In spring 2010 director Lee Mun Wah asked me to co-facilitate a documentary he was shooting that summer titled, If These Halls Could Talk. I remember the day well, it was spring break and I was at home, a tired teacher sitting in the sun outside when the phone rang. I was a fan of Mun Wah’s work, I showed his film The Color of Fear in my sociology classes each semester. We’d met at workshops I’d attended with students from my classes and from the Black Student Union, the student club I advised.
Teaching about racism is difficult but showing The Color of Fear made it easier, especially with white students. It got students feeling emotional and it opened them up and made them want to talk about race and the complexity of identity, skin color, and group position. I taught about race, class, and gender at the same time in my intro courses, intersecting these inequalities to highlight the ways that we experience both privilege and oppression, to help students see past the cultural conditioning and constructs and understand their experiences but also wanting to make their world’s larger and bigger than them. That is what sociology and anthropology did for me.
One of my tasks on the film was to help with casting students. Stirfry Seminars (Lee Mun Wah’s company) had collected applications from interested students across the country and I was reading apps and talking with students on the phone in search of people who were willing to take the risk and talk about racism, classism, and sexism on their college campuses. One thing was certain, I wanted to cast my friend and student Marc Thompson. When you watch the clip below, Marc is the young man who says, “We turned the word nigger into a term of endearment for ourselves.” That was how Marc was, he was bold and not afraid to tell truth. He was like that in the classroom and in everyday life, he was powerful that way and wise beyond his years. Our friendship started in the classroom but grew as we made the film and attended conferences to show it to the public.
Marc Thompson was murdered two months ago. His car was found on fire in a remote area of Butte County, off a rural highway in the middle of nowhere. He was buried a little over a month after he was killed, his family and many friends waiting on the DNA results from the coroner’s office. I know I’m not alone in this feeling but that was one of the worst months of my life. I miss him every single day and of all the people I would want to talk about this fuckery of an investigation with (see upcoming blog), it would be Marc.
When you watch Marc in the trailer below you get a taste of who he was, a brilliant man with a bright future. He was one of those rare people who pushed past the fear to say what needed to be said. At his service, that was repeated over and over, how he modeled and showed others that it was worth it to tell the truth in spaces where the truth is said to be welcomed, but often is not (see: predominantly white institutions or PWIs). I don’t want my friend’s words or his work to be forgotten so I’m sharing this with you because I was lucky to know him, he changed my life and I hope in this bit of time you spend with him, that he changes yours too.
Julie Garza-Withers, former award-winning community college Sociology instructor who’s currently using Sociology to organize and research for racial justice in rural northern California. She was a facilitator in the film “If These Halls Could Talk” with Director Lee Mun Wah, and has published at Working Class Studies, and elsewhere.
Julie has a particular interest in class and classism as a form of social stratification, and the role of cussing and anti-intellectualism in stratifying society. A fan of cussing herself, she says she only “Cusses when necessary,” which is often. She considers herself a working class academic because she is a first generation college grad who grew up in rural southern California where her options post-high school included getting married or working at Del Taco and selling tacos to fast food customers until she got married.
Julie has an M.A. from California State University, Chico, where she studied how social class and gender impact work-place conflict between women. She lives in rural northern California with her husband Larry where they enjoy the forest, their dogs, and gardening.
You can follow Julie on twitter where she posts as WorkingClassTeacher, and also check out Julie’s anti-racism work at Rural SURJ of NorCal-Showing Up for Racial Justice. Currently an inactive author, awaiting a poke with a sharp stick.