I really appreciate this very, very generous profile from @petercoy but I do want to disagree with the headline, which is reinforced by the article. I do have a credential- the intersection of my whiteness, maleness and cisness. 1/N
That I'm a white cis male who dresses in dress shirts and dress slacks(and have done so since I was 19)has given me a passport into conferences,events and more.I crashed conferences without paying during high school that I would have been barred from if I looked any other way 2/N
IN 2010 I attended a mainstream economics PhD students conference where students presented their job market papers and I asked basic questions about their assumptions and methodology. That would not have been tolerated if I didn't have all those "credentials" 3/N
In fact this is precisely why marginalized people (especially Black people) GET educational credentials. They need them to be taken as seriously (and sometimes,still less seriously) as I am without educational credentials.See the works of people like @tressiemcphd @ProfYuille 4/N
@DarrickHamilton,@SandyDarity and @mlholder999(a professor at JJay btw)among many others.I also benefit from people,in a sense,"lending"me their credentials when they promote my work.I doubt this would have happened as easily as it has if I were anything but a cis white man 5/N
This isn't to bemoan or disclaim my success or my hard work. The point is there are plenty of people who have worked just as hard as me, and many harder than me, who aren't having the success I am. It takes my social credentials to take a glidepath to the most interesting and 6/N
advanced subjects. It is my "ethnographic" experience with my social credentials (referred to as "privileges) that makes me support initatives like @DivDecEcon which is looking to change the social hierarchy of economics, and hopefully, devalue my social credentials within it.7/N
Because of that, I'm going to end this thread suggesting some young scholars, all more credentialed and less privileged than me, who you should be following and listening to. (apologies to those I tag for brief, bare bones descriptions) 8/N
First up @Donia_Susana, who's doing labor organizing in Atlanta while mulling over doing a PhD in economics. 9/N
Next (there's no particular order here) there's @_madhubala_ who's doing a masters at @JJayEcon (need to talk soon!) and a research fellow @jainfamilyinst 10/N
Next there's @heyauntiemercy who's brilliant, has her bachelors unlike me, and wants a research job in economics to build up her confidence that she can actually live in (someone makes this happen!) 11/N
After Mercy, there's @devikadutt who's finishing her dissertation in economics at Umass Amherst and is a co-founder and organizer of @DivDecEcon. Follow her!! 12/N
There are a bunch of people at UMKC who I can't tag because they're not on twitter but I will tag my coauthor @econ_robinson (will email you back this weekend!) Who's doing great work on MMT, economic history of race and much more. 13/N
There's also @platanomics who's director of the @Center4PopEcon, a PhD student at Umass Amherst and always incredibly generous and courageous 14/N
Finally, last but not least by any stretch of the imagination, there's my boyfriend @noahzazanis who's beginning a masters in Epidemiology at Columbia University and who is at the very least as brilliant as I am. Like any marginalized person, he needs educational credentials 15/N
where I've gotten by with social credentials but I've loved every minute of supporting him and being at least somewhat helpful in guiding him through networking and more. I know every day how lucky I am in all sorts of ways and I'll never, ever take this for granted. 16/N
So thanks everyone for their kind words and thank you those who subscribed today.I don't feel guilty for my success but I won't be satisfied until I see a Black trans person given the social license to do what I've done.I hope people who liked this story about me reconsiders 17/N
the next time they dismiss someone as clueless to check whether it's something about their identity rather than their argument that's making them do so. If you think there's something special in my story, help create a special moment for someone else. 18/N
More importantly, I hope powerful people following me consider lending their social power to provide paths for more marginalized versions of me.If smart people able to succeed without educational credentials is a good thing,we should expand the pool of people who can do that 19/N
argh I totally forgot about listing orgs to donate to. Please donate to @survivepunishNY and @prisonfeminism! Or a bail fund!
