Meeting Those Who Watchlisted Me (And Why Childish Gambino is more Important)

What stood out to me most was how nervous he was.

It was the first time since I was put on Turning Point’s Watchlist in November of 2016 that I had met someone associated with the organization. I walked up to the table stocked full of pamphlets and posters including “Commies Aren’t Cool,” “Socialism Sucks,” and “You PC, bro?” and shook the hand of the young man standing behind the display. He had set up shop on the campus of the University of Montana where I work.

I then told him, “Hi, my name is Tobin Miller Shearer. Your organization has had me on your watchlist for more than two years. That has led to me receiving death threats. Would someone from your organization be willing to talk with me about why you have put me on your list?”

That’s when he started getting nervous, especially when I told him that the organization had never provided the least bit of evidence about anything I had ever said or done in a classroom that would make me worthy of being labeled as a professor who promotes “a radical agenda in lecture halls.”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and said, “I’ll contact my manager to see what we can do about getting you taken off.”

We talked a bit more. He kept saying how radical the professors were on the list, that some of them had called for white genocide, and that they were just trying to let students and their parents know which schools and classes to avoid. He asked whether I loved America (I told him I respected and honored the traditions of democracy and full inclusion that are at the core of this nation’s documents). He informed me that the US was held to higher standards that any other nation in the world (and seemed to suggest that we shouldn’t be). He made fun of California. He said that conservative students were being persecuted right here on this campus (but had no evidence to support his assertion when I asked him to back up his claim).

The whole time he spoke, I kept thinking about how much my life had been affected by my inclusion on his organization’s watchlist. It was a very mixed bag:

- increased attention to my writing;

- dealing with additional security measures

- an outpouring of support from friends, families, and acquaintances across the country;

- and heightened scrutiny of my teaching.

I had tried not to let the notoriety of being watchlisted define my identity, but to a degree, when I was most honest, I knew that it had. I could not deny that the attention I had received because of my inclusion on the list made me feel like I was doing something right. It made me feel more radical than I actually was.

As the Turning Point staff member continued to chatter nervously about leftist bias and professor liberalism, another young man — I only saw white men staff the table or stop and talk with the staff while I was there — said, “I don’t think you’re on the site anymore.”

We couldn’t get the site to work properly on any of our phones, but it turns out that he was correct. In the process of talking with someone from Turning Point for the first time, I discovered that they had taken my name down from their website.

I have to confess that I was a little bit disappointed.

The irony, of course, is that during the two and half years of being listed on the Professor Watchlist website I have given more public talks on racism and white privilege than I have in the previous ten years combined. I have done more consulting on institutional racism. I have become more involved in organizing efforts to dismantle racism. I have created a new class on the history of White Supremacy in this country.

By Turning Point’s terms, I may have become the radical professor about which they were trying to warn students.

The young man’s nervousness, his immediate turn to a manager for help, and his inability to provide evidence for his claims both disturbed and relieved me. The organization clearly has a great deal of financial resources available to print up glossy brochures and posters as well as maintain the management network needed to show up in Missoula. Turning Point is reaching their desired audience. The least black state in the union is prime recruiting grounds for their often thinly veiled form of racism.

But I was also relieved at the relatively few people who were paying him any attention, at the feebleness of the young man’s arguments, and that he could be so easily flustered simply by me appearing in the flesh. He clearly was ill-prepared not to be attacked, to be confronted by the villain he railed against, and to be asked questions for which he had no ready answer.

I don’t think that I have changed anything about the way I teach or interact with my students as a result of having been put on the Watchlist. I don’t plan on making changes now that I am no longer on it.

I do plan on continuing the work in which I am engaged in much of the same manner as I have for the last three decades. Whether or not Turning Point thinks that I’m radical really doesn’t matter.

What matters is what the students in my classes are doing right now. They are discussing and being troubled by Childish Gambino’s new video on racism and gun violence in America. They are preparing a new high school curriculum on the true legacy of the civil rights movement. They are designing new anti-racism trainings for UM’s residence life staff and the larger campus and local community. They are writing papers about being moved and inspired by seeing white students and students of color working together to challenge white supremacy.

That is what is important. What my students are doing, that is what counts. The rest? The watchlisting and nervous posturing and unsubstantiated claims? Well, they just don’t matter as much.