| Some months ago, someone urged me to listen to a station called The Mic 92.1, a network of Air America Radio. I did, then, listen for a few minutes until I heard a string of annoying commercials. Buy-this and buy-that. I turned it off. I could deal with another Wisconsin radio station because there was little of that buy-this-buy-that advertisement. I was urged to try The Mic again. Now, I listen to the station and occasionally tune in to the other station. This same "someone" mentioned a Lee Rayburn during the summer. I was asked to notify him about our community group's activities. The name sounded familiar, but I was certain I had not listened to Rayburn. Now I listen to the Pro-Show which airs at 6 a.m. not because Rayburn responded to our request. I listen because Rayburn is truly concerned about issues affecting all the citizens in Madison, especially the issues surrounding diversity in Madison. I listen and hear him talk openly about race in Madison. I spoke with Rayburn the other day at Meeting Grounds Coffee in Madison. He spoke about his "racial awakening" in San Francisco once he left the all white Chicago suburb where he grew up. In San Francisco he had the opportunity to "see different cultures." He was most impressed by the Hispanic family structure, one not limited to parents and children, but included grandparents and uncles and aunts. Rayburn said he came to "cherish the stronger family unit" within the Hispanic communities. The philosopher, Martin Jay, in Songs of Experience, writes: "However much we may construe experience as a personal possession -- 'no one can take my experiences away from me' it is sometimes argued -- it is inevitably acquired through an encounter with otherness ... That is, an experience, however we define it, cannot simply duplicate the prior reality of the one who undergoes it, leaving him or her precisely as before; something must be altered, something new must happen, to make the term meaningful." Rayburn's experience among the Hispanic communities in San Francisco, serving as a starting point, raised his curiosity about other cultures. I am over 50 and a Black woman who has heard the "bitches" and "whores" blaring from car radios -- corporate-supported defamation of Black women. Over the years, White students (and even some White and Black colleagues) insist I am from the "ghetto." I must "hang out" somewhere when I am done teaching. I have encountered Whites shunned to find out I have a doctorate in literature -- "She reads!" They drilled me to find out how I "cleaned" up from a drug addiction or how I "escaped" an abusive husband before returning to school. Their assumptions were based on the negative representations U.S. corporations offer the world about my people. For Rayburn, the discovery of Hip Hop has been another "positive" experience. Distinguishing Hip Hop from Gangsta Rap, Rayburn insists that the former has been "magic" for him in that it reveals the "double-standards" when it comes to the way African Americans are treated in this country. In turn, nothing disturbs him more than the hypocrisy he witnesses in Madison. "I love Madison," said Rayburn. "It is not much different than other places in the country." But it is hard not to notice the lack of employment for Black residents in Madison while, at the same time, the numbers of Blacks incarcerated in Dane County rises each year. Madison has come to terms with "sexual identity" and "freedom identity," Rayburn said, but it has yet to come to terms with race. Much like the rest of the country, he said, Madison has still to deal with "racial identity," or racial diversity. "It is almost as if I am witnessing two cities" in one, said Rayburn. "There are Black communities like "South Park and Allied Drive," and then there is Madison. "We need to talk about our differences" and unify based on our diversity. It is all about "racial justice." How Madison handles its racial diversity is an issue. "When do we deal with it?" "All I can do is talk about it," Rayburn said. Madison has the 'potential' to be different from other cities, he added, because there are people here "committed to evolution." He has not seen that potential anywhere else. "More and more people are willing to make the change than anywhere else." Rayburn hopes to stay in Madison and witness its maturation when it comes to racial diversity. "The city would do well to acknowledge that there is still a 'persistence of ignorance' about races other than the white race. Rayburn said that part of his job on the radio is to "find an entertaining way" to bring people together on this issue. I wonder why a set of positive experiences needs the label "progressive." |
| Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels Madison should come to terms with race |
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