Anthropology Times

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

It’s becoming clear that I need to take some time away to get used to my new schedule of classes and to get a bit ahead on the homework. So far, my math and chemistry classes have been enjoyable along the lines that I thought they would be. However, I continue to reflect on anthropology and the path that lead me to consider graduate work in anthropology.

I’ve been hesitant to speak of my more recent anthropology classes. In the beginning, I feared that the fact that my mind was fuzzy and that I might not immediately remember something big and obvious would cause my anthropology professors to cringe. I still think that now, but I worry slightly less. I had excellent classes, and some of my classmates were quite exceptional. But for the quality of the instruction that I received, I would never have found myself in the position of considering graduate study in anthropology. My sense of cultural disconnect did not melt away, but still my more recent classes left me with a hopefulness that some of my concerns about study and work in anthropology would be less of a worry in the future.

A particularly unpleasant work-type experience in anthropology outside the academic setting reminded me that I could not depend on the positive local classroom experiences being reproduced in the industry at large or in further academic study. It wasn’t an experience that I would expect to be repeated, but still it felt like a wakeup call to the fact that I needed to give serious consideration to what it would be like to work in anthropology, to work in a field that was overwhelming dominated by middle class white culture. I think some of the difficulties I’ve had moving from the South to California may be very instructive. California is the least black place that I’ve ever lived. I think often people outside the South hear that I grew up in Mississippi and automatically think that it’s a state that is worse in every possible way for a black person. This is not the case. I grew up in a majority black county in Mississippi and there are cultural advantages to that. I hope to write more about this soon.

Until next time,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I got great results from my chemistry preparation.  My score on the California Chemistry Diagnostic Test placed me in about the 98th percentile (the percentile rankings I found were from years gone by).  And I will not have to take intro to chemistry. This gave me a boost of confidence as far as my study skills. It’s been twenty years since I’ve taken chemistry, so I made up a lot of ground with my four or so weeks of intensive preparation.

I started to think about how I learned good/effective study skills early from watching family.  My maternal grandmother didn’t finish elementary school, but still she never shied away from reading things, and out loud even, because the passage was difficult for her.  She had good basic math skills and she used them at the grocery store and other everyday situations in which I’ve observed people with higher math education not go through the bother.  My grandmother had a fearlessness and healthful shamelessness in the face of learning and pressing the limits of her abilities.  This behavior was presented as an ideal in black Mississippi Delta culture; an important measure of intelligence was how well a person made use of the skills and abilities she had*.  “Smart” people with inactive mental habits were often called on it.

A study skill that comes out of this tradition is to read from one book and then as a test do the exercises from a sufficiently different book of the same level; and then as a further test, attempt the exercises in a book of a higher level — seek out the limits of your abilities and then push forward from there.  In reading anthropology I tried not to shy away from articles simply because I found the jargon overwhelming.  I tried to stay focused on taking from the reading anything I could.  I sometimes felt like I could say embarrassingly little about an article, but having the weekly deadline helped me work past this uncomfortableness.

I haven’t forgotten about Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics.  So far it’s been a helpful read and I definitely have more to say on that reading.

edited to add *This manner of thinking was also promoted as a way to combat racism and build self-esteem in the black community — the fact that more privileged people had access to better education did not mean that they were smarter.  Being smart had a lot to do with how your mind worked and not with the accumulation of information you did not employ or the regurgitation of information that could be looked up.  Being smart was a matter of honing thinking abilities.  One of the things that attracted me to physics when I was younger was that physicists often talked about intelligence in this way and somehow the words used and/or the manner of speech used resonated more with me than when similar things were said in other disciplines.

Until next time,
S

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

My mind turned again to anthropology during my chemistry review.  In thinking about the importance of writing out simple formulas again and again, I thought that I should be using diagrams for common concepts in anthropology and that there’s a value in seeing key concepts/theories reduced to simple word groups with connective symbols such as lines, arrows, plus signs and the like.  Back in 2009, Greg Downey over at Neuroanthropology wrote a nice post regarding benefits and concerns when using flowcharts in anthropology.  The post seems a good place to start when I look into this more later.

So it seems that I am taking another week to work on my chemistry review.  It has been quite intensive and at the moment I find myself in that curious place where I could do much better on a test that most consider difficult while fairing much worse on a test that others consider easy.  That is to say that I have been neglectful regarding some of the required rote memorization.  I looked for sample chemistry placement test online since I haven’t been able to find out much information regarding the one that I may be taking.  So far, the results have been encouraging.

Yours truly,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I’ve been continuing my review of chemistry. The book has a bit of a narrative in which scientific study and discovery are touted as the height of human achievement; it’s the most important and the most glorious of human endeavors. I marveled at the grandiose absolutes used for self-defined values, at the totally straight-faced delivery. I’m reminded of an episode of “The Simpson’s” in which Bart bangs a pot and sings, “I am so great. I am so great. Everybody loves me. I am so great…” His lyrics are said to be a byproduct of the terrible two’s. I love and enjoy scientific pursuits, but I cannot dampen my awareness of its culturally defined importance.

I continue to ponder where to go next with what I write here. I will return to my reading of Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics next week.

Ever yours,

S.

“Seeking the Ancestors: Forging a Black Feminist Tradition in Anthropology” by A. Lynn Bolles
(This is the first in a series of essays presented in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

As I have felt more acutely aware of the value of the sense of shared experience, I particularly enjoyed this historical overview of black women in anthropology. When Bolles writes about why black women study anthropology, I understood and felt every word of it. She writes of how black women are attracted to anthropology’s embrace of its own eclecticism and of its holistic approach that draws on perspectives from multiple disciplines, *and because it can be used as “a tool to locate the sources of inequality, and in some instances, as a place where one could participate in finding a ‘cure’.”  She also speaks to some of my concerns when she writes that black women anthropologist do not receive appropriate recognition in the anthropological canon, that their intellectualism is held suspect, and that they often feel strongly driven to exert a corrective influence on theoretical and historical perspectives in anthropology. In light of these concerns, I have considered that as a black woman, my views on culture (in the public arena) might be better respected if I had an advanced degree in physics than if I had an advanced degree in anthropology as such a degree would be seen by the wider public as more convincing proof of my intellectualism.

Continuing that line of thought, I have often wondered whether as a black woman I should study a subject like physics because I can. Bolles commentary on the black intellectual tradition speaks directly to my reasons for thinking this. She quotes Leith Mullings as summarizing the goals of the tradition thusly: “(1) the charge of uplifting the race, (2) dealing with the social and material condition of the race, and (3) finding ‘a cure for inequality’.” So my question to myself has been, given the view of the study of physics in the wider public, whether I would do more to further the stated goals by increasing the number of black women with advanced degrees in physics. A female physicist (Kawtar Hafidi) with whom I felt some commonality regarding her childhood joy in studying math expressed similar considerations: “[My father] said, ‘What will you do with literature? It’s not useful to the country. Since you are good at everything, you should do science.’ So he convinced me, and I went ahead with science, because I thought I could help my country this way. So I started mathematics and physics in university.” As a black child who excelled in academics, it was impressed upon me early that I had to consider how what I studied and how well I did in school reflected on black people generally. During the many years that I spent (mildly) philosophically opposed to further study in academia, I wondered whether I should feel obligated to return due to the above mentioned considerations.

Yours truly,

S.

*edited to add