Identity Politics and the Academy

While identity politics have done a lot of good in American life, at their worst, they are a very destructive force. Identity politics have always had their strongest base in the academy. This has led to the founding of African-American Studies, Chicano Studies, Women's Studies, and other vital programs that serve both their demographic and university communities well But at times the knee-jerk side of identity politics reach a level of absurdity.

Take for instance the infamous SOLAS listerv run by the Latin American Studies student organization at the University of New Mexico. Anyone with sense stays as far away from this list as possible. The messages are deeply politicized beyond belief, the arguments both pointless and mean, and the volume of e-mail sent is out of control. Ever since I arrived at UNM in 2000, this has been a problem. While I am not a Latin Americanist, I have a strong interest in the region and would have liked to subscribe to the listserv for all the interesting events. But it's not worth it.

Let me give you an example. This week, a discussion came up about the hiring practices of UNM.

Participant A provided the numbers: "According to the Census Bureau, Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in New Mexico at 43.4%. However, less than 11% of UNM's professors are Hispanic. African Americans make up 2.4% of New Mexico's population, but only 1% of UNM faculty. At 43.1%, Whites are almost as prevalent in NM as Hispanics. Yet nearly 78% of UNM professors are white."

There is a sensible reason for this, as pointed out by Participant B: "The issue presented here is quite intriguing. However, we should probably consider the fact that professors at UNM come from a national pool of applicants, and while NM certainly does have a large Hispanic population, on the whole the US Hispanic population is much smaller. Not surprisingly, it is actually around 12%, close to the percentage of Hispanic employees at UNM. Food for thought."

Precisely. Plus, quite honestly, if you are a Hispanic, African-American, or Native American academic, the demand for you is incredibly high because every school wants to diversify its faculty as much as possible. UNM is a good school, but there are better and these faculty are right to take the opportunity to work at a better institution.

But on this listserv, this kind of realistic analysis has no place.

Participant C responded: "Are you trying to justify the racism that exists within the state of New Mexico?"

Now you might ask, what in the hell does this have to do with how faculty get hired? And of course the answer is virtually nothing.

Participant D builds on this by proclaiming, "The issue" has been and remains to be white supremacy. That doesn't change when you leave New Mexico, either. [Participant C's] arguement falls apart when you look at the percentage of African American Faculty at UNM. African American's make up about 12.3percent of the population of the US and 1% of the faculty. How this can be justified, i don't know, but I am sure that UNM has people on call to justify this. Weather or not we are compareing the census data (which is skewed in it's own ways) to the percentage of faculty at UNM or just listening to the personal experinces of people who have been excluded or fucked over by UNM, UNM and CNM practice white supremacist employment practices."

This is just not true, but hey, why think about facts when they don't fit with your knee-jerk reactions!!! One might say that African-Americans don't work at UNM in large numbers because there are hardly any African-Americans in New Mexico. Given that many black people would like to live around other black people and that African-Americans are in such demand in the academy, there is a realistic explanation for the lack of African-Americans on the UNM faculty.

Mercifully, Participant E more or less ended this absurd conversation (or at least I stopped paying attention at this point) by simply stating the numbers.

"NATIONAL DATA: DOCTORAL RECIPIENT BY ETHNICITY & GENDER 2002 Ethnicity Degrees % UNM% Black 1644 = 6.5% 1% White 20720 = 82.5% 78% Asian 1364 = 5.4% Hispanic 1233 = 4.9% 11% Amerind 146 = 0.6% TOTAL 25107 [the table covers 1992-2002; I’m just showing the 2002 data. I also calculated the percentages those numbers represent & added the UNM percentages from the original post]

So, based on the available doctoral degrees, by ethnicity, UNM "overhires" Hispanics by more than 2x their representation in the doctoral pool, slightly "underhires" Whites, and grossly "underhires" Blacks. Since those three categories leave 10% of UNM positions behind, and the US doctoral pool only contains another 6%, you can conclude that UNM somewhat "overhires" Asians and/or Amerinds as well.

What can you "conclude"? One conclusion might be that given the available doctoral pool, UNM is not practicing "white supremacist hiring". What is the larger question? ... Why do so few people of color get doctoral degrees? (and of those, go on to teach) And then, related to that, how does UNM stack up in granting doctoral degrees relative to the rest of the country? That is, is UNM serving its community?"

I think the answer is that UNM is doing as good a job as they can in serving New Mexico's community. Are we going to compete with Harvard and Princeton for the Cornel West's of the world? No. But we can offer a very appealing package for Latino and Native American scholars, and we do. The fact that UNM's Latino faculty equal the population as a whole is quite amazing, given the paucity of Latinos with PhDs compared to their percentage as a whole.

Moreover, it would be really bloody nice if people actually thought before they spoke sometimes.