I’ve recently been involved in a lot of talks about rules. This has been mostly with other academics; each one opining what the rules are, what the rules have been, what the rule ought to be etc. I’ve been convinced that the rules were there for a reason and those who made them surely knew what they were doing. So, I naively followed them never asking if they were the right ones for me.
School Rule: earn good grades
Community Rule: always be polite and mindful
Professional Rule: dress respectably
(Digression: I have used the word “rule(s)” a total of 10 times now).
I’ve reached a stage in my life and career that demands I stop and question if everyone is afforded the same set of rules. Of course, this question has been answered by others. I’m thinking here about the books Written/Unwritten edited by Patricia A. Mathews, Presumed Incompetent edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, the blog “Conditionally Accepted” that was started in 2013 and three years later became a professional advice column for Inside Higher Ed. And, in case you missed it, Yen wrote the prequel blog about rules. They are all collections of BIPOC scholars who have had to learn the rules the hard way by being denied access to a space where others might have a more comfortable path. Even having all their answers, the situations (we might encounter) are no less opaque. So, I can’t help but wonder then if making my own rules could cast a light as dazzling as freedom and as glaring as bias. To think of making up my own rules in academia would be fantasy; as a Black woman it is tantamount to delusion. The academe is not there!
So, obviously, it isn’t which rule to follow since there are rules that I will never be aware of. Rather, it could be whose rules would inconvenience me less. When there is no certainty and the standard keeps shifting, the only rule that matters is the rule of self.
At this point, I want to share an anecdote bit from one of the conversations I mentioned at the top. I asked a friend, white male tenured professor at a prestigious university in a highly regarded humanities department, their thoughts about being asked to do a job talk at my home institution. Admittedly, I asked him because I wanted to get his “insider” point of view; I wanted to know if this was on the up and up. I didn’t expect his loud recrimination, calling the situation racist. In his experience, “A postdoc never gets the tenure track job.” According to him, it has never been the case, could not be the case, and should not be the case. It did not matter that he did not know how the process was being managed at my home institution, he insisted that my being given this opportunity was “unethical and against the MLA rules.” How he perceived, and how others might perceive it, is that I’m being handed an opportunity that others are not simply because I am a Black woman. He cautioned that if I accepted it would hurt my reputation as a scholar. My first reaction was to believe him. May be that’s where I went wrong, thinking that the institution would only and always see me as a Black woman who got a handout and not that the institution already saw me as incompetent.
So let me end by asking this question: which of these scenarios seem more “unethical” (for lack of another word)
Scenario 1 (c 1980s): A white male chair at an in a language department at an Ivy league asks his white male graduate student to come into his office and discuss the next step in his young disciple’s career. He pulls out his little black book and asks the graduate student where he’d like to work. He then calls the chair of said department and ask him if they might have an office for his brilliant protégé. This graduate student is then invited for the campus interview along with 2 or 3 other candidates who did not suspect that the offer letter had already been drafted.
Scenario 2 (c NOW): A Black female graduate student is selected for a postdoc after a rigorous national search. She hesitates but ultimately accepts the position for fear of not getting the degree she worked towards for 6+ years. She is grateful for the opportunity but is also now unsurprisingly distrustful of the academe. Upon arrival she is told that she is being “guided” onto the tenure track. Less than a semester in the position she is gently pushed into this process. All is seemingly transparent, and not transparent. There doesn’t appear to be any doubt that she will be on tenure track next year; everyone hopes she stays.
Whose “ethical” rule is it anyway?
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