(Name-mce) ListServ Race and Careers

[Anselmo Villanueva]

December 28, 2007

Race and Careers

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/12/28/race

It was just a quick aside, but it was one that speakers and audience
members returned to:

Lisa Outar, an assistant professor of English at St. John's
University, in New York, mentioned she had seen how many departments
want to hire people who "embody what you teach." Her "visible
Indianness" wasn't what she was thinking about as her top issue when
she did her job search — she was more focused on finding a university
with a diverse student body, where people would be excited by her
interest in Caribbean literature.

But she noticed that her friends in graduate school with similar
research interests, but who were white, had a much more difficult time
getting interviews.

Others on the panel were not surprised by the comment, which came in a
discussion at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association
about the role of race and ethnicity in academic careers. A theme of
all of the speakers was that while there are many good opportunities
for minority scholars or people who study minority cultures, their
careers have a number of tensions that don't typically get enough
consideration.

Outer's comment prompted several questions about whether graduate
students should be considering whether their ethnicity and research
subjects match. Initially, all members of the panel — while
acknowledging that race is a key factor for many hires to teach ethnic
studies — said that students should follow their academic interests,
and not worry about whether a white scholar of black studies can get a
job.

But one of the speakers then modified his position slightly. Michael
Awkward, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, said
that when he started his career — as a black scholar studying
African-American literature — he had the firm idea that "race didn't
matter" with graduate students' areas of specialization. But after a
few years, he said, he noticed that his white graduate students "ended
up not getting jobs."

"It got to the point that I started to suggest to white students that
they market themselves as Americanists," he said. It's a matter of
presentation more than what they study, Awkward said, but their job
prospects improved.

A black female graduate student then asked how this issue would play
out for her if she wanted to study an ethnic literature that was not
her own — for example Latin American literature.

Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, associate professor of American studies at
Rutgers University, said that the issue was tricky. He said that many
language programs (at other universities, he stressed, not his own)
have certain "levels of fetishism" about these things. Scholars of
Spain are presumed white and scholars of Latin America are presumed to
be from Latin America. When programs get larger, a black person may be
hired with a focus on Afro-Hispanic cultures.

Of course, as panelists noted, the issues aren't necessarily much
easier for minority scholars who do end up studying their own groups.

Oatar of St. John's said she was surprised by the "invisible
expectations" that she be available to minority students — even those
who are not her advisees or students. Oatar said she welcomes the
work, but worries about the impact on tenure, since this mentoring
time does not fit in one of the boxes on which she must report what
she accomplished each semester. (Some senior colleagues are helping
her find ways to record her contributions, she said, and that
minimizes her concern.)

Awkward spoke about the impact on graduate enrollments of shifts in
policies that go well beyond any one department or its commitment to
diversifying the field. For example, he said that many English
departments have tried to keep the total number of students in
graduate programs below their top levels, in part to be sure that new
Ph.D.'s have a better shot at getting jobs. This may be a reasonable
idea, he said, but when a department is down to admitting 8 or 10
students, what does that do to efforts to reach out to more minority
graduate students?

He also noted the impact of Michigan's recent ban on affirmative
action — something that the good will of his department can't undo.

Anne Cheng, a professor of English at Princeton University, said she
was struck by the "double bind" in which minority scholars find
themselves: "the tension between politicized scholarship and
scholarship that is political."

Identity was the basis by which many ethnic studies programs were
created, she said. But the same identity can be the source of
stereotype in minimizing the role of ethnic studies, she said.

Likewise, she said that questions of institutional recognition are not
as straightforward as one might think. With recognition and support,
scholars can hope for "the possibility of a community" in the way that
a single professor can never have. But there is also fear, she said,
that the "codification" of ethnic studies by universities can lead to
the "strangulation" of its creativity and its role as an "outside,"
reflective observer.

These dilemmas, she said, appear unlikely to be worked out any time
soon. "They are timeless."

— Scott Jaschik