Opinion JENNIFER CALFAS EDITOR IN CHIEF AARICA MARSH and DEREK WOLFE EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS LEV FACHER MANAGING EDITOR 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com 4 —Friday, January 9, 2015 M om wants me to have a good job. And even though I go to art school, she still thinks that some- day I’m going to be a great doc- tor. I know that it’s not likely that I’ll ever make the money a doctor makes, but like most artists, I didn’t major in Interarts Performance for the impressive starting salaries. In fact, a non-profit called BFAM- FAPhD reports that only 10 percent of arts graduates are actually mak- ing a living as artists. I’m here because the University is a sort of utopia — a sometimes fractured one — that values com- plex ideas, nuanced views, hard/ boring work and strangeness. I’m here because artists are taught to be a little reckless, a little sloppy, but hopefully smart. I’m here because I get to work with genius professors. I’m here because my peers are geniuses, too. I’m here because I believe in a community of artists who are interested in asking big and foolish questions. But I’m not here for job training. I know that the rest of my life is probably going to be an absolute pigfuck. And I’m happy about that. Excited, even. I knew that when I signed up for a degree in perfor- mance art (or whatever). I didn’t always know I wasn’t here for job training. But a class I took in the fall helped me find out. Six credits of my schedule each semester are devoted to thesis work. It’s split between indepen- dent studio time and class time with seventeen others also working on their theses. And during the fall, one credit is spent in a Professional Practice lecture. The idea is that Professional Practice will teach the young art- ists and designers how to get out there and get jobs. The course exists because past graduating classes felt that they were left unprepared in terms of job-hunting. Professional Practice is the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design’s way to help fill in those blanks. Faculty, alumni and other guests give pre- sentations on topics like “Inter- viewing Skills,” and “Resources for Finding Employment Opportuni- ties and Resources About the Mate- rials You Need to Apply for Them.” You know, the sort of classes they offer inmates. While incredibly useful for students planning to enter the design field, Professional Prac- tice is where a young artist might get a little queasy. The conceptual sculptors and installation artists and performance artists amongst us have their dreams squeezed by notions of “startups” and “clients” and “internships.” For an hour a week last semester, the sad cloud of employability hung so large over the Stamps School of Art & Design that its shadow blotted out the “Art” part. If you’re a designer, you can get paid. If you’re an artist, you can become a designer. A guy I will call Mr. Employer vis- ited Profes- sional Practice one day. Mr. Employer is a vice president at a Big Company. He is Important. He spoke with a deep voice in a kind, Midwest- ern cadence and he offered advice about how to get him to give you a job. Don’t be too early. Don’t be ner- vous. Don’t make any spelling mis- takes. Do take an interest in him. Do look good when you show up at the office for an interview — “I’m judging you as soon as you walk through that door.” Do give him a firm handshake. Do send him a LinkedIn invitation soon after your interview — “I think that’s cool.” Don’t send him a LinkedIn invita- tion while you’re still in the parking lot — “I think that’s too much.” It’s nice of Mr. Employer to share his time with us. But Mr. Employer is not the boss of me. I don’t want someone to talk at me about how to become present- able for a job interview, because I want to work at a place that is going to hire me for the big dumb idiot that I am. I don’t want to hear about having a firm handshake, because maybe someday I won’t have arms. And LinkedIn is for the birds. I do think it is important to talk about jobs. Making money is important. But the artists in the room know that being an artist is just like being anything else — you might work so hard you accidentally become a millionaire or you might die in a fire. So talk to us about how to make lattes or how to steal supplies from Jo-Ann Fabric or how to cry silent- ly in public without disturbing oth- ers. Because having a job is not the important thing. We’ll find jobs. It’s a tough beat if a brilliant artist is going to be invited to the Venice Biennale because they gave Mr. Employer a very firm hand- shake. Artists are after something different, and it’s OK to talk about how messy and terrible that might be. Talk to us about how for three years we’re going to be frus- trated because it seems like nobody cares, but if we keep at it, something will finally give. Talk to us about how after spending a year trying to be a Real Artist we might find out that all we really wanted all along was to be a social worker. Talk to us about the 90 per- cent of art grads for whom it just doesn’t work out. Or talk to us about how a young Robert Rauschenberg made some of his most important work out of garbage he found on the street because he was too poor to buy canvas. But don’t ask Robert Rauschen- berg to create a LinkedIn profile. (Note: I’m not the Rauschenberg in this case, but our Rauschenberg was there for Mr. Employer’s lec- ture too.) Job placement rates aren’t really that important. Good art doesn’t happen because you read Mr. Employer’s memos. And you can make good art without making a good career. I hope. — Willie Filkowski can be reached at willjose@umich.edu. The sad cloud of employability Edvinas Berzanskis, Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Devin Eggert, David Harris, Rachel John, Jordyn Kay, Aarica Marsh, Victoria Noble, Michael Paul, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman, Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Resisting careerist ideology A s long as I can remember, I’ve always understood that when people asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” what they were really asking was, “What career do you want to have when you grow up?” What’s strange is that none of the words in the first question denote any- thing job or career-related. This means that our under- standing of the question must rely on connotations. Even though the ques- tion only denotatively asks about what one wants to be as an adult (or a “grown-up”) — which could be a wide range of things, like a parent, a good person, a read- er, etc. — we interpret the meaning of the question very narrowly, so that it just refers to jobs or careers. Why would we reduce what could be a beautifully open-ended question to a depressingly close-ended one? Careerist ideology. Instead of indepen- dently thinking through apparently enig- matic questions like being and one’s future, we prefer to defer to culturally and societally fabricated answers — e.g. careerist ideology, by which I mean a belief system based on the idea of the career, which holds the virtuosity of careers as self-evident and considers them centrally important to being. In a society where careerist ideology is pre- dominant, when the ques- tion of “what to be when you grow up” arises, we connote the condition of “being” accordingly and allow our thought to be guided and constrained. The conse- quence is that we often confuse or equivocate “being” with “being a (specific) career,” and not exclusively in the context of this question. What scares and intrigues me is that we mostly process these connotations uncon- sciously — that is, once we’re past a certain age, the intended meaning of this question is automatically clear to us. This careerist ideology exists within us largely outside our conscious awareness. Careerist ideology can be primarily explained by what’s sometimes called a con- junction fallacy — mistakenly believing that a conjunction of events (a hot and sunny day) is more probable than a single event (a hot day). When explaining this concept in lecture, my cognitive psychology professor gave us the following example: “Imagine a health sur- vey was conducted on adult males. Mr. F was included. Which is more probable? (1) That Mr. F has had one or more heart attacks, or (2) That Mr. F has had one or more heart attacks and is over 55 years old? Studies show that about 55 percent of people say they believe (2) is more likely,” even though it’s not! The probability of two events co-occurring (Mr. F having had one or more heart attacks and being over 55 years old) can only be less than or equal to the probability of one of the events occurring (Mr. F having had one or more heart attacks or the probability of Mr. F being over 55 years old), never greater. “To be” does not necessitate “to be career.” Obviously there are many other ways to be, but in our career-oriented society, we casu- ally believe in just the one partially because of this conjunction fallacy (which, in full, is a conjunction fallacy from casual reasoning). But there’s a deeper question: Why and how do we regularly commit the conjunction fal- lacy? Why and how is our probability judg- ment frequently distorted? Psychologists have a few explanations, but one prominent explanation pertains to how we represent these scenarios in our minds. When we imagine someone having a heart attack, we typically imagine an elderly per- son, and so we sometimes falsely conclude that being old and having a heart attack is more likely than just having a heart attack. So it is with careerism. The careerist ide- ology in our society is so predominant that we often assume that being an adult and hav- ing a career is more likely than just being an adult. When we imagine ourselves as adults, we imagine ourselves with careers, because many of the adults we know have careers. Because modern life (or perhaps more accu- rately postmodern life) is hyper-saturated with media that what we imag- ine for ourselves as adults highly depends upon the simulacra shown on tele- vision. How many televi- sion shows today aren’t only about a character with a career, but are about the career itself? Why would we reduce what could be a beauti- fully open-ended question that offers the opportunity to actualize the highest poten- tials of human creativity to a depressingly closed-ended one that basically offers a choice between two collars (blue or white)? I have maybe avoided this bigger question by delving specifically into careerist ideol- ogy. Careerist ideology is but one facet of a much larger system, spanning multiple levels of analysis, not least of which is economics (i.e., capitalism). Understanding this single but critical facet of our collective societal consciousness can potentially awaken us to related latent mechanisms in our thinking. My inkling is that individual people, once awakened from their dogmatic slumbers, would choose to focus on becoming more than just a lame career. Cultural thought- control mechanisms, like the question of what to be, hinder the human creativity that precedes our great capacity for free- dom. In recognizing these mechanisms we enable ourselves to push past the hindrances they impose. But then we’re immediately confronted with another challenge: the challenge of independently answering the deeper philosophical questions that ideol- ogy answers for us. — Zak Witus can be reached at zakwitus@umich.edu. I n the wake of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Aura Rosser and many, many more lives, students at the University are taking a stance on an issue that strikes a common nerve. We don’t need to look very far to find these racial debates happen- ing here on cam- pus. From the “die-in” before finals in December to the march down the streets of Ann Arbor in November, students are actively voicing their collective stance against the issue of police milita- rization. A year ago, the University community experienced a similar phenomenon of race-related open discussions including the #BBUM hashtag campaign and eventual demands to the administration and sit-ins. Months before that, there was another incident involv- ing a racially insensitive party (the “Hood Ratchet Thursday Party”) organized by Theta Xi fraternity. Both on and offline, students have voiced their dissent or support of the Black Student Union’s demands. Students shared their views on the relevance or inanity of cultural appropriation. Students generally spoke about race relations in Amer- ica as though they were authorities of these issues. And yet, it also seems that despite the passion presented on the forums, there is a dissenting opinion that race shouldn’t be dis- cussed, race relations shouldn’t be learned. When students aren’t con- stantly confronted with a piece of news related to racial tensions, dis- cussing it becomes frowned upon. The “not everything is about race” sentiments are thrown around. There seems to be a strange dis- crepancy going on. Many students, when pressed with the headlines, want to talk about race. They want to offer their two cents. They want to understand what’s going on, but they just as much wish to erase issues of discrimination from casu- al conversations. Why is this the case? The answer might lie in our first experiences with outward discus- sions of race in the classrooms. For many students, these talks were, at best, outdated. At worst, they were completely misaligned with current events. The narrative of racism in America gener- ally goes as fol- lows: there used to be racism that took the form of slavery and then Jim Crow seg- regation; how- ever, thanks to the civil rights movement and protesters such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks (but not the Black Panther Party), these forms of institutional racism have been completely eradicated. It is a narrative that relegates wrong- doings to the past and holds our society today up to a false ideal of complete equality. “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!” was a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. that we sang in my elementary school while holding hands and swaying back and forth. While MLK and civil rights activists have certainly succeeded in improving the lives of people of color in many different aspects, the way this part of history is told in the classrooms and textbooks shuts out any need to further analyze racial dynamics in America. It stops peo- ple from thinking critically of how racism was able to transform from institutionalized slavery to Jim Crow, and how it can just as easily change shape in modern contexts. We students have been given an overly optimistic narrative of where our society currently stands, but we also see situations of rac- ism in the headlines. Our response to these clashing narratives is just as conflicted — we both discuss racism and feel the discussion is not needed. We both type away on our keyboards or try to talk over our friends during heated conver- sations and complain about how pointless LSA’s race and ethnic- ity requirement is. Ideally, it is in these heated discussions that students discover for themselves what’s hap- pening in the world. But it is just as crucial that we pay atten- tion to how race is taught to our youngest and most impression- able. Other than the race and ethnicity class required for LSA students, the University does not provide many other opportunities for individuals to reexamine race in an academic setting. Educating people about race should incite much more public interest in race issues. It should reflect what’s actually happening and allow stu- dents to react to Ferguson not with stunned denial but with an out- spoken, well informed solidarity for those whose experiences with discrimination do not end when the headlines go away. — Jenny Wang can be reached at wjenny@umich.edu. Race relations discrepancy WILLIE FILKOWSKI My inkling is that individuals would choose to focus on becoming more than just a lame career. ZAK WITUS JENNY WANG Educating people about race should allow students to react to Ferguson with informed solidarity. You can make good art without making a good career. FOLLOW THE DAILY ON TWITTER Keep up with columnists, read Daily editorials, view cartoons and join in the debate. Check out @michigandaily to get updates on Daily content throughout the day. CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and viewpoints. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while viewpoints should be 550-850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.