Month: July 2020

A white woman colleague once told me she would love to “pick my brain” sometime because our knowledge and research interests around racism have possible overlaps interdisciplinarily. She said it in passing and as a way to forge a connection with me. But I thought, hell NO, you cannot! My brain is not yours to simply mine for usefulness to aid your research agenda. Just read and cite my work instead. Why would anyone say this to anyone at all but especially from a white woman to a woman of color colleague? The entitlement to me, my brain, and my expertise in such an off the cuff comment floored me. And people wonder why STEM has a reputation for being rife with problematic patterns.

There have been several occasions in my time as faculty here that I have witnessed white colleagues use linguistically racist microaggressions to imply that a student would not likely succeed here (or to point out why a student is likely to perform poorly in a specific major or internship opportunity) or a professor job candidate would be a bad fit here. About a candidate: “Would we really put this person in front of our students to teach them??” About a student: “This student cannot write or speak English well because it’s not their first language. I’m concerned about the type of students we are admitting, who cannot communicate well.” In these particular examples, I was privy to the writing in question, the spoken language usage, and the other candidacy materials that showed a more well-rounded perspective of these people. Small missteps, like an imperfect essay, or an occasional mistake in language usage, speak volumes to some racists here who are looking for reasons to other the others. I spoke up when these incidents occurred but the lesson I took from them makes my blood boil and puts me on the defensive when I think about the people this mindset impacts.

When I got tenure, I received many congratulatory emails from senior white colleagues. I have seen some of these people repeatedly in various faculty settings over the past 6 years to tenure, and have navigated those spaces largely invisible to that “club,” apparently. The tenure emails were odd because they were clearly a rite of visibility passage. These people know who I am. They’ve seen me around. But I didn’t become a legitimate colleague until I got tenure. Noticing this personally reminded me of when a fellow junior colleague told me that a white man colleague at a faculty social event told her he would learn her name once she got tenure. I guess we are now visible and legitimate to them! Which makes me sad to know how they surely continue to think about the untenured and visiting junior faculty.

In a Moodle discussion post from my class, we were asked to comment on the story of the South African Khoikhoi woman, who people now know as Sara Baartman, who was coerced by English, and then French swindlers into a contract in which she was exhibited in a human zoo. Her exhibition was deeply entangled with scientific racism. She died in 1815. I read my classmate’s Moodle post about Sara’s history, and the discussion of France returning her remains to South Africa. My classmate said that she was as French as she was African, and her role as a spectacle in Europe had an impact on French people. Therefore, my classmate said: “who owns her history? Although Sara was not French, she is a product of France.” This comment was probably meant as a throwaway. I know that very few people put much thought into their discussion posts. But I find it deeply troubling that someone could think of a Black human being as a product or cultural good belonging to the nation-state which imprisoned her, even after her death. It is especially disturbing coming from a white person in a major that is supposed to teach humane instincts. What does this say about the culture of our humanities program at Davidson, and among white people? Why is it that even in these casual comments, a lack of care for Black bodies is expressed?

I have family in Hong Kong. The coronavirus has affected my family and frankly, scared a lot of people who have family in China. I’ve been asked by my parents to search for masks so we could send them to Hong Kong, due to the extreme shortages there. I received a Snapchat from a student that stated “I’m finna get coronavirus from my AliExpress packet.” I was confused why I got this Snapchat and more so furious that this student made a joke about the situation. This virus is not funny and for people to lightheartedly joke about this virus hurt me.

As an international student, I have felt belittled by my professors countless times. I especially remember my [social science discipline] professor’s comment on my first ever college paper. Despite receiving a score that was above average, she concluded her corrections with something along the lines of “I am afraid there’s no quick route for international students”. I felt like my effort and hard work were being completely delegitimized. I was ashamed and singled out. My international identity unfortunately connoted much more than I had anticipated. I felt like I didn’t belong in that class and, despite my high scores, I believed I was incompetent. Having had conversations with other internationals, it is clear to me that condescending comments continue to emerge. I just wish professors would think twice about the repercussions of their statements on internationals’ self-concepts. When you are far from home, such comments can burden you even more.

I am shocked and disgusted by the amount of white Davidson students posting on social media, showing them and their friends drinking, celebrating, sitting by pools and on boats, and generally acting as if there is nothing else going on that warrants their attention. By posting in such a way, they are essentially saying that their privilege not only allows that to remain completely unaffected by the urgent fight for racial justice but also to blithely ignore it. Not to mention that some of these same people have been and continue to ignore guidelines set up to prevent the spread of COVID-19 because their privilege also allows them to remain protected in the wake of the pandemic as well. Do better, Davidson students.

In the Fall 2019, two Jewish student leaders were contacted by Marketing and Communications with the vague request that they preview the new college commercial. This left them with the uncomfortable feeling that there were being asked to watch the commercial as Jews, and contacted some of the new JS faculty members to come. One faculty member (myself) and the rabbi joined the two students two weeks later for the screening. We weren’t told why we were there or why they wanted us to look at the commercial. After showing the commercial they asked what we saw in the commercial. Several of the viewers were reminded of Nazi propaganda imagery. At that point, the marketing dept. did their big reveal — the reason they had asked us to watch it was because it had reminded someone of the Schindler’s List red dress scenes. The Davidson College marketing dept had called on Jewish undergrads to preview a commercial to test whether or not they would visually be reminded of the Holocaust. In other words, they asked students to blindly go into an experience that might be traumatic to them as part of a focus group. The whole process was based on the assumption that young American Jews necessarily have an internalized visual repertoire of Schindler’s List symbols, even though the movie was made before most Davidson College students are born. It then became very clear that they never had any intention of changing the commercial, no matter what we said (it was airing in two days). They only reason they asked the students was to cover their asses in case someone got offended by the commercial. It was tokenizing, disingenuous, essentializing, and insensitive all at once.

I was hired to teach on a particular minority experience. Several seniors wrote theses squarely within my field of expertise. My colleagues who were teaching the senior colloquium apparently don’t think my expertise is necessary, because they never recommended any of these students consult with me or take my classes. I didn’t even know about these theses until the dept graduation ceremony.