Each month, student members will provide insight and tips on a particular topic. This month, Student Committee chair Leigh Smith weighs in on unexpected challenges of being a minority in academia.  

On my first day as a PhD student, our department graduate coordinator sent out an email with the subject “Another UT-Austin Student of Color Attacked by Bleach Bomb.” Here’s what happened: a Black student walking to a friend’s house was hit with a water balloon full of bleach. He was the 5th minority student to be the target of this type of attack near the university in the past 2 years. The supposed concept behind the bleach bombs was to “whiten” students of color (1)(2). After digging around on the internet and reading several more articles on the subject, I stood up at my desk, went to the bathroom, walked into a stall, and cried hysterically for about 1 minute. Then I splashed water on my face, took some deep breaths, and went to class. The first week of graduate school can make even the toughest students break down into tears, but I had not anticipated my first cry would be caused by reports of racially motivated violence so close to my campus.

I am half-black and half-white. I am told my appearance is racially ambiguous. Since moving to Austin, I have been called a “wetback” exactly twice while waiting for the bus and a “nigger” once while waiting in line for tacos with a research assistant, who is also black. I have overheard students joking about how it’s better to go to the white TAs instead of the “darkies”. I was told, quite matter-of-factly, that the main reason I was accepted to a fairly large number of PhD programs was because there just aren’t that many “really smart black people out there” and departments need us.

I am not sharing this to make people feel bad or sorry for me. I am sharing this so you know that these things actually happen, and have likely happened to students of color in your department, or to you. I trust in our field and in the efforts we are making to increase diversity – but you can’t increase diversity in a meaningful way without also combatting discrimination. More people of color in a room isn’t worth much if none of them feel comfortable being there. So I want to talk about some of the challenges I have dealt with, not as a minority in general, but as a minority in academia.

Unexpected Challenge #1: Being asked about my race at inappropriate times

This is a tricky situation, and there is no formula for when it is and is not appropriate to ask someone his or her race in a professional conversation. As such, I would like to provide an illustration of when I have felt it was inappropriate versus a time I felt it made complete sense.

Inappropriate—During an interview: At a social psychology conference, I was near the end of a very positive and lengthy graduate school interview, when my potential advisor asked me whether or not I was a “legal minority.” A range of things went through my mind. First, I was not sure what he meant by “legal minority,” and I thought that perhaps he was asking about my immigration status. Second, I was not sure why I was being asked about my race during an interview for graduate school in the first place. He quickly clarified that he was asking me for scholarship purposes, because I would be eligible for certain funding packages as a function of my minority status. The reason this felt like an inappropriate time to ask me about my race was as follows: an offer of admission had not yet been made to me, which implied that my race might or could play a role in whether or not I was admitted to the program. But despite the lack of propriety, I believe that he was navigating the difficult terrain of racial ambiguity as respectfully as he could. Given the fact that minorities make up less than 20% of Psychology PhDs (3), he likely hadn’t had much experience discussing race with prospective students. And while this reflects the infuriating reality of institutionalized racism[1] more than it does the character of this particular faculty member – it also highlights that there is not enough understanding or communication concerning when and how to respectfully discuss race.

Advice: If I am honest, this interaction made me incredibly angry, and I wanted to ask this faculty member if he had lost his mind thinking that it was even within the realm of professionalism to ask me if I was a “legal minority.” But in these situations, a little bit of patience and understanding can go a long way. The more willing we are to openly communicate when we feel we’ve been disrespected or when we’re afraid we’ve disrespected someone else, the better prepared we’ll be to tactfully discuss racial identity moving forward.

Appropriate—When the deal is done: After you’ve been offered admission[EK1]  to a program, it makes rational sense that your new advisor will want to ensure that you apply to any and all scholarships available to you, which means they may need to ask about your race. Post admission-offers, six advisors all inquired about my race in a range of appropriate and creative ways, but one advisor in particular handled the situation with exceptional thoughtfulness; she said: “I apologize you have to deal with issues of race during what is already a very stressful process of choosing a graduate program, but I want you to know that I am asking you about your race for both scholarship opportunities as well as because it is vital for me to feel connected to my students and understanding their racial identity is an important part of that.”

Advice: As a graduate student in general, I believe it is important to always let people know when they have made you feel comfortable and supported, especially around sensitive topics like race. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but consider sending an email or having a conversation where you say: “Hey, I really appreciate the way you handled this.” There is a lot of confusion and well-intentioned curiosity around talking about race in our field, and vocally expressing appreciation for respectful behavior is just as important as speaking out against disrespectful behavior.

Unexpected Challenge #2: Coping with research findings that suggest racial bias is alive and kicking

One of the most meaningful services social psychologists have provided to society is fearlessly lifting the veil on racial bias—in schools, in workplaces, in social settings, between friends, and amongst families. That being said, I could not have anticipated that I would feel anything but pride at how progressive much of the research is in our field. But it turns out that I have also had many unexpected negative emotions in response to research that exposes personal and institutional bias concerning race: anxiety, anger, and sometimes weakened self-esteem. It is essential that we continue to publish these types of findings, because they have played a central role in fighting against racism—but when these findings are discussed in classrooms or at conferences, it is important to remember that the results may feel particularly personal to minorities in the audience.

For example, at a conference in Washington, DC a photograph of a black man being lynched was displayed on a huge projector screen as an illustration of mob mentality and racial extremism. I think that everybody in the audience was understandably horrified, but for black students and faculty in the audience, the image may have been especially impactful. For comparisons sake, I cannot imagine a researcher ever displaying an equally graphic image of a woman being raped to illustrate the issue of sexism. The talk was outstanding, but I remember experiencing a strong feeling of demoralization at its close. This does not mean that my enthusiasm for the research was tempered, but rather that I found myself having to sort through a variety of complex self-relevant emotions in response to the research. Am I at a disadvantage during negotiations and job interviews because of my race (4)(5)? Will people think of my skin as being “lighter” the more educated I seem (6)? Are people more likely to associate me with aggression and violence than they are a white person (7)? Do people think I feel less physical pain simply because I am a minority (8)? The answer to these questions tentatively appears to be “yes,” which is a hard, but necessary, pill to swallow. Moving forward, I simply encourage people to remember that these findings are more than statistics; they are battles your fellow students and colleagues have to fight every day.

Unexpected Support from Every Direction

Being black isn’t hard; being black is awesome. It’s being the subject of discrimination that is hard. Almost everybody I know has experienced some form of discrimination because of their gender, age, sexual orientation, nationality or any other number of personal characteristics. It took me a very long time to talk about the issues I’ve discussed here with anybody in my department, but once I did I learned that my peers and supervisors could indeed be counted on for support. The sad fact is that one of the coping strategies I’d been using was to downplay the seriousness of the racism I’d experienced, or to make excuses for the perpetrators, and it was my colleagues that reminded me that racism is not acceptable, that it should not be normative, and that I was right to be angry. These are things that are easy to forget if you don’t reach out to others and trust that you can be open about your experiences. Discrimination can make anyone angry, not just minorities. And we have to work together, and we have to be honest and critical, if we want to build supportive environments for minorities in our departments, and in academia more broadly. We can do better than we’ve been doing, and I believe in us.


[1] Institutionalized racism is a term that describes the way a government or other public and private institutions systematically afford one racial group an array of social, political and economic advantages, while marginalizing and putting at a disadvantage other racial groups.References:


References:

(1) Sherman, B. (2013, August 23). Another UT-Austin student of color attacked by bleach bomb. Retrieved January 10, 2015, from http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/13982/

another-utaustin-student-of-color-attacked-by-bleach-bomb

(2) McGuinness, W. (2012, October 4). Bleach balloons launched at minority students at University of Texas. Retrieved January 10, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/

10/04/bleach-balloons-university-of-texas_n_1939170.html

(3) Smith Bailey, D. (2004, February 1). Number of psychology PhDs declining.[EK4]  Retrieved January 10, 2015, from http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb04/number.aspx

(4) Kubota, J. T., Li, J., Bar-David, E., Banaji, M. R., & Phelps, E. A. (2013). The price of racial bias intergroup negotiations in the ultimatum game. Psychological Science, 24(12), 2498-2504.

(5) Kouchaki, M. (2011). Vicarious moral licensing: the influence of others' past moral actions on moral behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,101(4), 702.

(6) Ben-Zeev, A., Dennehy, T. C., Goodrich, R. I., Kolarik, B. S., & Geisler, M. W. (2014). When an “educated” black man becomes lighter in the mind’s eye: Evidence for a skin tone memory bias. SAGE Open, 4, 2158244013516770.

(7) Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: the role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 181.

(8) Mathur, V. A., Richeson, J. A., Paice, J. A., Muzyka, M., & Chiao, J. Y. (2014). Racial bias in pain perception and response: Experimental examination of automatic and deliberate processes. The Journal of Pain, 15, 476-484.