Wake Up! It’s Serious presents Dr. Rupert Nacoste talking about and giving away his new book, “Howl of the Wolf” about NC State students describing their new awareness and understanding of neo-diversity. Come join us on Thursday, November 8 at 7:30 p.m. in Caldwell Lounge! This will be an Open-Mic event. Coffee and refreshments will be provided by Global Village.

That is how the November 8, 2012 event was announced to the whole NCSU campus on various web bulletin boards.  Also posted all over campus was this flyer:

You see, NCSU students were going wild for my new book, “Howl of the Wolf.”

After the Psychology Club meeting and book give away, word started to spread.  Students began coming by my office to ask about this book they were hearing.  Some of these students were complete strangers to me.  One male student said, “I missed the Psychology Club meeting because I had to work.  I was wondering, though, if you’d give me a copy now.”  I did.

I knew this was not an efficient way to do this.  But that was ok in the short term because the social change student group I advise was doing the work to put on a major event to introduce my book to the campus.

“Wake Up! It’s Serious: A Campaign For Change” is a student advocacy group that grew out of my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” class. Fall-2010, we had an incident of hateful, racial graffiti in our so-called Free Expression Tunnel.  That time students were outraged enough to organize a protest rally.  At the same time, I led a discussion in my class, and asked the students if they wanted to keep this energy going.  Students said yes, and over the following six months, “Wake Up! It’s Serious; A Campaign for Change” was born.  Two years later, it continues to grow.  As an advocacy group, these students say their mission

    “…is to design campaigns to help North Carolina State University students learn how to speak up in the presence of intolerance by refusing to be silent when another person uses derogatory group terms. We have committed ourselves to speaking up when a fellow student utters words of intolerance toward a group of our fellow student-citizens.  We have also committed ourselves to creating and participating in concrete educational activities toward positive change in the campus diversity climate with the aim of strengthening the social bonds of our community.”

The Wake Up! It’s Serious” group put on a magnificent event with a spoken word artist Chicas, skits about diversity interactions, piano interludes by Justin Outlaw, with me as the main speaker at the end.

That night another 200 students showed up to listen, be entertained, hear me, and get a free copy of “Howl of the Wolf.”

One person who showed up was a young white man who took my course the first or second time I taught it in 2006-2007.  I remembered him because I wrote a letter of recommendation for him to law school.  For a little while after he finished law school he had kept in touch, but that faded as it should have.  But here he was, dressed like a lawyer, at this event he heard about on Facebook.  He came to get a copy of the book.  He was stunned that I remembered him, but I did.

To my surprise, a few staff and faculty members from the college showed up.  Each spoke to me after the event, and each was very complimentary about the organization and content of the event and the turnout.  I assured the faculty that all the credit was due to the students in “Wake Up!  It’s Serious: A Campaign For Change.”

It was quite a night.  We gave away 162 books.

    So, I had made a promise to the Psychology Club.  I promised them that when I had copies of “Howl of the Wolf” in hand, I would come back to a meeting and give copies to the people “…in attendance at the meeting tonight.”  I was very clear about this. 

     “All of you who are here tonight,” I said, “I will give you a copy.  But that’s our secret, just the people who are here tonight.  So when I have them, I’ll let Heather (the Psych Club President) know to spread the word that Dr. Nacoste will be at the next meeting.  That will tell you I am bringing copies of the book; but just for those here tonight.  Got it!”

   All heads nodded to say, yes.  Then I went home to have some dinner.

     By late September, 2012, I had the first 1,000 copies of the book.  So I asked Heather when was the next Psychology Club meeting.  She said in two weeks, so I told her, “…ok, I’ll come to that meeting with copies of the book.”  Again, I was clear; “I’m bring copies for those who come already knowing that I am coming for that purpose.  And that’s all I’m going to do; hand out copies and then I am going home.”

     I was very clear.

     Then the week before the meeting, I saw this flyer posted all over Poe Hall; the building that houses.

 

     Not quite as secret as I had planned. But now there was nothing to be done except show up prepared.  You see I knew the combination of my name, with my name on a new book that I would give away free, would bring a crowd.  And it did.

     The evening of the meeting, I walked into the meeting room and it was full and students kept coming in.  Students I recognized from one or both of the undergraduate courses I teach; and students I didn’t recognize at all.

     That night I gave away 120 books.

     Not as secret as I had planned.

    And now it was on.

    Here is “Howl of the Wolf: North Carolina State University Students Call Out For Social Change,” published September 18, 2012.

  

    Book Description:

     Using student writing from his “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course Dr. Rupert Nacoste presents North Carolina State University (NCSU) students’ voices describing their new awareness and growing understanding of neo-diversity. Neo-diversity is what we live with today; a time and circumstance when for all of us, contact with people who do not look like us happens every day, and is unavoidable.  

     In their own words, NCSU students describe how they have experienced the anxiety of being in interaction with a person who is not like them in some way (by race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation).  These students then speak out about how their new understanding of that anxiety has changed them and made them to want to work to accept the reality of the neo-diversity of America. These students howl that all students at NCSU should learn to interact with people who are not like “…you” because that is the only way to make our NCSU campus a good place for all of its citizens, and to make 21^st Century America strong.

     Read this book and hear the new howl of the Wolfpack.

  

    From the book: Foreword

    Like everywhere else in America, students at NCSU are trying to understand and manage neo-diversity.  That’s what I have been observing and teaching since 2005.  I grew up in the Jim Crow South; that time of legal racial segregation. But now, we no longer live in a society where our racial contacts are controlled and restricted by law. Nowadays, everyday, each of us has some occasion to interact with a person from another racial, ethnic or gender group. And those persons come from multiple racial, ethnic and gender groups. So, today our interpersonal encounters with race are not black and white, but neo-diverse.  That is why I say today diversity in black and white is dead.  Long live neo-diversity.

       Fast; this has come upon us very fast. Rapid social change has put each of us in situations where we have to interact with people on an equal footing, but with people who do not look like and sometimes do not even sound like us.  That is neo-diversity and that neo-diversity creates social uncertainty about how to interact with people. 

     I have seen that uncertainty here at NCSU.  So I created a course to help students figure out what’s going on.  In that course students write about their interpersonal encounters with neo-diversity, and then at the end of the course they write about their new understanding.  In developing a new understanding, many write with a powerful, fresh, motivation to work for a positive change in the neo-diverse environment of the NCSU campus, and of America. They almost scream it out in their papers.

     In this little book, I offer to the NCSU campus the voices of those students.

     Hear them.

     Listen to the howl of the wolf.

    Only two people knew that I had written a new book.  Gideon Brookins knew because he served as the technical editor of the book.  Logan Collins knew because she read drafts of the book as I was nearing the end of writing the book.

     So when the semester started, I had a secret.  But I also had responsibilities. 

     I am the faculty advisor of the Psychology Club.  As always, they had asked me to speak at the first meeting of the club for the semester in early September.  It was a Thursday evening and I decided that they would be the first to know about the upcoming publication of my new book; “Howl of the Wolf: North Carolina State University Students Call Out For Social Change.”  But I also decided to have a little fun with them.

     When I got to the meeting room, I found about 70 students in attendance.  I had already set up a power-point presentation, so I greeted everyone and began my remarks as they ate pizza.  I told them about my summer project and that the book would be published soon.  I said, though, that even though the book wouldn’t be available for a month, I wanted their reactions to the cover.  So, I said, here is the cover for the book:

    

     At first they were silent.  I was not surprised, but I prodded them on. 

    “Well, what do you think?,” I said.  Silence.  “No really, tell me; it’s pretty nice huh…” 

    Finally someone said well it’s ok. 

    “Ok?” I said.  “What’s the problem?”

      I knew the problem, but I wanted one of them to say it and someone finally did.

    “But it’s blue Dr. Nacoste.  Almost Carolina blue”

    I laughed.

    “Oh no,” I said, “…you’re right.”

     I was having fun.  No way was I going to publish a book that used the colors of the hated rival, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, even if I did get my Ph.D. there.  Not because it mattered to me, but because it would matter to the audience for my book; students at North Carolina State University.

    “Well,” I said, “… how about this cover.”

         

    Seeing the Wolfpack red, seeing the silhouettes of wolves against that big red moon, the relief and joy in the room was like an explosion.  Smiles, laughter, admiration was now all over the room and all over the students.  It was a fun moment. 

     Now that they were fully with me about my book, all their questions were about when it would be available.  So I promised them that when I had copies of the book in hand, I would come back and give copies to the people “…in attendance at the meeting tonight.”  I was very clear about this. 

     “All of you who are here tonight,” I said, “I will give you a copy.  But that’s our secret, just the people who are here tonight.  So when I have them, I’ll let Heather (the Psych Club President) know to spread the word that Dr.Nacoste will be at the next meeting.  That will tell you I am bringing copies of the book; but just for those here tonight.  Got it!”

    All heads nodded to say, yes.  Then I went home to have some dinner.

    Fall-2012 semester has moved at a clip.  One particular reason has to do with my major summer project.  Aside from taking a cruise with the family, I was working on a small book.  For a while now, I have been trying to decide how to use my students’ writings that they turn in as part of my course “Interpersonal Relationships and Race.”

     In that course, you see, I push my students to explore, examine, their own interpersonal histories when it comes to social interactions they have had with people who are not members of their racial, ethnic, gender, religious, or sexually-oriented group. In fact, one of the major assignments is for each student to write a description of their most “intense” intergroup interaction with another person. I collect these stories from my students and get their written permission to use the story in some way in my writing.

     At the end of the Spring-2012 semester, that May, I got an idea for writing a small book using some of those stories and thoughts from my students. The idea was to a book to challenge other students at North Carolina State University to face up to and embrace the neo-diversity of our campus. Neo-diversity is the social reality; a time and circumstance when each of us has to interact with people who are not like us in some way.  Today that is unavoidable, but too many Americans freeze up or act out in some ugly way when face with that interaction situation.

    But while taking my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course, my students come to terms with the reality of neo-diversity.  Not only do they write about and analyze their past mistakes, they write about how taking the course has changed their understanding of what is going on, and about how they now realize they can no longer just sit around “…waiting on the world to change.”  My students howl that now is the time for all on our campus and for all Americans to accept the neo-diversity of our lives and to make that neo-diversity a productive part of each of our lives.

    That was the idea, and that is what I wrote.  In September-2012, I self published my new book, “Howl of the Wolf: North Carolina State University Students Call Out for Social Change.”  That made this Fall-2012 semester move along at a clip.

    I give a lot of talks and presentations around campus.  Although I can feel the reaction of the audience to my remarks, I don’t often get direct confirmation of what I am sensing as a reaction.  Take my “Honoring the Authentic Self” presentation to students in the Univesity Honors Program at their Convocation (see previous post).  During my presentation, I felt the audience was with me; understanding and appreciating.  After, I got more of that feeling from the students who came down and stood around to get a chance to talk with me.  I got even more of that feeling when a student said to me, “thank you sir… that was helpful.”

    Helpful?  As I drove home I thought about that comment.  I thought about where these young people were in life; at the real begining of being an adult.  Helpful made sense as a comment because these young people are for the first time in a situation where they have to grapple with the hardest question in life; who am I?  And I had talked about developing an authentic self and not settling on being someone else.  So helpful made sense as a reaction.

   So sometimes I know that what I have done has made a difference.  But I don’t always see it in writing.  Lovely though that in the case of my presentation to the Honors Convocation, I found it in writing.  On the University Honors Program webblog I found this summary of the evening:

    For the 2012 UHP convocation, NC State students and faculty alike crowded into an auditorium to hear Dr. Rupert Nacoste address “The Aims of Education.”

    Following a brief introduction by UHP Director Dr. Larry Blanton, honors students listened attentively as Dr. Nacoste gave a moving speech on his interpretation of education as a means of self-discovery. His exhortation to the students was that they should not want “to be” anyone else; in fact to be another person, one would have to share all of the same life experiences. Dr. Nacoste reflected on his personal achievements by emphasizing the obstacles he was forced to face over the course of his lifetime. In doing so the primary objective of his convocation speech was not the generic or prescribed expectation, but rather to encourage the students to discover and better understand themselves as individuals. In addition to captivating oration technique, his stories, so unique to Dr. Nacoste’s life, seemed to strike a chord with the audience.

    Hearing Dr. Nacoste speak and share his own experiences left students with a desire to go forth, pursue, achieve, and possibly fail with grace and a better understanding of themselves from having experienced that failure. By doing so, they can gain not only knowledge about their fields of study, but also become more well-rounded by learning about themselves in the process.

    Good Luck to the UHP students in their studies of both themselves and the world around them.

    I like that summary.  Indeed, I am honored by it.

I am…

• Son of August and Ella Nacoste
• Louisiana bayou-black-Creole
• U.S. Navy Veteran (1972-1976)
• Fan of poetry, music, literature
• College graduate
• Writer
• Ph.D. Scholar

How do I put all that together?  How do I make all these parts of myself coherent to me?

That was the question I decided to take on when I was asked to give the keynote address at the University Honors Program (UHP) Convocation. My only instruction was to somehow deal with the question, “…what is the point of education?”  So the night before the beginning of classes for our Fall-2012 (August 15, 2012) students in the honors program gathered to hear me speak.

After being introduced by UHP Director Dr. Larry Blanton, I began with the statement above about the many parts of my social self.

Then I went on…

Professionally, I am a social psychologist.  As a social psychologist, I was trained by John W. Thibaut, one of the most important theoreticians of the field.

What was the point of my education under Thibaut?  Was it to be like him? Why do I even ask that question?

Well, lately, it feels like people have been hunting me down.  I try to get a moment to myself, and out of nowhere, I hear a voice… Dr. Nacoste. People want to talk to me.  A lot of those people say they want to learn from me.  Lately, too many have said they want to be me.

Now when a student says that… I kind of understand.  Even so, the desire is out of order.  But here’s where I go from feeling hunted to feeling stalked.  This summer, I was walking into Wholes Food and it happened.

I don’t teach in the summer.  But it’s more than not teaching.  I hide in the summer.  I avoid the campus and except for a few close friends, I avoid people.

You see I know too many people.  Actually, to be honest there are too many people who think they know me when in fact the truth is they know about me.  Even so, that doesn’t mean people won’t run up to me and start talking to me as if they know me.

So, I hide in the summer.  I use my summers to give myself time to myself; to read novels; to work on writing projects that are not academic; to travel.   This past summer I did all that.  That’s why when I was heading into Wholes Food, I was all relaxed.

In case you didn’t know, in North Carolina the heat of this past summer was unbearable; 5 days at 105 degrees.  So to beat the heat, I went to Wholes Food in the morning before the temperature made being outside unbearable.  I thought I was safe.  Just as I got to the door, there came a voice from an SUV that was sitting there.  “Dr. Nacoste…”

It was a relatively new NCSU faculty member. This faculty member said, “…I know when you heard my voice you had to be thinking, who is this person stalking me.” Then this faculty member just started talking.

I guess to explain themselves, this person said, I have people in my life, mentors that I look up to, and look to learn from.  You are one of my most important mentors… I want to learn from you… I know its summer but could you meet with me… you have to understand… this is so important… I just… I just want to be you.

Now, as a psychologist, I am worried… maybe even a little frightened. What the hell is going on?    No one should want to be me.  Not if you know my history.

Happy to be born and reared in the bayou country of Louisiana, I joined the Navy at 20 years old.  I was in the Navy during a hell of a time; race riots about ships carrying weapons of mass destruction.  I was onboard the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier with 5,000 men, at sea in the Mediterranean, when a race-riot broke out that lasted for three days; at sea, weapons of mass destruction all around. Same aircraft carrier, same deployment, we did search and recovery of bodies from a commercial jet crash.

When I was 23, I took my friend Benson home in a coffin…

I experienced all that, and more, while in the Navy.

Later, while a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan, I set myself on fire.  My left hand was so severely burned the doctors thought they might have to amputate it.  Later, when an assistant professor at Auburn University I had knee surgery and developed a blood clot, that became a pulmonary embolism.  I experienced and survived that.

     I don’t think people who say “I want to be you” really mean that.  It took me a while to figure out why someone would say that.  And part of that was a conversation I had with a really close friend. Basically my friend said that when people on campus observe me, they observe someone at ease with who they are, and someone who does what he thinks is the right thing to do. My friend was saying that people look at me and see someone who lives their authentic self.

     Ok… I thought… that makes sense.  Most people want to live that way.  But too many people want a short cut to get there.  Those people say, “Dr. Nacoste… I just want to be you.”

But that’s not how it works.  We all have a history that brings us to where and who we are. To be me would mean having the same experiences I have had; burned hand, blot clot and all.  It would mean having those experiences and finding a way to integrate those experiences into a coherent self.

Each of us has to develop our authentic self.   There is no short cut to your authentic self.

For me, that’s the point of education.  The point of education is to develop your authentic self. A good education is the pot in which the individual explores and integrates their experiences into a coherent self; a gumbo self.

I loved my parents. My parents loved me. I learned from my parents. I am the son of August and Ella Nacoste.   When they died, I felt a hurt like no other.  Even so, I never wanted to be my parents.

I was John Thibaut’s student.  He was a major part of my educational, intellectual learning.  He was one of greatest minds ever in the field of social psychology. I learned from him. I admired him. I came to love John as a friend. And he loved me likewise. But it was never my goal to be him.

Hear the poet Sterling Brown[1]:

Oh I shall meet your friends, and chatter on

As trivially, as sillily as they,

My talk resembling much the rattling way

Of an incessant mower on a lawn.

Oh I shall smirk, and prink and scrape and fawn

And listen to the nothings that they say

And answer less. And for a juvenile play

Shall all matured integrity be gone.

 

And there are very many things beside

That I shall do. And one of these will be

When you reward me for rank cowardice.

I shall call back, to fretting memory

A hut, pine circled, on a wild hillside

And peace thrown lavishly away– for this…

Don’t put yourself in that position.  Don’t give up on yourself. That’s what that poem is about.

The poem is the lament of someone who gave up on themselves to follow someone else.  They followed someone else’s goals; they followed a path chosen for them by that someone else.  And in the end they felt empty and cheated.

But they had done it too themselves; when you reward me for rank cowardice.  They had behaved cowardly and now, too late, realized what that cowardice had cost them. Don’t put yourself in that position.  Don’t give up on yourself.  It is true what Nietzsche said: “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

That’s the point of education; owning yourself.

The point of education is to develop your authentic self.

Be not afraid.