1.9%. That is the percentage of
Chicana/os that receive graduate or professional degrees at the time I entered Graduate
school. According to research from the UCLA Chicano Studies
Research Center report (2006), only 46 out of every 100 Chicano students who
start elementary school will graduate from high school. Of that 46 only 8 will
get a bachelor’s degree, and of that 8 at best 2 will receive a graduate degree
or a professional degree. While more recent studies have shown an increase in high school graduation rates and undergraduate enrollment, the rates of attainment at the post graduate attainment are still low. 1.9 % is inclusive of JDs, MFAs, MBAs, MAs, and
Ph.Ds. It has been years since I first looked at study and I have never
forgotten that number. I hate it. I hate how low it is, I hate how I feel
defined by it. I think of all of the people who were pushed out, alienated, or
who simply could not see graduate school as an option.
Yet at the same time
that number explains so much. To me,
that number highlights just how efficient the culture of the academy is at
producing and disciplining a majoritarian white space. It explains how lonely
the process of graduate education can be for a Chicano/a. It explains why I
feel unsettled in my choice to work in the academy. It explains why I feel at
odds with the dominant values, as in what constitutes “good” research. It also
explains why I feel so excited at the prospect of meeting other Chicana/os at
conferences, why I feel invigorated after a good panel on race and the
borderlands, why I find myself volunteering to help out with the Diversity
Scholars Cohort. When I see a graduate
student of color I see a fellow survivor. I see comrades and allies and role
models.
At the time of this writing,
I am days away from taking my comprehensive exams for my Ph.D. and I cannot
help but think about where I fit in that number. It must be a fraction of a
fraction. I feel perhaps more anxiety
about my exams than I should. I worry about the fact that I have come so far,
but that in order to go further I must relinquish control of my educational
future, I must trust in my own abilities to pass the text, but more importantly
(and this is what frightens me) I must trust the process. It might seem to many
a strange thing to be concerned about. The people who comprise my committee are
dedicated teachers, I have a strong working relationship with all of them, and
I trust and respect them.
However, that does not
mean that I trust the academy. In order to survive this institution long enough
to become one of the 1.9%, you have to be savvy about navigating the structures
and the people that make the space what it is. I had to learn many of those
lessons the hard way. I have experienced the academy as a place that is both hostile
of difference and also a home. This is a place that produces truth in service
of hegemony, as well as a place that gave me tools to resist marginalization
and oppression. I have been silenced and also found my voice. Even as the educational
pipeline attempts to get rid of us it also makes us stronger.
I was discussing my feelings of alienation
with a friend, a radical woman of color, who is in the dissertation phase of
her Ph.D. I told her that despite my good grades, the praise and support of my
teachers, I was unsure if I had made the right decision in getting my Ph.D. She
told me not to let “Them” do that to me, and then she shared one of her
experiences. She was speaking with one of her mentors, a Chicano who had just
received tenure, and he said, “Academia does a really good job of making people
of color and radicals feel like they don’t belong. It does this because it was
designed to do this; just play their game, pass this stage, and the rest is
yours.” The process and the structure insure that only the most useful, or the
most skillful, or the hardest headed make it into a position to be called an
expert, to be an authority. And I do not want to play their game. Like many of you I realize that the academy
is an important site for the production of truth, that the government will fund
most of us. The state invests in us because it has something to gain from our
presence in the academy. Call it tokenism, call it interest convergence, call
it whatever you like, but the 1.9 % were not brought into the fold accidently.
I fought my here because
I love to learn, I have questions that no one has answers for, and because I
believe deeply in the radical potential of educators (teachers and scholars) to
change lives. I know this because they have changed me. I don’t have the
stomach for games. I want my work and my time here to mean something. I want to
overthrow or at least challenge the structure that made me part of the 1.9%. We
have been losing a war of attrition but if it is true people of color and
radicals don’t belong in the academy, then every one of us who makes it is an
act of defiance. So my question and challenge to you is this, what can we do to
change the processes, to challenge the structure, to make a home for ourselves?
More importantly, to those of you who are (like me) still in the process of
your education, how can we help each other?
