Anthropology Times

INTERROGATING RACISM: Toward an Antiracist Anthropology
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 34: 667-693 (Volume publication date October 2005)
Leith Mullings
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I thought it would be nice to read a journal article again. Seeing as I have been thinking about what it would mean to me to be a female, black anthropologist, I looked for an article by a female, black anthropologist. Reading the article, I was reminded of a conversation with a black, male student encouraging me toward an academic career because of the importance of black students having black role models in academia. I was reminded because I felt an immediate sense of shared experience reading this article that alleviated in small part my hesitancy in thinking about continuing study in anthropology. Mullings writes that “many cultural anthropologists, in distancing themselves from the truly barbaric consequences of biological racism, have become ‘race avoidant’ (Brodkin 1999, p. 68), considering race to be socially constructed, but in the process ignore racism.” This statement left me wondering whether this avoidance then lead to less mention of black anthropologists in the majority of introductory cultural anthropology courses seeing that black anthropologists tend to write a lot about racism and racial topics.

Not far into the article, Mullings mentions several early African American anthropologists including St. Clair Drake, Allison Davis, Hortense Powdermaker and Eleanor Leacock all of whom worked to interrogate racism. Thinking of early anthropology peopled with black faces spoke to me, and even a slender section on racism in introductory texts might lend a greater sense that anthropology, not just the black anthropologists, was looking to speak on issues that greatly impact my life. Mullings wrote that she thought that anthropology had theoretical perspectives and methodologies particularly suited to interrogating and investigating racism and would do well to do more work in this area.

This tendency to avoid discussion of racism in the discipline and in introductory courses may add to an uneasiness as far as being able to discuss issues of racism within anthropology departments and/or the discipline as a whole; this being of particular interests if one were, as a black person, considering a career as an academic. Going in one would expect that such departments would be overwhelmingly white and middle class and not necessarily the most welcoming if one were not that. My first anthropology professor stated at the beginning of class that being a white, middle class woman that was the perspective she knew and that was the perspective from which she taught and that if you were not that, you may not identify with a lot of what was discussed or how it was discussed (this was a women’s studies class). Did I feel uncomfortable and excluded? Yes, but most of the time this was the type of perspective one faced in mostly white environments and often without any acknowledgement that the comfort/inclusiveness of those environments was limited as a result.

Until next time,
S