Joel Plummer, part-time lecturer for Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Africana Studies
Article by Stephen Witty
Although American media regularly reserves February for stories of African-American achievement, Rutgers courses celebrate diversity throughout the year, including during Summer Session, part of the Division of Continuing Studies, which began registration February 15.
With a semester’s worth of work condensed into five or six weeks, Summer courses always offer immersive intellectual experiences. This year, a couple of offerings built around Black history and African-American lives also provide a deep dive into a rich world, showing how far-ranging and interconnected those topics really are.
“African-Americans and Sports,” taught by Joel Plummer, part-time lecturer for Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Africana Studies for more than a dozen years, was originally designed as a sort of “a Trojan horse,” he admits, a way to use a popular subject to address a myriad of issues.
“I like to say my course is for people who want to use ordinary things to see extraordinary things,” he says. “And sports are something that touches everybody on every level. You take a CEO from some giant corporation and he’s probably going to flip to the Super Bowl just like the janitor who cleans the toilet in his office. Sports are ubiquitous. And there’s something about them that reveal passions. They reveal the way people really feel about society.”
Part-time lecturer in the Department of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies and in the Department of Africana Studies, Karla Jackson-Brewer teaches a class, “The Black Woman,” that is similarly wide-ranging, and innovative. “As Africana studies evolved, the African experience was often presented in terms of the male experience,” she explains. “As women’s studies evolved, it focused on white women’s experience. This course fills that gap. I’ve been teaching it for 30 years and it’s only become more intersectional, more international.”
Not only have the courses changed over the years, but so have the students who take them.
“When I first started teaching this, there wasn’t a specific, political sports controversy in the news,” Plummer says. “I know some students would say, ‘Oh, Professor Plummer is reaching, sports aren’t about politics, it’s an escape from politics.’ But then Colin Kaepernick comes along, and suddenly I’m more relevant than ever. I’m not talking about something out of a history book anymore; the students are watching it happening in real time. I used to have to explain how all institutions are part of the larger society, reflect the larger society. The students who come into class now – I don’t need to convince them of that.”
“The students have changed a lot,” Jackson-Brewer says. “There was a period when their energy was a little more passive; sometimes it could be like pulling teeth to get them talking , but I’m seeing a real resurgence in interest and engagement. They’re bringing in their own experiences, bonding, even meeting online after class to continue the discussion; they’re creating this environment for collectivity, collaboration, and association, which is very important. And the class itself has grown very diverse. It’s still predominately black women, but I have trans students, Caucasian students, Latinx students. Men, too. And that diversity is essential. We all need to be more literate about cultures that are different from our own. That’s the only way we can build equitable communities.”
Equity is something that’s very much on these professors’ minds. For example, when he’s not teaching, Plummer is a professional sports photographer, particularly renowned for his terrific images of boxers. And it strikes him that few sports better illustrate the sort of power dynamics he speaks about in class. “There are not a lot of millionaires who choose to get punched in the face for a living,” Plummer observes. “People turn to boxing out of desperation.”
Once again, he says, it’s all about black bodies, and white profits.
“The sports world is overwhelmingly populated by black laborers and white owners,” he says. “Why is it that these people are trusted to be the product, but not manage the product? How do you change that?”
Making students aware of why the push for equality continues, and how far there still is to go, is an integral part of these courses.
“One of the things we focus on is health and black women, so that they have an awareness of some things,” says Jackson-Brewer, who also has an integrative therapy practice in New York. “We talk about how the health-care industry does not meet their needs, how their voices are not heard, how even their pain is devalued. Sharing that kind of information, making that connection, is so important. University work is really hard work, but being able to communicate things like this is a privilege, too.”
And it’s not a job limited to February and Black History Month.
“My feeling is that those 28 days are still important,” she says. “And so are Women’s History Month, and Indigenous People’s Month, and Latinx Heritage Month. But this is not a competition, or about making folks feel left out. We need to integrate our history with everyone’s history. We need to understand the historical relationship between specific communities and the government and society and the world -- so we can create something that’s more equitable for all human beings.”
