Women Faculty of Color in the White Classroom

Reviewed by Michelle G. Knight

The cliché that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover applies to Women Faculty of Color in the White Classroom. While the title on its cover may appeal to women faculty of color, the book speaks to all faculty who seek to diversify institutions of higher education and mentor women faculty of color. What is particularly satisfying about the book is the insight it provides into the individual pedagogies and institutional structures that support the challenges that women faculty of color encounter.

Lucila Vargas draws attention in opening chapters to the underrepresentation of women of color in the academy and the overrepresentation of women of color in lower academic ranks. The sixteen narratives that follow her opening chapters illuminate the synergy between professors' social identities, their pedagogical practices, and the student evaluations that affect their academic lives and careers. In one narrative, for example, Delores Black-Connor Cleary, an American Indian, demonstrates how the use of tribal values to teach about social inequalities are challenged by students and colleagues whose expectations may be based on mainstream norms.

If you are a professor who has never experienced student resistance to your social identity and course topics, how can you begin to relate to and support the pedagogical challenges and joys faced by women faculty of color in predominantly white classrooms? These narratives provide one such entry point. The collected narratives show that there is a rich range of similarities and differences within, between, and among Asian women, immigrant women of color, African American women, and Latina women. The book's contributors examine the intersections of race, class, gender, nationality, language, and sexuality in the lives, educational opportunities, and professional experiences of women faculty of color. For example, the hauntingly poignant borderland experiences that Priti Kumar describes in "Yellow Lotus in White Lily Pond" can be more fully comprehended when one considers the intersections of her identities as an Asian, an immigrant, and a female who consistently crosses "borders" defined by societal understandings of ethnicity, immigrant status, language, or gender. Some of the border crossings Priti Kumar discusses include her experiences as a young girl traveling on Indian railways at a time when Asian females did not typically travel without escorts, the way her "brown skin and weird accent" were perceived in predominantly white Utah, and the necessity of working both as a part-time professor and at a fast-food restaurant to ensure her family's survival in Ohio. The marginality that women of color experience cannot be left behind as they enter predominantly white classrooms.

Several contributors assert that the social identities of women faculty of color both positively and negatively affect the interactions between teachers and students in terms of classroom authority, student acceptance or resistance of topics, and student perceptions of professors' teaching expertise. For example, when white students perceived that the professor's social identity and the topic of a course aligned, as when the Japanese Ryuko Kubota taught Japanese language courses or the African American Giselle Liza Anatol taught Caribbean texts, then professorial authority went unquestioned. However, when the social identities of the professor and the topics taught did not align, such as when Kubota taught French and Spanish classes or Anatol taught Shakespeare, students resisted and questioned the professor's expertise.

Many of the contributors employ pedagogical strategies that ask white students to critically examine or move out of their "cultural comfort zones" in order to explore issues of social justice and challenge deeply embedded beliefs about race, gender, or class inequities. Vargas uses an exercise asking students to talk about their experiences with professors of color and non-native faculty to emphasize intercultural communication in teacher-student interactions. Both Kumar and Kimberley Nicole Brown employ exercises designed to enable students to examine critically binary constructions of themselves, their professors, their privileges and oppressions, and the texts in class. Fredi Avalos-C'DeBaca asks students to examine, question, and ad-dress their individual and collective emotional reactions to a particular topic. For example, if reading an article on social injustice makes them angry, students ask themselves, "What am I really angry about? What if this article is tell-ing the truth?" Avalos-C'DeBaca notes that she has been challenged as to whe-ther this strategy asks women faculty of color to "emotionally coddle" white students. The book raises a complex question: how are women faculty of color, white students, and society served by these pedagogical strategies?

According to Vargas, women faculty of color have the lowest tenure rate of all groups of faculty, and many chapters attest to the contested terrain of the classroom and student evaluations. The authors of these chapters avoid interpretations of evaluations that ignore the social identities of women faculty of color and the predominantly white contexts in which they teach, and they contribute to a structural understanding of the mixed results that student evaluations yield for women faculty of color. Contributors such as Black-Connor Cleary, Celia Manrique, Diana Rioso, and Fay Yokomizo Akindes write that student evaluations tend to be extremely positive or negative, displaying overt and covert state-ments of racism, sexism, xenophobia, or linguicism (discrimination based on language differences). These writers contend that student evaluations do not take into account the intellectual and emotional demands placed on women faculty of color in the teaching and learning of cultural diversity in predominantly white classrooms. They argue that the multiple social identities and pedagogical practices of women faculty of color, and the impact that these factors have on evaluations, must be taken into account to understand why women faculty of color often have teaching proficiency scores below departmental norms.

Women Faculty of Color in the White Classroom sheds light on higher education's cultural and structural systems and on the necessity of establishing structures and standards that support the diverse pedagogical practices of women faculty of color. Xue Lang Rong argues that the multiple mentoring model can be one such supportive structure. This model suggests that, rather than expecting one mentor to meet all needs, faculty benefit from having multiple mentors available to address their concerns about research, teaching, and service. One mentor might advise a woman faculty member of color about her research, while another might help her distinguish between pedagogical problems common to all instructors and those unique to women faculty of color. Additionally, when evaluating teaching proficiency, institutional structures such as promotion and tenure committees should take into account the social identities of women faculty of color as well as purely technical issues such as whether papers are returned to students on time or the number of readings assigned to students. Rios further discusses ways in which faculty can use structures such as student conduct codes to support women faculty of color who experience inappropriate student conduct because of their social locations and pedagogical practices. Overall, the book is a valuable resource to which all faculty can turn as they seek to value and support women of color and their pedagogical practices within higher education institutions serving predominantly white students.

Michelle G. Knight is assistant professor of urban education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University.

 Printer-Friendly Page