Knocking the Hustle

knocking the hustle KNOCKING THE HUSTLE against the neoliberal turn in black politics LESTER K. SPENCE punctum books brooklyn, n.y. KNOCKING THE HUSTLE: AGAINST THE NEOLIBERAL TURN IN BLACK POLITICS © 2015 Lester K. Spence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attri- bute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remix- ing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. Revised edition: April 2016. First published in 2015 by punctum books Brooklyn, New York http://punctumbooks.com punctum books is an independent, open-access publisher dedicated to radically creative modes of intellectual inquiry and writing across a whimsical para-humantities assemblage. We solicit and pimp quixotic, sagely mad engagements with textual thought-bodies. We provide shelters for intellectual vagabonds. ISBN-13: 978–0692540794 ISBN-10: 0692540792 Cover photo: Lester Spence. Facing-page drawing: Heather Masciandaro. Book design: Chris Piuma. Editorial assistance: Bert Fuller and Kristen McCants. Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ http://punctumbooks.com/about/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contributions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our adventure is not possible without your support. Vive la open-access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii FOREWORD xv CHAPTER ONE 1 CHAPTER TWO 27 CHAPTER THREE 53 CHAPTER FOUR 73 CHAPTER FIVE 97 CHAPTER SIX / SOLUTIONS 113 BIBLIOGRAPHY 149 Dedicated to LaVita Wright Liverspoon (1969–2014), to Sam Isbell (1968–2001), and to the Spence Clan (Imani, Kamari, Kiserian, Niara, and Khari) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to my agent Shoshana Crichton for her work. Eileen Joy and the staff at punctum for taking the risk. Tamara K. Nopper for her wonderful editing assistance. The Breakfast Club for the semi-daily affirmation. Abigail Breiseth, Denise Lever, Camilla Seiler, Jay Gillen, and David Jonathan Cross, for thoughtful comments (and to Sam Chambers, Bret Gustafson, Clarissa Hayward, Fredrick Harris, Taeku Lee, Tamara Nopper, Rogers Smith, Steve Teles, and Dorian Warren for comments on the SOULS article this comes out of). The Sons of Blood and Thunder for Manhood, Scholarship, Perseverance, and Uplift (Sam Kirkland, Darius McKinney, Glenn B. Eden, Selvan Man- thiram, Lee Rudolph, Kurmell Knox, and Caurnel Morgan in particular). Hanes Walton, Richard Iton, Nick Nelson, and Stu- art Hall (RIP) for providing examples. The Department of Polit- ical Science and the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hop- kins University for providing a home. The members of Hopkins’ noon basketball game for providing a court. My children and family for providing a reason. The Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, the Murray Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Political Science Departments at the University of Califor- nia at Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania for providing a platform. Don Palmer and Beth Frederick, for providing a third space. The Red Emmas Collective, LBS, RAF, the Algebra Project, RTHA, West Wednesdays, Equity Matters, BUC, and the general 313, 248, and 734 area codes (Detroit, Inkster, Ann Arbor, and Southfield in particular) for providing alternatives. Marc Steiner for providing ammunition. And as always a spe- cial thanks to those who antagonistically cooperated with me in writing this book. The errors, of course, are mine. xiii FOREWORD In 1896, Paul Laurence Dunbar published a poem titled “We Wear the Mask”. We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties, Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask! Dunbar writes of black men and women at the turn of the twen- tieth century forced to “wear the mask” because of racism. I’ve worn a mask, but not that one. I’m writing this draft a day after I received word that my house has been “saved”, with “saved” placed in quotes because I am still in the middle of Bank of America hell. I had gone almost three years without paying—the last check I remember cutting to the bank was in December of 2010 or January 2011. I remember the moment I decided to stop like it was yesterday, xv xvi lester k. spence just like I remember the moment two men came to my home to repossess my car. Let me back up a moment. * * * October 2006 It was 1:30 am on a late Saturday night and I was in my office, working. There are probably three aspects of being a profes- sor most people outside of the Academy routinely misunderstand. The first aspect they misunderstand is the role writing and research play in our jobs and in our lives. I wasn’t up at 1:30 am because I was thinking about a lecture, or preparing for class. I was up “club late” because I was writing. Trying to scratch out one more paragraph, one more sentence, one more word. And failing miserably. Relatedly, the second thing they misunderstand is how hard writing can be, even for someone like me—I’ve been writing in one way or another since I was 3 years old. One of the reasons I decided to pursue a job in the Academy in the first place is because I knew that if I played my cards right I’d be able to write and collect a check doing it. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Particularly under stress. Which brings me to the third aspect. The Academy is like a multi-tiered economy, with four types of intellectual laborers. At the top are tenured professors, people who have the equiv- alent of lifetime jobs. Under them are tenure-track professors, people who do not have lifetime jobs but have the potential to get them if they work hard. And under them are adjunct fac- ulty, who are not tenured and do not even have the potential to be tenured, and live incredibly precarious lives even though in many cases they have PhDs.1 And then, alongside of them 1 The individual story of Margaret Mary Vojtko who passed away Sept. 1, 2013 is particularly important here. She’d spent over 25 years as an adjunct at Duquesne University, teaching French. According to union organizer Daniel Kovalik (2013), Ms. Vojtko was a cancer patient, and after Duquesne cut her salary to $10,000 was no longer able to afford her medical bills and her home. Forced effectively to live out of her office, Duquesne fired her. She died months after. knocking the hustle xvii to a certain extent, are graduate students, people who want to become tenure-track professors so they can become tenured professors, but given the paucity of tenure-track jobs will have to fight hard not to become adjuncts. I was on the tenure track, and knew I was hanging by a thread. So I worked. In this case about 45 minutes too long. Barely two minutes after I left campus a white Jeep Cherokee smashed into my minivan. I was ok, but the car wasn’t. The minivan was the only car we had. And it was just about to be paid off. My wife and I didn’t have savings for a down payment for another car. We didn’t even have enough money to get reimbursed for a car rental. And we had five children to shuttle back and forth. For a week local friends shuttled us back and forth. I bought a bus pass, and took the bus to work. Because we homes- chooled our kids we were part of a large black homeschool network. The parents in this network brought groceries, prepared meals, and helped shuttle our kids around. We were ok for a couple of weeks. Then my children were involved in another accident. Every Saturday my family made the trek up to the YMCA. T-ball, soccer, basketball, dance—you name it, our kids did it. Without the minivan we didn’t know how this would continue, but one of the homeschool parents came to our aid. She would drive to our house, pick up the kids in her minivan and would take them to the Y. Not two weeks after my accident, our friend picks up our kids to take them to the Y. Twenty minutes after she leaves we get a phone call. She was in a car crash. The car flipped over.

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