Notes on: Johnson, A and Joseph – Salisbury, R
(2018) 'Are You Supposed to Be In Here? ' Racial
Micro-aggressions and Knowledge Production in
Higher Education. In J.Arday, and H Mirza
(Eds.) Dismantling Race In Higher Education.
Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy,
pp 143--160. Palgrave Macmillan imprint.
Gewerbestrasse: Springer International Publishing
AG.
Dave Harris
Remi arrived at work early entered the staffroom,
photocopied a paper and a member of the cleaning
staff entered the room and asked him 'are you
supposed to be in here? in an accusatory tone'. He
was 'slightly stunned' (143) [so is this
micro-aggression?]
HE is often imagined as a utopian space 'beyond
racial inequality but it is in fact 'deeply
implicated' in maintaining conditions that give
rise to racial micro-aggressions. They draw on
ethnographic accounts and experiences of other
racialised academics to illustrate how White
supremacy is perpetuated. They provide a counter
narrative to the myth that HE is beyond racial
inequality. The quote illustrates the main dilemma
whether they are supposed to be there or not.
They draw upon 'an episteme of Blackness'
[attributed to Yancy 2008] which shapes their
experiences, as 'a way of knowing that is
developed experientially, collectively and into
generationally' (144). They can draw from CRT,
Black feminism and postcolonial theory. The
episteme has been developed through conversations
with each other 'and amongst other doctoral
students'. The episteme has been essential
to survival. These 'lived experiences of Blackness
engender a unique and valuable source of knowledge
(Solorzano and Yosso 2002)' to help them see how
race operates and to observe '"perceptional
differences" between Black and White academics
views on race in HE'. This will help disrupt the
'epistemologies of ignorance' the 'structured
blindness' that obscure normalised racist
structures, and the centrality of Whiteness in a
branch of knowledge production. They recognise
that an episteme of Blackness may 'seem anathema
to traditional social science' (145), but find it
particularly useful to understand racial
micro-aggressions, especially as a theoretical
concept, how it fixes scholars of colour as
spectacles, and how it reproduces the Academy as
the legitimate space to produce knowledge.
Chester Pierce first defined racial
micro-aggressions as a form of systemic everyday
racism, 'often subtle and seemingly innocuous'
connected with White supremacist racial
structures, and reinforcing their ideological
foundation. This is often obfuscated, which makes
micro-aggressions seem relatively innocuous
although in practice this makes discriminatory
acts even more repressive, micro only in name
[citing Pierce]. [Sue is also quoted here].
Rollock 2012 shows how racism is no longer overt,
and the concept of racial micro-aggressions was
increasingly used to bring attention to the
everyday form of racism on university campuses. It
is also found itself in CRT informed education
research [a useful list on 146].
They can be difficult to identify and challenge.
Pierce has argued that a theoretical grasp of
racism is required, and they think especially
epistemes of Blackness as a legitimate site of
knowledge. This is help them to see the opening
episode as 'always situated in the wider context
of systemic and institutional White supremacy'
(147). We can see how Remi was rendered out of
place, how the interaction became 'racially
significant' and how the micro re-trenched the
conditions and reminded him of his 'marginal
position'. Micro-aggressions are 'always in
iteration with institutional and macro White
supremacy'. A series of vignettes follow to
describe some of their experiences and help them
to weave an analysis that situates racial
micro-aggressions in a broader context.
Remi describes another episode when he arrived
earlier at a seminar room and one of the students
[NB] shouted 'with piercing incredulity' 'do you
teach here?' [Emphasis on you]. This showed
how his body was rendered out of place, how his
absence from spaces like this is 'intertwined with
how White supremacist racial structures sustain
themselves in the micro level' (147), how some are
marked as belonging and others as trespassers, how
his body was marked as something like a trespasser
or criminal rather than an academic. This and the
earlier one show how he faced 'the cumulative
burden'. He was reminded of the first episode. His
whole legitimacy as a knowledge holder was called
into question. The specific question 'might be
interpreted as a metonym for the more intrusive
and challenging meta-communication '"can you teach
here?"' (148). Black bodies are hyper- visible
[Yancy does a lot of work], to specific to be
objective universal producers of knowledge.
Academics often speak of racism differently as
located out there on other people's everyday
bodies, never on themselves, never located in
academia. There is another episode related by
somebody else [Puwar] concerning an encounter by
Lévi-Strauss [!] Who was '"thrown by the sight of
a feathered Indian with a Parker pen"' within the
New York Public library (149). Puwar says
that Lévi-Strauss sees this is odd, not
authentically Indian, and goes on to say that
someone else is discomfited because "'the natives
are no longer staying in their frames"' [so by now
we are getting to 3rd or fourth hand accounts].
Apparently, Lévi-Strauss's Whiteness is
neutralised but the Indian becomes highlighted and
fetishised. As a holder of knowledge, the 'Indian'
is 'unconsciously yet undoubtedly stained onto the
research created through Lévi-Strauss and
recreated/perpetrated through scholars using and
reusing his work within the walls of academia. It
is these same academics and texts which are
centred in the Academy without a critical
understanding of how Whiteness is maintained as
neutral' [so now Johnson and Joseph Salisbury are
commenting on this fourth hand account! Implying
that Lévi-Strauss is racist, or without a sense of
ironic humour is particularly tin eared]
This shows that skin colour is highlighted and
Whiteness is neutralised, and that they know
themselves as apart from institutions despite
being researchers and doctoral students, that
their presence in academic institutions is
deviant, that they see themselves as outsiders at
every level from the curriculum to the
professoriate to the architecture. 'These are the
conditions that breed racial micro-aggressions and
threatened to determine our positionalities' (149)
in those spaces of knowledge production 'our
Blackness is part of the spectacle: we are the
oddity of 'the feathered Indian with a Parker
pen'.
Azeezat tells how she feels on coming back to
university to give back to the Black Muslim women
who had taught her. She felt she was being asked
to describe and objectify her life experiences
'for the purposes of overwhelmingly White
audiences' and questioned her role' (150).
So many racialised people are absent. She is
concerned apparently. Other academics of colour
found the same problem, becoming hyper- visible
speaking to primarily White audiences, having to
'"perform the native"'. [The normal setting is]
that knowledge holders remain neutralised bodies,
and knowledge is distinct from lived experience,
[but this is racialised]. Black people are
'located between the subjective Self and the
objectified Other' [citing DuBois], so that
racialised academics know themselves both through
a relation to a White self, whose very subject is
defined in contrast to them, so they can never be
'situated as a Self', but only by relation to a
Black other, a racialised spectacle rather than a
knowledge producer, an object of knowing, with
difficulties in claiming their own voice [bit
speculative but I think I understand]
This has been discussed by Black feminists [it
makes more sense now], and Black feminists have
been forced to find their own spaces, alternative
institutions and among women who are not
traditionally regarded as intellectuals, different
ways of knowing [citing Collins, who also struck
parallels with White working class radicals, of
course]. Intersectionality also offers a
challenge, [but only in 'centring women of
colour'] (152). However, 'this does come without
its own problems [sic]… [Various people] pointed
to how the political impetus behind
intersectionality is emptied out from the term in
order for it to be used in mainstream feminist
research… The explicitly Black feminist standpoint
which created intersectionality is kept offstage
whilst the term is redeployed for "the positivist
dictates of traditional disciplines"'. And 'this
is what happens when a few racialised persons are
let into the walls of academia without the
knowledge produced by these institutions being
challenged'. This is 'superficial inclusion'
described by buzzwords like diversity.
Another comment by Azeezat. She struggled as a
first year PhD and was encouraged by two White
academics to claim representation and a voice, but
this caught her offguard and she could not see how
to do this because the university was 'in no way
built with our bodies in mind' [so how did this
get aggressive?] (152 – 3].
This question has 'led us to this search for the
episteme of Blackness'. Yancy says 'these
epistemes create the space to speak back to
deficit thinking' (153) and helps challenge
academia and understand its role, provide a
language to understand how Blackness has become a
spectacle and Whiteness normalised. Once they've
grasped this they can begin dialogues to challenge
the knowledge produced by the Academy.
Conversations with each other and with other
people of colour have helped them move beyond
'accusations of "being too sensitive" and resist
individual deficit explanations' (153). They have
stopped worrying about being preoccupied with race
and see themselves [much more heroically] in the
forefront of a struggle. They were appreciated
when they shared their experiences with a panel
and were met with other stories of similar
experiences. Their collective challenges helps
break the distinctions between racism out there
and in here [they were all part of the same
struggle?] Recovering their own racialised
experiences, no longer seeing them as just
data. They did not experience themselves as
failures compared to the standards set by
knowledge holders in the ivory tower.
They are wary of research claiming to have
dismantled the inequalities in academic
institutions, for example sceptical about
reflexive feminist researchers who claim to have
unmasked power relationships between interviewers
and interviewees. This implies they are 'all-
seeing researchers'[bit odd] (154).
Micro-aggressions are not always explicit or
discoverable and guarded by powerful forces. They
just want to find a place within these
institutions, to be realistic about the work
involved, to develop their episteme of Blackness
as a priority, to make their own spaces.
They have realised that they may have to leave the
Academy, they might not be able to transform it
from within, there may be possibilities to produce
knowledge outside. The Academy can create 'fertile
conditions for micro aggressive acts' and so it is
'perfectly reasonable for people of colour to opt
to leave' (155) rather than risk 'stress anxiety
and mental health'. They are grappling with this
issue themselves. Like hooks, they now know that
they must '"use lectures, radio, television and
conversation in diverse settings"' [Try YouTube
and the Web!]
They would now retort that they recognise that
they are not supposed to be in places that render
them out of place, but they wish to cultivate an
episteme of Blackness to understand and confront
the Academy. They don't just want to belong they
want to find a way to thrive, and destabilise the
Academy's position as the only legitimate
producers of knowledge
Yancy, G (2008) Black bodies, White gazes: the
continuing significance of race. Lanham: Rowman
and Littlefield
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