Unpacking”It’s Coming from Inside the House”: on being outsiders within the academy

It’s Coming from Inside the House

[Transcripts are auto-generated due to time and labor constraints. If this is an impediment for you, please reach out to vjohsu@austin.utexas.edu]

[00:00:00] Jo: Welcome to unpack this. Where academic misfits unload their shit. I am Jo Hsu

[00:00:05] Constance: and I am Constance Bailey.

[00:00:06] Jo: And today we’ll be talking about an article that Constance recently published in women in higher education titled it’s coming from inside the house.

that explores some interesting elements of academic experience that relates to a lot of what we’re talking about. And we can delve a little further in this particular genre. I’m hoping constants, you might begin by summarizing the piece for our. Uh,

[00:00:30] Constance: Yeah, for sure. We’ll be sure to link it in the show notes, but, it’s interesting that the editor pulled out that line because I initially planned on the piece being titled the plight of the invisible academic. But I was. Well, actually, we’ll talk about the context later. I’ll just do the summary, right?

So the article is about, uh, it’s really about the, ambivalence. And I would probably say, liminality, it really is about family commitments, [00:01:00] right? And about, people who are in fields that are very different from academia and how the work of academics and in this case, particularly me.

so it’s a first person, subjective, a reflective piece about, me and my mother. So in some ways it’s a kind of about generational, The ideas about work and the value attached to work. And it’s really fundamentally about, the, I think the disappointment and maybe even heartbreak that I sometimes feel, because my mom does not understand what I do.

And doesn’t necessarily. I should say maybe it doesn’t value what I do because it’s not the same type of tactile work that she had to do. Um, which doesn’t diminish that work. It does no less hard, no less difficult. So in many ways I’m trying to connect sort of my struggle. Would that have other people primarily, I think academics who come from working class backgrounds where, our families, did a different type of [00:02:00] work.

Right. And they were not engaged in the life of the mind regularly. What does it look like then when that person perceive you as kind of living the life? Right. And so, at one point I mentioned those memes where there’s like, what my students think I do, what my colleagues think I do, what I actually do?

You know? And they have, those were all different professions. I find those quite hilarious, but, it felt very. To some degree comical to me at times, like the type of misunderstandings that my mother would have about my work. Like when I’m at a conference, she thinks I’m hanging out, you know, meanwhile, which I might be, but that’s not my primary purpose.

I would do. Other things and choose other locations to just go hang out with friends. Um, and I wouldn’t have to hire a babysitter and it wouldn’t be expensive and inconvenient and all those other things. so yeah, I don’t know if I actually said what it’s about, but anyway, that’s a lot of random details that you could cobble together.

[00:02:57] Jo: Yeah. You touched on what it captures. And, [00:03:00] one of those elements of experiencing the academy as an outsider, as somebody who grew up in environments that are not anticipated by the academy and whose experience of it, , also put you in a place of alienation, I think, from spaces that were once familiar, uh, for me, the, the way that certain types of knowledge in the academy or certain types of labor.

Made me feel increasingly like an outsider in a certain home communities, uh, was something that wasn’t very often discussed or made visible in a lot of academic spaces isn’t anticipated very much. there’s actually, there’s this line from your article that I’d like you to go into a little further, because I think it captures some of what you’re doing and you write.

I want to reflect on the unique precarity of a certain type of academic. Those whose proximity to home in the form of family has been both a blessing and a curse. And can you say more about this? Like what, what do you mean by [00:04:00] proximity to your home and how do the structures of academic life fail to anticipate, or how do they act against this sort of proximity that you’re talking about?

[00:04:09] Constance: Yeah. So I don’t know that I’ll get to the second part in, because I probably will have forgotten the second part of the question by the time I answered the first part. But, uh, before I answered the first part, I do want to say, like, one of the things that your comment makes me think about is that there’s this expression, And I’ll try to tweak it for academia.

So I would say like, we are in academia, but we’re not of academia, if that makes sense. Um, or at least that’s been my feeling, right? So to be in a particular place, but to not have been, groomed or, a product of this place is sort of interesting. And.

[00:04:43] Jo: a Moten and Harney’s the under commons. Is that where that’s from?

[00:04:46] Constance: I don’t recall. Maybe,

[00:04:48] Jo: I think it is. We’ll put it in the show notes.

[00:04:50] Constance: But to the first part, so home could be metaphoric and it could also be a literal. So I like it as a metaphor and assemble, but I also, like, in my case, I was [00:05:00] specifically invoking home, because of the pandemic, so a lot of my academic work was specifically occurring in the context of the home and around my desk.

Right. Where I’m sitting at this very moment. Whereas before I think, pre-pandemic. The office, or let’s say the coffee shop or a library career, you know, other spaces were places that I would write grade teach. But because of the pandemic, the focal point of everything was, was my desk, right?

So there, you know, books just falling around, you probably literally see books falling around me. And so. More largely than home is just his family. And I know you write about a lot about home, so family, community, kinship networks, however, we want to think about that. So for me quite specifically, because of some of my medical stuff I had.

I was blessed, right. The blessing. And it was that my mother was still able-bodied, and not too old to help me physically, um, to recover from surgery [00:06:00] and to help, show for my kids and to do all of those things. So I really was very thankful and grateful for that.

But, as any. Child who has a mother, and is blessed to have a mother who was living knows that, living with your parents, but specifically a mother can be quite challenging in spite of, , the added advantage of having come sort of built in childcare, having an extra set of eyes to help with homework, so there are just some inherent advantages, but of course there’s a backside of that.

So that was the sort of blessing and curse. But I really think that., not everyone is going to have this nuclear family, so some of us have extended, kinship networks or friendships, however we think about home. Right. So, yeah.

[00:06:43] Jo: I think something you’re capturing is that the pandemic us into whatever our polices of residents look like, uh, for a prolonged period. And that presented very different challenges for different people. You know, for folks who live alone, it was suddenly [00:07:00] a huge degree of isolation that they were unable to alleviate.

for others, maybe they were living situations. And for still more of us, even if we’re living with people, we love being confined in the same house for. Uh, a long time houses that were not meant to be houses and offices for multiple people at the same time. it was, it was definitely a lot.

So you captured the, the blessing part, being able to have your mother there to care for you while you’re going through, , while you’re recovering from your medical procedures. What about the curse?

[00:07:29] Constance: Are you trying to get me in trouble, Jo?

[00:07:32] Jo: But we are talking about the ways that these things create unanticipated struggle.

[00:07:37] Constance: It’s all good. Because my mom, as I say in the piece, I don’t mention the podcast, but she probably will never read that article. And she probably will never listen to this podcast, which does not mean that she has not been supportive and invaluable to, my academic career.

She absolutely has. So the curse, I think just comes from, um, just ideological differences, which I think just might be generational, so [00:08:00] there’s lots of like, you know, different ideas about parenting different ideas about, structure and, just some idiosyncratic differences, she’s a little bit I like a clean and tidy house when I can get Mary or Molly maids or somebody over.

But that’s can’t be on my hierarchy of my own personal task because I have too many. Um, so, I think that was part of, she tends to be more introverted. I tend to be more extroverted. so just thoughts about sort of how I spend my time.

But again, the physical isolation of the pandemic was augmented by my medical recovery. So I couldn’t, physically couldn’t leave for awhile. And so the curse just became where it seemed like. Whereas you and I are talking right now and this podcast, sometimes we just talk about garbage Netflix things, but also sometimes we, we have really fruitful, generative academic conversations that lead to, potential [00:09:00] collaborations or other, wonderful ideas, and things just stay in those discussions.

And so one of my virtual. Writing groups where I was pretty much every day for a while. Online with these, other scholars, mostly black women, We’d have a guy popping, but, um, it seemed like, I think to her that was frivolous time. And so the curse sort of became, where there was this value judgment, and she was vocal about, her perception of what I was doing or in that case, what I was not doing.

And I had to try to explain to her I’m working in work. Doesn’t look like how she understands work to look. That’s, so that’s the sort of bumping heads. Cause again, some of it’s generational, some of it’s persons, you know, specific to our personalities, some of it’s it’s different ideas about what, what has value.

so, yeah.

[00:09:50] Jo: And some of it is part of the way that this place being academia makes its work illegible, , to a lot of other, of other folks. Um, you reminded me [00:10:00] of this story , the winter between 2019 and 2020, my partner and I were in Taiwan for the first time in a really long time for me.

And we were talking to my cousin who was trying to explain to me sort of his , goal in terms of. Coming to America, which, you know, has a certain romanticization, , , and what his like professional goals were. And it turns out that he wants to be a tenure track professor. And tried to explain to me what that was and what research universities were.

And I had the pause and say, you don’t actually know what I do for a living. Like in my family. It turns out, knows that this is actually my job. and I’m not sure that it would matter if they did. But what you’re speaking to is, is the way that, that has, for me to have been largely illegible both to family of birth, but also to others, sorts of, you know, chosen or found family who raised me.

And I struggled with that because it’s sort of the thing I’ve always known about myself as like writing is thing I do. It’s the thing I can do. Uh, [00:11:00] especially as I get, have gotten more and more disabled, , there are forms of , Advocacy and change that. I find myself unable to participate in some, sometimes when I am confined to my house or unable to stand for long periods or whatever it is.

And I know that there is work here that is important. Having found that my own life was saved by, work that I found in here. But I also know that a lot of. It looks like not work a lot of people and that the changes we’re advocating for sometimes take a really long time to sort of emerge and often are gradual systemic collaborative.

They’re not like, you know, this one person did a thing and they had this one achievement. , and so, for me, sometimes that feels really crushing. Sometimes it feels like I have spent my entire life doing this thing that a lot of people that I care about will never be able to see or recognize. So I’m, I’m curious.

What keeps you here? You know what, what’s sort of the flip side of that. What is the rewarding thing? What’s motivating you?

[00:11:59] Constance: [00:12:00] Yeah, well, those are all great observations. Although I’m very tickled. I think his expression, I will use about your, your cousin who wants to be a tenure track professor. It’s like, are you sure?

[00:12:13] Jo: Oh yeah. That’s a whole different road. We can go down.

[00:12:17] Constance: Yeah. So, I mean, I think, a large part of my students, lots of people know I have a deep and abiding commitment to students and to, educating folks, I think, you know, I, I won’t ever be the Michael Jordan of the game, but I gotta be the, oh me and these, these botched sports metaphors.

But, uh, it made me feel Jackson or maybe the Steve Kerr to the staff Curry or something, I want to, mentor, other people who need to see a black woman scholar in the classroom or who need to see a person of color or who might just need to see a friendly face.

Right. Some, academics have been, so, I don’t want it broken, maybe, the process has I don’t know if it’s jaded [00:13:00] them. I don’t know if they don’t remember what it’s like to have been a student. And so, you know, sometimes we just kind of lose touch with the sort of practical day-to-day struggles and challenges that students have.

And so I really try to stay grounded in that because it’s a struggle bus every day. They’ll try to, for me to get to work for me to be fully functioning for me to bring my a game. And so I tend to have a lot of empathy. But also that, you know, my research that is important to me.

We’ve talked a little bit about the book project. At one of the things that I should should say more specifically is that, part of what this article is really fleshing out is explored in the fourth chapter of the book, probably more so than any, so the book project is the representations of, the black collegian.

Culture. So collegiate scholars, the undergrad level, and postgraduate as well. So at black academics, and part of what happens [00:14:00] is this very class based schism where, and it’s generational for sure, because. I can’t go into this too much today, but you know, there’s like the blurred aesthetic. Second and third generation black college graduates don’t have the same, relationship, as folks from. My mom’s generation, with other academics, right? So by the time you get to a childish Gambino who jokes about his, college degrees and how educated he is, it’s almost kind of tongue and cheek.

 

[00:14:33] Constance: All that to say, like , we see along generational lines, this, hostility or resentment towards college educated black Americans, because there is the perception. Rightly or wrongly that black academics are a elitist they’re out of touch. They are removed from their communities. And I can, and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about trying to do some [00:15:00] community-based research and engaged scholarship, because one, I never want anyone to get that perception of me, which is fine if you, if you, if you don’t work in communities, like there are plenty of academics

and people who are doing valuable things, and it doesn’t have to look the way that, that you think it should look. So that’s the one thing like for old heads and old school folks, like stop being so full of yourself and stop being. So it’s not projecting, like if it’s not this thing, then it’s not okay or it’s not valid.

Um, but I mean, the other thing is that , I really do want to, be working in. In home communities, . I talk a lot about generational knowledge and quilting and folk sayings and black women’s humor and lessons that I got from my grandma and, you know, shelling peas, I’m young enough to, to remember hanging or old.

And my young enough old enough, I have a hangout clothes on clothes line, basically, so there were times before. Washing [00:16:00] machines and dryers existed. I know my kids would not believe that, but, some of that has a lot of value for me, and I appreciate being able to expose folks who don’t necessarily have that experience, but to say, Hey, Just because something is not your experience.

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. And so a part of that is, you know, just trying to, , expose people to different perspectives and different ideas about things, right? Just, those are the specific mechanisms by which I’m able to do that, but it’s no different than what I think most scholars who have some type of philosophical.

you know, orientation are thinking about like, how can we open people’s minds or enlightened folks or expand their thinking. So that’s a rambling response.

[00:16:43] Jo: I’m really glad you went there with that response. I don’t think we’ve, we’ve talked about this specific thing. , quite yet, I guess, you know, I, for me, my first book is also community engaged, , in a way that was very intentional. It was, I want to go to spaces that make me feel very differently than academic spaces and sort of sit and [00:17:00] learn in these spaces and.

The thing I wound up running into again and again, is that I didn’t want to be the researcher in that space. You know, like I knew that I was, I knew that that came with a whole lot of responsibilities and, and ways that I needed to sort of comport myself. But also I was aware of the sort of historical violence that I was embodying by being in that room, the historically researchers have made objects of a lot of people in these spaces.

, In a way that was the humanizing. And I obviously didn’t want to replicate that, but it made me think very deeply about how do I carry knowledge from these spaces in a way that doesn’t replicate that sort of violence in a way that doesn’t expose them in a way that doesn’t make it easily commodifiable for the academy, which is what a historically has done.

And so I don’t know that we’ve talked about this before. I’m very, I’m just very curious if you’ve also sort of grappled with that or like what you do with that sort of, I don’t know, feeling

[00:17:56] Constance: Yeah. I mean, I’ve grappled with it and I’m not sure, and [00:18:00] maybe by the time the manuscript is finished, I will have a better sense of what the quote unquote correct answer is, . Yes, I do often struggle with, how do I write about, and talk about these images without reifying the negative, stereotypes

So, Two chapters are about popular representations of black college students, particularly black college bands, which there’s very little research on. And then one is black fraternities and sororities and you know, how do I talk about, these cultural experiences without for outsiders, without exoticizing it and even, for this project, I don’t actually get to do as much in terms of ethnographic.

Work as I would like but you know, some of those same ethical questions, that come up when you’re trying to work with, a group, particularly a group that you identify with, how do you not, do the sort of cliche.

Thing. So this first part that feels a little bit safer because for the most part I am working with, static representations. So I can avoid some of the ethical pitfalls, but it’s hard. It’s something for those of [00:19:00] us who are doing engaged and community-based work, I think is just something that we constantly struggle with.

Right. Um, How do we, do work that’s satisfying. That’s rewarding that’s useful hopefully, and meaningful to these groups without damaging those groups without fracturing those relationships and without, problematizing, further stigmatizing.

Potentially, those groups. So, yeah, I think it’s just fraught with a lot of intellectual and ethical dilemmas that I’m trying to tread very lightly. So yeah.

[00:19:33] Jo: Yeah, for me, the sort of bulb, , moment when I was working on the book was when I discovered Audra Simpson’s work, and also, , Tuck and Yang’s extension, , on refusal it’s it’s on ethnographic work, which isn’t quite what I’m doing. , and it’s also, , from decolonial studies.

The idea that there are certain things that the academy has not earned to, you know, it doesn’t have the right to see, and that it is [00:20:00] sometimes more generative to point that out than to actually go straight into the story that they’re expecting to hear. like, there are moments when I try to do that with like an, a nonfiction sleight of hand, which is like, you expect to see this scene of harm or violence and it might exist.

But you’re not going to see it. And you’re going to sit with, with why, right? Like why you have not earned that gaze. And I don’t know that it’s perfect either, but yeah.

For me in this iteration of the project gave me a way to sort of drop a curtain when I wanted to. but I think I will continue grappling with that.

And I think we all will, , because we get dropped into these currents of harmful history and we do what we can to not further the sort of actions that are already in motion.

[00:20:43] Constance: Yeah, I might have to try that. I don’t know if I can pull any kind of strategic since I’m still, immersed in the writing of the things. See if I can pull some sort of strategic, frame pay, no attention to the man behind the curtain. Wizard of Oz.

Yeah, I saw I’m interested. I [00:21:00] wonder, and this is a question I think that you may pose for me too, but I’ll ask you, uh, first I’ll beat you to the punch, right? So there’s this line where I say with great education comes, great responsibility was of course I completely bit from Spider-Man I’m sure people recognize.

But then I said, but to whom do we pay our debt? And I guess I’m wondering, what are your thoughts about responsibility? And debt in terms of your own experience and actions.

[00:21:28] Jo: Yeah. I don’t really mean to keep going back to the book, but I think, , this book project was something that I had to write in that it helped me situate myself what am I doing with this work in this space? And am I committed to? Who am I working for? And. One of the concepts that comes from theory that I really like in terms of applying it to life is the way that scholars of queer diaspora think through intimacy.

And also disability studies scholars too. [00:22:00] thinking about intimacy, not just as like, you know, the traditional romanticized closeness, but also. Any sort of proximity that might imbalances in power. Uh, there’s a concept of forced intimacy that comes from Crip studies.

That is how disabled people have to disclose parts of their own experience and their needs, because they need to get access to systems that weren’t designed for them. , and so when I think through responsibility, I’m thinking through all of those possible intimacies with my life, you know, How does my own personal trajectory put me into deeper histories?

What sort of uneven privileges, affordances resources am I inheriting? And what should I be doing with those things? , who else is experiencing similar types of harms and what possible connections can I, forged from there and, know, there’s an infinite amount of work that comes from that sort of reflection that you could never possibly get to in a lifetime, but.

That’s sort of the series of questions that I go down. , and so it also [00:23:00] means that. Sort of red, very haphazardly in many directions in my work, because I want to know all of the decolonial things I want to know who’s doing work on anti-blackness and what that looks like. I want to know, , what conversations about immigration looks like from Latin X studies and borderlands, right?

Like I want to think about how different ways of understanding the harm that world. Immersed in, what resonance has come from that, what tensions and how do we, connect these things into a bigger of where we are and how we move from here? , , so I guess that’s a long way to say that I think of responsibility very, very broadly in terms of.

How does my life put me in contact with others? And what responsibility does that contact? Give me what can I do with my resources to again, minimize harm and maximize good and connection. and that, that is also similarly, how I think about debt? about you?

[00:23:57] Constance: Yeah, I wish I had a [00:24:00] sophisticated answer, but when all else fails, I just fall back on cliches, which have served me well. So. In terms of, I just in terms of responsibility, I just think of my privileged relative to those who have, less privileged than I do.

And so I try to, and he was where the cliche comes in pay it forward. So I don’t feel as beholden to the sacrifices that my mother and grandmother and great-grandmothers, I’m thankful for the sacrifices. I know that that, my work is, is made possible by strides and gains and sacrifices that they had to make.

my main concern is to try to make the path better. I don’t know about easier but better for our people who were coming behind me and who are trading that same path. So. I would just wanna, invoke some metaphor about walking in the footsteps of giants, but, you know, I like mixed metaphors and butcher [00:25:00] things all the time.

But anyway, yeah. I really think that, I just have a responsibility to those with less privilege than myself and, and I’m trying to, payback, some of what was given to me but again, working in multiple fields and multiple disciplines has granted me access to many different types of knowledge and bodies of research.

And, it’s sort of good and bad, because there are more stakeholders, and you feel like the onus is on you as a scholar to be sure that you are ethically and responsibly, working in those fields and knowledgeably. So it can spread you a little bit thin.

And I think academically, there’s certainly great reward in terms of being able to be welcomed and embraced by those fields, but also then having access to influence people, up and coming scholars, working in those respective fields. So, yeah, I don’t [00:26:00] know if that answered the question, but that’s kind of

[00:26:02] Jo: It did, , it also gets me to that, that next question, because I, I often think about it in these terms. Right. I, I stay in academia as long as it allows me to keep doing. Work toward the world that I want to build to, , sort of to, or create possibilities for the communities that I find myself, indebted to, or in, deep relationship with.

and so when I think about what sort of parachute will get me out of the academy, I’m also often thinking through what other jobs would allow me to do those things. so I’m curious if you weren’t doing this job, what else do you think you would be doing?

[00:26:39] Constance: Wow. You know, this is funny because I just had this conversation with someone. Uh, but, , I would be doing what I’m doing now. In the sense that I wouldn’t necessarily be a scholar. I would probably be running a non-profit organization. That is a position I have applied for [00:27:00] and been offered. it’s on some smaller scale, not like a huge like regional or national organization, but when I say that I’m doing that now a lot of the group fitness stuff or activities that I have done,

initially when I started that, um, hobby, what we’d call a hobby group fitness instructor, right? Like that’s not my main job. I do it. Quote, unquote for fun. I thought of it as like, you know, a secondary income and something for fun. Now, the more that I think about it and. You know, I’m now in the process of trying to re-imagine that, because one of the things that I said I was going to do before I got my PhD, I was looking into master’s of public health programs and thinking about how to work and you and I both have, you know, an interest in wellness and health, not necessarily systematically, but sort of more broadly.

Um, But you know, I was trying to imagine that. Can I make, primarily African-American communities [00:28:00] healthier, but also pushing back against what we think about as health, right. And that bodies don’t have to look like what sort of normative mainstream quote, unquote, healthy bodies look like. so that was, Over a decade ago, probably 15 years ago that I was thinking about a holistic, comprehensive wellness facility. that, you know, While there have been great YMCAs and other community access spaces, some of those things, um, two or $300 a year.

Does not seem like much compared to like a gym membership, but, it’s a lot for someone on a fixed income. And so, I always said that I would probably, try to get grant funding to open such a facility in a community that, you know, needed that. And that wasn’t one of the things that.

It wasn’t never, it was never really, um, an either, or it was, uh, maybe a bullet when type thing. So that is something that, um, I’ve been, trying to think about how, uh, when I [00:29:00] decide to leave academia, because I do think. Not necessarily that it’s inevitable, but unless there is a way to sort of, you know, make both identities work at some point, you know, I would probably go move towards doing that and soliciting grants to support such a, an enterprise.

And one of the things that I’ve recently come to. Conclusion is that you can, the group fitness I identity, um, sort of makes it easier because if I stopped thinking about that as a job or a for-profit thing, and think about it ideologically, and sort of restructured that as like a non-profit organization and entity, then I can do some of that community programming that would sort of start me on that path.

Right. So that is when I say this something I do like the online group fitness classes that I taught mostly during the pandemic were pretty much free and people could donate if they had money, but. Most of the time people didn’t, you know, it was people who were trying to get [00:30:00] active and were, you know, just, um, in their homes and couldn’t get out and they couldn’t afford a costly gym membership or they didn’t feel safe enough to go to the gym.

And now, even in thinking about like app development, I’m thinking, okay, How could I do this in a way that would make it free slash $5? Or instead of like a 20 or 30? Like, I do a lot of group fitness type of things. I’m in like a moms group, but it’s like 80 bucks a month and I can’t, you know what I’m saying?

Like, that’s just not, that’s not my vision. And it’s okay. I don’t have any judgment about people. Like, especially if you’re in an industry you’re trying to make money. Like I get that cost, like it’s okay. But for me, it’s more about the vision and less about the money. You, you know, you gotta make enough money to support the kids.

Like they like to eat

[00:30:48] Jo: Yeah.

[00:30:48] Constance: there, but, um, but I don’t necessarily want to think of it as a. You know, as a, as a revenue stream in that way. Um, so sorry. That was a really [00:31:00] long answer, but yeah. What about you? What would you be doing if you were not in academia?

[00:31:04] Jo: I do that long answer. I learned things about you, Constance. if I weren’t in an academia, I feel like the answer is kind of sprawling, but sort of has the same core, which is at the end of the day, always been thinking through how do you. Create platforms that tell stories that change the ways that we encounter one another in the world.

Right. , and I feel like I could see it taking several different forms. , I could see myself doing things like patient advocacy. I could see myself working in public health spaces. , I could also see myself working on sort of. POC queer and trans driven sort of media platforms, just because, I mean, fact about the coverage of the anti-trans laws that always sticks with me that the vast majority of that coverage is from a right wing publications, which means that for the most part left-wing publications just haven’t [00:32:00] cared.

Right? Like. Touched on it, which means that entire narrative is being shaped by conservatives and are responding. They’re responding to an argument that’s already been given to them. Right. They’re defense because they never got on the offense. Um, and so how.

[00:32:15] Constance: the case often. I’m

[00:32:16] Jo: Yeah. Yeah, no, you’re you’re for, right.

So, so how do you create sort of platforms that give people the sort of authority to, shape the narratives about them in the world? Part of this problem is that, you know, a bunch of newsrooms are run by a bunch of sizzle, might dudes, who gets to look at our stories and decide whether or not they’re worthwhile.

So. Yeah. Part of the scary thing about stuff like that is that I don’t know what the path to doing things like that looks like. So one of the, the reasons that I got here is because I knew school and I understood how school works and, you know, school got me to a place where I have the privilege of being secure enough to worry about how do I do these things out in the world.

Right. So for now it gives me the sort of shelter and [00:33:00] safety. To think about how I maneuver in other spaces. the moment that it stops doing that is when I start thinking about what that parachute looks like and how I get to someplace else.

[00:33:09] Constance: No, I love that answer. You know, that’s so funny that, over the course of our friendship, , we learn like things that like nothing you said surprised me and I’m sure nothing. I said, surprise you, but you might not have known it. So that’s, sort of funny, but I have you by a few years, I’m a couple years older than Jo.

I won’t reveal my secrets, but, I think it’s ironic. You’re absolutely right. Or I’m absolutely in agreement in terms of, that’s why I chose academia. It felt safe. It allowed me to be, financially stable. I didn’t have to be rich, I could provide for my children, but it also gave me a little bit of wiggle room, not a lot, but a little bit of time to start exploring and start branching out into things that were, adjacent.

And I think. It’s interesting because those side projects, which we’ve talked about on our side hustles a little bit, but we never, we never [00:34:00] got that episode pelvis, but they’re still adjacent to like, your work is still about home community and about making spaces better for people and my work.

Um, this advocacy is still about, community health and wellness. And how do we become whole when it’s about sort of a holistic approach to. Black community. So while the one project, other side project might be something that I might need, um, national institutes of health, like NIH funding for, , the academic.

Correlation to that might be, might need any H funding or, uh, NEA funding, uh, national endowment for the arts and national endowment for the humanities. Um, but, but it’s still the same, you know, it’s two different arms of the same thing. So I think that’s the beauty of, um, some of the. The side projects that we pursue, um, because they help give us inroads into some of those other things.

So, you know, we could definitely, and I [00:35:00] harass my friends all the time, but, um, we, we can harass a Nikita read about Arkansas. So as an alternative media outlet and how you start to, you know, like what gave her that vision. So I think. You know, uh, sometimes we have our friends on, we should ask different questions, right?

Like we’re willing to talk about this other juicy thing, but like, let’s also talk about like, Hey, how do we do this other really cool thing? Cause that’s the thing. I think some of the, um, people I’ve encountered have helped me start re-imagining, um, or start to think about what that next step might look like.

So yeah.

[00:35:32] Jo: yeah.

I like that. And we should definitely have Nikita back in , to have her talk about something other than, you know, uh, Amazon prime semester.

[00:35:40] Constance: I know. Well, we can talk about that too. That’s worth revisiting buddy. Yeah. So,

[00:35:47] Jo: I, uh, think that’s it for this episode. , I want to remind our listeners that they can find us. I am now on Twitter @voxjohsu. , you can also find Constance. What’s your handle? [00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Constance: um, you know what. I don’t remember the handle, but my co my current, um, you know, Twitter, I don’t understand the

[00:36:09] Jo: It’s so hard to find people on Twitter. I don’t understand.

[00:36:11] Constance: Yes. But if you type in Constance, the academic, a K a D E M I C, then you would find me because my handle might be my first and last name or. Some assemblance of who knows, but yeah, constantly academic.

And you can also email us@theunpackthispodcastatgmail.com and yeah. Let us know what you’d like us to unpack. We should have some pop culture stuff coming up soon, maybe. And yeah, just this, let us know what you want to hear and we’ll, we’ll try to talk about.

[00:36:44] Jo: Thanks for listening.