Archive for November, 2011

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

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

So over this time of my convalescence, it has become more clear to me that I will pursue further study at the academy. I don’t have the most positive view of academia, but over the years I have never achieved the level of study I would have liked on my own. In addition, more so than any other time I have been possessed with the thought that I want to get it right– I want to study something because I want to study it and not in consideration of a job or what seems to make sense based on what I have studied thus far. A dispassionate overview of my self-study tendencies over the past 15 years or so suggests that I would most want to study physics. This past week my thinking about what it would mean to me to be a black anthropologist was put on the back burner in favor of my thinking about why I’ve never considered returning to physics in an academic setting.

At first I thought it strange that I would be deciding between physics and anthropology; but as I was reading a review of an anthropology book, I was reminded that Franz Boas was a physicist. I won’t be applying to graduate school for at least another year and a half, and I’ve decided to take math and physics classes during that time. I have spent the week doing design work for a blog to document my experience of returning to science as an older student. I will write more about this later.

I plan to continue my study in anthropology and writing here at Anthropology Times. I’m on the lookout for areas where anthropology and physics intersect.

Until next time,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I’ve been thinking more about further studies.  I rolled in my head the thought of myself as a black, female anthropologist.  And the thought of it rubbed me the wrong way.  Part of my distaste has to do with the history of racism in the field as discussed in the post “Stuff White People Like: Anthropology, apparently” over at Zero Anthropology.   Another consideration was this sense that as a black person studying anthropology, one can’t just study anthropology, one has to be an active and aggressive ambassodor for genuine cultural diversity.  While I might encounter difficulties as a black woman studying physics, interacting with the mostly white and male population in that field, I wouldn’t be also burdened with the same kind of sense of needing to fix physics at a fundamental level or the sense that the average physicist I encountered wasn’t really thinking like a physicist.  In the Fall 1997 issue of Michigan Today, anthropology student Jennifer A. Scott says, “Many of us Black anthropology students and students from formerly colonized countries say that we are trying to ‘decolonize anthropology.’ We mean that we are trying to extend the field beyond the regional area where we conduct our research to include the academy, itself, as an object of anthropological inquiry.”  The article in Michigan Today presents the views and thoughts of three female anthropology students.

I’ve spent the week browsing around the net and I have more links.  I’ve also written much more on the topic inside my head.  When it came time to put words actually on the page, I was slow/hesitant to do so.  I’ll write more next week.

Yours truly,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…
Reading: America Day by Day, The Second Sex

My dearest Simone,

I badly planned my reading of America Day by Day in that the book had to be returned to library last week. I got it back just today, so not enough time to get back into it. I wasn’t sure when it would wind its way back into my temporary possession, so I started an initial glance at The Second Sex. I haven’t read the work before, but I’m certain that I’ve read excerpts and certainly I have read writers who were heavily influenced by this book.

I came across Francine du Plessix Gray’s review of The Second Sex for the New York Times.  I was taken aback by the virulent hostility.  The light peppering of faint praise seems added only to enhance the intensity of the aggressive expression of distaste and disdain.  For instance in the opening salvo, Gray introduces us to early reviews of the work.  She notes two highly negative reviews from the Catholic Church and Albert Camus, then nestles in the middle that Philip Wylie thought the work, “one of the few great books of our era,” before ending with two reviews with the harsh accusations that the work was “pretentious” and “tiresome,” and “bespattered with the repulsive lingo of existentialism.”  Gray says nothing good about the work other than echoing certain accepted platitudes and spends the bulk of her review poorly critiquing Beauvoir’s views of women in the workplace, marriage, and motherhood.  I do not find my own beliefs on these matters perfectly instep with those of Beauvoir, and even I, who love her, could come up with better-reasoned arguments in opposition to some of her views.  At some point Gray offers up observations that boy toddlers reach for cars and guns over dolls as proof that Beauvoir was mistaken in her assertion that gender is learned.

I figured others had certainly been critical of Gray’s review.  In her post, “Curses and blessings,” Cynthia Haven made note of others who expressed a distaste.  Haven makes extensive reference to a letter by Marilyn Yalom, Senior Scholar with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, published in the New York Times following publication of Gray’s review.  Among other things, Yalom finds fault with Gray’s critique of the more recent English translation of the The Second Sex:

Yalom finally zeroes in on Gray’s lambasting the new translation, which the critic finds wordy and cumbersome.  Yalom counters:  “The Second Sex is — among other things — a philosophical text. Would anyone think of translating Heidegger so that he flows nicely, when he rarely does?”

Though critical of the  translation (by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier), Gray called the introduction to the new translation written by Judith Thurman, “splendid.”  Judith Thurman’s review of the new translation published in the New York Times just a few days after Gray’s is a much more balanced review.  Thurman provides biographical details that give better context to Beauvoir’s views.  Whereas Gray seems to characterize Beauvoir as a woman driven to hysterics by the lack of the right to vote and being denied access to birth control, Thurman details both the surrounding political climate as well as Beauvoir’s bourgeois upbringing including mundane truths of how her lack of a dowry dimmed her prospects for the [customarily arranged] marriage.  Whereas Gray sums up comments about Beauvoir’s love life with a conclusion that Beauvoir had a “pronounced sexual appetite,” Thurman provides both a more thorough and nuanced recount of Beauvoirs romances along with an acknowledgement that Beauvoir engaged in love as a thoughtful woman.  Thurman characterizes Beauvoir as a woman who loved also with her mind, whereas Gray gives brief, sultry details by way of making a cheap shot at Beauvoir’s supposed physicality.

Gray seems to cite Beauvoir uses of “derogatory phrases like ‘the servitude of maternity,'” as proof of Beauvoir’s “paranoid hostility toward the institutions of marriage and motherhood,” as if she has never read Aristotle or Aquinas as Beauvoir makes clear that she has in her introduction to The Second Sex.  Thurman picks up on themes from Beauvoir’s introduction and uses them to illuminate aspects of Beauvoir character.  Beauvoir writes how in Genesis Eve is depicted as having been made from a bone of Adam.  Thurman draws parallels between Beauvoir and the author of Genesis saying that Beauvoir “begins her narrative, like the author of Genesis, with a fall into knowledge.”  Prior to this statement Thurman notes that Beauvoir would object to her work being called a “feminist bible,” in that she dismissed religions, “even when they worship a goddess — as the inventions of men to perpetuate their dominion.”

Ok, rush to publish before midnight….

In love and friendship,
S.