Black Woman Professor, by T. O.

Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 Reflections of a Black Woman Professor: Racism and Sexism in Academia By Tracey Owens Patton ABSTRACT This essay examines the interdependence of racism and sexism in academia. To frame the discussion, the theory of articulation coupled with hegemony was used. The narrative examples cited in this article illustrate a White supremacist hegemonic structure supported in academe. The essay explicates and illuminates issues of marginalization in academia because it increases awareness about interlocking systems of domination in academia at the microlevel, and in doing so, exposes important meanings of marginalization at the macro level. Further, salient intersections between discourse and hegemony are critically analyzed because the role communicative interactions play in articulating the experiences of marginality become primary.

Key words: Articulation, Borders, Hegemony, Marginalization, Racism, Sexism, White supremacy Dr. Tracey Owens Patton (Ph.D. University of Utah) is Assistant Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at University of Wyoming. Her main interests involve critical intercultural communication, interracial representation, and rhetorical studies. Her research focuses on the interdependence between race, gender, and power and how these issues interrelate culturally in education, media, and speeches. The author thanks the editor, Dr. Jill Bystydzienski, and Samuel Patton for their helpful comments.

The outsider-within position (P. H. Collins, 1986) is often an appropriate descriptor and phrase for women in general and non-Euro American women in particular who work in academe. The outsider-within descriptor aptly denotes and calls attention to the continued prevalence of interlocking systems of domination in academia and the multiple ways dominance is enacted on university campuses. During the last decade numerous scholars have written about their dis/enchantment with the academy, and Communication Theory (1999) devoted a journal

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200

issue to the subject, yet dis/enchantment continues to exist in academe. The most disturbing facet of this acknowledgement is that marginalization continues to flourish despite attempts to transform the academy. In this essay, I discuss the interdependence of racism and sexism in academe. To frame the discussion, I rely on the theory of articulation coupled with hegemony. I recount some of my experiences in academe to explicate and illuminate issues of marginalization in academia. The examples cited in this manuscript illustrate a White supremacist hegemony at the University. My recounting of my experiences is not intended to represent or reflect the experiences of other Black women or non-white women at largely Euro American universities. Rather, this analysis seeks to dig much deeper; this article adds to the ongoing conversation other scholars have undertaken thus far. I seek to contribute to this area of research by turning scholarly attention toward the hegemonic reproduction involved in the maintenance of marginalization regarding racism and sexism in academe. I hope to advance a productive critical analysis through critically analyzing constructions of disenchantment in academe. The significance of this analysis is that it increases awareness about interlocking systems of domination in academia at the microlevel, and in doing so, exposes important meanings of marginalization at the macro level. Further, salient intersections between discourse and hegemony are critically analyzed because the role communicative interactions play in articulating the experiences of marginality become primary. To this end, I begin with an overview of the importance of the theory of articulation. The remainder of the article is divided into three sections: enchantment, disenchantment, and re-articulation. Narrative examples (found

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 in the disenchantment section) are from my experiences as a multiracial Black1 woman in

academia and are critically analyzed through the lens of the theory of articulation and hegemony. The Theory of Articulation and Hegemony The theory of articulation provides us with the means of critiquing language, discourse, and power. The theory of articulation is inextricably linked with and wedded to hegemony. As Asante (1998) notes Speech is itself a political actWhenever one categorizes society in an effort to make concepts functional, one makes a choice among possibilities. Making a choice among possibilities creates cleavages that benefit some to the disadvantage of others. Through a choice in language and action, maintenance of the current white supremacist hegemonic order becomes intertwined in the most intricate patterns of our conversation and language. (p. 87-88) The enactment of agency with regard to language choice and action becomes a subjective choiceto maintain the status quo or use language that produces actions that challenge the current hegemonic order. The reproduction of hegemony is itself not solely a problem of color, but also a historical conceptual framework based upon values granted to particular racial categories (Asante, 1998) and values granted to particular language and action choices. Therefore, while White supremacy may be a function of the institutional structure, it maintains its naturalization because individuals through their articulation and enactment of hegemony perpetuate marginalization. This enactment of hegemony can take the form of the dissemination of symbols and acts or speech itself (p. 89). In other words, a conception of so-called reality takes place within the institution whether it is through action, language, or thought. Therefore, an institutionalized social framework becomes naturalized, reified, and unquestioned. As Slack (1997) explains,

Black is used as an encompassing term to include both Africans and African Americans. This term is particularly important because not all Black Americans claim African ancestry.

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 Epistemologically, articulation is a way of thinking the structures of what we know as a play of correspondences, non-correspondences and contradictions, as fragments in the constitution of what we take to be unities. Politically, articulation is a way of foregrounding the structure and play of power that entail in relations of dominance and subordination. Strategically, articulation provides a mechanism for shaping intervention within a particular social formation, conjuncture or context. (p. 112) The theory of articulation requires an examination of the configuration of power in any social

condition, and through which people or institutions advance or defend their interests and devise tactics and strategies appropriate to their aims (Fiske, 1996, p. 67). In other words, people must examine the complicitousness through which they defend their action and language choices. Language is intertwined with articulation because socially constructed knowledge, language, and action shape the present situation and the status quo which, in turn, have the power to shape the individual and the institution and to reinforce the hegemonic order (Hall, 1997). In higher education, as W. R. Allen (1992) argued, there are numerous barriers that, collectively, ensure that a status quo rooted in an unfair system of racial stratification is reproduced within the university (p. 42). Among these barriers are culturally and economically biased standardized tests, administration and faculty that is largely White male, high tuition costs and low financial aid programs, an emphasis on competition, and little cultural pluralism and diversity. W. R. Allen stated that the nations colleges and universities seem to be not only content with, but committed to, the current system of structured inequality, a system in which African Americans [and other ethnic minorities] suffer grievously (p. 42). Change in higher education and in pedagogy, W. R. Allen noted, will only come when universities feel more responsibility to change and challenge the current status quo: If we fail to respond creatively and effectively to this challenge, not only will history judge us harshly, but this country will also continue to suffer the negative consequences, such as the loss of its competitive edge in the world market, that have resulted from its failure to develop fully and utilize the talents of all its people, without regard to race, gender, or class. (p. 43)

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 Whether intentionally or not, universities can signal their collusion with maintaining the White supremacist hegemonic order even as it articulates itself as open and is often polemically known as liberal due to complicitous language and actions that on the surface appear to address hegemony, however, upon closer inspection, they ultimately maintain it (Patton, 2004). Dziech and Hawkins (1998) believe that whether it is an extension of or a reaction against its history, an institutions present always reflects its past, and that past influences [marginalized bodies] profoundly (p. 560). To challenge hegemonic concerns, academia must be ever evolving. Discourses are ways of constituting knowledge or truth. Through discourse people make meaning and make sense of their everyday world. As people

communicate about their social world they create and construct truths. According to Deetz and Mumby (1990), this process of communicating necessarily takes place in the context of power relations. As these scholars showed, communication and how it is structured can reify and restructure hegemony. In their view, communication can be said to function ideologically in that it produces and reproduces (i.e., legitimates) a particular structure of power relations (i.e., systems of interests) to the arbitrary exclusion of other possible configurations of interests (p. 42). Thus a constant power struggle ensues because communication occurs in the context of hegemonic relations. Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci (1992), who first described hegemony, argued in his 1920 essay Notes on the Southern Question that, the proletariat in Italy could only become the leading or dominant ruling class insofar as it, leads the allied classes [and] dominates the opposing classes (p. 136). The notion of hegemony was expounded by Gramsci to include all classes, not just the proletariat alone. As Gledhill (1997) explained, Since power in a bourgeois democracy is as much a matter of persuasion and consent as of force, it is never secured once and for all. Any dominant group has to a greater or

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 lesser degree to acknowledge the existence of those whom it dominates by winning the consent of competing or marginalized groups in society. Unlike the fixed grip over society implied by domination, hegemony is won in the to-and-fro of negotiation between competing social, political and ideological forces through which power is contested, shifted or reformed. Representation is a key site in such struggle, since the power of definition is a major source of hegemony. (p. 348) According to Patton (2004), Earlier constructions of the hegemonic order reified Euro Americans as the center (most often Euro American males) and marginalized anyone who deviated from that hegemonically supported standard. Currently, the racial hegemonic order continues to support the belief of Euro Americans at the center. However, through the negotiation process other marginalities have been recognized: class, gender, and sexuality. (p. 67) Omi and Winant (1994) find that, Race, class, gender (as well as sexual orientation) constitute regions of hegemony, areas in which certain political projects can take shape. They share certain obvious attributes in that they are all socially constructed, and they all consist of a field of projects whose common feature is their linkage of social structure and signification. (p. 68)

Fairclough (1998) believed that hegemony is socially constructed and supported. Hegemony, as much as leadership, can also be thought of as domination across the economic, political, cultural, and ideological domains of a society (p. 92). Fairclough echoed Omi and Winant (1994), claiming, Hegemony is a focus of constant struggle around points of greatest instability between classes and blocs, to construct or sustain or fracture alliances and relations of domination/subordination, which takes economic, political and ideological forms. (p. 92) This hegemonic hierarchy as Omi and Winant describe seems to be supported through the power of centered groups. Centered groups have the power to retain and maintain the hegemonic order [and] have the power to mark, classify, assign, and represent those others (Patton, 2000, p. 62).

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 These hegemonic dualities or dichotomies operate at such a deep level as to appear normal or naturalized. The dualisms that dominate Western tradition started with

the Enlightenment and coincided with European expansionism [and] it is correlated precisely with new forms of oppressionPlato and Descartes both built their epistemologies expressly to deal with the pressures on local belief brought to bear by contact with other culturesto find permanent, objective truths that would counteract the influx of truths from alien cultures. (Sartwell, 1998, p. 118) The European and American use of Enlightenment epistemologies have been used to rationalize and justify colonialism, expansionism, exploitation of third world labor, the slave trade and has been used to sustain and relocate rather than eradicate an order of racial difference inherited from the premodern era (Gilroy, 1996, p. 49). Dualism threatens the university, because it is framed by the dominant hegemonic paradigm that we have inherited from European and American history. Hegemony, therefore, can only be understood in its constant attempt to restructure and refigure its strengths and weaknesses, and in its continual attempt to recuperate forms of resistance that are as ongoing as they are different (Giroux, 1993, p. 37). Academicians who struggle against current constructions of hegemony, particularly as they concern the interdependent representations of racism and sexism, may find that these three regions of oppression culminate into interlocking systems of domination that provide for a chilly climate in academe. According to P. H. Collins (1991), race, class, and gender may not be the most fundamental or important systems of oppression, but they have most profoundly affected African-American women (p. 227). Interlocking systems of domination refer to the fact that systems of oppression class, gender, race, and sexual orientationare interdependent. Often it is the current U.S. hegemonic order which insists upon the either/or beliefyou are either oppressed because you are a woman

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 or because you are an ethnic minority. Interlocking systems of domination take into account the interdependent nature of oppression through a both/and or dialectical perspectiveyou are a

woman and an ethnic minority and a lesbian who may be oppressed. Depending on the situation, all groups have varying amounts of privilege and marginalization afforded to them. Additionally, a person can be both an oppressor and oppressed (e.g., a poor White woman; an upper class Asian woman, etc.). Therefore, through interlocking systems of domination hegemony is challenged. However, despite these interlocking systems of domination, resistance to ones marginalization, multiple identity, and oppression is often discounted and reduced to an either/or dichotomy. At the borderland of womanhood stand women of color, the double bind2, and the outsider-within. A. C. Collins (2001) contended that at the intersection of race and gender stand women of color, torn by the lines of bias that currently divide white from non white in our society, and male from female (p. 29). As I attempt to challenge the hegemonic structure by critiquing it, I am using language that reifies it through the terminology of border, center, and margin. I implicitly re-privilege hegemony because I am trapped by a discursive cycle that makes it difficult to de-center the status of the privileged class. I am using this rhetorical contradiction to navigate a world that does not often include me. Enchantment Academe has at least statistically become a more ethnically diverse institution. For example a slight increase in ethnic minority professors has occurred. In 1992, 13.5 percent of all

According to Frye (2001) one of the most ubiquitous features of the world as experienced by oppressed people is the double bindsituations in which options are reduced to a very few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure, or deprivation (p. 49). In this paper, the double bind specifically refers to women who are also ethnic minorities. Because of this double marginality ethnic minority women are often put into a bind, particularly within discussions of race and gender because of an either/or mentality that is produceddoes a woman fight against sexism or racism? Is it possible to fight against both successfully? Often one issue is prioritized over the other (Patton, 2004, p. 86).

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200

university professors were of ethnic minority (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2000b). In 1999, about 14% of U.S. faculty in colleges and universities were minorities. Less than 1% were American Indian/Alaskan Native; 5.8% Asian/Pacific Islander; 5.1% Black; and 3.3% Hispanic (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2000a). Sixty-four percent of faculty were males and 36% were female (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2000b). African American female professors comprised 2.6% of all faculty (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2000c); this is an increase from 1% in 1994 (Sadker, 1994). Overall there was a slight increase in ethnic minority professors in general, however, there has been a 0.1% drop in African American professors. Despite the small increase with African American women, I am an outsider-within. As an outsider-within, I am often the only Black person in the department, and usually the only Black female in the department. I am the most visible invisible person in my department. My presence, however, does more than check a few boxes for administrators. My presence signals that in this ivory tower there are and always have been pioneers in academia who have come before me. My presence paves the way for other women and women of color who will come after me. Further, I am given the chance to give backto give back to all of those who encouraged me. I am given the opportunity to work for the betterment of all. I am enchanted with the idea that academe is a harbor, a place to pursue ones research. Academe is a place to exchange ideas in the pursuit of ontological and epistemological development. My enchantment is not different from that of others. B. J. Allen et al. (1999) noted the enchantment of others: We were or are enchanted with the promise of the academy as a market place for the exchange of diverse ideas, and sometimes we have experienced such exchanges, with exciting and affirming consequencesOur discipline holds the omnipresent potential to have long-term, positive effects on peoples lives regarding matters of difference (p. 403).

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 It is this attractive seduction that academe holds for me: the opportunities to pursue my

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passion, disseminate knowledge, and engage with my students, peers, and colleagues. However, I am not immune to the negative or disenchanting aspects of academe. During my lifetime pursuit of education, I have experienced attempts at racial tracking, invisibility in the classroom, and many other common experiences of the ethnic minority student. As a professor I continue to experience a chilly climate, isolation, prejudice, racism, sexism, silence, and lack of mentorship and lack of supportive colleagues. As B. J. Allen et al. (1999) found, the source of our disenchantment lies within the idealism associated with institutions of higher learning. We are attracted to a profession and discipline that inherently promises an openness to studying and teaching difference, yet more often than not falls short of this promise (p. 403). Disenchantment A slight increase in women and ethnic minority female professors does not remedy issues of racism and sexism in academe; particularly if there is no challenge to current marginalized issues and concepts surrounding hegemony (e.g., lack of discussions of current U.S. racial hegemony). Often it is believed that universities are institutions that embrace diversity in terms of different beliefs, ethnicities, lifestyles, and perspectives. However, this rhetoric is only true so long as it serves to protect the White supremacist patriarchal hegemonic order (hooks, 1984). Rather than the university being a place to explore diversity and to embrace diversity, universities often become complicitous in domination and oppression. According to Wellman (1999), Border academics are troublesome to university culture because their crossings reveal borders that are otherwise invisible. Border crossers expose borders that universities refuse to recognize and deny guarding. Boarder academicians are double-trouble for the university. When they are not revealing borders, they expose the conflated character of other categories. (p. 90)

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 My presence and experiences along with other marginalized voices shift the experience of the

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marginalized to the center. It is through this shifting that the effects of hegemony become visible. Race, Racism, Womanhood and the Borderland Boundaries differ from borderlands in many significant ways. Boundaries define the borders of nations, territories, imaginations, and communities (Cottle, 2000). Boundaries mark out the limits of place, space, and territory. Boundaries serve to maintain hegemony because boundaries by design are to include or exclude, and have the ability to shape social relations. What makes boundaries even more insidious is the fact that because of the Black/White binary one is either an outsider or an insiderboundaries can become deeply entrenched and thus common sense. Cottle (2000) described the process through which boundaries become entrenched: Once institutionally sedimented and taken for granted, these boundaries all too often harden into exclusionary barriers legitimized by cultural beliefs, ideologies and representations. In such ways, the marginalized and the excluded can become ontologically disenfranchised from humanity, misrecognized as Other, exploited and oppressed, in extremis, vulnerable to systematic, lethal violence. (p. 2) We have seen these boundaries enacted in numerous ways: American Apartheid (segregation), education, glass ceiling, golf courses, internment camps, and office boardrooms to name a few. Borders, on the other hand, can be crossed. The fact that borders are crossable, does not mean that hegemony is not employed. Rather, sometimes people on the margins are allowed to cross if it serves the needs of those in the center. One common example of this is the U.S. feminist movement. Numerous scholars studied the feminist movement in detail. However, it is fair to say that even though most women experienced some form of gender discrimination not all were allowed to participate in the feminist movement in the same way. For example, some women felt that the feminist movement

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was only concerned with the problems of bourgeois, well educated, White women. hooks (1984) illustrated this border-crossing when she stated, The condescension they [white women] directed at black women was one of the means they employed to remind us that the womens movement was theirsthat we were able to participate because they allowed it, even encouraged it; after all, we were needed to legitimate the process. They did not see us as equals. They did not treat us as equals. And though they expected us to provide first hand accounts of black experiences, they felt it was their role to decide if these experiences were authentic (p. 11). This example illustrates that while the feminist movement was constructed as a movement for the betterment of all women, Black women were allowed to cross a socially-constructed White womans movement so long as their border-crossing benefited the needs and desires of the centered groupfinancially secure White women. This is similar to how women academicians were allowed to border-cross into the ivory tower. But the experiences for non-White women are not the same in academe. According to Gregory (1999) in her book detailing Black womens experiences in academe, African American women faculty continued to be concentrated among the lower ranks, primarily non-tenured positions, promoted at a slower rate, paid less than their male and white female counterparts, located in traditional disciplines, and primarily employed by two-year colleges (p. 11). Turner and Myers (2000) examined the experiences of African Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, American Indians, and Latino faculty, with those of White faculty at eight Midwestern universities located in Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. In addition to documenting the continued underrepresentation of faculty of color in American colleges and universities, their data revealed the subtle but insidious influence of a decidedly chilly work environment. Moreover, the study identified a number of barriers including, racial and ethnic bias, that results in an unwelcoming and unsupportive work environment. Undoubtedly, such an environment impacts the productivity and career

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satisfaction of ethnic minority faculty in the academe and discourages others from trying to enter the professoriate (Turner & Myers, 2000, p. x). Introduction to the Narratives Women scholars of color, working as others do within interlocking discourses of oppression, face significant challenges in attempting social change within the institution or in using (borrowing?) institutional privilege to effect social change beyond the institution (Williams, 2001, p. 89). The three narratives critically analyzed in the remainder of the paper describe the marginalization that I have faced in academia. My narratives show that marginalization continues to flourish despite attempts to transform the academy. In addition, my narratives signal that at any institution we are both transformed by and transform the organization. Even though I am no longer at the institutions in which these narratives have taken place, I have been intentionally vague about the particular details (i.e., context, location, and situation) in order to protect the identities of those involved and myself from backlash. I have altered the narratives to obscure identities. However, it should be noted that despite the necessary ambiguity, each situation can be thoroughly understood and critically analyzed. Narrative One: Sister Solidarity The first narrative is an example of the division of among women, borders, hegemony, and the double bind. I was at a meeting where the various benefits that some colleagues received were discussed; i.e., graduate or undergraduate assistant, graduate teaching stipend, research money, salary raise, and course reduction, as opposed to the lack of benefits other colleagues received. In this meeting I felt privileged to be included among those who should receive such benefits. Never before had my position and situation within the department been rewarded. I quickly learned my feelings were nave.

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I sure hope we will receive benefits comparable to Ryans3 (a Black male). I wonder, did Ryan really deserve the benefits he received? Did they really deserve the benefits they received? As Susan, a White female, speaks, she looks at me, as do others who are attending the same meeting. In an instant I am transformed from being included to being Black, and therefore, excluded. Did they really deserve the benefits they received? (italics mine). I am an outsiderwithin. In analyzing the above experience, if we problematize the notion of racism and sexism through the idea of belonging; i.e. border crossing, we are left with the paradox of the outsider withinboth belonging and disenfranchisement simultaneously. The notion of outsider within becomes a hegemonic category for organizing the institutional and cultural apparatus with its regulations and cultural functions for maintenance of the status quo. I am caught up in the politics of domination and colonizationthe same politics that allow my skin color to become more visible than my gender. In this moment, I am not only an outsider within, but I am ultimately an essentialized being. I am marked and fixed into either/or categories. According to Hall (1996), The essentializing moment is weak because it naturalizes and dehistoricizes difference, mistaking what is historical and cultural for what is natural, biological, and genetic (p. 472). Because essentialization has been allowed to occur through the maintenance of hegemony, my skin color now supercedes any female bonding or so-called sisterhood. I have been rendered the visible invisible. The politics of domination and colonization allow me to be reduced, my unique characteristics obscured, and differences concealed. As P. H. Collins (1998) pointed out

All names in this essay have been changed.

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 Relying on the visibility of African-American women to generate the invisibility of exclusionary practices of racial segregation, this new politics produces remarkably consistent Black female disadvantage while claiming to do the opposite (p. 14).

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According to hooks (1989), as subjects, people have the right to define their own reality, establish their own identities, name their history. As objects, ones reality is defined by others, ones identity created by others, ones history named only in ways that define ones relationship to those who are subject (p. 42-43). Patton (2000) finds that those who define only mark themselves by what they are not, which contributes to the normalization or naturalization of whiteness as something not diverse and invisible. Non-whites become the marked, visible other. Further there is retention of power because the definer is never marked (p. 38). The power to mark the body comes from those who have the power to represent. Groups who are able to retain and maintain the hegemonic order have the power to mark, classify, assign, and represent those others. According to Hall (1997), Power, it seems, has to be understood here, not only in terms of economic exploitations and physical coercion, but also in broader cultural or symbolic terms, including the power to represent someone or something in a certain waywithin a certain regime of representation (p. 259). Thus, the politics of domination and representation become played out on the body in favor of retaining the current hegemonic order. It is this naturalization of domination whether in terms of classism, racism, sexism etc. that allows hegemony to not only be widespread, but also appear natural and inevitable (Hall, 1997, p. 259). Therefore, by its very nature, the university recreates the hegemonic order and contributes to the reification of disenfranchised persons because it operates by constructing and has constructed an impassable boundarythe outsider within. The power of this impassable boundary seems to come not only from the current construction of hegemony, which privileges Whiteness above all else, but also from the

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 ideological construction of the naturalized privilege of whiteness. It is this ideological construction that makes the imagining of academe as accepting and welcoming a place

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fraught with disenfranchisement, marginalization, and adherence to the status quo. Thus, like the colonizers gaze, attempts to fix and mark, and naturalize the difference between the centered and the disenfranchised occur frequently. Narrative Two: Gender and Race This second narrative is an example of the intersectionality of gender and race in the organization. Wayne, a White male, felt he could advance his patriarchal White supremacist dominance without any repercussions because of the organizational structure that seemingly condones such domination. In a casual hallway conversation with another colleague, Wayne decided to tell me what he thought of my research: Clearly my research is counter to and challenges his White supremacist patriarchal worldview. At the end of this confrontation Wayne struck me with a heavy object. Nobody cares about race, racism. None of it matters. If you want to succeed you better learn how to compromise your values. You had better sell your soul. Your research contributes nothing. You need to lay low and just be silent. I informed my department chairperson of what occurred and the fact that I was stuck and she/he said, Thats just Waynes quirky sense of humor. He is a funny guy. When I sought advice from the director of human resources and diversity, I was told to put up with it, because youre new and no one at the university will support you. As Aparicio (1999) finds, due to the underrepresentation of non-White faculty at universities, despite the glacial increase of their numbers, many [faculty of color] face isolation, racial and gender-based antagonisms, the devaluation of their research interests and achievements, insufficient mentoring and support mechanism, and ambivalence about their academic authority (n. p.).

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The environment created is one that is hostile and degrading and one that supports White supremacy and, in this case, patriarchy. It is an environment in which devaluation can be dismissed as humor. It is an environment that is complicitous with Waynes call for me to just be silent. It is an environment that reminds me that I do not belong. It is a university environment that as Luz Reyes and Halcon (1991) argued, mirrors the same attitudes and generalities about cultural/racial differences that plague larger society (p. 171). It is an environment where faculty of color continue to report experiences of subtle discrimination in the workplace, such as seeing their work devalued if it focuses on minority issues (Turner & Myers, 2000, p. 22). Furthermore, subtle but pervasive discrimination indicates that I am a threat to the status quo. According to A. C. Collins (2001), the academy provides a chilly environment for Black women students, faculty, and administrators. The environment of the academy for the most part, is unreceptive, unsupportive, and lacks in understanding and sensitivity to issues that affect Black women (p. 38). While any organizational member, at some level, will become acculturated or integrated into the organizational climate and culture, one maintains her/his own identity as well as interacts within the organizational climate and culture. The statement sell your soul in the above quote refers most directly to assimilation. The assimilationist view as Yep (1998) described directs the marginalized person to try harder and harder to adhere, obey, and follow the rules of the dominant grouprules that he or she can never fully and completely participate in creating (p. 80). In addition, the strategy of assimilation invoked by sell your soul is deeply rooted in White supremacy and advocates a negation of anything counter to the maintenance of the White supremacist hegemonic order. Sell your soul refers not only to assimilation into the

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organization, but also is an attempt to mark, maintain, fix and naturalize the difference between belongingness and otherness. Belongingness necessitates maintenance of the current hegemonic order. Any challenge to the status quo, which might cause one to reflect upon her/his complicity with the status quo, must be denied and the internalized gaze must be reflected, turned outward, away from the self; hence the objectified gaze maintains the current hegemonic order. The representations of other through the White supremacist lens not only maintain the White supremacist hegemonic order, but also the representations render whiteness invisible. Whiteness is deemed rational and acceptable, and non-whiteness irrational and non-acceptable. Thus, the dance between the spectator and the spectacle continues. Narrative Three: Modern Racism This White supremacist discourse is one that is not new, but is one that is cloaked in modernism. As Giroux (1992) explains, Modernist discourse in various forms rarely engages how white authority is inscribed and implicated in the creation and reproduction of a society in which the voices of the center appear either invisible or unimplicated in the historical and social construction of racism as an integral part of their own collective identity. (p. 116) This invisible or modern racism is one in which the subtle manifestations of racism are covert, and seemingly more difficult to prove because they are naturalized. No longer are hate-filled faces a part of public displays at predominantly white institutions, nor are pictures of elected officials barring the entrance of African American students. Blatant rules excluding minorities from facilities of predominantly white universitiesas Harvard excluded the eminent W.E.B. DuBoisare no longer on the books. Overt racism has gone underground, out of the glare of the journalists and the television cameras that captured the raw emotions of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. (Turner & Myers, 2000, p. 11)

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A more expansive term for covert racism is inferential racism. As Fiske (1996) described, inferential racism is ultimately more dangerous [than overt forms of racism], not only because it is harder to identify, but because it is often exerted by liberals with an explicitly antiracist intent. Inferential racism is the necessary form of racism in a society of white supremacy [or an organization] that proclaims itself non-racist (p. 37). Therefore, underlying inferential racism is the belief of power, privilege, and representation which reconfirms the White hegemonic order. Thus, the co-creation of identity cannot occur when there is an attempt on the part of one of the communicators to, consciously or unconsciously, dominate the other physically or symbolically (Yep, 1998, p. 81). Further, fictive ideas within the politics of identitythe idea that one ethnic or racial group supercedes anotherbecome naturalized and normalized within White supremacist hegemonic domination. A problematization of this magnitude can be explicitly seen in the example below. In a meeting Bill, a White male, decided to veer from the scheduled agenda to lecture those in attendance about how he saw issues of discrimination in the department. Anyone who thinks that there is discrimination in this department in wrong. Bill stops and stares and me. I am the only Black person in the room. His face reddening, a finger waving and pointing at me, he yells, There is no discrimination in this department! Nobody stopped Bills tirade. I was silent and silenced. I was fearful of speaking. I did not want to lend legitimacy to anything that was being said by Bill. I felt that if I said something, the others might think there is a kernel of truth to what is being said. At the same time, I was complicitous in the maintenance of hegemony because I did not speak out, thus legitimizing Bills discourse. McGee (1998) referenced issues of silence in the political realm. Silence in this arena can signify assent or the inability to answer an argument; his point can thus be applied to hegemony and the maintenance

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of the hegemonic order because the goal is to maintain the status quo. Furthermore, the internal dynamics and regulations of a social system are apt to keep that system intact unless a conscious effort is made to change that system (McGee, 1998, p. 216). Thus, I exercised my agency not through my voice, but through actionI made my invisible/visible presence seen by standing up and leaving the meeting. Nicotera (1999) also ponders the issue of silence. Why couldnt I break the silence? Then it became clear: To break the silence is to be complicit in the discourse that first created it; it reifies the practice of attack and counterattack. I do not know how to break the silence in a way that breaks the discursive cycle of casting myself as victim and my attackers as predator. My conception of breaking silence as leaving myself open to a new attack was framed by the discursive cycle. It became clear why transcending a discursive cycle is so difficult: To be silent is complicit; to break silence is complicit. (p. 450) The above situation, as well as the others described, beg the question of how do we undermine or challenge hegemony in a way that the White supremacist, essentialist, marginalizing gaze is shifted without further risk to cultural, political, and socially disenfranchised people. It is this shifting that is not condoned nor permitted, lest the Euro American gaze which has been directed outward toward those who are not White nor male be directed inward. Further, it is the resistance in shifting that may allow the experiences of disenfranchised people to cross the border, but it does not mean that their experience will be brought into full view or centered. As Davis (1998) questioned: How much more informed are we of the ways of Black women and other oppressed groups symbolically create and negotiate their worlds? How do our methods of critical inquiry resist the appropriation of oppressed voices in scholarship? Are scholars willing to explore decentering our knowledge claims from a white, male patriarchal system to embrace the multiple consciousness of knowledge from marginal groups and, thus, examine multiple epistemologies and ontologies? Will critics find ways to explicate the rhetoric of oppressed people and their responses to dominant discourses? (p. 78) Further, by what means does the White supremacist gaze turn inward? What makes this turn happen? These questions can be best addressed by the theory of articulation.

Black Woman Professor, by T. O. Patton; published 2004 in The Howard Journal of Communications 15(3), 185-200 Re-articulating the Academy

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It is of no use for us to sit with our hands folded, hanging our heads like bulrushes, lamenting our wretched condition; but let us make a mighty effort, and arise; and if no one will promote or respect us, let us promote and respect ourselves. (Maria W. Stewart, as cited in Green, 2001, p. 208) Through my personal experiences in academia this study revealed the ways in which body has become the site of gender and race struggle in the academy. These micro experiences allow for a macro discussion regarding racism and sexism in academe. The way these three narratives have become articulated within the institution reinforce Dziech and Hawkins (1998) claim that whether it is an extension of or a reaction against its history, an institutions present always reflects its past, and that past influences [the institution] profoundly (p. 560). The power of the articulated moment is seen in the on-going struggle of language used as a means of gaining or maintaining power. According to Giroux (1993), language is situated in an on-going struggle over issues of inclusion and exclusion, meaning and interpretation, and such issues are inextricably related to questions of power, history, and self identity (p. 161). Therefore, the manner in which gender and race are articulated in the academy has the ability to reify the current hegemonic order or challenge hegemony. How marginalized bodies are articulated depends greatly on whether normative behavior is challenged. The theory of articulation speaks to the necessity in understanding the limits of our language and the implications not only with regard to race/racism, but also as it concerns culture and ethnocentrism, sexism, and socio-economic status. Giroux (1993) elaborated on the meaning of the theory: It means understanding the limits of our own language as well as the implications of the social practices we construct on the basis of the language we use to exercise authority and power. It means developing a language that can question public form, address social injustices, and break the tyranny of the present (p. 28). Because inclusion, exclusion, language and

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meaning are inextricably bound to questions of racism, sexism, and hegemony, what is needed is a new, oppositional paradigm. An oppositional paradigm is created through the theory of articulation because through this theory it becomes possible to deconstruct and challenge dominant relations of power and knowledge legitimated in traditional forms of discourse (Giroux, 1993, p. 167). According to Slack (1997) theoretically, articulation can be understood as a way of characterizing a social formation without falling into the twin traps of reductionism and essentialism (p. 112). Therefore, how is it that experience within the academy can be articulated and expressed in such a way that challenges complicity and, at the same time, avoids the traps of reductionism and essentialism? Interrogating or challenging White supremacist hegemony in academe requires a critical examination of how the institution is dis/empowering based upon how the status quo is articulated and how the institution might be re-articulated. In order to remedy this, Giroux (1992) suggested examining the socially constructed boundaries of race and power that would, make visible how whiteness functions as a historical and social construction (p. 117). Similarly Patton (2000) maintained that in marking whiteness, society dismantles the hegemonic order from the top-down hierarchical order in which Whites are on top and nonWhites are on the bottom, and replaces it with a more horizontal order in which one racial group is not privileged above the rest (p. 38). Hall (1985) found that thinking articulation thus becomes a practice of thinking [of] unity and difference [as] difference in complex unity, without becoming a hostage to the privileging of difference as such (p. 93). In hegemonic construction we, therefore, must think of society as a) complex, but b) that while contradictory ways exist they need not be thought of as better or worse than the otherthe so-called inferior other need

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not be invented to justify existence and survival; and c) it is not simply about unity because unity can erase cultural differences. It is about solidarity, a common set of struggles. Is solidarity possible? Is a shift in the center possible? A shift within the center is a direct challenge to the current hegemonic order. This shift not only challenges the top-down hierarchical order and replaces it with a more horizontal order, but it also allows us to realize and recognize that culture is shared and the unquestioned center should be contested. With this in mind, then, a critical examination of power can ensue. It also raises an important question: Is a White supremacist patriarchal hegemonic institution interested in re-articulating? In light of the oppression against women and ethnic minorities, will the institution throw off the cloak of complicity in which the hegemonic order is invested? When struggle, perseverance, and enlightenment is no longer made on the backs of women and non-White bodies perhaps that will mean other standpoints have been or can be embraced. Just as an aspect of feminist standpoint theory seeks to expose both acts of oppression and acts of resistance by asking disenfranchised persons to describe and discuss their experiences with hope that their knowledge will reveal otherwise unexposed aspects of the social order (B. J. Allen et al. 1999, p. 409), the theory of articulation can be employed in the same manner. The theory of articulation links and examines issues of disenfranchisement, as they are interdependent with the hegemony, language, and action that articulated their subject positions. To establish a womans and ethnic minority womans standpoint is to prepare to challenge academic hegemony. However, as Flores and Moon (2002) correctly pointed out, so long as desires are imbued with notions of superiority and domination, attempts to destabilize race [and other marginalizations] will fail (p. 200). Articulation challenges hegemony through an oppositional gaze. Giroux (1993) noted that oppositional paradigms provide new languages through which it becomes possible to

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deconstruct and challenge dominant relations of power and knowledge legitimated in traditional forms of discourse (Giroux, 1993, p. 167). Oppositional paradigms create the possibility for rearticulation to occur, thus shifting the current hegemonic order. The issue of racism and sexism in academe gains heightened importance particularly as positionality of the outsider-within not only remains entrenched, but also continues to produce and present numerous challenges and consequences. We need to recognize that alternative representations are necessary. Just as McLaren (1995) stated that pedagogical practice must be reimagined, so too must academe be reimaged in terms of racism and sexism lest we complicitly choose to remain adrift in the reproduction of dominant ideology. We must begin to produce new ways of thinking that involve deconstructing and dismantling the current hegemonic order and beginning to rebuild, reconstruct, and rearticulate the academy in inclusive and transformative ways. We are at a critical juncture in academe. The possibilities for reimagining and rearticulating a radically different institution come both from the disenfranchised and from the centered. It is through their standpoints, language, action, and oppositional gaze that we can enable ourselves to challenge the current constructions of racism and sexism in academe in order to embrace a critical, transformative, and liberated vision. Academia can be both enlightening and oppressive. It is not enough to have the disenfranchised included in such way as to make their contributions, their voices, and their perspectives ineffective and silenced because of the maintenance of hegemony or allow them to border-cross when it benefits those in the center. Of all places, academia should be a profession that is a marketplace for the exchange of diverse ideas, diverse perspectives, and education in the value of difference.

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