Anti Black Racism in US Academic Contexts

hello everyone we're gonna wait a little bit to have more attendees join us and then we're going to officially start the event by welcoming everyone all right um hello everyone i would like to start um by saying we respectfully acknowledge that the university of arizona is on the land and territories of the oldham and the yaki peoples who have stewarded this land since time immemorial hello and welcome everyone my name is abhinu audru puni and i am an assistant professor with the department of german studies here at the university of arizona i'm happy and excited to welcome all of you to the second and last campus weeks virtual events this week which is a conversation about anti-black racism and u.s american contexts and i would like to start um by introducing our conversationalists for today um dr gloria j wilson is the co-founder and director of racial justice studio an assistant professor of art and visual cult visual culture education at the university of arizona an artist public scholar and qualitative arts based methodologist she has presented her research nationally and internationally her current research work is situated within black studies cultural studies and critical public pedagogy she studies power situated in north american-based cultural texts which have produced race and racism in general and more specifically examine representations of race across creative modalities and how these practices and processes work to re-inscribe and refuse hegemonic systems she has been the recipient of a fulbright award to study in tokyo ogizaka japan and has also been an invited artist speaker for spelman college's museum of art black box series she's recognized for a work in facilitating anti-racism workshops in museums and community spaces across the us her current art making practices are grounded in critical arts based inquiry and methodologies and include like adam include the black academic project and forthcoming art installation dedicated to honoring lives of the descendant of the clotilda survivors in africa town mobile alabama next i'm going to introduce our second conversationalist dr stephanie troutman robbins is a black feminist scholar mother and first generation college student she's the department head of gender and women's studies at the university in arizona and is an associate professor of english she is a formerly affiliated faculty member of africana studies teaching learning and social cultural studies and the lgbt institute she has received a dual phd in curriculum and instruction and women's studies from the pennsylvania state university in 2011. a former high school and middle middle grades public school teacher stephanie is a scholar activist who has been recognized across a variety of community and campus spaces for mentorship student advocacy and social justice leadership she is the recipient of ua links awards the study affairs faculty impact award and the dr maria teresa valles outstanding mentor award dr troutman robbins is the former director of two outreach projects between the university of arizona and tucson schools wildcat riders and the southern arizona writing project these partnership programs serve as local community serve the local community by focusing on title 1 schools and providing them with opportunities for professional development academic resources and program programming rooted in diversity equity and inclusion through writing her research interests include literacies focused on social justice feminist pedagogy critical race theory film studies black feminist theories schooling identities and education she's the co-author of the 2018 book narratives of family asset community gifts and cultural endowments reimagining the invisible knapsack and the co-order of two part of the two-part and encyclopedia race and ethnicity in u.s television published earlier this year her research has been published in the journal of girlhood studies the journal of race ethnicity and education meridians feminism race and trans nationalism taboo the journal of cultural and education and in the journal of literacy and social responsibility please everyone join me in welcoming dr stroutman robbins and wilson thank you uh so much for that uh wonderful and detailed introduction um i'm uh happy to be here today with my colleague gloria wilson um as we get ready to uh have this discussion uh about anti-black racism anti-blackness in the academy um you know gloria and i actually uh both share background in public schools and in teaching and so i think you know we'll probably just jump right in and i bring that up just just to sort of foreground that you know a lot of the i don't know about you gloria but for me a lot of the issues that i encountered as a public school teacher as a black public school teacher you know i kind of assumed that those things would be different uh in higher ed and i don't you know the the more time goes on and i reflect on these different experiences of schooling um you know working in schools and then also you know being an undergraduate being a graduate student and i began to think about um anti-blackness and different anti-black encounters i've had um you know it it's a little bit disheartening uh for me that we are not further along in some ways and so i wonder um you know just kind of opening with that you know what your experiences have been if you kind of feel the same about that sure yeah i'm so happy to be here thank you um so much of benue for um the wonderful introductions um stephanie it's good to be with you today um to continue conversations that you know we've had even away from uh campus life and so um i just appreciate uh having this space to to sort of bring this topic to the fore uh and and stephanie you reminded me that yeah we had a whole we had a whole career before we got into higher ed i mean we were you know uh secondary school teachers and so this is really making me think about um those moments um prior to coming even coming into the professional space space of higher ed um that um you experience micro and macro aggressions and so this is making me think about um teaching in a high school in mobile alabama and so i have to say that my father is a black american he is from alabama he was in the military and i was in just approaching high school when he retired in mobile so we had lived you know overseas we lived in washington state we had lived in south carolina and um i think you're right some of my um most um watershed moments came when my dad retired and he retired very specifically in mobile alabama and we know that there's lots of history uh in alabama montgomery birmingham um and so i remember my first year teaching at this predominantly white high school and prior to that i had taught in a predominantly black middle school and so this was just you know an entire shift um not only in racial demographics but also culturally and it was a very rural area in mobile and um i remember one of the first visualizations that i saw um on campus was the confederate flag being represented in students wearing belt buckles and hats and t-shirts um license plates um all trimmed in you know con confederacy uh and so that very first week of school um my window was blown out the driver's side window um and it i had it was planning period and so it was early in the morning you know it's fall and it's not very hot early in the morning and i remember um calling my father first of all because i was i was upset and then he told me well you know maybe you just want to report it and i reported it and here comes the sheriff the sheriff comes and the first thing he says to me is that son sure is something else isn't it so he was indicating at least in my interpretation that it was the heat that had blown out my window but nobody else's nobody else is in the parking lot you know and that was my first sort of you know moment um of understanding um where i was you know i'd come out of this you know teaching in this predominantly black environment black students black teachers you know and here i am you know now in this predominantly white environment um experiencing you know my very first week of teaching there um this this what i would call macro aggression you know there was nothing micro about that and then to have you know the person who's who's assigned to sort of protect you know um say to me um what he said it was it made me you know want to quit teaching you know and and thankfully i had a reasonable dad who kind of calmed me down and talked me through uh staying there and nine years later you know i um was the department chair um and had done lots of things but had experienced quite a bit of um disruption along the way yeah you know it's interesting too there's a there's another there's a connection which i don't think i realized before which my dad is also a southern black man he's a retired military retired law enforcement um in georgia um and so you know there's this interesting um piece that's about very much about geography right and and location and i think being in the south you know one of the things i've learned i guess um as we're reflecting is that you know anti-blackness is really everywhere and so i guess maybe in the south when you're there geographically you expect it in a certain way because of the history of the united states but i think that there's also right ways in which you don't think these other more progressive spaces are going to have the same level right of racism and then you find out that they do especially if we're talking about higher ed and just especially reflecting on incidents of the last couple years with police violence um in certain metropolitan and you know other kinds of areas and so um i think you know it's really hard because in some ways uh again you can anticipate the racism in some of these places even though it's still unpleasant um and i think for me i didn't you know i didn't anticipate it in the academy in the way that i encountered it and i you know my first job in higher ed was also was in a predominantly black um was that an hbcu between cookman university and so at bethune cookman you know it was very much an all-black pro-black environment of course there are teachers who and professors from other backgrounds but given the student body and kind of given the history of space you know the racism wasn't um you know i felt it differently um and there wasn't as much of an issue um but then moving into more predominantly white institutions and spaces you know it definitely came up and i think i was very naive i think you know um i didn't as i said i didn't expect it right and so because i wasn't expecting it i wasn't well prepared for it and i think that that's one of the things that if anything i hope that you know younger scholars and graduate students will hear that it is alive and well in the academy unfortunately while there are programs and different you know mechanisms in place to try to combat it that it's it's very much here and they have to be prepared right because uh again i think if you're not prepared you're you know you're kind of behind in in being able to to have mechanisms in place for support or for community or to like push back or or deal with it right and so i think that um you know for me understanding that yeah you know academia is not this liberal bastion of like multicultural misfits who are all going to you know who are here because you know they're committed to some of the same the same things you know and i think some of that's been a an interesting lesson uh that i continue to learn in higher ed yeah yeah i agree um the being naive part um you know and then sort of being startled out of your naivete you know trying to um do the mental gymnastics about what is happening to you at the time you know and this is reminding me you you mentioned um students and sort of what that experience um might be like um and and i think we also talked about um a little bit about um you know the the less visible ways that these things show up you know and anytime that you're you know you have you know sort of you're doing sort of this mental gymnastics about you know whether it was something that someone said to you um or um you know maybe even a look that you that you notice that seems a little bit odd and just even recalling my own graduate experience and having a professor who needed to um needed to support me in articulating that i was studying black people um and and she felt the need to support me in that and this was a white professor because i was hesitant to articulate that out loud because of a program that i was in that had silenced me in many ways and so um it's just interesting how how these things happen and if if we don't have the systems of support that you talked about whether it's through colleagues or whether it's through professors your peers that you're you're constantly doing this you know the mental gymnastics you know and feeling a little bit crazy yeah i mean i i totally agree with you and i feel like you know you bring up this interesting point about how like our objects of study or our communities of study and i think about how you know a lot i think a lot of black folks experienced black graduate students um experience this sort of this tentativeness or a hesitancy to name that they want to study you know black life or some or some aspects of like african american identity or african diaspora culture anything like that because we already know right there's already this this knowledge that we're going to be thought of as less serious scholars that we're going to be thought of as doing you know vanity projects or um you know like naval gazing or self-interested you know identity-based work that's not gonna be as rigorous that's not gonna you know it's not gonna fit um these paradigms uh for what is considered you know quality scholarship and it's one of those things that i think white uh grad students and faculty really never have to think about or contend with and you know because if they're doing work on you know white or european populations well that's the assumption right the assumption is that that's the work you're doing so you don't have to explain that or second-guess it or think about it and if you are doing work on minority communities you also don't have to worry about it either because you're a white scholar so you're allowed to kind of do whatever you want and when people are like oh you're studying you know this afro-brazilian community or you're studying you know uh black folks during civil rights movement you know people think that that's you know that person is you know an expert or an authority or that that person is going to bring some kind of you know critical esteem or value to that area uh in a way that you know i think black scholars you know we don't we don't get the benefit of the doubt in that regard and we actually get more of a negative uh kind of reaction and push back around um around that and i think you know in keeping with sort of a line of reasoning or line of discussion around graduate students i know that one of the things that happened at penn state where i was a grad student um you know i i was getting my hair done by this african woman whose husband was a postdoc and she was telling me that during the orientation for the african post docs they were told not to not to befriend black americans that they should not be you know getting too involved with african-american students in particular because i guess she had mentioned that somebody in the group um asked about you know black resource like resources for black folks and asked about like oh i heard there's a black graduate student union you know do post docs engage with that you know how does that work how could we reach out and find out more information about that at which point they were like oh that's just for black americans like you don't want to be in that group and so there's this you know here's this group on campus that is a staple of the campus that's like a community of support that is funded and promoted you know by different entities on campus and you have you know people still viewing that in a negative way and still and you know advising uh african students not to engage in that space don't participate there because you'll be seen as a disrupter or don't participate there because you know the black the black american community on campuses is remedial right like so that's like a space for them so that they can get you know support to do this work that you don't need because you're you know not coming from within this context you don't have the same issues right and so i think that was another really like wow kind of moment for me i i just wasn't you know expecting that right absolutely and it goes back to this you know this mental gymnastics um that one has to perform when certain narratives are shared you know and so in in connecting with um sort of the narrative that you were um exposed to that was shared with you um you know i think about um you know the extra work that it takes in order to undo you know these assumptions right and so often um the lots of these narratives are not true you know and particularly um as it relates to communities um communities of black people right so this this is starting to make me think of you know about the systemic nature um of anti-blackness and how these can be internalized by anyone you know and so i remember hearing these narratives um myself um you know just the fissures that or that create fissures um across um black the black diaspora you know and and so if if if we don't do the work to push beyond the narratives that we're told um the question becomes you know how do we then internalize um these negative messages as well and to even extend um into extend into extend the culture that we're talking about so within higher ed spaces um i recall um an an instance where i was questioned about where i thought that my work was going to be published so the suggestion was gloria you might want to think about whether or not you want a tenure-track job beyond graduate school and what that might mean for you studying the subject matter that you're studying so race and specifically black people and which journals will accept your work and so talk about a message you know that one has to do this mental gymnastics around i remember the moment that i needed to decide whether i was gonna push through and do the work that i was really interested in which is the thing that i was being warned about um right um or whether i was i was just going to take the safer route and study something like creativity which is what my peers in my program were studying you know we're just gonna study creativity you know um and so again we get these these messages that we have to really tease through um and ask ourselves if if that is true and i will say that um you know i did make make the decision to study black teachers you know black high school teachers art teachers um and i have not had any trouble having my work published in the journals that i decided and so it again you know um sometimes it we have to do a little bit of extra um thinking about these things you know to ask ourselves particularly as it relates to you know black communities in the diaspora um if we're going to internalize these you know sort of warnings um and be fearful uh about pursuing the work that we're really interested in doing with our communities you know i think and this is such a really important and valuable point because it happens so often right and i think that you know uh black students and black graduate students you know there's this a tremendous amount like you're saying you talk about the mental gymnastics and like these sort of subtle right um hints or warnings right and so um i think you know all of that you know think about how much labor that creates right how much emotional labor and visible labor on top of already being in grad school where it's stressful where you're one of you're just one sometimes right like i and i think that that is another thing that is that's kind of shocking is sometimes you go into a space in academia in higher ed and you are the only one whether that's as a black undergrad a black grad student a black faculty member um and this is um you know this is evidence right of the anti-black racism that continues in the spaces just the the low n number of of us right and so it's this very um it becomes very taxing and very like you know stressful um and i think you know i've had white colleagues who are professors say to me like gosh i can't believe that you know working with this really talented black student and you know she you know um it's clear that she wants to work on this area right of you know that involves black identity in some way or another um and but you know but then her proposal came in and it just said nothing about this and you know i i'm not really sure what to do because it seemed clear from our conversations and other work that was turned in that that she was going in this particular direction and now all of a sudden it's just going to be about you know teachers in general or it's just going to be about you know this this other group of people um and i'm confused and i have to have the conversation like you're just saying right now where i have to tell that person well that's because that person doesn't feel authorized to continue for their real project for their serious dissertation research in that field right it's safer to maybe explore examine some of these things in course papers or in other projects but they feel like they cannot advance that research agenda and unless they have permission and i hate to say it that way but that because of the power hierarchies that exist in academia like i'm just going to call it what it is they want permission from their advisor or whomever to say like no you you can do this and you should do this because this is what you're interested in this is what you're passionate about and your contribution is valuable and so then you get into the space of like the white um professor advisor who's like uncomfortable with having to even have that conversation and not knowing how to have it which is why they have come to me um to say like hey this happened one student what i do and then when i tell them the answer they're like oh then it puts them in a position to have to sort of like think about this hierarchy to think about the history of what we're doing and and how the you know how the academy came to exist right who's been excluded et cetera et cetera and then they're in sort of the uncomfortable position of having to authorize or you know give grant permission and i'm like look don't i mean yes that's what it is but also think of it as um that you're supporting that person right instead of like oh i have who am i to give permission well you're in the position of being the person's advisor so you have to give permission and but like let's not dwell on that let's think about the fact that by doing this you're taking the stress off the person you're helping them get closer to their true interest and you're offering your support as they continue in this way what you're really doing is committing that hey i'm going to support you while you do this work it's not you know just that oh i think you should do it but i'm actually going to support you and help you find the journals and help you you know combat you know the any racism or imposter syndrome or other things that come your way in relation to this research trajectory and i think that that you know is is um is really valuable it's really important absolutely i want to pause quickly just to remind folks to please uh use the q a box as we're talking we're just kind of having trying to have more of an organic discussion here and so things that you're interested in or you know we might not get to but go ahead and put it in the q a and we're happy to answer that we're going to save some time at the end um so yeah just a reminder on that logistic um but yeah so going back to that sort of idea of you know supporting uh students and recognizing this additional labor right and you know realizing that it's already stressful to be a grad student but then when you add you know racism to it um there's there's even more um there's even more pressure there's even more challenges and i don't think and i mean the microaggressions are just endless and so that's that's one of the things that i you know you just never get used to it at least i never get used to it and so i um you know even coming here it's been it's been interesting i've gone to events where i on campus where i'm the only black person there yeah yeah yeah i i i don't get used to them i mean because and you know that's the you know that's sort of the um [Music] the sometimes latent nature um of the that violence you know because it adds up um and it comes out of nowhere you know and it's not always intentional you know there there are folks that you know um i guess and it's often how a microaggression you know is sometimes defined is that it's it's sometimes unintentional but when when you've experienced just a lot of them it it adds up and it could you know also impact us in the ways that we go inward you know and maybe want to check out particularly if we are the only one in our program uh and i think it speaks to what you mentioned earlier is having the support um and and locating those communities of support um not only as a minoritized um student you know racially minoritized um individual um but it's also useful for you know those who are in our communities who have not had the same sort of um you know racially minoritized experiences to you know put some tools in their toolbox you know so that they know if if you know you are advising a student who wants to you know do a particular type of research um and who is also having a very particular type of experience that you know who in the community the university community you can contact or put that student in contact with so that it is a supportive um part of their experience um yeah it's more than just paying the lip service to say that one is an ally uh for a racially minoritized person you know i think bettina love um articulates it beautifully when she calls you know um calls these humans co-conspirators um i think of brie newsome and her scaling the pole to bring down that flag and and i can't ever think of the other person that was a co-conspirator with her it was a white white man man yeah and he put his hand up right he put his hand on the flagpole the metal flagpole you know sort of in in protection of her body as this officer was standing there with a taser and so this this you know um this co-conspirator realized that he probably would not get tased as a white male you know and actually physically putting his hand on the pole to protect you know her very vulnerable self um is is doing the work you know it's not necessarily um maybe it doesn't manifest in the same way but are you willing to put action you know into into the work that that one says that they want to do um to be in support of like students or black faculty or you know colleagues i completely agree and i think one of the things too that i've become frustrated with over time because i get asked to do a lot of anti-blackness anti-racist work and one of the things that frustrates me you know and i've had to say to some units well you probably you wouldn't have to call me to come here if you had more black people like in your unit or if you were building better relationships um even outside your unit with other units in the college or with people in the community um then you could have different conversations then you could you know not you would have options right because other people are first of all there are other people that exist here so you need to do a better job of knowing who's here number one and number two like the community again is important and you should be looking there as well but also thirdly like you need to cultivate black faculty and staff through through a pipeline through an initiative through you know recruitment and retention measures like that needs to happen actively and i know that you know certain colleges in the past have really tried to do a hard push for more black faculty or for more faculty of color in in being very clear about like okay you know any units who get approved to hire we want you to know we're prioritizing diversity and we've actually had you know white colleagues on this campus respond to that call for diversity or that prioritization of diversity by saying so you're telling us we can't hire the best person instead like and and so instead of looking at it as an opportunity right they're looking at it as prohibitive because the best person in their mind is white is not diverse and now since you said diversity we can't hire who we want right or we can't hire the best person when really what it is is you can't hire who you'd be most likely to hire per se right like and so i just i find that you know really troubling especially when it comes from you know unit leaders or department chairs who are in all white departments which there are some here at the university of arizona in 2021 um not some but many uh and so you know where you're looking around your department and then that's your response when you're told that this should be a priority or consideration and so i just think like you know when people say oh it's not racist it's like but it is right it's just maybe not this somebody's not smashing your window in right absolutely but but it's still here and it's just as harmful absolutely well this you know it speaks directly to um uh what whose knowledge and what types of knowledge are valued you know so when we're talking about um you know what we consider as you know rigorous types or rigorous forms of research and i'm a qualitative and arts based researcher and so we have lots of conversations in my classrooms you know about um about the precarity of these types of methods in relation to what is more often privileged which is quant you know in statistics and it's not to do away with that but it's it's the fact that these other forms um can be in conversation with quant you know you you've got the numbers but they're stories with the numbers um and also you know um [Music] when i think about um ways of um ways of thinking about what constitutes data you know there are communities for which knowledge resides in orality in storytelling you know and so when we're thinking about um hiring people or when we're thinking about inviting you know folks to contribute to a larger conversation how are we thinking about um what constitutes knowledge you know and and and that being that being part of the ecosystem of racism you know when we're not considering forms of knowledge um beyond the status quo as valued and valuable um then we're really getting to you know sort of these more subtle forms um that folks would not consider as part of a racist practice absolutely i mean i think you know i've i've definitely been in situations where people have made comments about experiential knowledges um about more um you know cultures that have that use you know different language practices or written language practices right um folks who you know are very um they don't want to use a land acknowledgement they don't see it as you know important or necessary um and so i think you know we these are all forms that that like anti-that racism and anti-blackness take and i think you know one of the more and i think there's you know there are some really blatant ways but then there again there are these these other ways in which you know i think some of it is hard because i don't i would say that in some cases folks don't even know that they're perpetuating you know these these issues they're like thinking about you know for example i i feel that a lot of times black faculty like some of the needs that we have right we're seen as being we have to self-advocate a lot so that's the other thing i just will put that out there we have to self-advocate a lot um and a lot more than other people do like i know that most of the black faculty who i know you know have had either issues with retention or issues with getting things that they were told that they could get or have or even promise in writing like having to go back and find it right and produce receipts to hold people accountable for things that were standard that they were supposed to be getting right um i know black folks struggle more with you know spousal higher just different issues that i think you know a lot of our white colleagues don't deal with and don't know about either right and so i i just you know when we're when people want to say that they're an ally it's like you know i need to know what you're doing you know beyond you have the black lives matter sticker on your water bottle uh i need to know what you're doing to sort of speak up on behalf of racist things that are happening to your students or two faculty colleagues right or within you know your unit and i think you know one of the things that was very appalling you know is is to also know like we know the numbers and the numbers let us know that black women you know take longer to get promoted and tenured and that not many of us even attain the rank of full professor and in part it's due to i think racial battle fatigue the microaggressions the additional service and labor that goes into educating our white peers and to dealing with white students and to helping support the black and other marginalized students right it's like so many layers and then to only for us to do all that work and then come to have our portfolio or our dossier come before a committee that then attacks us for working on black people and attacks us for not you know publishing as much um which is not always the case but sometimes um or in or in certain spaces right like doing these really racist gatekeeping practices that have to be disrupted and so you know the the only way those things can be disrupted is by more of us like becoming associate professors with tenure becoming full professors and being in those spaces but also white colleagues who call themselves allies have a responsibility to step in and say no you know i'm sorry but when you know so-and-so went up for tenure they had the exact same profile and i've sat you know in different on different committees for third year review and other things where you know the white candidate is a superstar and they're amazing and you know the person of color candidate with similar background um and doing other and doing interesting and valuable work it's just not even that person is seen as doing what they're supposed to do and i'm like but wait a minute this person also did this this and this and if we're gonna nominate this person for a president's early career award why are we not nominating this person as well right you know and it's just you know you're the only one in the space though and then and then you have to and even for me i find that i have to have a white person cosign once i raise it if i'm the only one i have to look around and hope that there's going to be an ally who's going to stand up and be like oh i agree with stephanie or like actually stephanie that's a good point i'm glad you you mentioned that because yeah we could right like promote both of these these scholars or support them both in this way and so i just think you know the anti-blackness it in some ways it's really visible in our in our numbers and you know in how we show up but then in other ways there are these very systemic and ingrained kind of beliefs and practices that people don't don't stop to question right absolutely and then there's the the precarity of you know um so if you're in a tenure track position and you're still junior faculty um if you are the only one um in your department and your program uh the question becomes do i speak up you know and if i speak up do i make enemies by speaking up it's all of these these things that mental gymnastics again absolutely absolutely but you have to you know consider um how you how you navigate the space you know in hopes that you've come into an environment where like you said there is at least one um you know person that can co-sign you know what it is that that you're having um ideas about or challenges with um yeah there's so much stephanie right there's so much i mean the more i think about it i'm just like we're just basically scratching the surface i know we're almost at the end of our time before we transition to q a but there really is so much and i i tell people all the time you know that um you know i i go to therapy and and then the time is spent right with like it's 50 50 between like my childhood and my job and being an academic right like these are the things that i'm constantly working through uh that are sort of you know just lifelong like hmm you know because it's it is it is ongoing it's not there's not really an end point you know and there have been times maybe where i've had a sustained period where i haven't encountered any microaggression or any racism and then you know you get a little bit comfortable uh and then boom and then it happens again you know and you know we haven't even begun to talk about you know the way that black folks are you know treated in teaching evaluations the way that plays a role in promotion and tenure practices you know we have those colleagues who you know are overtly um you know unsupportive or or just racist right and you know who won't have discussions um unwilling to have even you know talk about certain aspects of of race and how it's showing up in the department or the program or the curriculum i mean there are many many things that we will not get to cover today but i i'm really appreciative of this sort of this opportunity just to connect with you on this gloria and for us to talk about it i always like being invited um but yeah i'm happy to open it to you know conversation or uh questions yeah same same and if i might i'll offer a um a resource that you know both sadly and gladly i came to as a graduate student and then returned to this resource um after i graduated and would you know sort of use it to inspire work and i'm sure stephanie and probably others in the room have seen this book um and again sadly a book had to be created around you know black black academics and their survival in the academy um and so i've dropped it in the chat oh yes so interesting that you pull this book gloria because this book was actually given to us at penn state and through the um they have you know they had support for black and underrepresented you know graduate students and so we have certain professional development and support that was available to us and one of the things that they gave us was this book right away um and so it was it's definitely one that's super helpful there are many other resources out there i would say that probably one of the most effective um acts of allyship that i had a white colleague do for me when i was at appalachian state university which is one of the top 10 whitest uh schools in the country it's in the mountains of north carolina and that's where i was before i came here but what i tell people all the time is that you just don't know where the good allyship is going to show up actually and in that environment i had amazing white colleagues and so even though i was the only one they were super vigilant about their commitment to anti-racism and so they were not i mean even before i could ask for support they were there providing support they're like oh we heard this and so now we've organized and we're showing up and we're writing a letter you know to our department chair or we're being you know pro proactively advocating you know in this way or that way and they just were there with it and one of the really effective things that um one of my colleagues did was he pro he did he led a group um he led a series of seminars he's a white man on um that were from presumed incompetent another really great book that looks at you know anti-blackness in the academy racism that you know scholars of color face and so he led this this workshop for white administrators specifically and for white full professors um so that you know that they would could become aware of their behaviors and um and their biases and so that he can give really direct approaches and examples not only what they were doing um but he had like sat in different you know faculty meetings different spaces like took notes of things that people said and did and then connected it directly so that they couldn't escape right like well you know we're talking about this because it happened in the book but jim i remember you said this on this date at the meeting and like just really called folks out but of course you know he was a white man and he had tenure but it's an example of how people can use their privilege you know to actually be an ally and you know to actually advocate and i think to you know your point about junior faculty if you're the only one and you're not tenured yet like how much can you speak up and you know what kind of risks are you able to take and i i think of one of my gender women's studies and african american studies professors at penn state um who went on to be at uc santa cruz and sadly you know is not is no longer with us but um you know in her time in the academy dr aaronette white amazing black scholar feminist just incredible professor um you know she told us there's never going to be a good time to speak up right you're you're a grad student and you can't speak up because your committee will won't approve your your work you're an assistant professor and you can't speak up because you don't have tenure you're an associate professor now you can't speak up because you'll never get full um it's just like so there's never a good time and so we have to understand that like regardless of the the ten year scenario that there's always going to be some obstacle or barrier or challenge that tries to silence us and we have to transcend that absolutely and you know i think we've been we've been saying it in many ways um all along um that one there's work involved from everybody whether it's finding your communities of support you know whoever you are you know so if you're a student finding other students finding you know faculty that you can trust um uh if you are you know not uh of a minoritized group um doing the work of unpacking um you know biases you know i think universities are now um for better or worse being called you know to the carpet about um you know inequities racialized inequities um and and fortunately unfortunately it caught the pandemic you know plus also the series of murders you know of black people that have always happened but you know that came to this critical you know moment last summer um that has kind of shaken things up a lot you know and and having us really reckon with um reckon with the unhealed scars uh of this entire you know globe really i mean you know um anti-blackness is a global phenomenon right it is i mean there are these color hierarchies yes already spaces right like so it's not just i mean again it's about a proximity to whiteness and these other kind of you know political dimensions and identity pieces but um you know you're right that these most recent incidents in the racial justice movement and this the way that social media has really played a role in visibilizing and you know making more you know more salient these issues that have been going on i think that you know you're right that's been a huge part of the response i think um because when it wasn't as you know visible or readily accessible um in a visual you know domain i think people were able to more easily ignore it or deny it right and we now see that that's that's no longer possible so we do have a question about um our thoughts on diverse equity inclusion committee approaches that are a favorite they're a fave in the academy um they are very uh exciting uh people are excited to use these mechanisms but i find you know i don't know i think it's a mixed bag right on the one hand it's better than doing nothing but at the same time i mean how many of these you know reports end up you know in somebody's desk drawer or you know not being you know they come with recommendations and you get thanked for your service but the recommendations are never implemented and then two years later it's another diversity equity committee doing the same work you know replicating essentially the work that the last committee formation did that never got implemented and it can become this like cycle of inaction and so i would just warn that you know anybody who see who decides to serve in this capacity or on these committees you know needs to really um first of all understand that it's a big time commitment so if you kind of show up in the room and you don't feel like the folks that you're working with are actually going to be committed to getting something done to passing an agenda or calling for accountability i would resign and if you know in a best case scenario you get the right people who all have you know a particular kind of energy and a particular level of um you know power and commitment and then the committee can actually sometimes move the needle on certain things but i think you know it's complicated because there's so many moving parts and there are a lot of there's a lot of turnover and shifting um and so it's hard because of you know the different the different factors but also you know diversity equity inclusion committee is is a low-hanging fruit but everyone should have that minimally some version of that in their unit you know just to like ensure that conversations are are happening i suppose yeah i think it says you know it says it says something that that we have to have this in the first place right so that speaks to you know um the ever-present concerns um of each of these areas you know and and also um brings to question how people are defining these things like how how you know we know that there's no silver bullet approach because racism is endemic it is not trendy it is time less you know i've heard lots of you know folks that say oh this is so timely like well no no this is timeless you know we we could have had this same conversation 60 years ago 80 years ago 10 years ago you know and so i have to ask what is it that we think we're doing when we bring these sorts of committees together um and if we're not attempting to have the structural conversation about how these structures were designed very specifically and what are the methods to undoing and interrupting these very you know endemic and structural um frameworks um how how will things change you know it requires quite a bit of discomfort you know when we shake up a system um much like it really does an insistence right i think there's also a point at which people like well you know i said what i could or i said my piece at the meeting or i did whatever and then i just felt like you know once so and so brought up like it just wasn't gonna you know it wasn't gonna go any further and it's like but you need to persist right um and you need to insist right and there's not a there's not a point at which you know um you withdraw when you're committed in a certain way and i think that that's the thing it's like well no matter you know what this other person said about this candidate or whatever it's if you're trying to do anti-racist work you know it's your job to continually disrupt you know this this other narrative or discourse that's happening in his space i mean i really hate the conversation about well fit this person's just not a good fit like fit is the conversation ender in these academic spaces right it's like well this candidate does you know has this to offer and this candidate has this to offer and you go back and forth back and forth and what ends up happening is you say well these are both excellent candidates one's black one's white they're both great we actually need them both but we can only have one and then people say well i just think anne is a better fit than shantae right like and that and then that's it then everybody's just like you know and so i i feel like you know it's my job since i have tenure um and and other folks right who are committed um who have some kind of privilege whether that's race or rank or whatever it's our job to say but why why is this this white woman a better fit right if we have determined that they have equal qualifications and credentials they're both phenomenal then why is this person a better fit what makes them a better fit you know and we have to push for that conversation and like you said it requires discomfort it requires vigilance and you know i think there are there are a lot of you know white folks who are not willing to to get to that level right and to those folks i say well every day we have to be at that hyper-vigilant level as black scholars as black women in the academy of like dealing with and deflecting and processing microaggressions racist colleagues you know um all of all of the things so if we have to go through that and you want to call yourself an ally then you need to be okay with pushing through with some of these you know questions or tactics strategies right in these other settings and spaces right and i mean i know we're short on time there was a last question about how academic units can better support black graduate students who are experiencing micro and macro aggressions uh what are you what are your thoughts on that gloria i'll let you have the final one well yeah oh um uh so wow you know when we talk about structures um again i have to reiterate that there is no silver bullet you know and so one has to ask where one wants to enter into the interruption you know of patterns you know so if patterns of um uh in the inability to retain students of color you know or black students is you know sort of the issue at hand one has to um look at you know the community and the ecosystem um if you are the only one what is going to encourage you to to stay and if you have no sense of who else what other black students you know are in the community again it goes back to you know who who who are the resources um on camp on campus the human resources that students can be connected with um and what messages are students receiving you know i think this ties really well into everything that we've been talking about you know is the is the student's research considered valuable you know is their method considered valuable um how can how can those who want to be allies or co-conspirators re-imagine um what these students already bring with them and it might require reimagining the culture of a field or a discipline um i have friends who you know i was in grad school with who were parts of different programs and it required selecting a committee member who may happen to be in a position of power whether it be through tenure or whether it be through their skin privilege that they could actually support that student in their in their defense of their research proposal you know to sort of check the other committee members that may not have supported them otherwise so there's so many different i think points of entry that that we can interrupt sort of these anti you know um these racist practices you know subconsciously these biases that we have you know just to start undoing the [Music] and harm would say too like even beyond that it's just like you know check in in the same way that you check in with other students you know like you know you seem stressed are you good um i haven't heard from you in a while or you didn't you know you didn't show up at this event and i you know in the past you have been at these types of events i noticed you weren't here is everything all right you know like just checking in and you know you have to assume that something's wrong but it's okay to check in and that that affirms that you notice right that that student is not there or that you're wondering if they are struggling in some way in the program so i encourage people like some of it's not as hard right there are really difficult structural things but then there's also just sort of like the human engagement of like you know an ethics of care practice and ethics of gender you know especially for your students of color and minority students and also again like i was saying in the case of the two junior professors when you're thinking about students that would be great for this award or this scholarship or this research opportunity make sure that you check that the students in that conversation are not all students who look the same or who espouse one particular identity make sure that we're talking about all these other students and i know that some people i was a single mom when i was in grad school well you know it wasn't it wasn't race stuff it was just like everyone knows you're so busy because you're a single parent i'm like that's for me to figure out right you don't get to decide for me that my single-parent status means i can't do this research or i can't be part of this opportunity i might have a babysitter i might have you know family who's willing to watch these kids you don't know you know and and i've tried to take it upon myself to be that professor who especially when there's a student parent i'm like we should consider so and so when people raise those concerns i tell them my own story of like wow i got overlooked because of assumptions and that and if we know for a fact that that student doesn't have support as a single parent well what could we do to provide that support so that that student can have that opportunity you know i mean i think it really does require a lot of you know a lot of commitment yeah yeah i think that's a beautiful way to you know sort of um put a pause or put a pin i mean because this conversation can go can go on forever um but you know like you said stephanie i'm just glad to have the space uh to share with you know you to share with everyone um on today to just sort of you know crack open um a part only just you know just a teeny tiny we've only scratched the surface here yeah yeah and i hope there will be more conversations and i hope folks will look for you know additional resources to continue to educate themselves and to grow absolutely thank you so much for inviting us thank you both so much for this really interesting conversation um bringing some really important points to the fore um and thank you everybody for your engagement thank you for your comments in the chat really appreciated thank you also to campus weeks for sponsoring this event department of german studies we really appreciate the time and and support financially that went into this also thank you so much gloria wilson and stephanie troutman-robbins both professors at the university of arizona we really appreciated hearing your perspective and taking the time to join us today thank you thank you everybody thank you all you