Comments | fa_ikaika: Great Essay on PoCs in academia

fa_ikaika

Great Essay on PoCs in academia

Jan 15, 2010 21:33

hat tip to unusualmusic over at snr.

Scott Bear Don't Walk was accepted to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. This is his account of what he found there ( Read more... )

academia, by any means necessary, thinking

Comments 9

Great Essay on PoCs in academia chiraljhae January 15 2010, 19:22:32 UTC

This is a great perspective. Oh how I wish that more people shared your philosophy.

Re: Great Essay on PoCs in academia fa_ikaika January 15 2010, 19:32:44 UTC

There are more of us around than you'd think oss. If you feel you can, try getting in touch with Paula Hammond at MIT. She's a chemical engineer but I think she'd probably be able to put you in touch with other PoCs in your field who would be able to give you a sense of community.

For me, the Association of Black Anthropologists has been a similar kind of "home space". I'm not there a lot, but I'm REALLY glad they're around, and I am proud to call some of the folks I met through ABA friends, colleagues, inspirations and mentors.

(The comment has been removed)

fa_ikaika January 16 2010, 01:51:48 UTC

thank you T. I'll respond to your own post on the matter in more detail a little later on.

parlance January 16 2010, 01:16:16 UTC

Thanks for posting your thoughts. Saddens me that time and time again the story of Scott Bear Don't Walk is the norm for PoCs in academia.

fa_ikaika January 16 2010, 03:13:05 UTC

Yes, although as I pointed out, it's only sad if you take the attitude that he "should" have gotten through. His own post (and my own thinking after observing a bunch of fine people both PoC and not, who ended up walking away from the program) is that academia at the moment is not actually a positive place for the kind of things that he wanted to do. In that scenario, staying there would simply have driven him crazy or lead to him making so many compromises, he wouldn't have recognized himself when he had gotten out.

I do think he deserved better though. And it's our loss that we don't have him any more.

parlance January 16 2010, 03:22:08 UTC

Well, yes, I think we're making similar points - that it's unfortunate that he wouldn't have had that freedom and support to do what he wanted to do. Call me granola crunchy but I think there should be that sort of room in an academic environment.

fa_ikaika January 16 2010, 03:40:27 UTC

i couldn't agree more. And I wouldn't say that was granola crunchy as much as deeply and properly human.

verbalessence January 16 2010, 02:54:31 UTC

I'll have to set aside more time to read the entire original essay, but the gist of it is certainly familiar.

The grad school journey (or in the case of Scott Bear - the journey within a very elite program) is an alienating one by default - even more so if you belong to an underrepresented group. The lack of minority/women/etc. faculty at institutions of higher ed, make the work that fledgling academics do even more significant. Undergraduates need to see those possibilities; graduate students need support.

One of the things I'm looking forward to is advancing some of the ideas you mentioned and others in a position like department chair or dean of students.

It's a long, frustrating, discouraging and conflicted journey, but for me it's a matter of working to make hardships that I experience now a bit easier to overcome for those who follow and negotiating hardships that potentially can't be.

fa_ikaika January 16 2010, 03:07:06 UTC

Agreed 100 ( ... )