Yeah, I just met you... and this is crazy...

--or-- Riding in Cars with Candidates

I'm currently chairing a search committee and we're in the midst of on-campus interviews. The higher ed interview process is already a strange beast, but one of the areas where this manifests itself is one-on-one time with the candidate. As the chair, it has been my role to get candidates from the hotel to campus the morning of the interview.

Clearly I'm using my personal vehicle. This is no problem. I make it a point to keep it a little cleaner than I might otherwise (whoops, forgot about the clothes headed to Goodwill in the back) and be sure there is space for them to place their bags and personal items. But in the 10 or so minutes we're together in the car, what should be on the radio?

Left to my own devices, I almost always have my iPod plugged in. In most cases I'm listening to podcasts--typically either sports or marching/athletic music--but the music present represents quite a range from the serene to the ign'ant. My radio station presets tell a similar tale; The range on my primary setting is, in order: Rap, Urban Adult Contemporary, Top 40, Top 40, Variety, and Country. I've been sticking to the radio for practical reasons, partially selfish; if I'm listening to a podcast, it's because I'm interested in the subject matter and actually want to hear the podcast, not the candidate, talk. In the same vein, I'm not going to ride around silent--it's not realistic and gives you no hiding place should silence become awkward. So I go the radio route. I know that rap and country tend to be the most polarizing, so I keep it quite literally to the middle of the set.

With the first candidate I transported, I went the Urban AC route. They tend to stay on the mellower side, but I forget that Urban AC radio has done to me what Nick at Nite did long ago: I'm old enough that stations that once played music from when my parents were younger now play music from when I was younger. As luck would have it, they were playing Queen Latifah's Unity (who you callin' a...) Fortunately we were engaged in conversation so it wasn't at the forefront, but certainly potentially awkward.

With the most recent candidate, I instead went the pop radio route. I kept the volume a bit lower as well, not that my speakers were going hammer previously. But during a lull in conversation, we realized what was on. You guessed it (or read it on Twitter earlier): Call Me Maybe. We commented briefly on its current ubiquity and moved on from there. Not extremely awkward, but perhaps a bit.

Have you found yourself in the car either with a candidate or as a candidate? Do you remember what was on the radio?

Not diverse, just tan.

I felt compelled to share my reaction to an article my colleague Chris posted not long ago on Twitter. Specifically, he posted a piece from Diverse Issues in Higher Education, "Interview: The Tanning of America with Dr. Marcia Alesan Dawkins" which in turn links to the article, "The Future of the 'Tan Generation'" from The Root. A primary theme is that the increased multiculturalism in America--children under the age of 1 were more likely (50.4%) to be nonwhite than white at the time of the 2010 census--will not necessarily lead to increased social justice.

It was the words chosen that gave me particular pause. I had little issue with the term Tan Generation. The mean skin tone of our nation is likely tan, and while the root is the fact that we're dealing in skin color, not culture here, black, white, and brown have been in the lexicon long enough that this is simply its natural progression. Further, my daughter, who is biracial (black/white), would likely select a tan crayon to draw herself, as would many from across the United States from various cultural and racial backgrounds. It's a bit clumsy, but it fits.

The title that Diverse chose, "...The Tanning of America..." bothered me, however. They took tan from a noun or an adjective into a verb and used it in a way that to me implied a specific action. Tanning, as we most commonly use it, is a process through which fairer-skinned--largely white--people expose themselves to the sun to increase melanin production and ultimately appear darker. Science aside, this says to me a couple of things: America is "supposed" to be white, despite a current trend to the contrary. It also says that we view America as primarily homogenized--that the only difference is pigmentation, ignoring facets of cultural and experience that are what we should really be addressing when we talk about diversity.

The original message was that a rise in population diversity would not necessarily lead to a rise in social justice and cross-cultural understanding. The title chosen helped hammer this point home in a way it may not have intended.