By Justin Caouette
Myisha Cherry and Eric Schwitzgebel recently took the philosophy discipline to task for being so white, the title of the piece was pure gold "Like the Oscars, #philosophysowhite". I really enjoyed the piece. Not because I agreed with it all but because I believe it's important to have these discussions about why our discipline is so fucking white, and so male, and (what I thought was left out "so fucking rich or middle class") because something has to change. It's embarrassing as an academic more generally as whiteness and gender disparity in the professoriate is bad, but it's even worse in philosophy. In what follows I'd like to discuss their piece, so if you haven't read it yet I suggest giving it a glance so what I say has a chance to make sense. I'll first (briefly) mention the points I liked and then I'll mention a point of contention about their construal of the white experience.
I agree that philosophy has an obsession with intelligence (and they'll mostly settle for pedigree to do the work as the placeholder if they didn't here 'so and so' say all those "smart" things at the last conference). Sounding smart (and often times looking smart) is surely driven by the ability of many white males to command the cultural apparatus of seeming smart.
I also agree that white men from privileged backgrounds have a large advantage in displaying the superficial features that attract high expectations, as the authors note quite succinctly. The data they appeal to is also quite telling as to how different the white experience might be when compared to the experience of minorities. But I wanted to lodge a criticism about their construal of the white experience in the classroom, though I should add that this point is meant to clarify and I do not think it changes anything about the conclusions the authors make other than add a bit of specificity to the white experience they summarize.
As a white male I must say that seeing a white prof at the front of a class and reading mostly white males isn't the same experience for us all. It doesn't have the motivating force the authors alluded to, not for all of us anyway. It can be, and certainly was for me, QUITE different.
Sure, some of us walk in with more self-confidence and get inspired because we can seem smart, I'm sure that happens. In fact, it happens ALL the time! But this seems connected to *class* as much, or, *more* than race or minority status, and that POV is not given much reference in their piece.
It's worth noting that what sometimes happens is that they/we (whites from lower economic statuses) see an educated white man for the first time (besides seeing them on TV of course). They use a vocabulary that is unfamiliar, I'm not talking the isms of intro either. And they/we are not caught up with "oh, he's like me, i can do this" mentality. We tend to feel quite the opposite, actually. It's more like "that dude is wicked smaht, and so is this other kid from that prep school I heard of once, that has a *rowing team*" who happened to be sitting on the side of me, and, who was also offering literature analogies that made no sense to me but that everyone else in the class laughed at and nodded with approval. It can feel like another league, not one of confidence and "he's like me" sort of feels, yes even for a white guy like me.
All profs, but philosophy profs especially, spoke (and often still speak) in a way that is foreign to me and in a way that made me feel "I can't do this"! They spoke in a way and with a confidence that I had never seen. The smart white kid on the side of me sure sounded like them, but I didn't. I'm not comparing my experience to that of any other race or gender, I just want folks to remember that not all white experience is the same. Cracking this discipline (or even taking it seriously as an option) coming from poverty or lower classes more generally, (in this present day specifically) and without a close family member to look up to who "got out" and college educated is not easy. Maybe seeing the same color face in front of the class helps some people, and I'm sure it helps a little for those of us who can't even see it, but man, I didn't feel any motivation from reading those white guys or listening to smart white men I had never came in contact with before. I didn't grow up reading literature, I grew up playing ball. So I shit my pants the first time a reference was made to some piece of writing unknown to me in in undergrad (and in grad school). "They're going to find out I'm not REALLY one of them". Or, when I dress a certain way, or partake in different extracurricular activities, etc. etc. Also worth noting, and I don't think is peculiar to just my experience coming from a lower-economic status, is that nearly all of my family are women, the men ran off, or died, or whatever. White men aren't a safe place and source of motivation for all of us; class differences affect whites too. Okay, I'm feeling a bit ranty at this point, I just had some feels, so why not blog about them, right? The FB message on Myisha's wall was getting too long so I decided to write it on Percs instead. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on this piece. It was thought provoking and quite provocative. I should note that I get that the authors were both giving a description as to why the problem is present, and I agree with them on that front, but it also sorta read like cracking this discipline is the same for all white males, in one way it is, but, in VERY important ways it's not.
