Too Brown or Not Brown Enough: Latinos, Politics in 2012 and Beyond

2012 marked the first year that Latinos were featured as major speakers at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.  The next step, ascendency to a presidential candidacy, seems inevitable.  Unfortunately, Latino politicians have been subjected to the same set of potentially unfair expectations that frequently beset many young minority professionals. On the one hand, they are marked as insufficiently authentic representatives of their communities. The Daily Caller, for instance, noted Julian Castro’s poor command of Spanish[1] while Texas Republican Senate candidate Ted Cruz was chided by his primary opponent, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, for refusing to conduct a debate in Spanish[2].  On the other hand, they may also be designated as too ethnic: In Castro’s case, his was guilty of association with his activist mother, who was described as being a radical and a racist[3].  Unlike the prior form of criticism, however, Democrats are unlikely to levy this form of criticism against Latino Republican politicians.[4]

                 

Criticism of Barack Obama in some cases, first as a candidate, then subsequently as President, appeared to follow a similar trajectory.  Jesse Jackson, for instance, criticized Obama for “acting like he’s white” based on Obama’s initially response to the arrest of six Black youths in Jena, LA on charges of attempted murder after a school brawl[5].  On the other hand, Glenn Beck famously noted that he believed that the President “was a guy with a deep-seated hatred for white people.”[6] Moreover, as with the aforementioned Latino politicos, criticism of Black conservative politicians has been limited to the questioning the authenticity of their ethnic identity[7] rather than demonization alleging animus toward any racial majority.

                

 Criticisms like these initially led me to believe that an event like Obama’s victory in 2008 was unlikely. I found it more plausible that the first president of color would likely be a member of the GOP for the same sort of contradictory criticisms that I cited above.  Surely, an African-American Republican would face some criticism in some quarters as being insufficiently representative of his race.  However, given the nature of the Democratic base, these arguments would likely fall outside of the mainstream of political discourse and would surely be ineffective ways to mobilize support among Democrats against a Republican candidate.  Conversely, because political claims of racial radicalism are almost exclusively the domain of conservatives against progressives, a Republican candidate of color would have little to worry about, presuming they successfully maneuvered through their own party primaries.

                 

Yet, Obama’s victory in 2008 defied these expectations.  A number of factors can explain that victory, none the least of which was the degree of dissatisfaction with the status quo. .In any case, these concerns continue to color my perspective on the likelihood of a successful Latino candidate.  The two Republican candidates I referenced above, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are both of Cuban descent, while Democrat Castro is Chicano.  Cuban Americans have a long history of support for the GOP[8], while Mexican-Americans have long-standing allegiance to the Democratic Party[9].  Using the designation “Latino” as a pan-ethnic identifier may mask very real differences among ethnic groups in favor of the broader narrative of demographic dominance.  According to the Pew Research Center, among the Hispanic population in the United States, 64.9 self-identify as being of Mexican origin, versus 3.7 percent who self identify Cuban origin.[10]In the case of the Republican Party, trumpeting their diversity with references to a constituency that has long embraced their message and represents a relatively small portion of the overall Latino population may ring hollow. Defenders of the party, however, can effectively make the case that the Republican Party during George W. Bush’s administration was more keenly aware of this and made greater outreach to the larger Latino population, a point that GWB’s brother and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has been emphasizing of late.[11]

                 

More interesting might be Jeb Bush’s personal stake in this debate, as he himself is married to a Chicana, Columba.  Not coincidentally, political observers have long speculated that his son George Prescott Bush is an eventual heir to the Bush political dynasty. [12]Since he first emerged at the 1988 Republican National Convention at the age of 12, the young Bush has been burnishing an impressive resume befitting a future political mainstay, including military service in Afghanistan.  I have been telling my students this for well over a decade now: an eventual Presidential bid by George P. Bush seems almost inevitable.  That is a far cry from his first public appearance, where his grandfather and then Vice President George H.W. Bush described George P and his siblings to President Reagan as “Jebby's kids from Florida, the little brown ones.”[13]

That Latinos are so frequently cited as an emerging electoral force should come as little surprise by virtue of sheer demography. What that means in practice remains to be seen.  However, if George P. Bush becomes a viable candidate in 2016, his ethnicity and political affiliation may afford him advantages unavailable to his Republican and Democratic counterparts.

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[1]  Geoffrey, Malloy. “DNC Speaker Julian Castro ‘Doesn't Really Speak Spanish’” The Daily Caller. Last modified September 5, 2012. Accessed September 20, 2012. <http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/05/julian-castro-doesnt-really-speak-spanish/>.

[2] Graves, Lucia. “David Dewhurst Challenges Ted Cruz To Debate In Spanish.” The Huffington Post. Last modified June 4, 2012. Accessed September 20, 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/david-dewhurst-ted-cruz-spanish-debate_n_1568958.html>.

[3] Burka, Paul. “BurkaBlog : The Second Battle of the Alamo: Fox News vs. Julián Castro’s Mom.” Texas Monthly.  Last modified September 10, 2012. Accessed September 20, 2012. <http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/burkablog/?p=14152>.

[4] Such references may exist, however they remain outside of the mainstream political dialogue.

[5] Burris, Roddie A. “Jackson Slams Obama for ‘Acting White’” POLITICO.com. Last modified September 19, 2007. Accessed September 23, 2012. <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0907/5902.html>.

[6] Associated Press. “Glenn Beck: Obama Is a Racist.” CBS News. Last modified July 29, 2009. Accessed September 23, 2012. <http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-5195604.html>.

[7] Republican political consultant Ron Christie devoted a whole book to the subject.  See Christie, Ron. Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2010.

[8] Miller, Bettye. “Cuban American Voters Remain in GOP Corner.” UCR Today. Last modified January 30, 2012. Accessed September 23, 2012. <http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/2263>.

[9] Lopez, Mark H. “The Latino Vote in the 2010 Elections” Pew Hispanic Center. Last modified November 3, 2010. Accessed September 23,2012. <http://www.pewhispanic.org/2010/11/03/the-latino-vote-in-the-2010-elections/>.

[10] Motel, Seth, and Eileen Patten. “The 10 Largest Hispanic Origin Groups: Characteristics, Rankings, Top Counties.”  Pew Hispanic Center Last modified July 12, 2012. Accessed September 23, 2012. <http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/06/27/the-10-largest-hispanic-origin-groups-characteristics-rankings-top-counties/>.

[11] Camia, Catalina. “Jeb Bush: GOP Needs to Win Back Hispanic Voters.” USATODAY.com. Last modified January 26, 2012. Accessed September 23, 2012. <http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/01/jeb-bush-immigration-florida-primary-/1#.UF_W665UXKc>.

[12] Sharp, Deborah. “George P. Bush at Center of Campaign Buzz.” USATODAY.com. Last modified June 18, 2000. Accessed September 23, 2012. <http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/e2099.htm>.

[13] Associated Press. “Bush Defends ‘Little Brown Ones’ Term for Grandchildren, Tells ’Pride and Love’” Los Angeles Times. Last modified August 17, 1988. Accessed September 23, 2012. <http://articles.latimes.com/1988-08-17/news/mn-655_1_pride>.

* Latino/a Higher Education Enrollment Milestones *

     As we all embark upon a fresh academic year, I would like to draw your attention to this blurb that caught my eye in a recent email from Inside Higher Ed. 
     Latino enrollments in higher education passed several milestones in 2011, according to a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center:

• Latino students are now the largest minority group among four-year college and university students.
  
• Latino students now make up one quarter of community college enrollments.
  
• Total Latino enrollment has passed 2 million students, or 16.5 percent of all college enrollments.
  

     Having made the transition within little over a year from grad student to new Ph.D. to full time lecturer to tenure-track faculty member, the preceding news comes as an encouraging testament to the value of higher education and the importance of accessibility and opportunity. 

     I have thought a lot about types of institutions lately, especially while getting to know all my new faculty peers at various formal and informal orientation events as we all anticipate our new positions and the campus culture here. While I have experience teaching at big state schools, a community college, an open enrollment "commuter" university, and now a highly selective liberal arts college, I know that undoubtedly the student demographics influence the examples I choose to make the course content relevant and applicable to my students' lives. 

     In a recent faculty development workshop I attended, we discussed the role nonverbal communication plays in our perceived credibility, likeability, and authoritative command in the classroom. There was brief mention of how race, ethnicity, gender, and other nonverbal identities we wear on our external shells factor into how we are seen by our students. I made the point in the workshop that it is often the case that when minorities are in positions of power, they are more noticeable because they are not as common. This can be negative because we may experience more challenges to our authority from students. This can also, however, be a positive because we can provide mentorship to our students and embodied diversity. 

     Increasing numbers of Latino/as enrolling in universities and colleges is a sign of progress. There are more initiatives these days towards also increasing faculty diversity to reflect the diversity of students in higher education. While there are many kinks to work out in this process of inclusiveness and truly embracing difference, I am happy to at least see that the trend is growing progressively. As a young Latina professor, I am eager to see what the future holds as a result of the diversification of higher education. I want to start this year on a note of optimism. Cheers to you all for a productive, positive, and peaceful semester!  

Latino Performatives: No Consensus on Betweenness

I am a biracial White-Latino communication scholar who lives in the Midwest in the southern tip of Illinois in the college town of Carbondale. I am a performance poet and educator. Originally from California, I moved to Illinois to pursue my graduate education. I was raised by my white father and stepmother in a predominately white area in the Bay Area. Mi madre Mexicana was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was just one year old so I grew up somewhat alienated from my Latino identity. My dissertation is about reclaiming my biracial Latino identity, telling my mother’s story, and locating myself in relationship to place. I have come to call myself a “merry Midwest mestizo”—a self-naming for my hybrid Latino, White, and biracial being in the world. My dissertation follows and extends the work of Latina communication scholars (Viramontes, Calafell, Chavez) who have examined the meaning of Latina/o identity outside the context of the North American Southwest. I identify and give meaning to my biracial identity in the context of, what I call, the “Midwest-South.” My dissertation deals with the spaces between: between and White-Latino, between California and Illinois, between the Midwest and the South, between racial identities, between my White, Mexican, and Latino identities, and between my brown and white identities, and all their messy intersections. I often use aesthetic qualitative methods like poetry and performative writing. What follows is more a conceptual work in progress that takes a step back and examines the slippery-ness of the “Latino/a,” particularly as it stands among the black and white racial binary.

                                                ***

In a powerful framing article, in a special issue of Text and Performance Quarterly on Latina/o performances, Bernadette Calafell and Shane T. Moreman, discuss the difficulty of translating “Latinidad” into an English term at the confluence of performativity—“Latinivity?” they ask (123). Following their lead, it seems to me, that “Latinidad” is already defined in some very real sense by performativity, in repetitions, in reiterations, in ways of being. Latinidad is accomplished through mundane performances of race (in relationship to) culture, ritual, and ways of being. Taking the performative turn with race would allow us to see, like John T. Warren understood, that performance is a constitutive component of our racial identities, moving away from static or essential understandings of race, to a more fluid one.

This understanding may mirror the complexity of the term “Latina/o” itself. “Latina/o” is a strangely precarious discursive racial designation that is caught up with umbrella terms like “Hispanic,” and “Chicano,” or a myriad of other self-identifying terms. “Latino/a” may have more to do with self-identification than ascription by others, but at the same time never independent of ascription by others. In my experience and my experience growing up biracial in a white context, I think that identification with the term sometimes has a strong relationship with speaking Spanish; the way identity so often is immersed in language. Growing up without my Mexican mother in the home, I never learned to speak Spanish. To this day, not speaking Spanish is big issue of mine. Latina/o functions like any umbrella term, unifying a group, but at the same time also glossing substantial differences between groups of Latinas/os. In short, what I like to call “brown” doesn’t hold still; it can’t easily be held down. It seems as though a defining feature, if there is any, of “browness” is its slippery-ness. Racial betweenness actually comes to constitute the identity category. Brown. Sometimes lighter sometimes darker, but always very hard to pin down. Of course, “brown” is color, but not a race.

My experience with the 2010 census may serve as a case and point. In April of that year, along with people all over the country, I received my census form. I filled it out along with my roommate at the time, for the household that we both comprised at the time. As we filled out the first page dealing with how many people lived in the household and asking for an “X” to be put in the proper boxes, right away, I, as a person living in the household, encountered a fascinating problem. The problem stemmed from questions 8 and 9. The former was concerned with “Hispanic Origin,” asking if the person was “of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin,” while the latter was concerned with the person’s race. What was fascinating was that there were two separate designations prefaced by words in bold black type: “NOTE: Please answer BOTH 8 about Hispanic Origin and Question 9 about race. For the census, Hispanic origins are not races” (my emphasis here). For question 8, there were four or five possible answers, including one box for Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicano, a box for Puerto Rican, a box for Cuban, and a box for “another Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin.”

Question 9 was presumed to be exclusively concerned with the question of race. The census provided an opportunity to “mark one or more boxes,” which as biracial person, was a welcome improvement from previous surveys. Then the question provided a dizzying 13 possible races that could be checked, including “Other Asian” and “Other Pacific Islander” which were to be clarified by writing in the boxes with  “Laotian” or “Pakistani” as examples. “White” and “Black, African Am., or Negro” were, of course, present. But what was absent, what was nowhere to be found, was brown. Brown did not exist. There was no “brown” race according to the 2010 census. Brown is a color like tan or crème or khaki. But brown is not a race.

The whole activity highlighted for me the ways that “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin”—whatever you want to call it—has a possible incoherence that deconstructs the process of racialization itself. Struggling to fill out the census reveals race, with its history as pseudo-science (is it skin color?), and it’s colonial legacy (are we now the race of the conquerors?) as a dubious socially categorical, measurable, static phenomenon. It’s not just culture implied by “Hispanic origins;” it’s not just biology or phenotype implied by a racial category; it’s not just a region or a country (Cuba or Puerto Rico), it’s all of them. Or none of them. Or simply one of them— sometimes it could just be one, no less powerful identity marker, that makes a Latina/o identify a certain way.

Critical Race Theorists have for decades talked about the ways that race get stuck between the binary of black and White (Delgado and Sefancic). Racial binaries bind racial thinking. Race as an issue, comes to mean White people in contradistinction to African Americans or Black people. In the general mind about race, not much exists in between. It’s a black and white thing. But really, the census highlighted for me the potential for brown to take the whole thing down: racial categorization cannot seem to handle the betweeness that is already at work in people of Latino or Hispanic origin. Some of us our light brown, some of us are dark brown, some of us speak Spanish, some of us do not.  Specially designed surveys can’t encompass it. Historically, for example, Mexicans are already a mix of two historically hitherto discretely “distinct” races: Europeans (Spanish) and Native American Aztecs. So what did the Census Bureau do? They went right around it by parsing Latino from race, re-mapping the black-white binary onto a group that was always already between.

In defiance, I chose “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin” and then I checked “White,” and, after that, I checked “Native American,” I wrote in “Mexican.” Of course, I violated the logic of the survey, nullifying its measures. I should have written “Brown.” There is already black and white. Looking back on it, I should of put in Aztec for the “name of my tribe.” That response would have been historically accurate. Needless to say, a couple months after I had moved from the house, a census person came knocking on the door to clarify the information for our household. She cleared it up, most likely glossing some part of our racial identities for the sake of categorization. But I share the story because right away it demonstrates that brown doesn’t hold.

Certainly there are Black Latinas or Afro-Latinas throughout the Americas. Latin America today is much more “Black” than people often know or acknowledge. There are 150 million decedents of slaves in central and southern America (Cevallos). This historical racial influence on the United States should not be overlooked.  Many of the slaves who ended up in Louisiana had already spent time in the Caribbean. At the same time, there are lighter skinned, White passing Latinos. There are many Mexicans with blond hair and blue eyes. And there are of course brown Latinas/os — Latinas/os who are both and somehow neither. Latina/o is already a mix that cannot be extrapolated, bifurcated, or divided, without undo pain by the terms “White” or “Black.” It may be both. It may be one. It may be neither. The term cannot be separated from a complicated biology, history, and culture.

As Latinas/os, our very existence, then, seems to undermine black and white categorical thinking. Brown bounces, slips, doesn’t hold still, changes in the light, and is contingent on what one is standing next to. It may be imbued in performativity. Or language. Or history.

There are far are more questions than answers. If Latinos in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean came about through years of mixing, then where does “the mixed race” lay as a discrete race? What of the African influences on Latinos, because of the slave trade throughout the Western hemisphere and the world, from Virginia to Argentina? And it gets even more complex as we consider biracial people of Latino descent—are they not mixes of mixes? Latina/o seems mixed all the way down. Delving at these questions demystifies racial thinking, getting at more accurate accounts of peoples’ histories, undermining race as discrete phenotypic thinking. And when we add performativity to the conversation it changes and complicates Latina/o even further, troubling essentialist static notions of race. The term is already immersed in a confluence with performativity and other factors. That is, skin itself is already between, already mutable, changing according to history, context. Sure it’s contingent on who your parents are and who your parents aren’t. Or where you stand in the family photo...Café con leche like coffee mixed with milk. Piel Morena o peil Blanca, dark skin y light skin, Aztec noses or African noses, Blond hair and blue-eyed Mexicans, Light-Skinned Mulattos. It’s Afro Mestizaje in the Caribbean. African Creoles in New Orleans. Mestizaje is the process of mixing and thus a slippery-ness must be part of “Latina/o.”

The space between—Latinidad, my Mexican-ness, my biracial identity, California-Illinois, metaphor, and mestizaje (hybridity in the Mexican context)—is a very rich concept for my dissertation and for my identity literally and figuratively. I want to continue to embrace knowledge at the intersections of race, space, landscape, metaphor, poetry, personal narrative and performative writing. I want to stick between.

                                             

Works Cited 

Calafell, Bernadette Marie and Shane T. Moreman. “Envisioning an academic readership: Latina/o Performativities per the form of Publication.” Spec issue of Text and Performance Quarterly 29.2 (2009): 123-130. Print. 

Calafell, Bernadette Marie. “Transforming Landscapes through Performance: ‘Y Soy Chicana/o’in the New Latina/o South.”Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. 13-51. Print.

Cevallos, Diego. “Latin America: Afro-Descendants Marginalized and Ignored.” Inter Press Service News Industry. 19 May 2005. Web. 30 April 2011.

Chávez, Karma R. “Remapping Latinidad: A Performance Cartography of Latina/o Identity in Rural Nebraska.” Spec. issue of Text and Performance Quarterly 29. 2 (2009): 165-82. Print.

Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press, 2001. Print.

Viramontes, Adrienne. On Becoming Chicana in the Calumet Region: A Phenomenolog of Decolonization. Diss. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. 2005. Print.

Post Tenure Blues

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an essay, "Why Are Associate Professors So Unhappy?" A similar piece was also run by Inside Higher Ed. As someone who has been tenured for a little more than three years the pieces resonated with me. In the last few years I have been making an uneasy transition between junior scholar/colleague to more seasoned (note I did not say senior) or mid-career scholar/colleague. It's a position or feeling I am still trying to get used to, but I feel more and more as I am now a department chair and am continually working with doctoral students who are now the up and comers. Part of the uneasiness of this position lies in the question of what's next. For me, I hope what's next is full professor and a sabbatical. What's next is working with my students to continue to make them competitive and marketable in an increasingly cut throat job market.

Last night as I tried to fall asleep I thought about the things I have learned almost ten years after I graduated from my doctoral program. I suffer from insomnia so I often have a lot of time to think about these things. These are the things I have learned that make this associate professor unhappy. This is not based on any "scientific experience," only on my experiences in the academy. I have written about several of these things in my research already so I'll try not to be too redundant.

1. The generic straight white rhetoric guy wins out nine out of ten times unless a department thinks they can hire you to solve their "diversity problems." Again, this is based on my experience as someone has who has been on the job market off and on for almost ten years . But this really hit home for me recently when I applied for a job at the assistant/associate level that was open to several areas of my expertise. I had an phone interview which I thought went well and was surprised to learn I would not be invited for a campus interview (nor would any other person of color for that matter). I do not expect to get every job I apply for so that's okay. However, when I learned that a certain rhetorician who had beaten me for a job when we were both on the market in 2003, who then didn't get tenure at that job, was invited for an interview it felt like a slap in the face. I'm tenured and have done okay for myself, so it hurt a little. I also know that more often than not, whether we acknowledge it, departments want colleagues that they can feel comfortable with and often comfort comes in the form of sameness (i.e. whiteness or straightness). It could also be that both times I was passed over because I am an ass. It could also be that this individual is just so exceptional and ahead of his time that no one has yet been able to recognize his greatness. That could be a possibility, but I also think we have to at least consider how whiteness and what is valued in terms of research might factor into this.

A second part of this statement is to be wary of departments that are overly enthusiastic about your Otherness. This may be a red flag. Sometimes a department has had a history of problems around race, gender, and sexuality, and they naively think the way to change this is to hire a person of color (as if we magically transform a space with our presences like unicorns) or the university puts the pressure on them to do so. Again, let's not change any ideological or structural inequalities, because your body will heal them all! Unrealistic demands are placed on us and we often end up in toxic environments.

2. A university would rather lose money on faculty turnover than actually deal with a racist, sexist, homophobic faculty. The better bet in their minds to wait for him (yes I said him purposefully because most often it is a him) to retire than deal with tarnishing their public image. This is especially the case for private universities and when the perpetrator is tenured.  It doesn't matter how many years a pattern is established and how many witnesses are brought in. You, as the queer untenured woman of color and/or your white woman colleagues, are expendable. Hopefully, eventually the change you pushed for will happen and someone else can benefit from it. Be prepared. Once you blow the whistle the quality of your life at the university will decrease even more than you thought it could before (as if that was possible), and it is a safe bet you will not want to stay at your university. Colleagues' well meaning comments like, "Well they have to give you tenure now," do little to comfort you. Be prepared for post-traumatic stress when you leave. Be prepared to be constructed as problematic by former colleagues and friends as they attempt to salvage the image of their department.  Very few people will understand your experience and may often think you are whining or place blame on you for the situation.

3. Standpoint critiques, critiques based in intersectionality, or identities are often viewed as passe, politically incorrect, and seen as self-serving by many. These critiques that push hegemonic critical theory further and implicate the critic are read as naive and problematic rather than based in any movement for social justice. The idea that those who have less power have a more accurate view of how power works is not popular. Postracism isn't just a discourse we toss out to talk about what's happening in society. How about we turn an eye inward?

4. The academy can be a lonely place especially for queer and/or people of color. Our presence is small and our allies are fewer. Being an ally means really being there and putting your body on the line as well. I have been blessed to have known some powerful white women allies in  the academy. I was reminded of the importance of allies today when I met with one. These relationships offer renewal, hope, and love. Don't assume that folks who are also Others in the academy will be of like mind, especially when they have male or heterosexual privilege(s) that they refuse to recognize.

5. Building off of number four, you need to set boundaries, otherwise you can get hurt. I have written in the past about the politics of love and vulnerability, but be careful of those who would exploit this vulnerability. A woman of color colleague from another university and I were talking about some problematic interactions with graduate students of color. One of her friends mentioned that a student sought her help, but then did not include her on her committee because she was not "whitely" known. Basically the student had used the woman of color faculty who had invested so much time in him/her and then decided to have a white faculty who was more celebrated in academic circles (by other white academics) on his/her committee. All of this work the woman had done counted toward nothing and was simply the extra service that many of us already do. To add insult to injury is when this happens and the student continues to come to you for help.

I realize that this sounds kind of depressing at this moment, so perhaps it is best to close out this post. Hopefully I haven't depressed you or pissed you off too much. There are plenty of good things in the academy, but once in a while we gotta take stock of where we are. Almost ten years after graduation here's where I am. Chalk this up to the post tenure blues.

Being Honest to One’s Students and One’s Self

This is a topic that has plagued my mind and my pedagogical experiences for as long as I’ve been teaching. I am a Hispanic female, and my culture of course influences my views of the world, the ways I teach, and the topics I integrate into course materials. At this point, I’ve taught at three different institutions, two of which have high concentrations of minority students. The other, the institution where I currently teach, is composed of predominantly white students. At my other two institutions, I identified with many of my students and felt right at home. At this institution, I often feel like an outsider when interacting with students and teaching them, and I am still trying to figure out how to deal with that.

How important is identifying with students? How does it affect your teaching?

Enter: a student who was in one of my classes last year. She identified as a Mexican-American and was from my hometown. On the first day of class, she came up to me and told me, “Ms. H., I’m so excited to be in your class. As soon as I saw your name on the roster, I instantly signed up for your class.” “Thank you!” I responded, and proceeded to ask why she chose my class in particular. “Well, to be honest, Ms. H., you have a Mexican last name. That’s why.” I was stunned. This was the first time a student told me that s/he chose my class because of my last name, and I’m assuming the look on my face spoke wonders because she followed up with, “I’ve never had a Hispanic professor here. I knew that, if nothing else, at least I would feel comfortable with you.”

Fast forward to the middle of the semester. She comes up to me after class and tells me, with a tremble in her voice and sadness on her face, about her experiences at our institution. “Ms. H., I feel lonely here. I don’t fit in, I don’t belong, I have hardly any Mexican friends, I can’t find my culture anywhere, and people give me dirty looks and sometimes treat me like an outsider. I know you got your master’s at UH – what’s their undergraduate program like? I’m thinking about transferring. I know I’ll fit in more there.” I wish I would’ve had time to prepare a better response. I was torn. Part of me wanted to tell her to stick it out, that hopefully she would find more people here with whom she could identify and that hopefully her time here would get better. The other part of me, though, wanted to tell her to transfer as fast as she could because yes, this institution and this city sometimes do not feel very welcoming to minorities and that I felt the same way she did. Coming from a city rich with different cultures, it was quite a shock to come here, where I’m part of the minority and where students tell me, “Oh, you’re Hispanic, Ms. H? I thought Hernandez was your husband’s last name. I thought you were white” or “Wow Ms. H., I don’t know very many Hispanic people who are getting PhD’s.” Well, why should it matter what color I am and what my cultural background is? Frustrating.

I talked it out with my student and told her that I often felt the same way she does and that hopefully it would get better. She asked me how I cope, and I told her that my cohort, my professors, and my department created a very welcoming and diverse atmosphere that made me feel right at home. I suggested that she do the same – try to seek out like-minded people, regardless of their race/ethnicity, and to make a home here with people who made her feel welcomed and comfortable.

I struggled with my response for a while, as I did not know if it was the right thing to tell her. Was it even my place to divulge such information about how I’m very saddened at times by the unwelcoming culture here? Should I put on a straight face and pretend that racial/ethnic differences are not a problem here? Was it right of me to somewhat convince her to stay, considering I knew that staying could potentially mean more terrible experiences? I’m not trying to villainize this institution or this city by any means – that’s not my intent. There are many wonderful people here who look past cultural differences and do not make an issue out of them. However, I can’t deny that being a minority here is sometimes a very difficult and exhausting experience.

At the end of the semester, she never told me what her decision was, and I didn’t hear from her again.

Fast forward to a few months ago: I see her at the library with a friend, and she looks very happy. I’m relieved that she stayed, and I’m relieved that she looked like she was enjoying herself. As soon as she saw me, she gave me a hug and thanked me for such a wonderful class and for talking with her about this topic.

Friends and colleagues, if you’re affiliated with an institution that might not be very welcoming to your culture or your ethnicity, how do you cope? Do you have students who often express these same feelings of “outsider-ness” with you, and how do you respond? I've been to countless diversity meetings and mini-seminars--which are helpful, don't get me wrong--but they don't exactly "teach" you how to have these difficult conversations with students. I’m asking because, at this very moment, I still have Hispanic/Latino students who approach me with these same issues and topics, and the conversations don’t get any easier. I adore my students and truly love working with them. I feel like being dishonest with them is the same as being dishonest with myself.

Thoughts are appreciated. J

-Lea

On Mentoring and Love: Thanking Whom?

Mentoring for my students has saved my career. Bernadette Calafell (2007), in her piece “Mentoring and Love: An Open Letter,” writes about the mentoring relationship that saved her career as a tenure-track faculty member within a white dominated institution. This mentoring relationship reminded me of my own feelings of love for my students, and the ways that they allow me to remain a whole person in their presence. By whole person, I mean that I do not have to leave any of my identities at the door. I can be a gay husband, a critical educator, a shaman, a Xicano, a writer, or whatever. Shane Moreman and Persona Non Grata (2011) are a perfect example of the mentoring relationship that I wish to have with my students. In this powerful example of “theories in the flesh,” Moreman, a tenure-track professor at Fresno State University, and Persona Non Grata, an undocumented graduate student, utilize their mentor-mentee relationship to give voice to Persona’s story, which typically would be excluded from academia because of her lack of documentation combined with the real fear of deportation that this political status holds. This work exemplifies the type of teacher I wish to be--one that empowers, supports, yet heals as well. Through autobiographical performance and performative writing, I explore four mentor relationships that I have recently (re)/(dis)entered into thus continuing and complicating the conversation on mentoring and love by questioning: who should thank whom?

I am sitting at my desk with a former Portuguese female student from my very first public speaking class at San José State University. She is beaming and bubbly just like I remember her, yet she is different. She is almost a senior now, and as a communication studies major, she must interview a faculty member from the department about how to be successful with this particular degree. I can tell she has been looking forward to this, and to be honest, I have too. She has kept in touch with most of the class and weaves in their current statuses alongside her questions. So and so is doing great, and he or she is struggling in his/her major. The interview quickly turns into a dialogue as we each move from question to laughter to answer to clarifying question to fond memories to career development. She is still working with my high school buddy at a local restaurant--"he hasn’t told you anything about my past has he?" Her familiar laugh rings and reverberates more memories from that first semester teaching. Inside my head, I laugh at myself because I was her at one point, and now I am on the other side of this type of relationship of love. Is this how my mentors felt? 

Another day, another month, I am back at my desk with another student. This Asian-American male with glasses and a great smile has been warning me for weeks via email and in person that he was coming to interview me. In fact, two days ago, I found him sitting outside this very office waiting for me just to say that he forgot his microphone and would like to reschedule. He didn’t want to insult me by handwriting my answers in note form. He is nervous. He is intimidated but laser-focused on his task. He frames the interview: “I wanted to interview you because I look at you like a mentor. Before I took your class, I was really shy but hearing you say that you were always nervous really help me open up, so when I got this assignment, I thought of you.” I hear his words but have trouble connecting them to my own body. Me? Why would anyone want me to be their mentor? I remember this student well. He visited me in office hours that first week of class last semester--he was nervous then too. He didn’t think he could pass this class, but he did with an excellent grade (for those that care about those arbitrary things) by demonstrating excellent speaking progress and determination to succeed. I’m not sure how to proceed. Was that really me? “I have to disagree... I may have helped but it wasn’t me that did this... it was always you.”

I’m tired. Like Bilbo Baggins of the Shire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, I feel stretched thin like butter over too much toast, but still, I agreed to two interviews with two former students to help them satisfy assignments for their courses. She is up first and wearing her Latina-identity much differently than I remembered. It is not confidence but purpose that holds her voice stronger and clearer. She wants to know about my activism and how I have pushed back because she remembers protesting with me against the 11th straight student fee hike for California State University students and their families. She has switched majors to communication studies, which is why she now has to interview me. She wants to help her community; she wants to dream about Xicana/o success, yet I hesitate because "when faced with the faces of the next generation of Latina/os, how can we honestly repeat the same mantra that the previous generation said to us? Isn’t it a lie?" (Gutierrez, 2012, p. 6). I see her face change when I tell her that I am heading to the very fringes of Aztlán to get my doctoral degree, so--I can’t be her mentor. I cringe at the irony that building more Latina/o educational pipelines means leaving my community to get a doctoral degree. He’s been listening at the doorway from the linoleum floor. My department is publishing a newsletter, and as the only M.A. graduate student heading to a doctoral program after graduation, my former Filipino student currently a 2nd semester freshman was tasked to interview me. Always brave, he literally scared me that Fall 2011 Halloween with his vampire steel contacts and dark suited costume meant to blend in with the humans to catch us off guard. He is wearing different contacts now and are those diamond earrings? He is my adviser’s assistant, and using that relationship, we reconnect and I am honest with my answers about my graduate experiences as a working-class, queer Xicano male. He can’t believe I’m leaving as he leaves me, and as I write this, I feel vulnerable. Am I really hoping that my disclosures within this mentoring relationship do not end up on the front of the department newsletter? How am I put at risk by mentoring from a place of love?

Mentoring is a huge responsibility for both participants. Like Calafell and Moreman, a mentoring relationship is about love, but for a person of color, it is often about survival. Persona Non Grata needed Moreman to survive in the academy just as much as Moreman needed her. Calafell (2011) reminds us that when it comes to mentoring "the ways people come into our lives, impact us, and in some ways serve as mentors whether we know it or not" are not always controllable. These scholarly works mirror my own lived experience in that my students are often the only people-of-color I interact with in a single day. They listen to my stories of higher education gaps and understand my feelings of being trapped in a system that doesn’t want to hear our voices. Sometimes, it feels like crawling naked over miles of broken glass. When I talk about my husband or my feelings surrounding gender, their eyes do not glaze over and their mouths react inquisitively. Such as, when issues like whiteness or (dis)ability enter the classroom dialogue, they do not push me or each other out of the space but honestly try to grapple with the concepts. In many ways, I am more impressed with them than I am with many of my colleagues in graduate school. No, I cannot stop crawling even if my stomach is leaking entrails and my arms and legs are boney stumps. When I look back, I see my trail of blood cutting a winding path through a scintillating landscape of jagged failed dreams. Is that one of my students I see crawling back there too? Are they using my bloody path to navigate their lives? Like a fish, my muscles spasm sending me flopping forward another stabbing inch. I cannot stop--my students need me.

References

Calafell, B. M. (2007). Mentoring and love: An open letter. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 7(4), 425-441.


Calafell, B. M. (2011 August 6). On the importance of mentors and friends [blog post]. AcademicZ. Retrieved from http://academicz.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-importance-of-mentors-and-friends.html


Gutierrez, R. M. (2012 April 6). Xicana/o communication pedagogy: Theorizing an agenda. Xicana/o Graduate Council Spring 2012 Newsletter. Retrieved from http://www.sjsu.edu/mas/docs/xgc_newsletter_spring2012.pdf

Moreman, S. T. & Persona Non Grata. (2011) Learning from and mentoring the undocumented AB540 student: Hearing an unheard voice. Text and Performance Quarterly, 31(3), 303-320.

Excuse me, Perdón. And other translations

I have become so keenly aware of my difference.  Who would've thought it could be greater?  As a ten-year-old Chilean immigrant girl, I worked so hard to lose my "otherness."  I watched hours of American TV sitcoms, adopted the mannerisms, accents, and sarcasm.  I "whitened" or Americanized more than my siblings did, at least at first.  I studied and learned English so well so I could know it as well as all the other kids in my grade--I needed to be their equal.  I became "Beni" since they couldn't say name.  I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to accept me and make myself as "normal" as possible so I wouldn't stand out--you know, in middle school when standing out was a bad thing.

Even though I worked so hard to "be like them," I realize I will never be one of them.  Little things over time hinted at it.  There are things that I just can't express as well in English, some memories and feelings that are more potent and beautiful in Spanish.

When I became a citizen, I was expected to forsake my country for the United States.  But how can they not understand?  El amor que se trae en la sangre no se puede borrar.  You can't have a Bloody Mary without the tomato juice in it.

(just bear with my metaphors, please).

In the end... even if I am now a United States citizen, I am still different.

"Naturalized," not "natural born."  The difference remains.

While those words can define it concretely, the difference as I have come to recognize vividly in grad school comes from life and lived experience, in moments, emotions, relationships and people.  What I have come to understand is that I was born into and grew up with a completely different dictionary and encyclopedia of world experiences that make sense of my life and my world.  

Those around me who have not lived that experience do not understand me.  I live life differently.  I form relationships differently.  I value work and family and friends and my time differently.  Touch and actual contact are part of my livelihood.  I communicate and connect and survive through relationships and emotional exchanges with those I am close to.  My family is equivalent to the blood running through my veins.  And a delicious meal can literally make me dance.  (Cuban coffee, sweet plantains, manjar—where was I?  Ah yes…).

Translation has become a constant part of my existence as I try to explain myself, my experiences, my stories to those around me.  And it is no stranger to the academic world.

As far as I can see, it is our burden as Latina/o Communication Studies scholars to explain ourselves, excuse ourselves, give reason for ourselves.  If I am wrong in this, I ask that you tell me so!  As readers, people need to be compelled by something in order to engage it.  In some form it must matter, or relate, or affect them.

Currently, I feel like the drop of oil in an ocean of water.  I’m here.  I’m floating.  I’m hanging out.  I am seen.  But no one is absorbing me.  Or worst yet, I’ve swallowed one of El Chapulín Colorado’s Pastillas de Chiquitolina’s and I am Lilliputian in stature, and it doesn’t matter how much I flail my arms.  I am still just a spec of dust in the grand scheme of the academic world.  Who cares?! I’m just another minority group trying to talk about my subaltern experience.  What’s new?!

I guess in the end what I am finding—and I apologize for my nihilistic perspective.  Maybe it’s because it’s April (taxes, you know)—is that that difference I am facing all too often becomes equivalent to feeling insignificant, ignored, unimportant.  Too different to be concerned with.  Etc., etc.

So what say you, internets?  Any hope to spare for a novice academic?

~ BMYV