Making gumbo is the way I like to describe my life as a university professor. Being from the Louisiana bayou town of Opelousas, gumbo is close to my heart. To Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana, no matter where we reside at the moment, just the word gumbo resonates with family, childhood, good spirits, challenge and hope. As a university professor I try to bring that mix of ingredients to my efforts to teach.

Right now, I am in the fourth week of the Fall semester. As always, one of my courses is a 200 student, auditorium class. This semester that course is my favorite, Introduction to Social Psychology. My specialty is social psychology and I teach that course as a course on what it takes for a relationship to develop and be maintained. My goal is to challenge students’ romantic assumptions about how romantic interpersonal relationships work. We are at the point in the semester where my students are starting to realize that I meant what I said when on the first day I declared to them, “you’re not going to like this class.”

My other class has 40 students. That class too has an interpersonal focus, but takes on a different set of social psychological dynamics. Yes we still concentrate on relationship development, but in this case the question is, how is relationship development influenced by race? In this class the point is to understand how feelings of uncertainty can put relationship development at risk. And right now in America, race, ethnicity, gender and general otherness, causes more uncertainty than ever. One cultural analyst, Appadurai, captured what is going on by saying that daily we are struggling with the question, “who are the ‘we’ and who are among the ‘they?’”

I created that course, “Interpersonal Relationships and Race,” in 2006. Something was in the air and now we see that something. Everyday I have so many examples I can take into the classroom to talk about the role of racial uncertainty in American life. Just this week, former President Jimmy Carter causes a storm of controversy by saying that “racism” is what is behind much of the protest against President Obama’s push for health-care reform. Yet, at the time Mr. Obama was elected President, pundits were declaring our America’s move into a post-racial era. We had finally gotten past, they said, the hurts of our racial history.

Clearly something is amiss. And so in my class we have much to talk about when it comes to what my students are experiencing in trying to navigate a college campus that is teeming with diversity; how to make friends with people who do not look like, talk like, you? “Who are the ‘we’ and who are among the ‘they.’”

Myself, I never bought the idea that Mr. Obama’s election meant we were post-racial. At the of this month, my essay “Post-racial?: Something even more bizarre and inexplicable,” will be published. I’ll post it here when that happens.

In that essay, I make the point that we are living on a new racial frontier. Mr. Obama’s election did not create it, but is only a part of the terrain of that new frontier. I work that out in detail in my book “Living on the New Racial Frontier,” which is being considered by a publisher right now. I’ll let you know when I know whether it is accepted for publication.

Already accepted for publication by Plain View Press is my memoir, “Making Gumbo in the University.” With the publisher, Susan Bright, I have gone through the copy editing process. Now I am waiting to get the proofs so that we can move toward an actual publication date. I am anxious to see that book in final form.

So with my teaching and writing, I am in the midst of another exciting, spicy, semester. The gumbo has a lot of ingredients, and it’s almost ready.

1. Marilyn Hodge Says:
   October 21st, 2009 at 10:42 AM

   Congrats. All sounds very interesting and timely. Wishing you much success.!!



2. Wanda & Larry Caillier Says:
   October 21st, 2009 at 9:55 PM

   This could not be more appropriate especially at this particular era. We are extremely proud of you. Would like to hear from you more frequently because people seem to be disappearing from this earth at a rapid pace.



3. Cleo Simien Lemelle Says:
   October 26th, 2009 at 10:12 PM

   How refreshing it is to see how accomplished you are. Take a look at the front page of the Opelousas Daily World 10/25/09 – Sunday Edition. My sister, Etha (HGS Class of ’63) and her husband are on the front page.

   Cleo Simien Lemelle
   HGS Class of ’68.



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