Blog

We are not Replaceable

This talk was given at the American Sociological Association meetings in 2019 in New York City My mother called me one day, during my first semester of graduate school.  She was curious about this mysterious world of academia that I had committed myself to. She wanted to know how it was going. “Are there oth...

Shackling Pregnant Inmates in Georgia

Yesterday, Governor Kemp signed HB 481, more commonly known as the heartbeat bill. HB 481 effectively bans abortions after a heart beat is detected (approximately six weeks of gestation). Politicians in support of HB 481 argued that this is an important and necessary step for our state to take so that the unborn a...

Where are We Safe?

Last month, I attended the Sociologists for Women in Society conference in Denver, CO. My colleagues and I gathered and discussed the current conditions at our respective institutions. We discussed racism, microaggressions, gender inequities in pay and workload distribution. We vented, we raged, we continue … “Whe...

Last Night, I Heard the President Address the Nation

Yesterday, I started my day at the bus station in Atlanta where I go several days a week to assist asylum seekers who have been released for ICE detention centers and are in route to meet their sponsors. Most have been released from McAllen, Texas and when I meet them in Atlanta, they have already spent between 24 and ...

How Even a White Man I’ve Never Met Can Successfully Expend My Emotional Labor.

Fresh from the American Sociological Association meetings on Feeling Race, I have been thinking a lot about the many areas in which I engage in emotional labor for the betterment of my discipline. Through the years, I’ve become more cognizant of this labor, tried to guard myself from overdoing it and to protect mysel...

Cis White Men … Say Something.

The first on-campus interview I ever got was at a school in the Midwest. After giving a job talk and teaching demo I was scheduled to go to dinner with two white men faculty members. I was informed that one faculty member would meet us at the restaurant and I was to ride to the restaurant with the other. In the car rid...

Surviving the Job Market as PhD Students, Visiting Professors and Untenured Faculty:

I gave this presentation at the Southern Sociological Society 2018  annual meeting. At the request of attendees, I am posting it here for all who are interested. Advice for the newly minted So much of what you can do to increase your prospects on the academic job market occurs long before you are actually on the marke...

Body Cams Won’t Fix Anything

The other night my 17-year-old son came home from a party. He arrived home ahead of the agreed upon time and came upstairs to speak to my wife and me about his evening. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were leaving the party and going to M’s house?” I asked him. “I gave M. a ride home and decided to go inside...

These are Very Sad Times

Last week, I was teaching my seminar when a man walked into the room. I was sitting with my back turned toward the door, across from me sat my students who were actively engaging the week’s assigned reading. As the door shut behind him, the man stood there looking at us for what felt like an eternity. In reality, it ...

What I Wish I’d Known before Becoming an Academic

In my first week of graduate school, I got a phone call from my grandmother. Up until then, I’d spent a lot of time accompanying her to doctor’s appointments, translating and advocating for her, fighting with insurance companies that wanted to cut off her benefits or refused to approve the latest medication prescri...