[ITM readers: check out this timely reflection on the workshop at the May 2017 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, on "Whiteness in Medieval Studies." ICYMI, note also a recent ITM posting about more inclusivity in public discourse about race and medieval studies.]
“Whiteness in Medieval Studies” Workshop : A
Reflection on Emotional Labor
Reflection written by Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh
Workshop organized by: Seeta Chaganti,
Jonathan Hsy, Sierra Lomuto, and Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh, with Dorothy Kim and the
Fellowship of Medievalists of Color
Students and faculty of color often
find themselves leading initiatives to dismantle power structures of whiteness
that support racism and implicit biases. It is easy to assume that we are
somehow more comfortable with this kind of work, that we have less to lose
which is why we are willing to risk our reputations or job prospects, or that
we somehow have more support than others and are thus more prepared to put ourselves forward. This is far
from the truth. I can only speak on behalf of my own experiences, but I believe
my observations will resonate with other students and faculty of color. As an
immigrant and Iranian, Muslim-American, I have always moved through the world
expecting that, at any point, I may lose
everything: immigration status, freedom of speech, physical safety due to
Islamophobic violence, educational opportunities, financial security due to
racial profiling, etc. In the Islamophobic world I grew up in, before I could
read, write, and move for my own sake, I had to make space for myself in
classes that did not welcome me, navigate the administrative bureaucracies of
my middle and high schools when I was bullied or threatened, and fight for
opportunities in fields, subjects, and extracurricular activities that did not
readily yield opportunities to people like me. In other words, I speak up not
because I have less to lose or because I am more comfortable with the
consequences, but because that’s the only way I’ve ever been heard. Our
experiences as people of color may differ, but what we all share is courage. We
have never had the privilege of being in the white world without it.
I
am also a student and educator. And it is important for me to stress that I
have my courage because of my education,
not in spite of it. I have learned how to think critically in classrooms. My
educators model courage for me both inside and outside of the classroom.
University of California, Berkeley, like other universities, is one of the few
places where people think critically about the pursuit of knowledge and are
committed to its advancement for its own sake and not to serve an agenda. That
is to say, when students ask for change in a field, institution, department, or
classroom, they are not threatening the field or institution. They are
celebrating it. Their initiatives prove their investment in the degree, that
they are committed, that they care, and that it is not enough for them to make
it through the field. They want to thrive in it.
“Whiteness in
Medieval Studies” ICMS Workshop
At the 2017 International Congress on
Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, some of the members of the Fellowship
of Medievalists of Color organized and led the “Whiteness in Medieval Studies”
workshop to bring racial consciousness to medieval studies, disrupt white supremacists’
attraction to our field, and improve the field’s inclusivity. Sierra Lomuto
laid the foundations for the workshop when she confronted the white nationalist
appropriation of the field by writing a bold piece titled, “White Nationalism and the Ethics of Medieval Studies.” Sierra proposed the idea of the workshop to the Fellowship of
Medievalists of Color listserv shortly after the piece’s publication in
December 2016. And that began an intensely laborious, yet invigorating
preparation process.
The following five months were packed
with hundreds of emails, countless numbers of meetings over the phone and
Skype, and many, many, drafts and revisions of our workshop materials by the
organizers and medievalists of color on the listerv, totalling over one hundred
hours of labor by each of the main organizers of the event— Seeta Chaganti,
Jonathan Hsy, Sierra Lomuto, and myself. The results of our intense labor was a
one-hour workshop. The hour included: a five minute opening given by Sierra and
me stressing that our main objective was to bring racial consciousness to the
field, which required first and foremost recognizing whiteness as a race; a
thirty minute staged conversation by Seeta and Jonathan that addressed some of
the ways whiteness and implicit biases shape notions of professional merit, how
scholars are read in peer review or hiring practices, and the implications of
race on mentorship; and a thirty-minute discussion focused on questions based
on the pre-circulated readings. The workshop was phenomenally
well-attended. We estimated between 200-250 people. Many of the participants
seemed to have done the readings beforehand, which suggested to us a thirst for
learning and understanding beyond the confines of the workshop. We walked away
proud and relieved.
The Workshop
& Emotional Labor
While workshops like this one demand
physical and intellectual labor, as graduate students and academics we are
accustomed to tight lower back muscles and mental fatigue. What makes this work
especially difficult is the emotional labor— the fears and anxieties around
putting oneself in precarious positions; the calculations, the negotiations,
the consideration of white fragility; strategizing how to strengthen white
allyship while staring into the eyes of Whiteness in medieval studies; working
through the fears; and confronting whiteness boldly and unapologetically as a
person of color. It is this kind of emotional work that is taxing.
For example, one’s first inclination
when organizing a workshop on the experience of people of color with respect to
Whiteness is to structure it so that it values the personal anecdote. As people
of color in predominantly white spaces, we
do our best to stand out as little as possible, and to blend in as much as
possible. Personal anecdotes are
empowering because they give us the opportunity to set the tone and lead the
conversation. And they do so in a way that foregrounds, rather than tempers,
our identities as people of color. That is just the work it does for the
speaker, however. Sharing personal anecdotes, experiences of microaggressions,
and/or just plain agressions has the power to validate the experiences of every
other person of color in the room. It is equally if not more empowering to
realize that there was never a need for you to experience a vortex of
self-doubt as you silently sat in a seminar room a few months ago or a
conference last year, that your experience was
real. This validation allows you to begin the process of healing that you have
resisted because you convinced yourself your worldview is a paranoid, critical,
or judgmental one. That is the power of the personal story.
And yet, to be taken seriously while
speaking personally is itself a privilege that people of color do not have. We
understand that too often the personal anecdote is mistaken for shaming and
blaming the white body. It triggers guilt that is toxic for any constructive
conversation. And more importantly, often when people of color offer specific
examples, the focus of the discussion moves away from, “What about the power structure led to this act of marginalization?” and
focuses instead on, “What were the
intentions of the accuser?” Most often, the intentions are honorable, and
yet this is besides the point, for as Sierra and I mentioned in our opening
remarks, to confront whiteness is to move beyond the particular bodies in the
room and to think about power structures that allow, train, or accustom bodies
to work, move, or speak in certain ways.
To be an ally is to first and foremost
accept that structural racism exists, and to
expect it wherever and whenever there are spaces, much less fields, that
are predominately white. To demand specifics or to defend the well and good
intentions of one person or another is to miss the point. It shifts the burden
back on the person of color. It suggests that they were not generous enough,
that they were or are sensitive, judgmental, or critical. This unfortunate
maneuvering of blame detracts from the real problem at hand: the toxic
structure that underlies microaggressions and makes them possible. Seeta,
Jonathan, Sierra, and I wanted to bring the community together to address the
underlying condition, rather than fiddle with the symptoms.
So, every time the four of us met on
Skype, edited documents, or spoke to one another, we asked ourselves again and
again: Should we risk shifting the focus of the discussion in order to validate
the experiences of those most vulnerable in the room? Are we convincing
ourselves to keep it impersonal and general because we are afraid of how our
predominantly white audience may interpret our stories? Will we seem
threatening, petty, angry, rude, or judgmental if we share them? Will this turn
people away from our main cause? Are we withholding our personal anecdotes
because we are doubting those experiences again? Such questions required us to
collectively revisit our experiences again to reassure ourselves that they were
part of a larger pattern of marginalization. We interrogated our choices and
intentions at every turn, because it was important for us that fear was not
guiding our decisions. If after our discussion, we realized that we were
containing our personal anecdotes because we were afraid of the consequences,
then it was even more imperative that we work up the courage to make our
stories heard, not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of every other
medievalist of color in the room. On the other hand, we were willing to forgo
the desire to be heard if the stories undermined the structure and objectives
of the workshop.
After a lot of deliberation, we decided
to keep our comments and the staged conversation and questions general,
speaking as medievalists of color rather than as Seeta, Jonathan, Sierra, or
Shokoofeh in order to keep the discussion as focused as possible. At the same
time, we agreed that we should introduce a personal anecdote whenever we found
it pertinent. We also distributed index cards to the audience to give people
the opportunity to share personal stories.
I describe this example in detail not
only to expose the emotional and intellectual labor that went into every
decision, every spoken line, and every group question at the workshop, but more
importantly to show that this work is not easy or comfortable for us. Despite
our willingness to organize this workshop, at the end of the day, as
medievalists of color, we are a minority in our home institutions, in the field
at large, and especially at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. We
are not familiar bodies. We do not blend in. And this inevitably makes us
vulnerable.
In fact, when Sierra and I began the
planning process with Seeta and Jonathan, we were so afraid of the professional
and social consequences of publicly exposing the field’s racial politics that
we neither intended to put our names on formal documents nor speak at the
workshop itself. This was the plan for months and, looking back, I am deeply
unsettled by our willingness to put in so much labor without taking credit for it. It wasn’t until we
created the website, and were faced with the reality of
leaving our names off of the official, public-facing presentation of the
workshop, that we realized the disempowerment embedded in our decision. To
choose not to put our names on the website was to officialize the anonymity.
This was silencing, defeating. However, to publicize our names was to present
ourselves as critics of a field before establishing ourselves as scholars and
professors.
The ease with which we were willing to
pour ourselves into this work while remaining anonymous is a perfect example of
the power structures of whiteness at work. We silence ourselves because we are
afraid of further threatening our already slim chances of getting hired as
people of color in a white field. The silencing in turn suggests that what we
have to say is disruptive, disrespectful, and most of all shameful. Moments
before launching the website, Sierra and I decided to publish our names on the
home page. There was little to no discussion about why we had changed our
minds. The anxieties and concerns for our future never fully subsided, but they
were countered by trust and self-respect. It was a choice driven by
courage.
Responses to
the Workshop
It was encouraging that our workshop
participants responded to our vulnerability with courageous statements and
promises of their own, both during the workshop itself and in their online reflections. In fact, all of our white friends and
colleagues who attended the workshop later applauded it. People we did not know
approached us during the Congress to express gratitude; many told us they were
encouraged and motivated to interrogate their own practices as educators and do
more at their own institutions. One man raised his hand during the workshop
discussion to admit (and I paraphrase), “I thought I knew what the folk theory
of racism was, but after doing the reading, I realize that not only did I not
understand it fully, but that I am guilty of it in my classroom as well.”
Another woman had the courage to admit that she had not put forward a black
professor in her department for a teaching award because the professor (as well
as many of the other professors of color in her department) was cross-listed
with a different department— in this case, African American Studies. She always
assumed that the other department would put them forward for the award. From
the reflections we learned that people who felt like they were always
“second-guess[ing]” themselves or “overreacting or overanalyzing...felt very
validated and less alone.” At the same time, white individuals in the room
expressed that they needed to focus on “what [the] IMPACT of [their]
actions/words/assumptions” were “regardless of their INTENTION” (emphasis not
mine). And one person even acknowledged that her “anti-racist intentions and
actions don’t necessarily mean that [she has] rooted out problematic
unconscious ideas.”
More than anything, a sense of urgency
permeated the reflections on the workshop. “Change is needed RIGHT NOW,” one of
the participants has written. “It is time to change...the woeful inadequacy
with which whiteness in medieval studies has been addressed.” Many expressed
the need for “more of these” kinds of conversations, “more…[workshops] in
Kalamazoos [sic] and elsewhere,” a
desire to make this “an annual workshop at the ICMS,” a desire for “more time,”
“more discussion[s] of whiteness and how it functions in the field.” And some
even acknowledged that they “cannot let medievalists of color do all the work.”
From these statements, it is clear that
our white friends and colleagues also recognize the power structures at play,
and there is a yearning not only to better understand how the structure
functions but more importantly, how to dismantle it. It takes strength to admit
white privilege, but it takes a sheer amount of courage to confront how
whiteness has led one to overlook prejudices and to then commit to breaking
destructive patterns that the white power structure has established and eagerly
welcomes white bodies into.
Reflection
& Next Steps
Only acts of courage can change
systems. But acts of courage are not comfortable or convenient. They are not
safe. They are never anonymous.
They can, however, vary. One does not
need to lead a workshop in front of hundreds to make a change. In fact, the
smallest act of courage can have an intense ripple effect. Speaking up with a
person of color when she raises concerns at a meeting, speaking up in forums
when a person of color is disrespected, not hired, not promoted, etc.
Relentlessly pushing for inclusivity initiatives at institutions, putting that
ask in writing, and sharing it with colleagues is perhaps one of the safest yet
most powerful acts of courage available. It can have a monumental impact on
many levels. To have others raising concerns about inclusivity not only
relieves a heavy burden from the person of color, but dramatically impacts how
welcome they feel in the community.
One of the qualities that ties these
examples together, however, is that they are public. Concern, disappointment,
and even rage in private (and here, private includes sympathetic friends or
colleagues) is limited in its efficacy. It is comfortable, convenient, more or
less anonymous, and it neither weakens the structure, nor validates the person
of color. It is only with sheer vulnerability that there is any hope of
bringing this power structure to its knees.
To that end, then, we must admit that
more than anything acts of courage are about acknowledging fear. Fear is a
central part of courage. To admit boldly that we are afraid, and to list what
we are afraid of is to admit that we have something to lose. It is only courage
when we recognize what we have to
lose and continue to fight for it. After
all, what we have to lose is the very thing we’re fighting for.
If you are a person of color who works in the
field of medieval studies, the Fellowship of Medievalists of Color warmly
welcomes you. To join the listserv, contact the current administrator Jonathan
Hsy at jhsy at gwu dot edu.
About the author: Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh has an Mphil from Oxford University, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, tentatively titled "The Muslim Prism," explores the entanglement of race, ethnicity, and faith as reflected and refracted in the Muslim body and in representations of Islamic space. She invests as much of her free time as possible in inclusivity and diversity initiatives on the UC Berkeley campus and in the field of medieval studies.
