are perhaps best described as: belly dancer, geisha, thug, ancient Egyptian, redneck and the proverbial Asian student, to name a few. Next to someone dressed in such garb, the poster offers an image of a person looking sad and put upon. The posters tout slogans such as “This is not who I am, and this is not okay,” or “You wear the costume for one night, I wear the stigma for life.”

It’s unclear whether STARS would support Ohio University enacting sanctions against students who wear the costumes deemed offensive. Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said that would not be allowed, anyway.

“Universities and student groups are free to encourage people not to wear costumes that other people may find offensive,” he told The College Fix. “They are also free to speak out against costumes they find offensive.  However, a public university like Ohio University is not free to legally mandate inoffensiveness, on Halloween or at any other time.”

And while reaction to the campaign is a mixed bag, the movement is growing. The campaign was picked up at Florida State University this year, and many students supported it, but not everyone did, according to a FSU news article.

International affairs major Gavin Benner, a senior, said he thinks Halloween costumes shouldn’t be taken so seriously and that STARS is being a little too sensitive, the FSU article states.

“These [costumes] are all portrayals which take place in film and television all the time,” Benner said. “There will always be people who are being irresponsible and intentionally offensive, but that is the vast minority. When you take into account that everyone has a freedom to expression, then I believe it isn’t anyone’s place to suppress that.”

But that attitude, and not just a Halloween costume, may get one labeled as a racist, as well.

Consider a recent article on TheRoot.com:

“There’s this sense of ‘I don’t know why people have to make it a big deal,’ ” says Leslie Picca, associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton in Ohio, whose book “Two Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage” examines inconsistencies in the presentation of white racial attitudes, using data gathered from the journals of students recorded across the U.S. Despite living in a heavily racialized society with racial gaps in wealth, health and education, she says, many (especially young people bred to believe they exist in a ‘colorblind’ world) have trouble accepting the serious implications of what they choose to wear for a once-a-year holiday, even when those implications are brought to their attention.”

STARS’ campaign is a public-service announcement aimed at creating a more tolerable student body, and it remains to be seen if it’s a friendly reminder or a slippery slope. Hyde, in her email, noted that “it is certainly a great goal to address ALL problematic Halloween costumes.”

Fix contributor Patrick Seaworth is a student at Ohio State University.

IMAGE: Gaudencio Garcinuño/Flickr

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Obama, Ohio State engaged in a lovefest

by Patrick Seaworth - Ohio State University on October 24, 2012

Ohio State University and President Barack Obama and his re-election campaign have engaged in something of a lovefest this election season, quite noteworthy considering the school enrolls about 57,000 students in a state that has accurately selected the president in the last 12 election cycles.

This fact has not been lost on Obama, who has dropped in on the Columbus campus five times in two years.

Take his March 22 visit to the campus, nestled just a short drive north of the state’s capital building. Obama’s arrival came as Ohio gas prices neared $4 a gallon. Obama stopped in to speak on his green energy initiatives, a topic near and dear to many idealistic college students’ hearts. Only happy to oblige, campus officials shut down the Recreation & Physical Activities Center for his visit.

Their love affair resumed May 5, when Obama touted his re-election campaign in Ohio State’s basketball arena to a mostly adoring audience of cheering crowds. In return, the Obama camp paid the university $75,000 to rent the arena, according to The Lantern, the school’s student newspaper.

Just a few short months later, on Aug. 21, Obama paid a largely impromptu visit to Ohio State’s Student Union. However, Obama’s team was sure to park its army of tour buses – including ones borrowed or rented from Ohio State – along the campus’ east side, lest anyone hadn’t heard of his surprise appearance. The sight of the enormous motorcade prompted one homeless man to remark: “Oh, my God.”

Obama was in town to speak at another nearby university, but he was sure to make an appearance at his perennial favorite (wink, wink).

And let’s not forget it was hard to tell who the rock star was recently when Obama paid a visit to Ohio State accompanied by the popular Black Eyed Peas musician Will. I. Am.

As catchy techno tunes pumped in the background, the super-star artist (Will. I. Am, not Obama) chanted “Four – More, Four More Years!” over and over (ad nauseam). The students echoed the mantra and cheered in return.

The free event earlier this month drew about 15,000 students, faculty members and residents. Tickets were doled out thanks to student promoters who helped publicize and coordinate the campaign stop, prompting their peers to sign up – oh, so conveniently – through Obama’s website, meaning they’d have to give their email address to the campaign.

(After the event, the Obama campaign wasted no time sending a barrage of emails to students who had signed up).

The visit/concert led to some classes being cancelled, as well as temporary hindrances in accessing the university’s library. Roads through campus were blocked off by public transportation buses as well. Meanwhile, the Obama camp paid $200,000, in advance, to cover the costs of the spectacle. Yet two years ago an Obama event on the same grassy campus location, dubbed the Oval, cost Ohio State $80,000 to host, according to a November 2011 Lantern article. It’s unclear if the school was ever reimbursed for that.

In addition to Ohio State students who are big Obama fans, there’s faculty in the mix, too.

A big controversy was sparked in late August after an arts and sciences professor sent out an email urging fellow educators to invite the Obama campaign into their classrooms to help register students to vote in the upcoming election. Even Ohio State provost Joseph Alutto knew that was going too far, stating in an email to faculty that “simply put, partisan political discussions may not be sponsored by (OSU) employees on the OSU campus.”

In a similar vein, recently Senator John Glenn (D), namesake of the Ohio State University’s School of Public Service, was featured in a local commercial endorsing Obama. The school responded via email that Glenn’s endorsement was not one given by the School of Public Service as well. (Yeah, right).

In stark contrast, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has yet to visit Ohio State.

Fix contributor Patrick Seaworth is a student at Ohio State University.

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