By Bobbie Kirkhart

Rand Paul emu­lates his father in almost every way. Almost.

:: Ron Paul is a physi­cian; Rand Paul is a physician.
:: Dad was in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; son is in the Senate.
:: Ron is a Lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing Repub­li­can; Rand is a Lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing Republican.

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An Interview with David Goldfield

Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog: Pro­fes­sor Gold­field, in 2013 you pub­lished a wide­ly acclaimed book, Still Fight­ing the Civ­il War: The Amer­i­can South and South­ern His­to­ry. Even the inter­na­tion­al press is cur­rent­ly fol­low­ing the debate about the Con­fed­er­ate flag which flared up after the shoot­ing of nine black parish­ioners at a his­toric church in Charleston, S.C. Are South­ern­ers still fight­ing the Civ­il War, and why is the Con­fed­er­ate flag such a pow­er­ful symbol?

David Gold­field: Not as much as we used to. Many things have been set­tled in the South over the last fifty years (but not the pre­vi­ous 100 years): fore­most the rise of African Amer­i­cans to the sta­tus of full cit­i­zens as a result of the end of legal racial seg­re­ga­tion and restora­tion of vot­ing rights. African Amer­i­cans hold 1500 polit­i­cal offices through­out the South now, and their eco­nom­ic gains have expand­ed the black mid­dle class.

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By Sabrina Völz

For those of you who missed Part I, click here.

Last week, we left off with Cheryl Strayed’s long descrip­tion of her­self.… It all seems to be there, well almost. All but two things: age and race. The age part didn’t both­er me too much, but the race part did. I often teach about iden­ti­ty con­struc­tion, race, eth­nic­i­ty, racism, and col­or­blind racism. Recent­ly, I have begun to look more deeply at the top­ics of white­ness and white priv­i­lege.
While read­ing that long descrip­tion, I began think­ing about the fact that when Strayed authored her book, she took it for grant­ed that she is white and that her read­ers prob­a­bly are too. I reread the pas­sage. Nowhere does she men­tion her white­ness. She does not need to do so as she is mere­ly adher­ing to the ‘white­ness’ script of west­ern civ­i­liza­tion that pre­scribes white­ness as the norm, the spring from which Oth­er­ing flows.

Quite intrigued, I began scour­ing the entire book, ask­ing myself the ques­tion whether Strayed’s white­ness was in some small way par­tial­ly respon­si­ble for her per­son­al tri­umph. Of course, her quick think­ing was essen­tial when faced with wild ani­mals with no pro­tec­tion oth­er than a loud whis­tle. And hav­ing the fore­sight to send her­self care pack­ages at stops along the trail as well as accept­ing help from oth­ers at key points also enabled her to con­tin­ue. Prob­a­bly char­ac­ter traits, such as tenac­i­ty, deter­mi­na­tion, and flex­i­bil­i­ty, didn’t hurt her chances either. But why did com­plete strangers go out of their way to help her? Was it her good looks, the nov­el­ty of see­ing a woman—a woman alone—on such a rugged trail, the Amer­i­can way, luck, or was it sim­ply the fact that she is white? Would she have got­ten that help at crit­i­cal parts of her jour­ney if she’d been African Amer­i­can or Native? I can’t answer that ques­tion, but it is cer­tain­ly a ques­tion that is wor­thy of inquiry, a ques­tion which I will con­tin­ue to pur­sue in my own life and teach­ing. What about you? If you are white, have you thought about your white priv­i­lege lately?

By Sabrina Völz

After hear­ing that the trav­el­ogue Wild by Cheryl Strayed was made into a movie, I thought about pick­ing up a copy of the book and inves­ti­gat­ing why so many peo­ple are wild about Wild: A Jour­ney from Lost to Found. The mem­oir sketch­es Strayed’s strug­gle to over­come the loss of her moth­er to can­cer, a failed mar­riage, and the ensu­ing depres­sion that plunged Strayed into using hero­in recreationally—if that’s possible—and hav­ing sex with strangers. How­ev­er, the major­i­ty of her book describes her 1,110 mile trek on the Pacif­ic Crest Trail and her jour­ney to inner peace. It all sound­ed cheesy, so I was reluc­tant but even­tu­al­ly did buy the book after see­ing a sto­ry on the Night­ly News about the many Amer­i­cans fol­low­ing in Strayed’s footsteps.

Although I teach life writ­ing and am always look­ing for new teach­ing mate­r­i­al, I approached the book as a just-for-fun read. After a few pages, I came across Strayed’s descrip­tion of her­self that plunged me into a strug­gle with some­thing much deep­er. Well, take a look. Is it just me? Or is there some­thing about the fol­low­ing pas­sage both­er­ing you as well?

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