People of Color in Academia

Soo Lee
A002
Week 2

As written in Valvaerde's "Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia" and in "Women of Color in Academia," women of color face explicit and internalized discrimination in daily basis. It become impossible to believe that everyone deserves right to education when the women of color face smaller career opportunities and tenure position, seism in work place and classrooms, systematic racism and classism. As it was evident in may political movements on different campuses, I agree in that "we[people of color] are expected, and at times, explicitly asked, to remain silent and blindly adhere to the power hierarchy." As Valverde and Fanon mentions, not only discrimination is directly done by the people in the dominant (white male) group, but it also is done even by the people of color who are advantaging from assimilation and suppression of their own people. Thus the emotional, physical, financial, and psychological abuse of people who are marginalized continue to take place within Academia.

Question: As a fellow academic, how can I(we) empower those who are marginalized to continue in their education while knowing the system setup such ways that it has very little place for us to success? Can we still convince ourselves that education will get us somewhere?