1/ A few months ago, I posted about my experiences with anthropology graduate studies hoping to support #hautalk in discussing the asshole problem in anthropology.
2/ I noted in my post that, as a privileged white, cis, able-bodied male student, I "could only imagine" how much more difficult these situations could be for others.
3/ One of the responses I received was an email from a black woman who had been driven out of an anthropology department through targeted harassment and threats of violence. As suspected, things can get a lot worse. With her permission, here is her story.
4/ By her request, I'm going to refer to her as "The Anthropologist known as Discuss White Privilege," or DWP for short. Readers of @anthrodendum's predecessor may recognize the name. Everyone in the story will remain anonymous by her request for legal reasons.
5/ DWP was a graduate student at a prestigious anthropology department having graduated with accolades from another elite university. Things seemed to be going well until another graduate student began to harass her. DWP reported his harassment to her department.
6/ In emails she has shared with me, some of the professors seem initially sympathetic and supportive. One offered to meet with her to discuss the situation, but also mentions that he would like to invite her harasser.
7/ Around this time, the harasser, who for legal reasons will remain anonymous here (Do not try to guess who this is about if you think you know this story), began to make public accusations that DWP was a jealous ex-girlfriend who had attacked him.
8/ I would hope that anyone who has followed #BlackLivesMatter or #MeToo, which would hopefully include all anthropologists, can recognize that these accusations traded heavily in racist and sexist stereotypes about black women. Need I say more?
9/ At this point, DWP found her department turning on her. They were readily prepared to trust a white guy over one of the very few black women in anthropology.
10/ In her view, this dismissal was compounded by the fact that she was a black anthropologist studying "the everyday practices of white supremacy." As she explains (bit.ly/34TXBx1), there is enormous resistance to black scholars studying whiteness.
11/ DWP took a pause from studies for maternity leave. When she returned to the department to discuss recommencing, she found that the department had been notified to call the police if they saw her.
12/ This is where my story and DWP's diverge most strikingly. While my situation impacted my mental health, I always sort of knew that I could leave the university setting and be fine. I could keep a rough line between my academic life and the broader world.
13/ For DWP, there was no divide. The racialized threat of police violence, along with the gendered harassment she had already received, meant that there was no escaping things that many anthropologists would like to think of as "other people's problems."
14/ This was a breaking point for DWP. It was clear that there was no way for her to continue her studies. She tried to raise the alarm on her abuser, but the faculty whom she had already alerted now pretended that they had never heard of her situation.
15/ Anthropologists supposedly educated in critical theory and ideas of structural violence dismissed her as a "crazy" Black woman who should be ignored at best, and feared at worst.
16/ Fearing damage to his career, her abuser shopped around for a lawyer and court who would approve an unconstitutional gag order against DWP to silence her. He maintains an order to this day despite DWP no longer residing in the same country.
17/ Fun fact: his original lawyer was on trial for a felony themselves and has since been disbarred! While other lawyers and the District Attorney have looked at DWP's case and found his order ridiculous, she does not have the resources to fight it.
18/ This is why I cannot share any of the names involved in DWP's story or many of my sources. Her abuser has sued repeatedly when she goes public with her experiences, thus relegating this entire story to whisper networks.
19/ This is a second big difference between my experience and DWP's. While my post received relatively little skepticism (at least, directly addressed to me), DWP faced legal threats, dismissal, and doubt. Her abuser remains part of the anthropology community.
20/ Just consider that DWP frequently raised the issue of anthropology's racism on @anthrodendum's predecessor as early as 2010 in a series of comments that were deleted for being "ad hominem" and "a breakdown of collegiality." savageminds.org/2010/02/08/rec…
21/ This could have been another moment like #hautalk. A moment where the discipline could have wrestled with the fact that it is not innocent of the kinds of racist and sexist abuses that we love to critique in the rest of the world.
22/ Talking to DWP about #hautalk, she seems to have mixed feelings. On one hand, it's great that harassment is being called out. On the other hand, she watches as others are celebrated for making the same claims she had made almost a decade ago.
23/ Are we taking things more seriously now that white men like me have come forward? As DWP asked me in an email, "(How much) does anthropology care about Black people?"
24/ Why resurface DWP's story now? It's important to realize that anthropology is not innocent of the racism, sexism, and oppressive practices that it likes to observe "in the field." Anthropology still needs to do better.
25/ It sounds like DWP is doing pretty well for herself now, so this is not about the harm of leaving anthropology. We should do better because it’s the right thing to do, not because it harms the discipline, but it also harms the discipline to lose so many perspectives.
26/ So thank you, DWP, for sharing your story with me, with others years ago, and for trying to make anthropology a better space for all despite what it did to you. Thank you for laying the unappreciated groundwork for actions like #hautalk. Hopefully, change is on its way.
