ActiVe Regional differences
A Dean I once had asked me if I felt like a slave while working as a Lecturer at the University of Tennessee, and I said, “I guess,” when really I should have said that I felt like an activist. I guess I wasn't sure how to respond as a person who had been working 3 jobs and being paid at the poverty level. Education is valued differently in the South. You're even credentialled differently, though you do the same work at one of the top research institutes in the nation.
I am not sure why there are these regional differences in the transferring of credentials between states, or why Southern teachers are paid less, but I do know why I felt like an activist. During the Civil Rights, students and teachers were activists, and I was teaching research into American Rights. I was constantly being challenged by authority figures or tracked down for even the slightest infraction, even ones that technically were not because I had a parking pass and for all the times they tracked my car down to ticket me if it was not displayed 100% correctly or if my meter had just run out, they should have known this and my vehicle.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once talked about the importance of dressing in your Sunday best to protest, and I had observed what was considered appropriate and fashionable for my status and started dressing that way. I even started using my full name like some of my colleagues.
My landlord finally came down on me when I denied the advances of his friend when he realized I was a lesbian (now a trans man) and served me a non-renewal lease. I realized I was no longer safe in TN as a single person living alone with little to no community.
At the time, I had lost almost all ties with my past because of a glitch with my phone that caused my contacts to be wiped, for better or worse. At the time, I tried to rebuild after a lot of hurt had been done. I had not realized I was developing a double-consciousness.
I've had several glitches with my phones these past few years where I've lost my contacts or phone or I've ‘had to start over’ and none have had the same impact. I think because I have already changed so much.
The thing that has had the most impact on me recently are these dreams I've been having recently. I don't know where they're coming from - sometimes I'll dream I'm tripping, but I never have, and I swear I'm sober. But it's like that. It's like tripping and becoming conscious of a reality that exists outside your reality and really having no control over it but wondering what it has to teach you. Sometimes I ask and receive no answers. Sometimes I receive a word like patience, endurance, and virtue.