When I first tried to publish “ ‘This the ConscienceRebel’: Class Solidarity, Congregational Capital, and Discourse as Activism in the Writing of Black Female College Students,” I must admit that I was taken aback by white resistance in composition studies— the field to which I am most closely aligned by nature of the work that I do but certainly not by the nature of my politics , aesthetics, or pedagogies. I was not surprised that the white editors saw the work— a text that focuses on working class Black female college students— as irrelevant to the wider field. But, I must admit: I was surprised that it was Black female scholars in the field who gave the white editors rhetorical ammunition.
It was Black female reviewers who brought up the point that most professors reading the article would be white and have mostly white students and so would not be able to relate to the content. Yes, you heard that right. It was Black female professors who made that claim. And I shouldn’t have to tell you that the white editors went to town on that right there. Besides the fact that it undermines all Black women when Black women see themselves as tangential to educational research, the idea that the majority of college writing classrooms today mostly enroll white, middle class students IS FALSE! That’s not historically accurate and it certainly does not apply to an era where higher education gets browner and browner every year. Whiteness in this field gets maintained by scholars of color as much as it gets maintained by white scholars and it’s time we start talking about it.
My father and his closest friend, a man I call an uncle, discovered an easy way to save money: always wet your toilet paper and paper towels. Apparently, once these rolls dry after you have wet them, they no longer roll as easily because ripples have been created. This will slow down your roll, LITERALLY, if you take too much toilet paper when you are on the throne, for instance. People use less paper products, the fewer paper products you need to buy, the more money you save: it’s all a vicious cycle. I hover back and forth between two adjectives for this practice… CHEAP…and… RIDICULOUS. It does, however, offer me endless opportunities for shit-talking with my father. I could tell any array of such stories to convey how frugal my father is, but I hope this lumpy toilet paper saga will suffice.