Last night I was rummaging through my stacks and stacks of books --- the overflow of books I own, of which I have no shelf space --- looking for Herbert Gutman's, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925. I actually did find the book, which somehow had found a spot on my bookcases downstairs (the stacks of books upstairs in my bedroom are piled high in the corners next to the bookshelves I have up there).
While this was happening, I confused Herbert Gutman for Irving Goffman, the father of Alice Goffman, who is the author of the bombshell book, On the Run:On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. The book's controversial, actually. The New York Times had a huge write-up on her in the Sunday magazine: "The Trials of Alice Goffman: Her first book, ‘On the Run' — about the lives of young black men in West Philadelphia — has fueled a fight within sociology over who gets to speak for whom."
Anyway, that's how I ran across Ms. Alice's TED Talk, which is mentioned at her Wikipedia page. The video of her talk posted at the TED website has been viewed over 2 million times, and the YouTube video below almost 280,000 times.
She's gets very emotional, with her voice cracking and her nearly coming to tears as she gets further and further along in her talk --- it's quite compelling.
In any case, now you know the story of how I came across this video.
Watch:
She was denied tenure at the University of Wisconsin (obviously mostly as a result of the book controversy), and she's now a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pomona College, where "unnamed activists calling for her offer to be rescinded due to unsupported and unsubstantiated claims of racism in her work and research methods."
Naturally. *Sigh.*
In any case, enjoy the show!
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