I’m a classicist of color at a pretty famous university with a pretty famous Classics department. I’m a PhD student, and I was elected Graduate Student Representative this year, and recently I sat on my first department meeting.
It was a reasonably interesting, though ultimately uneventful affair — of course, “junior members” only get to attend the “unreserved” (read: “no money or gossip”) business, so whatever excitement there was probably happened after I left.
But one moment caught me off-guard, a moment that I won’t forget anytime soon. And the worst thing about it? Nothing even happened.
Some context: I’m a PhD student in one of the most historically privileged and exclusive academic fields. I’ve been negotiating white spaces for a very long time, growing up in a reasonably non-urban area, going to school where nonwhite representation was minimal among students and nonexistent among staff. I’ve since spent almost five years at a university that continually struggles with representation of people of color at both student and staff levels. But this space is my home — I’ve never really known anything else.
Part of why I’ve been able successfully to make it my home is that I am, in many ways, extremely privileged: I come from an academic background, I’m able-bodied, I’m male, I have a comprehensive studentship. I recognize that these are all barriers that can intersect with race in complex and unique ways.
But I personally have been very comfortable during my time here. No one has once asked me where I’m “really” from; people make an effort to pronounce my easy-to-pronounce-but-foreign-so-people-often-give-up name; I try to embody my support for decolonization in my academic work, and my supervisors and the department have always supported me in that. As much as I’m always thinking about race and inequality in respect to political engagement, it doesn’t encroach all that much on my day-to-day working life.
But today, for the first time in a while, it came painfully into focus.
We have a Diversity and Equality committee (which I do not sit on) that is developing several initiatives to support historically underrepresented groups in the department. The minutes of its first meeting were circulated for the board to read. There was some extremely promising material there, including:
— Ensuring that the department is physically and digitally more inclusive
— Ensuring that syllabi and reading lists reflect the diversity of scholarship
— Encouraging more women to apply for postgraduate degrees and academic positions
— Increasing trans visibility and making the department a more gender-inclusive space
But one thing that was bafflingly absent was any effort to increase the number of POC in our department, at any level. “Race” was listed as one of the things that should be considered when drawing up an “inclusive” syllabus, but not at all with respect to structural changes in the department.
We don’t have a single permanent POC member on our academic staff. The department barely manages to get POC through the doors as undergraduates, let alone for them to stay on as graduate students; forget about actually employing them. The discourse surrounding this is generally supportive and ally-esque: “We should decolonize,” “We should try to attract more nonwhite applicants,” etc. But discourse aside, the department embodies white privilege. This could not be made more obvious than a committee running a review on Diversity and Equality and neglecting to dedicate anything to POC other than an afterthought concerning reading lists.
And so, when this came up in the meeting, I spoke up. I mentioned my concern and confusion at this omission; I mentioned intersectionality, and the fact that this isn’t about race versus gender because empowering POC is empowering women. I mentioned the fact that we had no permanent POC academic staff. I mentioned that I was pleased it had come up with regard to syllabi, but I highlighted its conspicuous absence earlier on.
My heart was beating pretty heavily (this was my first department meeting after all, and it’s a little intimidating anyway!). But I had said it, it was off my chest. Did I feel release, and satisfaction, at being able to address my specific and irrefutable concerns to the department board, including the chair of the department and a load of professors?
Yes. For about ten seconds.
Then the paranoia kicked in. I don’t really remember what the chair of the meeting said, but his comments were 100% positive. I had been heard, and it was worth it.
But what if I had gone too far? What if mentioning the demographics of the staff was too personal? What if I had just isolated everyone I needed on my side? What if the people I thought were nodding along in support in my peripheral vision were just shuffling their papers in discomfort? What if, in my haste to make a punchy point, I had somehow diminished the struggle of other underrepresented demographics who had been mentioned in the report?
But worst of all, as the only POC in the room, with twenty white people around a table, all senior to me, how predictable that the first thing to come out of my mouth would be a comment on racial inequality. How cliché that it might be “overcharged” or going “too far.”
Yet, as I mentioned before: nothing happened. No reproach, no funny looks. Acceptance! But here I was, sitting through a discussion on changing the way undergraduate exams were marked, the meeting having moved on — and my heart was still pounding. These thoughts still pulsed through my mind.
I made it through to the end, and got to step outside. I’m a reasonably calm person, but I felt extremely anxious. For that one moment, I felt as if I had been reduced to nothing but the brown person in the room. And I had never, ever been made to feel like that, even though, in actuality, it’s very often the case for me.
And for the first time in my professional life, I had felt the burden of being a POC, talking about race to white people. Supportive, agreeable white people, many of whom I look up to and some of whom I would even call my friends. People who, ultimately, had done nothing wrong (the omissions of the Diversity and Equality committee notwithstanding).
In that moment, I would have given absolutely anything to have just one other POC in the room with me. For that person to be a senior member of staff — well then, this report would have looked pretty different in the first place. But as it was, I felt trapped. I had nowhere to go, no one in the department to confide in about what had just happened. I would be reticent about my feelings anyway, as it might not seem like a big deal, given the gentle and positive response.
But for it to fall to me, and me alone, to speak for all classicists of color (and by extension, all POC), whether I liked it or not, was just really fucking tough. I’m glad I said what I did, but I’d really rather not have to think about that meeting again. I suspect, however, I might have to.
I wish I had something positive to finish this story with, but I don’t. All I can say is, if you’re a POC reading this: I see you. I feel you. I just want to read the texts I love, do what I love. I don’t want to think twice about my skin color and what that means for me in the context of academic life. But that’s not how it works for us. Be loud, go “too far,” and never once feel embarrassed or self-conscious in doing that.
If you’re white and you’re reading this: do what you can to avoid situations like this arising. Support POC; encourage them to stay in the field, to shape the field. Admit them, employ them. Ensure that they, together with the entire spectrum of different intersecting types of privilege and anti-privilege, are never erased from your considerations.
And if you do find yourself listening to the one POC in the room talk about race and intersectionality, and particularly if this person is junior to you and probably a little nervous anyway — please nod along and give us a smile. It really helps.
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