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i study stories as a sociologist and
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specifically as a criminologist there's
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a
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vast literature on stories and what
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they're made of and what they do in
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society
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well we know that stories are shaped by
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cultures
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and how stories fall into genres
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people may have probably already have a
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sense about that
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you know the horror genre or the
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romantic comedy
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and notice how similar
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they are within the genres if i ask you
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to tell a life story it's very
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normative in our culture it's very much
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expected
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for you to tell um a story that goes up
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that that is
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positive it's it's not so common it's
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not
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crazy but it's not so common to just
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tell a story that that is of decline so
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we call that a progressive narrative the
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stories that are typical
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in american society nowadays
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tend to emphasize individuals individual
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actors and individual actions
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they tend to ignore the patterns that
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affect
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people's lives like the availability of
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affordable housing
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like health care that's affordable or
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publicly provided like child care
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policies the availability of jobs
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the most famous model for telling a
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story
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in america is that you've
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some somebody coming from a very
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disadvantaged background beating the
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odds you know doing succeeding no matter
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what
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we love that kind of story i love that
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kind of story
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but what happens is that kind of story
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which emphasizes
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hard work and the strong character of
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the protagonist
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it has a tendency to occlude
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the circumstances people are
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experiencing
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to keep those you know marginalized and
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another thing
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it tends to get us thinking that
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um anyone who doesn't make it must not
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have worked especially hard
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must not have strong character so
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what would be the implications of that
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well we shouldn't help them
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they don't deserve it they wouldn't make
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good use of that help anyway
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it's hard to tell a different story in
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our cultural environment
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but that's a big part of what the
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sociological imagination is about
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we think of sociological imagination as
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being able to tell a biography
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that includes the shaping effect of
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all the contexts within which people
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live including
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history including social policies
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including the culture
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where in which you live and your
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position in the world
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i grew up in a poor rural community
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my family were very much working class
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we spent most of our time with family
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and in the community of faith that we
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were a part of and those were the two
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main influences in my life
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i was writing books in notepads by the
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time i was four and five years old
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writing was always super important to me
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i
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looked for ways to do work like that at
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home and my mom actually was very
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supportive and developed projects for me
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and they did do things a little bit
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differently than a lot of
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their family before them which was they
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were you know supportive of things i was
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trying to do in school
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there were definite privileges i had
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growing up
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in schools that were fairly well
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resourced but also
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could guide me toward the next kinds of
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steps and and that was really important
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in all all along in terms of the steps
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that got me here
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my dad comes from kind of a complicated
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history he's
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he was born in tahlequah oklahoma along
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with my grandfather and my
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great-grandfather
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telecoil's the home to cherokee nation
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which is one of the few sovereign tribes
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in the united states
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a lot of folks who were native and
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indigenous
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in telequa did a westward migration at a
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particular point and he and my
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grandfather and grandmother
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moved to california at a certain point
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to do
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various forms of labor so they were part
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of logging labor in northern california
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and eventually my grandfather
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worked and retired in the san joaquin
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valley and i spent my summers there so
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it was a real
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factor in terms of how you know i at
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least got out of the region i grew up in
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and went to school and to see other
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kinds of things
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my mom and dad met through our church uh
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and they met
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at camp meetings uh in colorado my dad
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had to leave and go to vietnam
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soon after and when he got back he and
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my mom got married
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there was a mobility step my dad became
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a salesman i remember him getting up
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every day
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wearing a suit and tie my mom was home
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we had
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you know three meals and that was kind
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of our lifestyle so there was
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a kind of mobility there that then
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bumped me into yet another level of it
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with where i am now kind of solidly
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middle class
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i think that being working class and
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growing up with that kind of class
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background sensitized me to a lot of
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different kinds of struggles that we
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face
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you know it was also me watching their
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life and their labor be extracted in
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particular kinds of ways so
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thinking about the constraints that they
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faced and
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in terms of their own life and their own
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creativity and knowing i wanted
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something
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that would allow for that it took a
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while longer for me to realize
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exactly how much a part of my life race
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was
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because i grew up in a white world and
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you know there were no people of color
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in my schools in my
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religion and community of faith and in
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my family
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so it was only at college when
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i met someone who was assigned to a work
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study position with me
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and we got to know each other and in the
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process became really good friends
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and have been through a lot across the
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years together
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you know i took her home one weekend to
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be with my family
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and one of my young cousins was playing
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with her and just in the course of play
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called her the most racially charged
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term in american history and did it in
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front of
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everyone we were at a family gathering
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i'm originally from mississippi
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single mother household my grandmother
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did a lot of the raising
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as far as my childhood is concerned i
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seen her um
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work um as a maid servant for white
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family in mississippi
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and part of that was really instrumental
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of really pushing me to think about the
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world in more complex ways
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and so it was that interaction thinking
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about the inequalities that we had to
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endure growing up i grew up
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extremely poor project housing asking
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the question to be honest with you as a
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child
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why me like why did we have to grow up
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in this way
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especially in school i was you know
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relatively okay as far as academics are
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concerned
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but when i see my friends who were not
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passing to the next grade who were not
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getting good grades in class
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will still come to school and the best
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clothes and the best shoes
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and it made me feel some kind of way and
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so i took it personal
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i thought my family just didn't care
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about me in the same way
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other people's families cared about them
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i really took it personal growing up
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poor
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that my family was doing something
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individually and i
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internalized that i thought that was
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part of my biography i thought that my
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family didn't want to succeed especially
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when you hear narratives in you know on
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in the media on the news
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that you know people who look like me
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are
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lazy and not hard-working and so i
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really
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really took that personal and thought my
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family
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actually fit the fit the bill and
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it created a sense of frustration
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depression
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just wanted to escape in any way
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possible so
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you know part of that biography is also
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internalizing a lot of that from drugs
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to
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you know smoking weed with the with my
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friends growing up in high school
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i ended up having a baby when i was 15
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years old
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all of those things were part of my
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biography and the frustrations that i
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felt and so part of me getting here is
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to really
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understand why was it me why did i have
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to grow up like that
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i went to a high school that was
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the the first integrated high school
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really
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uh in the south side of of chicago
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which was not embroiled in violence
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around integration at the time
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here i was i was this young kid who
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was interpreted by my teachers
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as a troubled white middle-class
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kid and i became involved in drugs very
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very early
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at the expense of any interest in school
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it didn't
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hurt that my mother was also for a
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period of the time
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the president of the pta and active in
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school
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so i would miss classes for eight
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weeks at a time and instead of being
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kicked out of class
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like many of the black kids with the
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same skills
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lack of skills bad habits that i had
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would have resulted in but instead those
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teachers came to talk to my mom
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and so the family expectations pushed me
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through all of my siblings i have three
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siblings
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all of us ended up with advanced degrees
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i was the only one who took the
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deviation the
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the diversion but all of us went ahead
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in that same way i graduated from a high
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school
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only two-thirds of those kids that i
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went in with
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graduated in four years but
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because of that understanding
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of me as a particular member of a group
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white middle class even troubled i was
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pushed on
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through when i got to college those bad
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habits as i said
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continued to follow me as i was dropping
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out
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i went to work on construction sites in
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the construction world
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where there wasn't a whole lot of place
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for excuses
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i learned how to work very very hard and
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i learned about
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low pay hard work and a very different
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class existence
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a working class existence as opposed to
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the middle class existence
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that i came up in i had to move to
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aspen colorado to work for very rich
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people
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but then the knowledge about groups
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continued
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i became part of a an army of workers
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who called ourselves
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the down valley dirt bags because we
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lived down
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valley from aspen because we couldn't
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afford to
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live there you know the response of my
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family
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you know it was a turning point for me i
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was like how can this happen
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and of course jill my friend she was
00:11:02
like uh this happens every day
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so this was nothing new for her but we
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made that journey
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and she was patient with me through it
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together but i do think you know
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thinking about the absences that
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structure our lives
00:11:14
are equally important in thinking about
00:11:16
who we are who we want to be
00:11:17
and and what we want to seek out you
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know and those contradictions they
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materialize across a lifetime
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this is how race impacts our lives even
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when we see it as
00:11:27
non-racial it's a space in which
00:11:30
constantly we are creating racial
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hierarchies that are deadly
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in racial hierarchies that are
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profoundly damaging and those
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hierarchies come through how we raise
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our children and how we educate them
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and the things we tell them the things
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they hear and it comes also through
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you know not seeking out or learning
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about other people's experiences
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and and moving toward that in particular
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ways as opposed to moving away from it
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i lived in a very insular community both
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of faith and family
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and and that's really important and it's
00:12:00
one of the things you know here at ut
00:12:01
i'm very committed to is the idea that
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we have experiences beyond our own with
00:12:06
other people different from us
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so you know one of the things i would
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say is that both patriarchy and the
00:12:12
class struggle and different things
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added up at a certain point to really
00:12:15
really hard times for my family
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when my mom was diagnosed with a late
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form of breast cancer
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there was no history in our religion of
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using health care medicine it was
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prohibited along with other things that
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that were fairly gendered
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and she made a decision to pursue that
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she felt clear in her faith to do that
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but it resulted in her basically being
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you know kicked out of the church
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she was uninsured the medical bills
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added up my family filed bankruptcy
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they lost the house my parents after 30
00:12:46
years of marriage divorced
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and you know eventually my mom passed
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and my father's story is equally
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challenging you know he had
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three other siblings all of them died
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prematurely from
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alcohol and substance abuse as well as
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suicide
00:13:01
those kinds of deaths are what jonathan
00:13:03
metzel calls deaths of despair they're
00:13:06
linked to whiteness
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they're also linked to the way my
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great-grandfather died
00:13:10
at cherokee nation there's lots of
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connections here that are structural
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and extend across generations and i
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think all of that's played a really
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important role in where
00:13:20
i am and why i'm here and why i've
00:13:21
stayed here because
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alone as an individual it's hard to make
00:13:25
sense of that story
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it's a painful one to tell but it's
00:13:28
certainly one
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that i know is patterned and i know
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other people have experienced
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and i know social forces played a role
00:13:35
in all of that it's not just
00:13:37
the individual biography that i'm
00:13:39
telling you i really do believe
00:13:41
it's part of the beginning of another
00:13:43
story and that story is about
00:13:45
the challenge of moving collectively
00:13:47
together and not alone and not isolated
00:13:49
by capitalism
00:13:50
or racism or patriarchy towards
00:13:53
something
00:13:54
that's transformative and and that's why
00:13:56
i'm here and that's what i try and do as
00:13:58
a professor
00:13:59
fortunately i had mentors that i met
00:14:02
along the way
00:14:03
and so for example when i was a father
00:14:06
at 15
00:14:07
there was someone who really took
00:14:09
interest in me and
00:14:11
recognized what i could be and not
00:14:14
looking at where i
00:14:15
presently was and so i you know that
00:14:18
helped me to think um i'm a roughly
00:14:21
around 18
00:14:22
19 years old at this time and i ended up
00:14:25
becoming a manager at mcdonald's
00:14:27
and a manager at walmart at the same
00:14:29
time and i did that for about a year and
00:14:31
a half
00:14:32
and this one of the mentors came to me
00:14:34
and really had us
00:14:35
kind of sit down with me and talk like
00:14:37
look you can
00:14:38
continue to work these jobs or you can
00:14:40
go back to school
00:14:42
and here is the reason why school may be
00:14:45
a better opportunity what you're doing
00:14:47
now
00:14:47
and when he did that it really pushed me
00:14:50
to think about
00:14:51
the world in these new ways and so when
00:14:54
i went back to school i actually was
00:14:55
trying to like be a truck driver or a
00:14:57
mortician
00:14:58
or any type of trade and then a
00:15:00
professor was like no
00:15:02
no like you need to be on the academic
00:15:04
track like i can tell that you should be
00:15:06
on the academic track so i listened
00:15:08
i ended up majoring in english education
00:15:11
i wanted to be an english teacher then
00:15:13
another professor
00:15:14
was like well you need to don't stop
00:15:16
here go to the university
00:15:18
it's like okay and then i ended up
00:15:21
applying to mississippi state
00:15:23
got into mississippi state by my senior
00:15:26
year i took a inequalities class
00:15:28
and that's when my world changed because
00:15:30
part of being a sociologist
00:15:32
i didn't know at the time but what it
00:15:35
was doing for me
00:15:36
was was connecting my biography with
00:15:39
history
00:15:40
right and so in that class really
00:15:43
had me to think about my own biography
00:15:46
in a new way
00:15:47
so ins so when you understand my
00:15:49
hometown the history of slavery
00:15:51
the history of jim crow the the history
00:15:54
of lack of economic investment
00:15:56
um post to civil rights movement then i
00:15:59
started to understand that the world was
00:16:02
much more complex than nuanced
00:16:04
than just having family and friends who
00:16:06
were lazy
00:16:07
right and so that class then
00:16:10
pushed me to think about my new
00:16:12
perspective
00:16:14
so much so that that professor
00:16:15
encouraged me to go to graduate school
00:16:18
and then in graduate school my life
00:16:20
changed
00:16:21
and so not only were people helping me
00:16:23
along the way
00:16:25
but also my perspective started to shift
00:16:28
because i was able to contextualize my
00:16:30
own biography
00:16:31
right you know people encouraging me to
00:16:34
not just stop at the master's degree but
00:16:36
i needed to get a phd and
00:16:37
remember i'm first generation i come up
00:16:40
you know how pro
00:16:41
project housing single mother family so
00:16:44
a lot of things were new to me
00:16:46
i mean even filling out the fafsa form
00:16:49
right it's a challenge
00:16:51
and and and these professors were
00:16:53
encouraging me to go to grad school like
00:16:55
what is that right and so people helped
00:16:58
me
00:16:59
professors helped me along the way to
00:17:02
sit my own
00:17:03
experience my lived experience in a
00:17:05
larger historical context and say
00:17:07
oh that's why things were a challenge
00:17:11
and what's most important here is that i
00:17:14
wasn't the only one right and so
00:17:16
part of sociology is although you may
00:17:19
have a personal biography
00:17:21
that biography can then map on to other
00:17:24
person's biographies as well
00:17:26
and now it's it becomes less about an
00:17:29
individual
00:17:30
and more about group based inequality
00:17:32
right so although i grew up in
00:17:34
mississippi
00:17:35
experiencing inequities i know folks now
00:17:38
who
00:17:39
california maine nebraska florida
00:17:43
who all have similar experiences i do
00:17:46
and
00:17:46
the same underlying mechanisms that was
00:17:49
a challenge for my family
00:17:51
was some of the same ones that was a
00:17:53
challenge to other families as well
00:17:55
so sociology created a context
00:17:59
for me to understand myself and then
00:18:02
that put me on the course of being dr
00:18:05
williams today
00:18:06
and so i teach sociology and really
00:18:09
challenge students to think about their
00:18:11
own biographies within a greater
00:18:14
larger societal context i worked with a
00:18:17
construction company
00:18:18
that was working on a very expensive
00:18:21
house
00:18:22
i worked on that house for six months
00:18:24
the last four months were 12 hours a day
00:18:27
seven days a week with no breaks and
00:18:29
then the moment came that
00:18:31
that company didn't have work in the
00:18:33
middle of winter
00:18:34
so again i had that reservoir
00:18:38
that legacy of being middle class
00:18:42
without having necessarily the skills at
00:18:44
that time because i had the path laid
00:18:46
out
00:18:47
because that was the expectations of the
00:18:50
white middle class immigrant family so i
00:18:53
went ahead and did get into
00:18:55
colorado state and i got very lucky i
00:18:58
had learned how to work hard
00:19:00
i also at that time came into contact
00:19:04
with a group of activists who were
00:19:06
actively working against
00:19:08
the united states intervention in
00:19:10
various central american countries that
00:19:13
were beginning to
00:19:14
contest their their their politics their
00:19:18
society their economics that had been in
00:19:21
in place before
00:19:23
my life became defined newly defined by
00:19:26
twin passions
00:19:28
studying political change and being
00:19:31
a part of it when i received my master's
00:19:35
in sociology i felt like i needed to see
00:19:39
some of these struggles
00:19:40
first hand so i went down to nicaragua
00:19:43
and used these skills as a builder
00:19:46
building houses in a nation that
00:19:49
has for decades been one of the two
00:19:53
poorest nations in the western
00:19:55
hemisphere second only to haiti
00:19:58
and so i worked on a collective farm i
00:20:02
worked building houses
00:20:03
and again i learned more about the
00:20:06
differences of
00:20:07
race and class and gender but also
00:20:11
first hand experiencing international
00:20:14
inequality in a way that that i knew
00:20:17
only from books before
00:20:19
i worked a couple more years as a
00:20:21
construction worker not still not quite
00:20:23
understanding
00:20:24
that i could actually make a living from
00:20:26
that new middle class existence
00:20:28
and then went back to graduate school
00:20:31
this time at the university of
00:20:32
california davis
00:20:34
my wife was working and so here too
00:20:38
was a difference the graduate student
00:20:40
life
00:20:41
is often a pretty poverty stricken life
00:20:44
but my wife was working and so we
00:20:46
actually uh were able to enjoy our lives
00:20:49
in a way
00:20:50
that was quite different so again i
00:20:52
continued my interest
00:20:53
in latin america and this time mexico
00:20:57
and i went down to guadalajara mexico to
00:20:59
do field work on a community
00:21:01
organization
00:21:02
that was representing a community that
00:21:05
didn't have
00:21:06
sidewalks it didn't have electric power
00:21:08
it didn't have potable water
00:21:10
it didn't have sewage again i studied an
00:21:13
organization
00:21:14
who was representing those workers in
00:21:16
their political struggle
00:21:17
to attain those things and against a
00:21:20
deeply anti-democratic government
00:21:23
so once again i came home impressed with
00:21:26
the
00:21:27
with the nobility of this struggle
00:21:29
passion about
00:21:30
understanding those struggles and
00:21:32
participating in struggles
00:21:34
on my side of the border but also once
00:21:36
again
00:21:37
understanding the differences in groups
00:21:41
understanding the different experiences
00:21:43
of
00:21:44
working class and poor versus middle
00:21:46
class
00:21:47
of race of international inequality
00:21:51
so i came back and graduated
00:21:54
finally went to work for a couple years
00:21:56
at tulane university
00:21:58
and then came to work at the university
00:22:00
of tennessee
00:22:01
continuing to be interested in these
00:22:04
same kinds of issues
00:22:06
not always internationally defined but
00:22:08
struggles for
00:22:09
justice for people whose lives are
00:22:12
defined by their
00:22:13
very very different backgrounds
00:22:16
and so when i think about this story the
00:22:20
difference
00:22:20
is it's all about me as a member of
00:22:24
groups but also in contrast to those
00:22:27
in other groups who may have had
00:22:30
much the same experience as i did but
00:22:33
not
00:22:34
being defined in the same way
00:22:37
as this white middle class troubled guy
00:22:40
who
00:22:40
if he just gets his troubles taken care
00:22:42
of he's going to succeed
00:22:44
instead many of the same people that i
00:22:46
knew from that time
00:22:48
did not have that privilege did not have
00:22:51
that support
00:22:53
so in each of the stories that my
00:22:55
colleagues just told
00:22:57
people you i think you'll agree work
00:23:00
extremely hard the storytellers my
00:23:02
colleagues worked
00:23:04
hard in their lives and ultimately they
00:23:07
arrived
00:23:08
at this rather comfortable meaningful
00:23:12
professional life but hard work was not
00:23:15
enough
00:23:17
those three storytellers hone our
00:23:20
attention
00:23:21
on also on secondary characters in the
00:23:24
stories
00:23:25
who also worked hard but didn't succeed
00:23:27
parents and grandparents and others
00:23:30
and that also makes us think well
00:23:34
context must be very important so let me
00:23:37
talk a bit about each of the stories
00:23:39
now dr michelle brown's stories expose
00:23:42
in various ways how much
00:23:44
conditions shape people's lives her
00:23:47
mother
00:23:48
gets cancer and it's the situation of
00:23:50
being uninsured
00:23:52
that produces the financial economic
00:23:56
and relationship harm involved
00:24:00
poverty sexism and racism shape
00:24:03
experiences
00:24:04
in subtle ways in dr dedrick williams
00:24:07
story
00:24:08
he takes a social inequalities college
00:24:11
course which
00:24:12
leads him to recognize the fallacy of
00:24:15
that american story just work hard
00:24:17
just be a strong person and you'll
00:24:18
succeed his family and friends were poor
00:24:21
because of
00:24:22
obstacles patterned obstacles
00:24:25
of unju of injustice and not because
00:24:27
they weren't hard
00:24:28
working or because they lacked the will
00:24:31
that's what
00:24:32
he was socialized to think that i'm
00:24:34
gonna quote they were lazy they didn't
00:24:37
want anything out of life that was an
00:24:38
earlier idea but he came to recognize
00:24:40
that those ideas
00:24:42
were wrong and i'd point out also
00:24:46
keep the obstacles in place keep the
00:24:48
status quo
00:24:49
dr scheffner came to understand the
00:24:51
privileges
00:24:52
that he had as a white american middle
00:24:55
class
00:24:56
teenager the chances multiply he was
00:24:59
given
00:25:00
after chronic sense substance abuse from
00:25:03
a very early teen
00:25:04
age and also truancy later his work as a
00:25:08
laborer
00:25:09
at the utter mercy of market forces in
00:25:12
the united states
00:25:13
and then even later his research and his
00:25:15
activism in latin america
00:25:18
honed that understanding really
00:25:20
crystallized it
00:25:21
again and especially we see in dr
00:25:24
scheffner's story
00:25:25
history has a very large role to play
00:25:29
in both both those um personal
00:25:32
experiences both the privileges
00:25:35
and then the later marginalization
00:25:38
as a worker clearly what we see in my
00:25:42
colleagues and i'm so proud to know them
00:25:44
is a lot of determination
00:25:47
a lot of drive and the hard work
00:25:50
but we also see how much their lives
00:25:52
were conditioned and constrained by
00:25:55
forces completely outside of their
00:25:56
control
00:25:57
so to wrap up i find that their stories
00:26:00
really
00:26:00
make us think in in a a a robust way
00:26:04
about the sociological imagination
00:26:06
and they challenge what we take to be
00:26:09
the real story of our lives
