‘We especially welcome applications from members of visible minority groups’: reflections on race, gender and life at three universities

Abstract

This autoethnographic account documents and analyses university life as a racialised woman who has worked in both Canadian and American universities. The theoretical framework draws from critical perspectives on race, black feminisms and narrative and autoethnographic research methodologies. The study involves a range of data sources that provide sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts in which to ground the Personal: academic writings on race and gender, university reports, email correspondence, relevant newsmedia artifacts, as well as personal written accounts, conversations with colleagues and life experiences. This article critiques the pervasive institutional practices of white and male privilege and gendered racism. It offers some suggestions to reshape disciplinary knowledge, curricula and the workplace for black and marginalised women faculty. It is hoped that the results and conclusions contribute to our understandings of life as it is lived in the margins of race and gender, and in this way, contribute to understanding black women’s experiences in North American universities.

Keywords:

• race and gender
• higher education
• women in leadership
• authoethnography
• critical race studies
• black feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All names of colleagues and names of universities are pseudonyms. Moreover, three URLs were withheld from the references section to ensure institutional anonymity.

2. In Canada, the Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as ‘persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.’ Here is an example of a typical equity statement: We especially welcome applications from members of visible minority groups, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities, and others with the skills and knowledge to engage productively with diverse communities. We encourage all qualified persons to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents of Canada will be given priority.

3. See James (2011) and his discussion of the paradoxes of the identification of ‘visible minority’; the paradox of data and the paradox of colour-blindness.

4. Authors in the humanities and social sciences are exploring self-narratives through several ‘blurred genres’ (Ellis and Bochner 2000): memoir, autobiography, autoethnography, even autobiomythology. Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish between them.

5. It is difficult to access these data. According to the Federal Contractors Programme, all Canadian universities are required to make these data public. See Dua and Banji 2012.

6. Companies have fired black women from the workplace for wearing braids, dreadlocks, blond hair and non-traditional clothing. See, for example three Huffington Post articles: ‘Black executive allegedly fired from BP for braided hair and ethnic clothing,’ 12/9/2013; ‘Company policy requires Missouri woman to cut her dreadlocks to keep her job,’ 10/24/13; and ‘Black woman fired from Hooters for blonde highlights,’ 10/22/2013.

7. Theologian, Thandeka (1999), theorises such white parental disapproval as producing a lifelong confusion (even guilt or shame) in children regarding their friends who are not like them. By contrast, consider this incident that happened at Metropolitan Market, a grocery store in the Pacific Northwest of the US, in 2009. A child about three-years-old pointed at me and said, ‘Mommy, look at the brown lady.’ Her mother answered, ‘Yes, and isn’t she beautiful!’ In this way, the mother has given the child a positive message about black women and various notions of beauty.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annette Henry

Annette Henry is a professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her scholarship examines race, class, language, gender and culture in socio-cultural contexts of teaching and learning in the lives of black students and black women teachers’ practice in Canada, the US and the Caribbean. She has written extensively about diverse feminisms and conceptual and methodological research issues especially in culture-specific contexts. She has received several awards including the Jason Millman Promising Scholar award from Cornell University, the AERA Distinguished Contributions to Gender Equity Research Award (SAGE) and the AERA Scholar of the Year Award (Research Focus on Black Education). Current projects include Guest Editor for the Caribbean Journal of Education, an ethnography of an inner-city school in Jamaica and a life history project of contemporary black women in Vancouver.