Transcription of Christopher Petrella for the show Living History #299
Dr. Lisa: In the studio with me today I have Christopher Petrella who teachers at Bates College, and explores question about the intersection of race, criminality and citizenship. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Harper’s magazine, Boston Review and The New Yorker. His research has appeared on ESPN and NPR and has been debated in the US House of Representatives. Great to have you here today.
Dr. Petrella: Thanks so much. Happy to be here.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about this US House of Representatives debate. It’s very interesting that what you are doing has made it all the way over there.
Dr. Petrella: Yeah, a few years ago in 2013, 2014, one of my colleagues, we are working on questions of prison privatization. It turns out that there’s a very deep amount of secrecy and lack of transparency when it comes to private prison companies in the United States. We endeavored to representative Sheila Jackson Lee out of Houston, a democrat, draft a bill that would require private prison companies like Core-Civic and the GO Group, which are these monstrosities of publicly traded for-profit prison companies, to disclose the very same information that their public counterpart agencies already have to disclose.
In simpler terms. If you are a journalist and you want to access information about the California department of corrections and rehabilitation, you can file a foyer request. If it’s reasonable you’ll be able to obtain that information. If you try to find similar information on privately, publicly held private prisons, you can’t. They generally claim a proprietary exemption clause, and say that the disclosure of such information would generally put them at a competitive market disadvantage. We found this … We among many other people found this particularly problematic of course since we as private citizens ultimately pay for private prison companies to exist to large degree.
The act was called the private prison information act. It was introduced in 2014, 2015. It hasn’t made it out of committee, my understanding is that it will be reintroduced very shortly. We are looking forward to hopefully some fruitful results from that debate.
Dr. Lisa: This seems like a very specific field that you’ve chosen to go into. I know that you have degrees from Bates College, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, what sent you down this path, and what was your educational background?
Dr. Petrella: I’m very much generally interested in questions of justice and how we can expand the wee of an involving democracy. I was… I lived… My family and I lived in the Hartford area until I was about four, at which point we moved to this tiny, tiny sort of bucolic rural community called Summers, which is in north central Connecticut. Summers has more prisons than stop lights. I grew up in a town with three prisons, which included the maximum security facility. At the time it also included death row, Connecticut has since gotten rid of capital punishment. Questions of containment, punishment were in my backyard.
That generally served as an entry into beginning to ask questions about the relationship between race and democracy or sort of more capaciously, race, democracy, and incarceration. I discovered as a fairly young person, I think I was around 16 when the 2000 US census came out, and discovered that somewhere between 12 to 15% of my community was what the US census would classify as black and or African-American, despite the fact that I went to school with very few black peers.
This raised some questions. Where are these folks being counted and why? With the help of a progressive teacher we looked into this matter and he helped me to understand that for the purposes of census designation, resource allocation, sometimes legislative apportionment, prisoners are counted in the census tract in which the facility is located, as opposed to from where they came. That struck me as particularly problematic. For a whole holster of reasons it sort of perverts the democratic process.
I later came to understand this as prison gerrymandering, which is unofficial practice that a lot of states utilize. What it essentially does is resegregate particular communities and then in conjunction redistribute wealth. I knew that being a white family in this particular space where in many ways we were benefiting directly, and complicit with these prisons, housing, many black and brown folk in my community called me to think through what that complicity looked like and began to ask questions, what does it mean to be white in the United States? I’ve sort of carried those questions with me since.
Dr. Lisa: It’s a complicated conversation, and I think it’s one that not everybody feels comfortable having.
Dr. Petrella: I think that’s right.
Dr. Lisa: Questions of race. It seems as though we’ve kind of in some ways come very far and in other ways they may be stalled out to a pretty significant degree. How do you get comfortable as a self-identified white male talking about these really sticky issues?
Dr. Petrella: I don’t know that that I’ll ever be comfortable. I think I’m very much a work in progress but I would say it begins with the recognition that maybe we don’t know as much as we thought we knew about who we are. I say we as white folk. James Baldwin has a fantastic quote from the mid 60s in which he writes, “White people are trapped in a history they don’t understand.” I think that’s very much an accurate diagnosis of the American dilemma. A question I often ask my students, my white students, self-identified white students is, when did you know you were white? That process of becoming white, that process of American socialization as white is one that’s complex and one that means different things to different people.
I began to explore that through the prison question in a lot of ways is why I think it’s impossible to ask questions about what punishment looks like in this country without thinking through questions of race, without thinking through questions of democracy, especially because quite frankly, the prison system in the United States, or more accurately prison systems came up with the birth of the republic. They were cousins. If we are going to diagnose questions of power, questions of access, questions of freedom and democracy, it would be incomplete not to include questions of punishment.
Dr. Lisa: How do students that you teach respond? I know that Bates actually has a history of trying to be as inclusive as possible over the decades. It still has a fairly high percentage I believe of white students as do all the smaller real arts and university schools in our state. How do people respond that you are teaching now?
Dr. Petrella: I think generally the response has been fairly favorable I think if you need… I think this is sort of a general pedagogical good practice. When you are meeting students where they are with where you are it’s very difficult to have an inauthentic encounter and conversation. I try to open myself up to being uncomfortable. In every syllabus that I construct there is always a line that suggests we are trying to make a safer space for dangerous conversations. If we can’t have those dangerous conversations, I don’t actually know that we are particularly capable of moving the needle forward on these seemingly intractable social issues.
I would say that Bates’ genealogy I think makes the institution very favorable to having these conversations, both at the classroom level and at the institutional level. Something that not everyone… Many people know that Bates was founded by Oren Cheney, who was a freewill Baptist abolitionist.
What folks don’t know is that he was great friends with Frederick Douglass. He was right in the mix, he was right in the thick of it. There were several instances in which Frederick Douglass came to Maine to visit with Cheney. Here in Portland in fact, Douglass spoke at least twice that I know. When City Hall used to be in Monument Square, he made a few stops there. He also made a stop or two up to Louis and Bates. The institution, the State of Maine in a lot of ways has a very rich history and legacy vis-a-vis abolition. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the state is where it needs to be. I certainly think we can draw on those histories to influence the present.
Dr. Lisa: Having now had one child whose graduated from college and another who is currently in school, one of the things that I’m very aware of is this kind of culture of micro-regressions, and this culture of, I think you kind of addressed it, of fear around even having a conversation because if you say something that’s outside of what might be considered politically correct, you are really putting yourself at risk. How do we get to a place of conversation, and how do we get to a place of conversation without having people feel threatened?
Dr. Petrella: This is a complicated question. I think it depends who you are. It depends on one’s embodied identity. I can only speak as a white person what that means to me. I would say it means approaching questions of potential sort of racial tension or just more generally tension related to social power with a certain radical openness. Particularly if we can’t have these conversations that are institutional at our educational institutions, then I’m not quite sure where we can have them.
Micro-regressions are certainly, I think an issue on every college campus around the country, and in part of my role at Bates over the next four to five months, we are actually putting together an anti-bias bi-center intervention training program, hopefully to equip students better to intervene in real time in these type of incidents, which thankfully are paltry but nonetheless problematic.
We are looking at ways for students to build literacies when it comes to identifying incidents of bias, intervening in incidents of bias, caring for oneself and the target in the aftermath of an incident of bias. Then more generally from a higher altitude perspective living one’s principles. How do we sort of transmogrify a lot of the values we have into direct action, into a political engagement, into community conversation and dialogue? I think that’s an involving process. We are certainly happy with what we have in store in terms of our pallet of offerings but you are right, it’s a thorny issue and one that needs to be addressed around the country.
Dr. Lisa: As a white male, have you ever experienced kind of I guess reversed bias?
Dr. Petrella: No. I have not.
Dr. Lisa: You are fortunate.
Dr. Petrella: I would say that… My PhD is in African-American studies, more precisely African Diaspora Studies from UC Berkeley. I would say I was one of maybe three or four white students in that PhD program. There was not a single time that I felt unwelcome. There were times that I felt intellectually and politically challenged. Again, I think that the recipe for evolution and growth anyway. My sense has always been almost all people of color that I ever encountered, when they know a white person is deeply invested in the cause and has proven themselves to be a co-conspirator over many years, one will welcome you with an open hand. That’s generally been my experience.
Dr. Lisa: It also seems, the way you are describing it, as if it comes from the way that you frame it as well where what you just talked about was that you have felt challenged. You didn’t feel as if it was a bias against you.
Dr. Petrella: Not at all, because I think once you recognize all of the accumulated privileges that you’ve had, that I’ve had, despite growing up in a working class family. I think partly sometimes the issue with white people is that we think that privilege is absolute. The common argument is, “I’m white, but I grew up in a working class household.” You have racial privilege and you don’t have economic privilege. That’s okay. It doesn’t invalidate the fact that race is still a salient organizing principle in society, and we need to contend with that.
I think in some senses you are very right to say that it’s a matter of framing. It’s a matter of having enough sort of historical literacy and historical sense to understand the problem correctly. I’m also lucky because through a lot of my research and work I’ve been able to meet other staunchly anti-racist white people who I can look to as an example, there aren’t many, I will say, and some days are obviously harder than other to find those examples, but they are out there. They certainly are out there and they are a whole host of folk. John Brown, Howard Zinn, I could go on.
Dr. Lisa: What’s your criteria for a staunchly anti-racist white person?
Dr. Petrella: I think the most important ingredient is someone who has a structural or systemic analysis of white supremacy, which is to say that racism is not exclusively transactional. It’s not necessarily fully based in discrimination but it’s based in how we choose to organize society. I think perhaps a powerful example could be one of the first pieces of legislation that was passed after the ratification of the US constitution, which was the US immigration and naturalization act of 1790.
The act expressly prohibited nonwhite people from naturalizing as US citizens. That’s something we have to contend with, but I think that because in most circles this history hasn’t been exhumed, we don’t always have… As white folk, we don’t always have the best analysis of how deep white supremacy goes in our history, in our politics, in our policies, until a piece of legislation was passed in 1952, there was still a racial restriction on immigration. My dad was born in 1952, that’s recent history.
I could go on and on, but there are many examples that bring this history very much up to the present. There is a ground swell of evidence to suggest, particularly in the US, south, that the origin of municipal police department were in slave patrols. Having that type of historical literacy, I think, forces a different analysis and forces a different confrontation.
Dr. Lisa: I’m finding this also interesting because obviously as a medical doctor, my background was educationally more science-based. I did have history classes but they were far fewer than the ones you had and far less extensive, obviously, given your educational background. However, my daughter is a history major.
Dr. Petrella: That’s awesome.
Dr. Lisa: Of course. That’s actually something that I kind of wanted to talk about a little bit too. That is the… You talk about the value of education, and how do you quantify it? If you go out and you are a doctor, obviously there is a job for you on the other side. If you are a history major, then there is a few different paths you can go but it seems like it’s less certain. What you are describing is extremely important to have people who actually understand the background of our culture and society. When you were deciding to get your PhD, what did that calculation look like for you?
Dr. Petrella: I’ve never been… My calculus and calculation has never particularly been sort of economystic. I have to say I very much think there are sort of differences between vocations and professions. I’m lucky that I was able to sort of meet at the intersection of those two fields. My thinking as a person in their mid-twenties when I started the PhD program was that quite simply we needed more white people who understood their history. If we begin with that proposition and sort of build a critical mass, I think we certainly can sort of move the bar forward.
I’m very fortunate. I’ll also say that good people doing good work find each other. That’s always been my experience. I feel fortunate that I’ve been able to link up with other folks doing the work. I’m actually… I just got back on Sunday from doing a Know Your Rights training camp in Chicago at the DuSable Museum, which is the museum for African-American history, which was story-sponsored by Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. That’s the sort of work I’m talking about. I think there are real people doing real work. It’s inspiring to be a part of those conversations and hopefully a part of the solution.
Dr. Lisa: What you are saying to potentially history majors out there and current history majors is do what feels important to you and don’t necessarily assume that there won’t be a job on the other side.
Dr. Petrella: Yeah. I think… I’ll say this. I think my sort of vocational orientation has always come from the words of this educator Howard Thurman, who wrote “Do what makes you come alive because the world needs people to come alive.” I think we need to be awake and vigilante and conscious and conscientious in order to improve our collective lot. My sense is, if you are doing what you are doing pretty well, hopefully over time there will be opportunities for you. If you don’t like what you are doing, you are not going to do it well. I think there are certainly calculations that people will make that are different than mine. I’m a staunch supporter of the humanities, a staunch supporter of interdisciplinary programs, and I’ve been very disappointed to know that many of these programs, disciplines are on the chop and block.
I don’t think it’s particularly where we need to go as a society. I think we are losing opportunities to ask questions that matter very deeply. That’s also, I’d want to be super clear. That’s not to suggest that the natural sciences do not matter, because I think very much so in my field there are connections that can be made between the natural sciences and questions of power.
Dr. Lisa: What do you hope to see happen over the trajectory of your career and really of the field that you are working in?
Dr. Petrella: Two separate questions. I’ve always felt like the traditional academic route was not particularly made, tailor-made for someone like me. I love writing, I love being able to give talks around the country, but I’m aware of the limitations of for instance publishing exclusively in academic journals, speaking to other folks who use the same language and have the same units of analysis and in the same discipline. I’m sure that in some way, shape or form, my career will be one characterized by hybridization, I very much plan to remain in the academy in some capacity. I think that’s an important grounding. I do think the degree is important, I do think scholarships are important. My question is always, who is seeing it, who is able to access it. Are we as scholars and academics making ourselves clear and relevant?
I think this is part of, sort of my working class genealogy bubbling over the surface here because if I couldn’t understand something, it wasn’t relevant to me, not to hop too much on Dr. King but he also later in his life, in the late 60s said, “If you can’t understand something I’ve said, it’s a failure of my education not yours.” I think as academics it’s incumbent upon us to make sure we are adding to the conversation not alienating and marginalizing people who may not have the same pedigree, who may not have the same sort of life experiences, and quite frankly privileges and opportunities.
Having said that, I very much want to make sure that I also have one foot that is either outside of the academy or able to pivot sort of in agile ways. It really has been a pleasure linking up with the Know Your Rights initiative because it’s provided an opportunity to bring some of the sort of rigorous scholarly work to a community that’s just vastly underserved by their institutions. I see that in a lot of ways as sort of the way to sort of redistribute knowledge. I think that’s generally been a guiding principle. How can we ensure that people, all people have access to the sort of knowledge sources and various literacies that I as an instructor at Bates with a PhD have?
If we can do that then I think we’ve, we are onto something. To your question about where I’d like to see the discipline and the field go. I very much would like to see, and I think we are getting there, but I would very much like to see more self-identified white people investing themselves of questions of not only race but really just questions of sort of critical social literacies, power, politics. I think that’s what we solely need. For instance, I think we need more self-identified white folk to be asking questions like, “Should we vote for the Democrat or should we vote for the Republican?” As opposed to, can we think about how both of these parties in a lot of ways have their roots in whiteness and have their roots in white supremacy?
Abraham Lincoln did not think that black people and white people were equal, by any stretch of the imagination. He articulated that very proudly actually in one of the early Lincoln-Douglas debates, I think in 1857. The democratic party has its roots in the KKK and the Dixiecrat South.
I think we need more white folk to shift the conversation. I think we need new frameworks, better questions, and that’s where I’d really like to see sort of generally the field go. Also, just education more generally. I know that not every course can engage in questions of race in the way that I’m describing, but I think every course certainly can engage questions of power. If we are not doing that then I think we are offering our young people an incomplete education.
Dr. Lisa: I appreciate the work that you are doing. I hope that what you have asked for will materialize within the course of the next few years.
Dr. Petrella: We plan on making that so.
Dr. Lisa: I’ve been speaking with Christopher Petrella who teaches at Bates College and explores questions about the intersection of race, criminality, and citizenship. Thank you so much for all that you are doing and for coming in today.
Dr. Petrella: Thank you so much