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Pressure on black faculty to be visible
Last week, Jerald Walker’s thought-provoking column at the Chronicle of Higher Education careers site dealt with pressure on black faculty to be visible at “black” campus events. Yes, as if minority faculty members don’t have enough to do.
The trouble started when Walker didn’t attend the campus Kwanzaa celebration. Why not? Well, he doesn’t celebrate Kwanzaa. But when asked about his absence by an African American colleague, he lied.
. . . Kwanzaa’s emphasis on Africa simply has no personal appeal to me. I am American, not African. I speak English, not Swahili. I wear Western-style clothes intended for commoners, not kente cloth intended for royalty. I have no need to participate in a highly ritualistic holiday to feel better about myself; for that, my ancestors gave me Brer Rabbit and John Henry. . . . I did not have the courage to say that. I had been an academic for only a few months, but I had followed the profession enough to know what happens to black faculty members who get labeled “conservative.”
After his colleague hinted that he needed to be more visible to get tenure, Walker bowed to the pressure and showed up at more of the right events. But it increasingly bothered him to be at events he considered defeatist. He realized he’d had enough while attending “Black Commencement” and listening to a quasi-coherent speaker whose talk “included references to ancient Egypt, Allah, mathematics, Imhotep, slavery, reparations, and cloning”. He decided to end his obligatory visibility:
Never again would I applaud speeches that celebrated the myth of black defeat, and I would not participate in events simply because of the color of my skin. And if people questioned my absence, I would not tell them a lie. I intend to be visible, I would tell them, but only in ways I wish to be seen.
One could argue that Walker is too conservative, and that he needs to stop complaining and go to Black Commencement. We here at Dr. Medusa can certainly relate to the importance of campus events of, by, and for minority group members. Many’s the time we have loved the support of our local Gorgon American campus chapter.
But is it really necessary to load down minority faculty—especially untenured faculty—with obligations that their white colleagues needn’t bother with? We would like to see women and minority faculty members given the support they need to get tenure, not pressured into showing up at events they don’t wish to attend.