BY JOHN STREAMAS
After writing my Journal of Academic Freedom article, “A Vision for Scholar-Activists of Color,” I learned that my university has launched a new campaign to “recruit and retain” a diverse faculty, and now I serve on a subcommittee.
At the same time it is also redefining standards for school-wide curricular requirements, and the new definition for courses aiming to score the diversity designation is actually half-sound. The university now recognizes power as a factor in social relations. This is an improvement, but it fails to mention that ambient differences in power create and sustain institutional racism. In fact, it doesn’t even mention institutional racism, though now it vaguely seems to recognize that discrimination is more than a matter of frat-boy Bob drunkenly uttering racial, misogynistic, and homophobic slurs. What most upsets me about the new definition is that it aims to discourage personal experiences, impressions, and observations as valid evidence, and to encourage instead verifiable quantitative evidence. We people of color know the experiences and impressions of whites, but they don’t know ours. They seem to think that their experiences are so universal that they don’t need to hear ours. Thus many of us feel silenced. Our experiences and observations have never felt welcome on campus. Now they will be further discouraged, by order of the diversity gods.
How can any institution hope to “recruit and retain” a diverse faculty when it also discourages the evidence of personal experience? In the typical introductory course in ethnic studies, it is the clueless white boys who try to dominate discourse: “I’m not a bigot, and I never owned slaves or killed Indians, so why should I be made to believe I owe anything to people of color? Why can’t they just move on?” Of course we have heard this all our lives—this is the personal experience and observation we don’t need to hear any more of. But then students of color feel afraid to counter these white boys, afraid that they will be shouted down. Teaching these courses, I try hard not to silence the white boys, but I try even harder to encourage people of color to share their stories. Sometimes I succeed, but often I don’t. I understand the fear of my students of color. I feel it myself, whenever I walk on campus.
And I have come to believe that the greatest obstacle to truly free speech on our campuses—and thus the greatest obstacle to hiring and keeping faculty of color—is this terrible, never-ending fear.
Guest blogger John Streamas is an associate professor in the School of Languages, Cultures, and Race at Washington State University.
Read the complete volume of the 2019 Journal of Academic Freedom at https://www.aaup.org/JAF10.
In my view, there are MANY reasons for seeking a more diverse faculty, staff, and student body at universities — and society in general. However, one of the rationales used above — “Of course we have heard this all our lives—this is the personal experience and observation we don’t need to hear any more of” — does not make sense to me (admittedly a white guy who, nonetheless grew up in extreme poverty and whose name is proudly ensconced on Rosa Parks’ WALL OF TOLERANCE).
In short, what does one’s personal history with discrimination have to do with one’s ability to succeed as a student, professor, or staffer. Many people are fearful of many things and we can hardly account for all of them. Acrophobia, for instance, would prohibit and/or interfere with some people’s education in any building over 4-5 stories in height. Can an extreme feminist be expected to learn about nude painting? These are not absurd examples — and I am not asking rhetorical questions. I’d like answers — to sharpen my responses when troglodytes ask them.