Who are cops…the police? Mostly guys, mostly white. In the past few decades a few women, more and more “ethnic” persons: some African-American, in Minneapolis-St. Paul they reflect the recent immigrations…somewhat…as far as I know. Not too many Hmong persons, a few Latinos from various countries…

Who are we…in thinking about the police – wondering how they think about us, and what they’re “up to?” How many of us would like to be cops? Do police “like” being cops, or filled to various levels of…fear, import, wondering about each next person, in each approaching moment?

How do they get to be cops? I mean what’s inside their heads, their thinking, that we might get to understand in their terms – more than in our reactive minds?

Also important – maybe very important is the fact that they dress in “uniforms.” Uniforms seem to take individual identity and help make them all into police – cops. (Where has their “individuality” gone?)

More signs: their cars, bright flashing lights, rear seats which can be made very separate from the front ones; painted black and white (in lots of places). Quite obvious. (Except that we might forget to notice them when we’re driving a bit too fast: over the speed limit. And they can make really loud siren noises which instill us with fear and the immediate reaction to stop, and pull over.)

All this to say that the police have quite a “presence” in the world: in many/most senses they are all “alike.” Uniform…has several meanings and even more connotations. (The differences between police and the military? – has gotten a bit complicated and confusing especially in these moments driven by war, terror, fear… (Observing the RNC meeting in St. Paul last fall: the police “looked” remarkably like military – faces obscured, wearing odd/different uniforms, carrying threatening looks and clubs. Whatever it takes to “keep the peace” said the mayors!)

Sargeant Crowley and that “Uppity Professor” (from Harvard no less), “Skip” Gates. What were the exact circumstances? Never totally clear: perhaps so “obvious” to many of us, that the moment-to-moment “facts” don’t seem very important to the situation.

A white cop (likely with some ethnic background which might still be “important” – was very important a couple of generations ago – Irish Catholic? Boston, a long history of Irish Catholics bathing in money and power. But we should remember the movie, “Gangs of New York” pitching the Irish immigrants against the (then) white Protestant majority to taste those senses of their history. Tough (mostly) guys? Ethnics, culture: what sorts of culture do the police have? “White ethnicity: gone entirely or some residuals?

And an African American, in many ways “the African-American Professor” in these times when being “Black” is taking on some “new” meanings, especially as Barack Obama is our President. And Harvard: In “spite” of being at Harvard, Gates is probably the most important historian/critic of what is African-American. (I got to watch/listen to him an entire evening at the U. of Minnesota a few years back, being interviewed by colleague John Wright of the English Dept. here: two very interesting/fine minds at work in trying to understand and be critics of the American world, and “blackness” within it. And Gates is a public figure frequently on TV and elsewhere.)

African…American? Some history here. The Irish Catholic history seems to have effectively disappeared – but there might be some “cultural” habits or thinking – maybe especially about what it means to be a cop…

So who am I? Writing about all this?

An Anthropologist who tries to observe the world, all the people(s), who they are, how they world “works,” how their heads direct their thinking. What is law and legal? What do I know? How to behave and stay out of trouble! Be a good boy! Observe, think…

In some ways, I am a cop. I teach and work hard at keeping some semblance of peace in my classes (not usually much problem…but sometimes, Yes!).

I am a bureaucrat, don’t exactly wear a uniform…but I apparently “look like a Professor” – dress pretty correctly in that scene. Lots of people at the University (mine, or wherever I visit) say “Hello,” as if I …belong there. Gates looks like a professor, as well, but his professorial appearance is sometimes overwhelmed by…color!? (And is being a Professor a “good thing” in these times of money mongering and little thought about different cultures and how they are often misunderstood: e.g., Iraq!)

Some personal history (we all have “some history”) with cops. A police station just 4 doors away till I was 5 – police all very nice to us neighbors. No memory of any sense of fear. Next house, had to walk a bit to school. Remember a very nice cop who helped us cross the major street, with buses and all kinds of traffic and stores. No sense of concern or worry thru high school: careful, cautious…sure. My Buffalo home was across the Peace(!) Bridge to Canada: we learned to deal with the Provies (Provincial – very formal cops) on the Canadian side. “Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” Such memorable moments.

Stories about cops on the take: Chicago was the center (at least in my extended family). Then a trip to Mexico – where it was all “different.” Or seemed different, except they were usually so helpful to us – saw very few “bad” scenes (lived always in the “right” neighborhoods?) Concentrated on helpfulness and kindness. (Have TV and movies “changed” all these perceptions: a much more “dangerous” place than when I was growing up and growing our kids up?)

During the Civil Rights days, I was very concerned with questions of fairness, democracy – and “got involved.” Worked during Summer 1968 (as the Democratic Convention was disintegrating in Chicago – as most cities in the North, at least, were being burned to different levels of crisp) – I worked for the Justice Dept in Washington – knew a lot of cops – met with them. But the FBI – and the Community Relations Service (where I was) – had very different ideas of police “work” and cop cultures.

I was the Anthropologist: given the task of  “close” reading the notes of so-many cops who had gotten killed in confrontations with African-Americans. Fewer than 100, I recall, but not much less.

Most seem to have “brought it on themselves” – didn’t really study, understand, probe the cultural dynamics of “Black Folks” – “outside” gatherers in groups – cops apparently saw loud crowds more than individual people in groups.

Pulled their guns “early” in the moments of confrontation. (Pulling guns early – was a part of the ways in which most of the urban cops – interestingly, historically – mostly dominated in the Northern Cities by Irish-Americans. Still? – guns, at least handcuffs.).

The Community Relations Service – which did have a good number of African-American cops – had a very different notion of police presence. First say “hello,” reach-out, shake hands (and usually some reception or defusing), guns stay way behind the scenes, or may appear if nothing else works (but it usually “worked)!

From my study, I urged the police (everywhere) to hire African-American cops – have them out on the streets, try to befriend crowds. It could help if the cops knew some of the persons personally. And these “riots” (they were called)  all stopped! Literally – after the Democratic Convention, the levels of threat, anger, and all – virtually stopped, and became history. (I was asked a few years later by a S. African official how this had happened here…Same advice.)

So: cops! I’ve had long conversations with a few of my students who were (already) cops – what it’s like – the training – the moment-to-moments of dealing with all the people in the various “hoods” – (I live in dwtn Minneapolis – where there’s lot of action!) – but it’s not a “ghettoized” scene. And there just began a program of “sort” of official workers-helpers-cleaners just to keep the scene “pleasant.” A sort of community-relations work, where their uniforms act as a kind of  “official intermediate.” Very nice work.

But it’s not always “pleasant” – not always easy, or friendly. Poor people increasing (I “pass” for a nice-white guy in most current settings  – I rarely get asked for I.D. with a credit card.) But I note a fair number of dwtn cops who “hold” themselves/faces very formally; appearing to be looking for the “worst” persons, cases (4 centuries of slavery in America still rise to reek and tweek our noses and fists-wrists). “Ghettos” still exist, and seem to be becoming more-so these days. (Maybe…with Obama?)

So: cultures, color (what gets cops decorations and promotions?). In 1968, a good cop from the cop’s administration, was convinced that pulling a gun really early in the scene would…work. But it didn’t – not in that Civil Rights moment. And there were others, not cops who were frightened (of a black Harvard guy?) – because…

Because history, poverty, slavery!…continue to wander still uneasily in our collective and individual minds. Change the world: make us all equal? A cop’s wish, culture, keeping the scene cool and calm. Anger? Handcuffs work? (Most African-Americans would, I’m pretty sure, keep this situation quiet, hidden: not Skip Gates!)

In such an “interesting” time we’re in, the question of the cops…police hovers always a bit nervously…especially when we’re a bit nervous about who’s trying to get (to) us. Why? Increasing fear makes it easier to keep the world in and under control – except for  a few thoughtful (and brave) persons…

Who am I? A deep and developing question. But I did have several teachers who helped me to formulate my thinking and directions.

Above all, Ray Birdwhistell – the originator of “Kinesics,” the study of the human body-in-interaction. He was an Anthropologist who was the best observer of people I’ve ever met – observer in the sense of seeing people in careful and detailed senses. He was trained as a “classical” dancer, and seemed to see all others as performers in life’s dances. And he didn’t only concentrate on each individual. He also/always noted how they interacted: in groups, in life’s varieties of social contexts from infants to older, the ordinary and the exceptional in every sense; richer and poorer, healthy and injured and “odd” and…; ethnic, linguistic. His ways into the world were always expanding. Life is social, interactive: the individual…?

My Teachers (click image to enlarge)

Ray was a student of the Chicago School of Symbolic Interaction – heirs of the American Pragmatist, George Herbert Mead, and the anthropologists who wandered the entire world. His work wandered from American Indians to the average family dynamics, to the sick – physically and, particularly, mentally. And he directed me to the U. of Chicago, Anthropology, where I continued my studies with linguist Norman McQuown – under whose tutelage I (and family: J, and infant daughter Amy) studied a Mayan Language (Tzotzil) and lived in Chiapas, Mexico for two years deeply immersed in both Indian and Ladino (their term) cultures during this time.

Ray was also a student in the line of thought and active fieldwork (life is fieldwork!) of Franz Boas: Margaret Mead (especially), Gregory Bateson, influenced his thought. Boas’ observation and insistence that the study of the human includes the Physical, Cultural, and Linguistic – (and his friendship with John Dewey, G.H. Mead’s buddy) – all floats in my being and work. Boas’ work on the nature of the shape of the human head/body as cultural, has yet to be fully heard. This tradition, which insists that all humans are equally part of the human condition – and that it takes continuous observation and wonderment of how we are…including oneself…to begin to understand the human condition. Many of the ideas of Human Rights developed within and from their work.

I met Ray Birdwhistell at SUNYBuffalo, where he joined linguists George Trager and Henry L. Smith, Jr. – who had previously led the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Dept. They had recently been dismissed (all the anthropologists-linguists) – from the FSI – and began the study of Anthropology and Linguistics, where I was one of their first two students. With Smith and Trager, I got deeply into questions of language and expression: how language “works,” as grammar, but also as sound – in the various contexts of culture and society.

Trager’s wide-works were more embedded in the works of some other former colleagues (e.g., “The Silent Language” – written by Edward T. Hall) which became part of my thinking on intercultural communication, “proxemics” – the spaciality of interactions, always expanding to questions about “how the world works.”)

We spent a summer with Trager in Taos, N.M. examining “paralanguage” in the Taos Indian language: i.e., how language sounds and “pitch” are bound together in speech and interaction. Some of my work (“Language and Human Nature” – resetting many issues surrounding “artificial intelligence”) flow from this thinking.

From Smith, more the involvement with one’s native language, and how to see and examine oneself speaking, observing; he was well known, as well, as an expert on American English dialects. My concern with language, expression, context sprang deeply from these connections and teachings which continue to frame much of my thinking as I approach the world of people: talk, interaction, the body, context…culture, institutions, history.

The work and thinking of my teachers at Buffalo is more expressed by others (e.g., E.T. Hall), and by Birdwhistell’s student (also sent to Chicago), Erving Goffman, whose work and thinking (“Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” etc.) elaborates much of Ray’s conceptual and intellectual orientation toward the study of the human.

Again, the two years of fieldwork in Chiapas under McQuown, taught me to observe and think (with several other co-students) about other languages/cultures. The opportunity there also provided me with two years of “hanging” around home, where I could observe daughter Amy learning language (actually two languages), and where being outside in the tropics afforded me the ongoing opportunity to see everyone and their families, etc., in the context of a fairly small community of Venustiano Carranza where both Indian and Ladino cultures and languages were spoken. Living in other cultures, speaking other languages, has been powerful in my being and thinking.

Beyond this were various teachers I had throughout my schooling: some very good and fairly memorable; a couple with whom my interactions were, frankly pretty terrible (in a year’s study in Medical School – which experience still resonates powerfully in my thinking – dissecting a cadaver remains in my thoughts.) The couple of “bad” experiences with teachers has strongly influenced how I think about and actually teach students: my book and practice, “Teaching as Dialogue.” (See the movie, “Paper Chase” to get the taste and flavor of those experiences – I try to pursue kindness and critical thought, social critique, more than directed study or lecturing!)

Resonating in my being, still, are also a couple of violin teachers from age 8 until my college days. Paramount in my thinking is Bernard Mandelkern who helped me to become a kind of “self-teacher” on the violin, whose study I continue to pursue most days in the vague hopes of being able someday (soon?) to play (perform?) J.S. Bach’s unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas.

I’ve also had “teachers” as I have been engaged in studying the world, people, institutions, ideas…two years as a mathematician-programmer at Cornell Aeronautical Lab in Buffalo, and four years in Western Psychiatric Institute in Pittsburgh doing research on the dynamics of Psychiatric Therapy.

As a critic-commentator of the (idea of) the University, Stanley Williams directed and joined with me on how to study and understand how such institutions work (from his experience as Manager of a Research group in Surgery); Phil Regal, on how to think about biology and most everything else; Mischa Penn who urged me to broaden my thinking and framing of all of knowledge; and various of my students, some of whom remain close co-thinkers, especially Jerry Timian and Glenn Radde; and members of the “Body Group” with whom I studied the body with observers, curers, athletes, musicians, etc. (especially R. Hruby).

And there are teachers of Alexander technique, tai chi, and ongoing yoga study with Nancy Boler – which I practice most days. Dan Latorre is my teacher-guide to the internet: I have much to learn.

Above all, hovers the wisdom and critique of partner Janis Sarles: my major teacher for over 50 years.

I’m posting this work in progress to gather comments and feedback, which sections are most interesting today — or not — let me know what you think.

Context, to begin, takes up the continuing questions of how we come to know and live contextually. The usual drill: “leave it to context” – avoids the underlying truths that contexts are aspects of our knowing. Where we are, how we know that, how this shapes or affects our understanding: what is same, what different; when do the same concepts mean differently in various contexts?

As these continue to be works-in-progress, I have not yet begun to address how we, for example, learn, know, and discern the contexts in which we find ourselves; or teach them to each next generation.

Human Nature begins or underlies much of my observations that we have traditionally (and continuing) mis-or under-estimated the human. Especially in the Western philosophical tradition, we continue to play theme-and-variation on the mind-body and the idea that humans are unique “due to language.” We have moved away from observation in deep and subtle ways, as we use the concepts of language on which to focus and organize thinking about the human: Meaning, Reality, the Ideal…

Especially in this era of the rise of “strong religion,” we are in the midst of these conflictual ways of thought and being, but are more arguing “politics” than the underlying issues, as cast in the Foundations Project. Morality explores these issues, beginning by questioning whether morality is only or particularly human (NO! it’s a part of the being of all social species). How do we come to be moral: part of our interactions, especially with m/others…

Looking beyond the Western tradition, it has become clearer that questions of Life Paradoxes (just beginning this study) are everywhere, but vary in different traditions. Some traditions want/choose to “resolve” paradoxes on one side or the other, while other traditions find them to be “complementary.” How this happens or “works” seems to underlie much of how we consider our being, reality, etc. In Western thought and religion, whether change or permanence is the real, underlies most other arguments in these days of the rise of strong religion.

Last (up to this moment), the questions surrounding Identity flow in many paths and moments reflecting and refracting the other Foundation Projects.