Reuben May: I’ve been called homeless. I’ve been thought of as crazy. And when I say that--a police officer comes over and asks me are you okay do you have medication. Like really? So people don’t get it. I walk up to people and I say do you know who I am? They go, “No.” Because there’s something about not believing that I can be those two people.
Monika Blackwell: There’s this point in all our lives where we question who we are. Some people ask the question over and over and over again. The identity crisis. The “who am I” story? We find some parts of ourselves in some places that contradict the people we are in other places. But what if we just accepted that sometimes we’re two, maybe even three different people? These sides don’t have to wrestle, even if maybe they contradict.
Reuben May finds himself here all the time. He’s, a professor of sociology at Texas A&M and holds the holder of the Glasscock Professorship in Undergraduate Teaching Excellence. Dr. May has also held the title of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visiting prof at MIT and is a former W.E.B. Dubois Fellow at Harvard.
May is observant and inquisitive. His classes are packed, and yet he calls out each student by name. It’s obvious that they really like him...even though he expects a lot of them.
RM: I am someone who is dedicated to making my students thinking, living, aware beings about their lives that they can apply in a lot of different contexts.
MB: And while his success is no doubt in large part because he’s an inspired and enthusiastic teacher… it could also have a little to do with this…
[Music begins, May rapping over a beat]
MB: Meet Reginald S. Stuckey.
RM: Reginald S. Stuckey is a nickname I came up for an alternative persona….and it happened one day in the gym in 1988. I’m shooting baskets in the gym. And I say: “the clock is running down 5-4-3-2-1. He shoots and he scores!” And I pause because I can’t be me. Because I’m very limited as Reuben May. Who can I be? Stuckey! Stuckey. Stuckey scores!
MB: For nearly 30 years, Reuben May has had an alter-ego known as Reginald Stuckey, aka “the Stuck.” He’s like May’s creative mojo. The free spirit, chain-wearing alternative to the guy in the glasses and the bowtie.
RM: And the idea was that I was the best player in the gym. It was the competitive side of me... It was the side of me… I was the best player. I got all the girls. Had lots of money. Of course it was all imaginary. I would never live a life where I thought that was real. It became the embodiment of another that was a creative aspect.
MB: May started writing rap as a way to journal, a practice he took up when he was 10 years old. And he started performing his raps at the urging of a student… something he says he probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to do without a push.
RM: And what I discovered is that there is such a high level of freedom associated with it. It’s something I have to do at points of stress, when I’m feeling good, when I’m feeling down. There’s an energy about doing it that’s very freeing.
MB: I asked Dr. May about what I called his competing identities, and he swiftly corrected me. He says his identities complement each other. One side can’t function without the other.
RM: They are all part of the same creativity. In fact, I would say they are very complimentary in fact. That’s because they just represent a different facet of who I am. And without that facet, there would be some part of me missing.
MB: So maybe identity is just about where we are and who is around us. There’s this term in linguistics called code switching. It’s describes how we speak one way in a certain environment and then transform our language to communicate best in another.
When we talk about code switching, we’re often talking about shifting across the different cultures and cultural intersections that we’re a part of.
RM: I think all people have to code switch. You don’t say the same things around your parents or the same way you would around your peers. There’s constant code switching. I think what I show people is that you can be a learned, intellectual, accomplished scholar, a noted professor but you can also be down to earth, you can be aware and related to your cultural experiences without sacrificing the quality of your abilities.
MB: Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio and coming to Texas, I think a lot about the question of identity and the nature of code switching. I focus on keeping various sides of myself pretty well-contained...not using “y’all” as much, for example, when I’m with my family in Ohio. I code switch in all sorts of scenarios. My work side is my work side. My me-with-friends side is my me-with-friends side. So I appreciate hearing that this is pretty normal for people….encouraged even.
In class, Dr. May is intense. He moves quickly and covers a lot of ground. He calls students out for not reviewing their notes or for having side conversations in class. And he doesn’t shrink. All sorts of important topics are covered. Sociological vocabulary is peppered into larger discussions about racial and socio-economic divides. But between classes, it’s pretty common to find Stuckey standing on the benches outside of the Academic Building. His headphones on, a towel tucked into his pocket, he raps as loud as possible. And even this is a lesson for the students who pass him by.
RM: I would teach in class, come, change my clothes to sweatpants and a tee shirt, and go outside and call my students by name and, “Oh! Dr. May I didn’t know that was you.” Because they don’t spend time looking. Part of the reason I ask people do you know who I am is to call their attention to you’re looking at me in this way and you don’t understand that people can be complex and I can be that person and that person and that person too.
MB: To be honest, I can understand why students need to do a double take. The first time I saw him, I had to do one too. I was driving down Texas Avenue with some of my student interns in the car. We passed Stuckey outside of Starbucks. He looked like he was giving a really energetic sermon. One of my interns pointed him out. And when she told me about the so-called rapping professor, I thought, “At Texas A&M? Really? No...”
I didn’t know though that, a few weeks later, I’d be standing on the street with Stuckey as the cars drove by. We were both holding microphones in the heat of a blazing Texas sun.
As we stood there on the sidewalk, people honked, they slowed down as they passed, they yelled or took pictures out of their car windows. It’s pretty obvious, Reuben May, Stuckey, whatever you call him… is a local celebrity. I should point out here how utter un-self-conscious Stuckey is in these moments. And I’ve got to admit, *I* was self-conscious standing there. But he just kept rapping on, totally unfazed.
It crossed my mind that his performance on the street was in itself filled with sociological meaning. What he’s doing opens the door to a whole host of questions about social norms and race relations and human agency. In some ways, I think I learned more about sociology standing on Texas Avenue with him than I did in his classroom
But his classroom lessons are equally important, too. He doesn’t flinch about certain topics that other professors might leave off the table. You want to talk about Black Lives Matter or the election? Take Dr. May’s class. And that’s what students came there for. Even though he’s received some criticism for his style.
RM: So my first semester at A&M there was a revolution and department heads wanted to know what was going on with me. Students rallied around me and they said listen we paid to take this class, let us take it the way he teaches it. And I was free to do what I do. And it has paid off in a very distinguished career here at Texas A&M.
MB: What are they complaining about?
RM: Without getting into specifics? It’s the way that I rattle people almost into thinking. Because people are mostly passive students. They just want you to give them information and they will go with that. You just can’t take the information. You have to analyze the information. I’m very forceful about that and so that caught a lot of students off guard.
MB: May says he had to overcome some pretty deep-running stereotypes to transform his image. It took some people a while to look past their perceptions of a “typical black male” to see what he really had to offer. But because he showed them his true self--in all its complex forms--he’s made a lasting impact on his students. Some of them have even brought their parents to class they wanted to introduce them to a professor who helped shape them.
RM: And the beauty in all of this is students from all walks of life can say they have had this experience and it’s been life-changing for them. And that’s the beauty of it; it’s not all my black students. All my Hispanic students. Everyone who comes in and have contact who’s been able to understand the process of what happens in a course with me who gets the whole idea, the whole picture. Many folks have stepped and said he’s doing a really creative and fantastic job with our students.
MB: And you’re still here?
RM: I’m still here. (laughs)
MB: The main thing that Dr. May is teaching his students is how to think for themselves. So that whole question of identity? It comes full circle. In his class, his students get to think about the big questions that help THEM figure out the people they want to be.
To support the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M visit give.am/support sociology. For the Texas A&M Foundation, I’m Monika Blackwell.
This episode was produced by me, Monika Blackwell, with production help from Davis Land, a student in the College of Liberal Arts. The Sound of the Spirit is a production of the Texas A&M Foundation, a nonprofit fundraising arm of Texas A&M University. The show is on iTunes, so please be sure to write a review and share it with your friends. Oh, and if you’re a Snapchat user, you can find Stuckey on there as "reginaldstuckey". It’s kind of considered a Texas A&M bucket list item to get a snap of the Stuck.
RM: Ok this is a Snapchat. This is Monika from the Foundation, she’s gonna hook a brother up and this is for the podcast. The Stuck!
To support the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M, visit give.am/supportsociology.
Music on this episode by:
Reginald S. Stuckey
Electronic Lizard
Blank Kytt
Podington Bear
MindsEye
Photo credit: Josh Huskin
