(White) Academia Needs Work
Tiffany Martinez didn't need to add the "white" to her statement that "academia needs work." She experiences the power and exclusion of whiteness all the time. For her, the academy is white. I hope you've already read her piece, Academia, Love Me Back, but if you haven't, you need to. Anyone working in the academy needs to. White people need to. I needed to. I know, from my own experiences and my own mistakes, that the worst injury a professor inflicts on a student is the false assumption that work they have submitted is not their own. That is what happened to Martinez. She used the word, "hence" in an essay. Her professor insisted that this was not her word. They underlined "not" twice. As in, "no freaking way do you know this word." Not to mention this young woman is a serious scholar and can probably out-write every kid in that class. The damage we can wreak as professors by making assumptions about s