FIRST PERSON

Tripping Over the White Fantastic

A job candidate in sociology whose research focuses on race finds that he's not what search committees were expecting

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By JOSHUA T. WILEY

Hearing your name spoken in a puzzled, confused, and interrogative tone the first time you meet a prospective employer is never a good thing.

I'm on the academic job market for the first time this year. To my delight, I was granted more than a dozen preliminary interviews at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in August. The speed-dating, cattle-call tone and timbre of the large auditorium aside, I was optimistic about the interviews.

After all, I've now racked up a number of publications from my time served in graduate school. Professors on my dissertation committee and others speak highly of my work. And I am professionalizing myself in the discipline, serving on national committees and networking. Still, in quite a few interviews with representatives of the institutions I am courting, the first meeting and handshake have been a bit awkward.

In pursuing my CV, one sees more than a few lines that mark my identity. There are references to membership in the Association of Black Sociologists and a historically black fraternity. There are lines that show community service as a ghostwriter for various African-American advocacy journals and as an adviser to my institution's magazine for black undergraduates. My publications illuminate theoretical work on black nationalist groups, participant-observation studies of black organizations, and examinations of black representations in the mass media.

Bluntly put, I have been told many times that, on paper, I look like a black man. Yet when people see me in person, they see a white man.

Being white and studying race has been simultaneously enabling and constraining for my academic career. In the former, I am almost automatically granted competence in the halls of academe without having to say a word. White skin can be an all-too-convenient stand-in for gray matter. Teaching classes about race and inequality to a largely privileged and white undergraduate population also affords an authority for which my colleagues of color have to fight tooth and nail. And because I am concerned with issues of white identity and racism, my ability to slip in and out of social circles of white homogeneity has afforded access to the most compelling, intriguing, and disturbing kinds of data.

But then, on the constraining side of the equation, when I meet potential employers I often hear, "Jo ... Joshua? Uh, ... hi."

Perhaps I should have seen this coming. Several times during my graduate career, surely well-meaning white academics approached me and asked about my research. After a few minutes of intellectual pleasantries, they would pause and offer career advice akin to: "You know, you're white. [Thanks. I had, in fact, noticed that.] And it's going to be difficult for you to get a job since you study race. Have you thought about studying [insert mundane topic that is commonly understood as indelibly nonracial]?"

Sigh.

I cannot simply shut my sociological "eyes" to the dynamics of my own discipline. Something is disturbing about being immersed in a field whose "holy trinity" is supposedly race, class, and gender, while simultaneously bearing witness to what some might see as a myopic tendency to expect a racial correlation between research and researcher. After all, when I mention that I also study white identity, people often remark, "Oh, OK. That's good, then."

Double sigh.

This is neither a covert, backlash-laden rant about how hard white men have it when studying race, nor an undercover assault on affirmative action. Given the politics of distrust endemic to race relations, coupled with white domination in academe, I think we need a healthy level of critique when whites speak of race. That is especially true given the burgeoning field of "whiteness studies," which is often seen, at best, as narcissistic navel-gazing, or, at worst, as an endeavor that threatens to steal hard-fought disciplinary space from scholars of color.

Take my doctoral institution. It boasts about its extremely high graduation rates for black students, yet its tenured and tenure-track faculty is also one of the whitest in the nation. It has had only two African-American graduate students during my five years in the program, and only one of them completed the doctorate. The Ph.D. pipeline in sociology has disturbing leaks. In 2006 blacks earned 16 percent (4,627) of the bachelor's degrees awarded in sociology; 13 percent of the master's degrees (201), and a mere 7.8 percent (40) of the doctorates. As of 2007, African-American faculty members made up just 7 percent of the membership of the American Sociological Association.

So there I was at the annual meeting this summer, moments after the awkward first encounter, wondering how race complicates the maxim "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." As we sit down, I glance at the people who might be my future colleagues and notice their expressions changing. They are slowly morphing from surprise to the faintest display of disappointment. My interviewers wanted me to be black. They just knew I was black. I feel as though I have betrayed them.

Now an all-too-familiar feeling creeps up my spine: a sense of guilt. I want to apologize. I want to tell them I did not mean to mislead them. I am aware of the politics of my research agenda, and I am not going about things as if I am entitled to every job for which I have applied.

It might be an uncomfortable reality to admit, but given the pipeline demographics, many search committees use the CV as a gauge of racial identity because they want to bite into those numbers. By and large, sociologists are progressive enough to recognize the effects of white supremacy upon their own institutions and discipline, and they hope to hire more scholars of color in order to combat those effects.

Yet I'd be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge that some committees simply use the CV as a racialized proxy because they are facing pressure from the human-resources office to find a "token" so they can play their own version of the race card: "I'm not a racist — one of my colleagues is black."

So, when I received the admonition that I "shouldn't study race," was there something to that counsel? Was that advice meant not only to guard my feelings during those awkward job interviews but to also fight against the further entrenchment of white domination among faculty members in the social sciences? Maybe I'm too much of a cynic, but I doubt those comments arose from some deep desire to promote diversity. Rather, their advice seems more like a misplaced effort to protect my career, motivated by some disturbing assumptions.

But their advice does raise the question: What's the alternative? That white people everywhere should lay down the gauntlet of racial research? Leave the topic of race to the scholars of color? Should white folks avoid race like the plague if they want a job in academe?

I have a better question: Can we be a bit more self-reflective and, dare I say, open-minded? The discipline of sociology is often framed as a bastion of Marxist, queer, feminist, antiracist, multicultural, postmodern advocates. Supposedly, those radicals are — while wearing their Che Guevara T-shirts underneath tweed jackets — irreverently deconstructing and resisting boundaries while tearing down the traditions of the status quo between office hours and faculty meetings.

But from my perspective, it sure ain't that kind of party. If we can't get past snap judgments, prejudicial attitudes, and racialized assumptions concerning who should study what, then what kind of future can we expect for the discipline? And what kind of narrow and racist expectations are we imposing on scholars of color? Imagine the converse for a young Latina woman entering a sociology department with an interest in, let's say, gerontology: "No, no. You should really study Latino identity or Mexican immigration. That's a better fit. What? You don't speak Spanish?"

So now, as I prepare my applications in the hope of garnering some campus interviews, I wonder if I should paper-clip a photo of myself to my CV. And if so, the only question that remains is, should it be in color or black and white?