Religion:
“Religion is deeply intertwined with conceptions of American society. The absence of faith, the belief in a higher being seems to be a major barrier between people in our society.”
-“Profs study race, religion,” Minnesota Daily, April 27, 2004On Whiteness:
“Whiteness is both an identity for some, and an absence of identity for others…it captures awareness and understanding of social inequalities of some, and the absence of such understandings- that it is at once ubiquitous and privileged, localized and universal- are the essence of the phenomenon of whiteness.”
-YWCA’s Response to ‘Critical Whiteness Studies’ survey“It’s sort of like having an accent. For some white Americans, racial identity is so fixed, so taken for granted, that 'race' becomes something other people have.”
-“What Whites think of their own race: University of Minnesota provides new insight,” Eurweb.com, CA, September 19, 2006“I have a lot of students in my race relations class who say ‘I don’t have a race,’ ‘I’m part of the human race’ or ‘I’m American.’”
-“Survey: Whites Do Have a Group Identity,” shrm.org, September 12, 2006“There is a lot of interest in focusing on white privilege and white identity, but nobody had really tried to test, evaluate, or quantify what the literature claims is true.”
-“Survey: Whites Do Have a Group Identity,” shrm.org, September 12, 2006“Another explanation [for white identity] is the desire to be part of a multicultural identity and to have a culture they can celebrate.”
-“Survey: Whites Do Have a Group Identity,” shrm.org, September 12, 2006“A lot of people have an expectation that non-whites will be more critical [and that] they don’t believe in American values. But they are as optimistic as anyone else. I think that’s probably one of the starting points for addressing racial differences- focusing on some of the things we agree on, like optimism and American values.”
-“Survey: Whites Do Have a Group Identity,” shrm.org, September 12, 2006“[The Whiteness Survey] is a conversation starter about whites and their role. But why that is, and how we should proceed, is a bigger issue.”
-“Survey: Whites Do Have a Group Identity,” shrm.org, September 12, 2006“The assumption has been that for many white Americans, race is something other people have. Experts in the field and diversity trainers assumed that whites overlooked their own race. But you can’t deal with the problems of race and inequality by just looking at the people who are disadvantaged.”
- “‘Whiteness Studies’ researchers at U look at racial identity,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 11, 2006It is probable that white Americans see affirmative action as reverse discrimination.
-“Profs study race, religion,” Minnesota Daily, April 27, 2004On Critical Whiteness Studies:
“[I am] neither pro-Whiteness studies or anti-Whiteness studies. [The survey was simply an attempt to test preconceptions about race.]”
-“Survey indicates white people have sense of racial identity,” Associated Press, September 11, 2006On Race Relations:
“We understand that history matters but don’t want to see how it pervades our culture. It’s kind of surprising but also really typical of how Americans can’t reconcile race problems. To support affirmative action, you have to have a historical understanding of where these problems come from.”
-“The Delusion of Colorblindness,” Time.com: Nation, September 7, 2006“Whites have invented subtle ways to convince themselves that race isn’t a problem in America.”
-“The Meaning of White,” Time Magazine, September 11, 2006“We think of U.S. minorities as less engaged in American individualism, but they are maybe more so.”
-“The Meaning of White,” Time Magazine, September 11, 2006On Colorblindness:
“It blurs the real problems of jobs and education that communities of color are struggling with.”
-“The Delusion of Colorblindness,” Time.com: Nation, September 7, 2006On Building Stadiums for Sports Teams:
“If you’re a city on the move or on the make, I think you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better alternative that will raise your visibility quicker.”
-“Will Success Pay Off?” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 17, 1999“It’s only pride you can appeal to. But people are seeing more and more that all the profit goes to the owners and all the risk goes to the municipalities, and it’s getting harder and harder to accept that.”
-“Will Success Pay Off?” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 17, 1999The economic benefits stadium boosters like to proclaim are “mostly mythical, and extremely intangible and indirect.”
-“Long Bombs,” The Deal, Vol. 3 No. 31, July 11-July 24, 2005, pg. 30On community research projects:
“The kinds of research questions that I ask and I’m interested in require local ethnographic research and you can’t do research if you don’t have relationship with people. You have to be willing to exchange information and set this up as an equal relationship.”
-“From firing iron to hiring people: faculty in the community,” CLA Today, Winter/Spring 1999“All of the struggles, as frustrating as they are, really open your eyes [to all the economic and bureaucratic obstacles to social change. And that’s a central principle of ethnography. You can’t understand the world view and experiences of people in an abstract way. You have to see how they live.”
-“From firing iron to hiring people: faculty in the community,” CLA Today, Winter/Spring 1999“All of us have had a longstanding concern that our research have a use for society. We’re doing work that is of direct usefulness to people.”
-“From firing iron to hiring people: faculty in the community,” CLA Today, Winter/Spring 1999On Sports and Academics:
The context of athletes’ academic performance should be considered. “The graduation rate among athletes is actually higher than for nonathletes at the University. The athletic-academic issue shifts the burden of attention on the athletes and focuses on them rather than the larger problem.”
-“U athletics rank last in academics,” The Minnesota Daily, October 5, 2006The pressure on student-athletes’ academic performance is familiar and expected- and that it spans across postsecondary institutions.
-“U athletics rank last in academics,” The Minnesota Daily, October 5, 2006“There’s nothing else in the University that gets the attention that athletics gets.” [There’s disproportionate publicity for University athletics.]
-“U athletics rank last in academics,” The Minnesota Daily, October 5, 2006“They’re embracing [athletics] and using it for an educational mission [through raising money for] the institution. Time will tell if that plan will work.”
-“U athletics rank last in academics,” The Minnesota Daily, October 5, 2006There is a clear solution for unsatisfactory academic progress among athletes: bring in better students. “We need to start taking steps in that direction, and we need to have that goal.”
-“U athletics rank last in academics,” The Minnesota Daily, October 5, 2006On the decline of Blacks in Baseball:
“Through the civil rights movement, I think a lot of critics of American race relations have seen the black experience in that same trajectory. You have this high point in the ‘50s and ‘60s where Americans as a nation realized the faults of slavery and Jim Crow and stood up against that and started creating policies to sort of reverse those trends. The effects are you start to see improvements in employment and income and education status. And starting sometime in the ‘80s, as people are willing to spend less money on those specific programs, you start to see gains African-Americans have made at least stagnate if not decline.”
-“Baseball’s Blackout,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 9, 2006“I don’t know if it’s out and out racism. It seems like it’s institutional history that’s really helped to shape who’s playing today.”
-“Baseball’s Blackout,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 9, 2006“You often think about integration as a really good thing. And once you achieve it you’re done. And neither one of those is true. Integration is a challenge, and it’s hard to do. Usually more conflict is going to happen if you’re genuinely integrating an institution. And it’s not going to stay certainly there once you achieve it. It has to be continually produced and reproduced. I think that’s the thing that happened especially in baseball, that it celebrated itself and took for granted that it was integrated without taking the steps to see that it stays that way.”
-“Baseball’s Blackout,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 9, 2006“If you think about [baseball] as a market system, and you’re looking for workers, it just seems like major league baseball has looked for cheaper markets to get good players that aren’t American, that aren’t even white.”
-“Baseball’s Blackout,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 9, 2006“That’s one of the arguments made about the decline of the Negro Leagues. Not only did you lose the black institutions, but it was basically the white major leagues exploiting the black talent pool there, and once it was gone, they start looking elsewhere. You decimate the peripheral nations and go where you need to go next.”
-“Baseball’s Blackout,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 9, 2006On the new generation, the 2001/millennium generation:
“[Students will] probably not [turn their ideals into reality.] It’s just too hard. Plus, there’s still general economic growth happening. It’s only when people start getting hit hard that you get strong forces for change. There are people with good ideals, and there’s all kinds of alternative political activity, but it’s still a minority of the population involved in that.”
-“Mindset for a New Millenium,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 5, 1998If you say you’re ‘dissatisfied,’ it implies there’s something wrong with you.
-“Mindset for a New Millenium,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 5, 1998“The reality is, most students are obsessive and neurotic about (how they look) and do whatever they can to change or maintain what they have. People don’t want to see themselves as falling short in this kind of culture. You may not think you’re perfect but you think you’re closer than most people. Everyone thinks they’re kind of above average, and they’re not comparing themselves [in the survey] to the ideal, but to other people.”
-“Mindset for a New Millenium,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 5, 1998“If this society is to live up to its highest, noblest dreams, it will have to rise up collectively and work together, not just see society as a thing for them to get what they can individually. It’s not just making a rich society, but a good one. I don’t have a lot of optimism for this generation at the moment.”
-“Mindset for a New Millenium,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 5, 1998On college coaching:
“The movement [athlete revolution] gave rise to a generation of athletes that saw themselves as individuals. But the assumption now is, it is a good thing that athletes are tied to a certain program and belong to it no matter how they’re treated or how they relate to a specific coach. We don’t think so critically of ourselves if we change jobs or move to a different city. We look at that as a good thing, a sign of growth. College students change schools all the time for different reasons. They might not like a professor or might want to switch majors or whatever. Yet to a certain extent we want to take that choice away from athletes. We seem to think more about the university and its team than the needs of an individual.”
-“Old Yellers,” The San DiegoUnion-Tribune, April 15, 1998“The great coaches tend not to be authoritarians.”
-“Old Yellers,” The San DiegoUnion-Tribune, April 15, 1998“You can’t tell most athletes anymore, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’ You can’t step on an athlete’s rights and privileges like people did 10 years ago. More and more, players are standing up and saying, ‘We’re human beings.”
-“Old Yellers,” The San DiegoUnion-Tribune, April 15, 1998On Heroes:
It is unsafe to generalize about heroes because each culture, community, interest group, and ethnic group has a different take on what a hero is.
-“Idle Worship,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 2, 1998“Different communities and different people in different times have different heroes.”
-“Idle Worship,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 2, 1998“No matter how you came to fame, when you’re a hero you have these general abstract ideals. But when you become a political leader, you have to give those ideals substance, and when you give them substance, not everyone can agree anymore.”
-“Idle Worship,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 2, 1998“A democracy like ours needs individuals to celebrate, but we can’t have them too high above us, because that destroys the very assumptions about equality and humanity that unites us all.”
-“Idle Worship,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 2, 1998On the NBA’s dress code:
The leagues new dress code for players, who are predominantly black, smacks of “racial implications.” “Not only is the league dominated by African-American athletes, but the proposed regulations seem so directly targeted at styles that are associated in the public imagination with inner-city black culture. The NBA isn’t colorblind. The NBA wants to have it all ways. The league doesn’t want to offend consumers and advertisers. But I’ve got to believe that the players, whose jerseys are some of the NBA’s biggest sellers, are the same players they are now trying to police with this dress code.”
-“NBA dress code reaction stirs passion statements,” Star Tribune, Oct. 21, 2005On the Love Boat scandal:
Response to the so-called “Love Boat” incident is watered down by three decades of increased pornography, graphic sex and dozens of high-profile scandals involving people in the public eye.
-“Shocked by the Vikings boat bash? Hardly,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, Oct. 15, 2005“There are social realities about the society we live in that we like to pretend aren’t there. For tons of people in our society, we’re happy, if not to condone, at least to allow this kind of thing- as long as it’s kept in its place.”
-“Shocked by the Vikings boat bash? Hardly,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, Oct. 15, 2005“They’re [athletes] pretty much like other people. Except they’re people who have a lot of public eyes on them.”
-“Shocked by the Vikings boat bash? Hardly,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, Oct. 15, 2005