My first year as a doctoral student

It felt like nothing I had to say mattered. There were so many times when I just felt like giving up and then I realized that others would follow me and so I had to fight the good fight. I am one of two Black women in the program. The other woman was told that she doesn’t even deserve to be in the program. I was never told but was rather treated that way. Nothing that I said mattered. It was as if I spoke and no one was listening; like I wrote and nobody read what was written in black ink; like I taught but nobody learned.

At 26 years old, I am the youngest in my program. My age and my ethnicity have worked against me in myriad ways. First, I had to put up with the agist comments of some of my colleagues who did not think that a 29 year old superintendent knew what he was doing. I had to put up with racist comments by professors and colleagues. They spoke things in front of me that shocked the daylight out of me but I had to tolerate and subdue my anger and rage for fear that they would consider me another “angry black woman.” I tried to understand this culture of power, but I felt like an outsider ALL THE TIME. I remember one specific incident in which a woman spoke about the disempowered children in her school. She told the class about the clear difference that can be seen when some children drive Escalades at 16 years old and others have to walk or take the bus. The professor’s immediate response: “so you have the Black kids and the White kids.” I was floored. The woman had said nothing about color, she just spoke about privilege and already the assumption by the person leading the class was that privilege or lack thereof was equivalent to race.

I was always the exception: “City kids have no skills when they come here, they lack basic skills.” A statement like that would be followed by the furtive glances by certain class members and then the person would correct the statement by appeasing me with a “oh not you because clearly you’re here with us.” But what about the city kids that I had taught for four years who are now attending Ivy League institutions? I recall a time when a white woman brought her daughter who was on spring break from college to class. I watched as she introduced her daughter to everyone but me and the other black woman in class. We were standing right next to her but she never thought it necessary or proper to introduce us. Not that we cared, we just noticed and my friend and I talked about our memories of the Jim Crow era when white people would never introduce a Black person to another white person and here we were in 2007 experiencing the same thing.

And then there’s the woman who despises Martin Luther King because there were so many other people who fought for civil rights that have gotten no credit. But she never took the time to highlight the accomplishments of King who so constantly and respectfully gave credit to his supporters and to Mahatma Ghandi for the teachings of non-violence. She never showed respect for the fact that I sat in the room as one African American in a class of 13, and never acknowledged that the very things that Dr. King fought for were still not being practiced in our school. All she could say was that Dr. King didn’t deserve the accolades he received because he did not do it alone. Her point, though valid, was offensive to me, a Black woman who appreciated the leader that helped spark change in the way America views difference.

It was as if I was invisible in some of their conversations. They said things that shocked me. I was amazed that people who have been exposed to difference, who have traveled far and wide, who are teaching children from varied cultural backgrounds could say the things that my colleagues said. Whenever they wanted an international perspective, they would point the direction to the only non-fluent English speaker in the class—the woman from South Korea. They even once asked her what it was like to live in a Communist country and in my mind I thought—She’s South Korean…how could you guys even ask such a stupid question. I would watch them flinch and roll their eyes as she spoke. Some would often offer a condescending nod in agreement even when what she said didn’t require agreement. It was as if they were sorry for her simply because she didn’t speak English well. They didn’t speak to her outside of class. In fact, they hardly spoke to anyone but each other outside of class and this is why I didn’t attend social functions.

The two social gatherings that I actually attended confirmed to me that I would never attend anymore. They were stuffy. If anyone brought anything as a dish other than crackers, cheese, or cucumber sandwiches, the food would remain untouched. Another rule I learned, don’t bring ethnic food unless it’s from some European country. They don’t eat it. I made the sad mistake of bringing rice and beans to a dinner and then I realized that my rice and beans remained untouched as people reveled in the luscious taste of brownies and ham sandwiches, barbecued ground pork and some other very White meals that I tried out of deference. All the white people spoke together with an occasional acknowledgement of the fact that I was in the room when they wanted to know what the dish I had prepared was. “It’s rice and beans,” I’d say, as I conjured up creative names for the rocks they had been living under for their very white, middle class lives.

We have an annual lecture series in which they invite an outside speaker. Last year, before I joined the program, they had Dr.Lisa Delpit. I don’t think they learned from her or else they would not do the things they do. I went back to read Other People’s Children and I am all three of the graduate students quoted in Chapter 2. I made a copy to give to my professor. I don’t know what else to do. This year, it was some other lady who talked about kiddy literature and something else. They had really wanted Cornel West but he was “booked.” I am of the opinion that they really hadn’t tried to get Dr. West, they just said it to appease my query about why this year’s lecture wasn’t featuring someone who dealt with social justice issues. For this year’s lecture, I had been sick all week but I thought I’d do my best to attend since my school was responsible for the event. Upon entering the reception area, I saw my advisor and since I had my partner with me, I thought it would be nice to introduce him to her. As we walked over to her, I saw two other professors, who acknowledged us and inquired about my health. They offered their well-wishes. As I approached my advisor, I realized she had been engrossed in a prior conversation. As is my cultural custom, I did not interrupt. Instead, I stood to her right and waited. She did not acknowledge my presence. She carried on in conversation and then proceeded to walk right in front of me and made her exit. For the entire evening, she did not make eye contact, nor did she as much as wave to say hello. And then I remembered something I learned about some white folks: They won’t acknowledge you in public.

Then there was the struggle of writing. I’d get papers back with comments such as “well-written, well-organized paper.” As if they didn’t expect that I could write or organize my ideas. Nothing is said about what is written, except if what is written is wrong. As an English teacher, it is my practice to have conversations with my students’ work on their papers. I’m not reading their papers for organization but for substance. These doctors of miseducation seem to have missed that lesson in teaching. I would get papers referring me to ask my classmates about certain topics as if what I had to say was not valid but their knowledge was. I got comments that were directed towards personal things rather than what I had written on the paper. People assumed that what I said on the paper constituted my opinion rather than my research, although I had listed several sources to confirm what I had written. It was as if nothing I said mattered unless I could cite a million white people who said the same thing. I would write about Black people and then I was always asked if this isn’t true for all people. I’d be referred to read books by white authors never by a Black author. If I were to find something by a Black author, it would have to be on my own. I was not free to speak my mind for fear of backlash. People warned me to be careful of what I said and to whom. But I have never been that kind of student. I was never one who would sit and take what people said without responding.

The one thing I have learned during my first year of doctoral studies is that my experiences are invalid and that I am not a member of the “group” although I did the same things—if not more—that the others did to get where I am. I found myself constantly defending myself and since there are no Black faculty members in my school, I felt alone and vulnerable. I became resentful, angry, but subdued. I spent extra hours working on things that would be simple if I hadn’t felt the sting of racism at my tail. People wanted me to fail. They corrected spelling and fixed my commas, took points off for me forgetting an ampersand on my works cited page and I constantly received grades with a – or + next to them; rarely a solid grade. It was after my second semester after I had painstakingly written what I and others who read it considered an excellent, informative paper that I began to feel the need to fight back.

I knew that I had done the right thing and that my paper had been based on the research I had found. I made one simple blunder, which I acknowledged, and I became a sacrificial lamb. I am tired of defending myself from their mindsets. There is just no way I will be able to withstand the rabid racism that lives in these people’s minds. I thought about quitting three times during my first year and it was not because I thought the work was too difficult for me to manage. It was mainly because I felt demeaned, disrespected, and distraught by the things I was told and the things I heard and saw.

My program and the people who run it are no different from public schools where Black children are treated as inferior. They have built the program on a social justice theme, where they claim that the focus is to change society but my program is more of a replica of racist America than they realize. On one of my last papers, my professor asked how can we solve the problem of retention and recruitment of Black scholars in programs dealing with education and after pondering on her question, I realized and understood why more African Americans are not in doctoral programs. We are tired of being banged against society like the narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. My first year made me wonder what these professors are teaching teachers to do to Black children, if this is what they do to Black adults. It made me realize that retention rates of teachers and drop out rates of students is probably never going to change as long as there are people who think they are superior to others.

I have never come this close to giving up the fight and though my program is two years long, I fear, no DREAD the day when I would ever have to enter another classroom taught by another white person who has predispositions about what I should and should not know or say. I have to think back to the days of segregation and wonder what those who have come before me would have done. I cannot sit by and allow prejudice to dictate what will become of my life because although I do desire to do better for myself, I love what I do. Education is my calling and I will not and cannot allow white people who think they have written the books on how to teach, dictate what will become of my self-esteem and self-worth as a teacher.

I think of what will happen if I stay here. Who will sit on my committee? I look around my school and there are no faces that look like mine, no hearts that dance to the beat of African drums, and no lips that speak the truth about my people; I cannot stay here. Yet, I need to stay here so that I can do for someone else what nobody here can do for me: help. Never before in my educational career have I felt so hopeless, so undeserving, and so useless as I have in my doctoral program. These people have worked and continue to work to squeeze every bit of pride and self-esteem that is left in me and in my other Black female colleague. Nothing we say matters unless I can cite a million other white people who are saying something similar.

But I can hardly find enough white people saying similar things as I have experienced them in New York City’s public schools. They are all saying that Black children are not achieving. My children are achieving and have achieved with very few resources and yet nobody chronicles their experiences. I have reached the point of saturation and I am seeking a mentor, someone who can guide me; someone who can provide one word of encouragement to say “hold on” because they are doing everything to crush my spirit. They constantly challenge my knowledge and my scholarship as if they have written anything groundbreaking or earth shattering in the last ten years. I am frustrated and ready to give up and go back to my students who I love and miss so much. They send me motivation everyday and they are behind me, rooting for me to finish this program and do something to fix the inequities in their school. But I cannot endure the sting for much longer and each step I make towards endurance and resilience is pushed ten steps back by the powers that run my school. I am lost, alone, and frustrated and I cannot even tell this to my advisor because she is one of them. I am a fallen tree in an empty forest: nobody is hearing.

I’m meeting with a professor next week to defend another paper...How much can one person take?