telling the story straight_lynn bolles.pdf

8/9/2019 TELLING THE STORY STRAIGHT_lynn bolles.pdf

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Lynn Bolles

TELLING THE STORY STRAIGHT: BLACK FEMINISTINTELLECTUAL THOUGHT IN ANTHROPOLOGY

In her introduction to Black Women Writers at

Work, Black literary critic Claudia Tate (1983:

xxvi) quotes a few lines of the Langston Hughes

poem “Note on Commercial Theater” that reads

“someday sombody’ll Stand up and talk about

me, and write about me — Black and beautiful.”

Furthermore, an old African American adage

reminds us that one must speak for oneself if one

wishes to be heard. “Telling the Story Straight”

addresses a group of anthropologists who are

“Black and beautiful” women whose scholarship

needs to be talked about so they can be heard, rec-ognized, and valued in terms of their contributions

to anthropology and to women and gender

studies.1

More than half of all members of the Ameri-

can Anthropological Association (AAA) are

women, who by and large adhere to the basic prin-

ciples of equal access, rights, and opportunities

regardless of gender.2 However, White privilege,

the dominant systemic ideology of the United

States is embedded in all levels of the academy. It

is White privilege that allows White feminist

anthropologists to carry out normative practices

of exclusion of their Black feminist counterpartsfrom the activities that count in the academy such

as recognition and citation. I contend that all

Black women anthropologists are politically aware

of their status as being both raced and gendered in

departments of anthropology and in women’s and

gender studies. I use the terms Black and African

American interchangeably. Therefore, this discus-

sion has two broad missions. There is the matter

of the right to be heard and to have one’s presence

acknowledged that helps explain why the Black

female voice in anthropology is not fully included

in the reading and the teaching of anthropology.

Second, this discussion begins to set an agenda forarticulating a Black feminist intellectual thought in

anthropology.

The concept of “double jeopardy” (Beale 1970)

(being Black and female) is a good explanatory

tool to decipher the situations faced by Black

women anthropologists in the politics of the

academy where exclusionary practices are not often

challenged, despite AAA committees. This current

work demonstrates how the female academic intel-

lect that is raced Black is relatively excluded in

the scholarship of European American feminist

anthropology colleagues. Despite employing ana-

lytical tools that dissect the structural and cultural

implications of race, gender, ethnic, economic, and

other forms of social inequality found across the

globe, these same feminist anthropologists have

basically rendered Black feminist anthropology

almost invisible. I argue that “race” trumps “gen-der” in departments and in significant feminist

publications over the past 30 years. Subsequently,

there continues to be a struggle to gain respect, rec-

ognition, and prominence in the field of anthropol-

ogy by Black feminist anthropologists. Over 10

years ago I wrote (Bolles 2001:14) that “for as long

as there have been graduates of anthropology

departments, there have been Black women who

studied this field of inquiry.” According to my

informal accounting, there are now almost 100

Black women who earned the doctorate in anthro-

pology. Besides my own counting, I also put a call

on the Association of Black Anthropologist listservto contribute to this act of discovery. The late

anthropologist John Gwaltney (1981) remarked

that “telling the story straight” was a way of cor-

recting history and correcting the stereotypes and

dominant paradigms that often misaligned and

misrepresented Black people. Here, this work of

“telling the story straight” focuses on Black women

anthropologists and including them into a more

inclusive history of anthropology.

This work combines different elements of the

self-reflective, the informal sharing of information

and experiences among Black feminist anthropolo-

gists, with the intellectual production of Africanand African American women anthropologists. At

this juncture of the 21st century, our students and

colleagues need to know the lifework of African

American women anthropologists and more

importantly, the contributions they have made to

this discipline.

Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 21, Number 1, pp. 57–71, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466. © 2013 by the AmericanAnthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/traa.12000. 57


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DECOLONIZING FEMINIST

ANTHROPOLOGY

To borrow a concept from the eminent historian

Carter G. Woodson, there is a problem of “mised-

ucation” in anthropological thought and pointedly

in feminist anthropology in instruction, research,

and writing about Black anthropology and Black

feminist anthropology. The ways of “miseduca-

tion” in anthropology are the glaring omissions in

citations, and exclusion from discussions that

establish recognition in the field. And my goal in

this article is to examine the how, why, and where

exclusions occur and the consequences of

omission.

To “tell the story straight” requires contextu-

alizing and laying a foundation. To do so, we

must unpack how exclusion, racism, and elitism

can be carried out in the name of feminist anthro-

pology. There is “homework” to be done on the

home front, meaning in the politics of the depart-ment and in the structure of courses, particularly

those critical to the development of the discipline.

I use the notion of “homework” beyond Kamala

Visweswaran’s use of the phrase (1994:101). Here,

homework refers more than anthropological field-

work into U.S. life and culture, but to literally

casting a critical eye and ear in the office, in the

classroom, in the departmental meeting, and in the

entire academic praxis. Brackette Williams

(1995:25) captures the expansive concept of

“homework.” She says that doing one’s homework

is to “gather information in order to be an

informed citizen capable of acting in a morallyconscientious manner toward a particular category

of persons who share the identity fellow citizen.”

Homework in this instance is about understanding

“what must be done, why it must be done, and

what are the consequences are doing it one way

and not another.” Williams purposely left aside

the ongoing dilemmas of fieldwork among the pri-

marily non-White, indigenous, poor, and working-

class women whose lives and experiences that

anthropologists represent on the printed page, on

film, or in other discursive texts. In this context

“homework” must be applied to all situations par-

ticularly when those fellow citizens are one’s owncolleagues.

In their introduction to Situated Lives, editors

Louise Lamphere, Helene Ragone, and Patricia

Zavella (1997:3) remark that second-wave femi-

nists and critical anthropologists “now question

the nature of our relationship to our subjects and

examine the way in which our writing reflects the

power relations embedded in the research setting.”

The question is does the power relations on the

home front of the department, for example,

between advisor and graduate student and in other

academic politics, garner equal attention as in the

fieldwork scenario? How can we motivate our-

selves to be “morally conscientious” doing the best

“homework” possible for our “fellow citizen” who

is a Black woman anthropologist?

Clearly, over the past three decades, a rich lit-

erature emerged examining many women anthro-

pologists, including both those few who have

entered the canon and those who have not (Lewin

2006; Mascia-Lees and Sharpe 2000). The work of

decolonizing anthropology runs parallel to this

process of feminist recovery; it too includes a

strongly historical component which focuses on

lost figures. I argue that we presently face a critical

juncture in feminist anthropology by which the

hard-won lessons gleaned from a recovery of

female ancestors and validation of their work is just one way to contribute to the way we decolo-

nize the field. What does decolonizing really mean

and how can it help feminist anthropology in

terms of addressing the issue of “miseducation/

omission”?

Faye V. Harrison’s (1991[1997, 2010]) intro-

duction to Decolonizing Anthropology presents the

paradigm enacted by decolonizing efforts of

progressive anthropologists. The work calls for the

transformation of anthropology, the child of impe-

rialism, at a time when post modern claims ques-

tion the validity and worth of the discipline — the

most humanist of the social sciences, and the mostscientific of the humanities (Wolf 1964). However,

it is that same unique history and praxis that calls

for transformative efforts from within the disci-

pline that comes from the experiences and strug-

gles of people of the global south, or so-called

developing world (Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin

America, and the Caribbean), and the “belly of

the beast,” namely the internal colonies within the

advanced industrial north, the location of the

majority of anthropological research to date.

Identified are four major streams that contrib-

ute to decolonizing efforts in anthropology, but are

applicable to any field of study. It draws on a neo-Marxist political economy; it experiments in inter-

pretive and reflexive ethnographic analysis; it

includes a feminism that underscores the impact

race and class have upon gender; and it has tradi-

tions radical of Black and (other) global scholar-

ship which acknowledges the interplay between

race and other forms of invidious difference, nota-

bly class and gender (Harrison 1991:2 – 4). It

58 Transforming Anthropology VOL. 21(1)


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becomes imperative to revisit and to critically build

upon a body of knowledge produced by anthropol-

ogists who were generally forced to work and

struggle on the intellectual periphery, such as Zora

Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus,

and Vera Green, all of whom were anthropologists

and African American women. Hurston, Dunham,

and Primus developed as humanist anthropologists

and as cultural producers who pushed the bound-

aries of the discipline of their era with their creative

innovations. Their self-reflexive and politically

nuanced interpretations of African Diaspora

cultures challenged an objective science approach,

valued by their peers and mentors. Vera Green’s

commentary of the misrepresentation of impover-

ished people in U.S. social policy countered the

prevailing stereotypes of poor Black Americans

(Green 1972). Collectively, they became peripheral

and invisible due to their race and gender. It

behooves contemporary anthropologists to becomeacquainted with these marginalized scholars as

their careers addressed the issues of the “miseduca-

tion/omission” specifically in feminist anthropology

and in anthropology.

A decolonized anthropology recognizes and

promotes development of theories based on non-

Western precepts and assumptions. This under-

scores the point made by John L. Gwaltney

(1981), Bolles (1987, 1996), and echoed by Patricia

Hill Collin’s (1989) Black Feminist Thought,

whereby history and intellectual authority rest

with the people in the community, legitimizing

those everyday standpoints as valuable in and out-side of that setting. A decolonized feminist posi-

tion articulated in a feminist anthropological study

has no boundaries of what it can do and say, by

and for the populations it represents.

Over 20 years ago Aihwa Ong (1988:80)

argued that Western feminists tended to objectify

non-Western women by relegating their status to

“other.” Contemporary feminist anthropology has

been trying and continues to try and readdress this

history through a process of recovery and histori-

cal analysis. However, as mentioned earlier, it

might be easier for many feminists to follow dem-

ocratic practices in the “safety” of the field wherefemale anthropologists may pass as honorary

males in some societies, or as persons of higher

status based on their membership in a Western

culture, (Visweswaran 1994:29) than on the “home

front” of the department.

Early on, decolonizing efforts on the home

front was a perspective argued for by Black

anthropologists and their allies. African American

feminist anthropologist Diane Lewis (1973) stated

“‘First World’ anthropologists need to study their

own cultures and (how their) involvement in his

(her) culture has affected the development of the-

ory and method in the discipline, but it may turn

out that this seriously skewed perspective in other

cultures.” In her chapter in Decolonizing Anthro-

pology, Deborah D’Amico (then Samuels)

(1991:69) argues that we (anthropologists) need to

stop talking about “the field” as separated from

the academy and “real life.” She says that bound-

aries are constantly blurred as anthropologists

research, write, and think in a variety of locations.

The illusion of separation between the field and

the academy is dangerous and expensive to the

people under study. Gina Ulysse (2007:7) demands

that we ‘flip the script’ of dominant discourses. In

other words, the privileges accorded in the field

setting may provide the basis for continuing to

“other” women. Or, despite democratizing thefieldwork experience, women anthropologists are

not able or willing to apply decolonizing efforts

back home in the academy. Therefore, “othering,”

White privilege and the reproduction of omission

and other exclusionary practices abound. How

does this happen, when feminist anthropology and

the field of women and gender studies has argued

for understanding experiences through an intersec-

tional lens and being champions of cross-compara-

tive analysis?

One of the issues facing women and gender

studies in the United States has been its own his-

tory (circa the late 1960s) that promoted a narrowvision of women’s lives and experiences that cen-

tered around being White, middle class, educated

and often from the northeast. Over the years

women’s studies broadened its scope of vision and

embraced an analytical framework that focused on

the complexity of social factors that intersect an

individual’s circumstance and identity, and

reduced a binary perspective. In the late 1980s,

Black and Latina feminist sociologists applied

what they called an intersectional approach to

understanding the situations of the women fea-

tured in their scholarship (King 1988; Brewer

1989; Garcia 1989; Segura 1987). More broadly,they used this framework to understand their own

lives and experiences. This concept became a valu-

able analytical tool because it was relevant to

understanding aspects of scholarship and research,

including examining the structure of the academy.

Consequently, feminist anthropologists, particu-

larly those who were housed in women’s studies or

have affiliation with that interdisciplinary field

Lynn Bolles 59


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were now fully equipped with three important par-

adigms. The first was to critically address issues of

“othering” other women in the fieldwork setting

that came with true incorporation of a decolonized

effort in feminist anthropological scholarship. The

second paradigm was the ability to apply an inter-

sectional lens not only in their scholarship as a

way of understanding social structures but also to

be of use while encountering a range of social for-

mations in their own everyday life. Finally, when

adopting Brackette Williams’ concept of fellow cit-

izenship, whereby what must be done, why it must

be done, and what are the consequences of doing

it one way and not another became an essential

habit in doing one’s “homework” in both research

in the field and on the home front in the depart-

ment and the academy at large.

There is no doubt that the discipline of

anthropology reinvented itself to address the pop-

ulations and issues traditionally studied, by whom,in what ways, and toward what end (Cole 2001:x).

The substantial changes over the course of two

decades (1960s – 1970s) laid the foundation for fem-

inist anthropology. However, despite all of the

embracing of differences among folk in the field,

and the use of various theories to understand the

variation in humankind, the determining locus and

structure of power still is in place. Suggested prac-

tices of decolonization, intersectional thinking, and

doing one’s fellow citizenry homework conflict

with White privilege, the dominant discourse of

everyday living in the United States. Almost all

anthropology departments3

are profoundly situ-ated in predominately White locations and the

majority of anthropologists are white women. Was

it different when the majority of anthropologists

were canon-setting White men? Yes. When the

vast majority of anthropologists were White men,

their female counterparts (of course there were

exceptions) were often marginal to the benefits of

membership and their scholarship was devalued as

examined by numerous authors (Morgen 1988). As

the predominately White academy expanded to

include women’s studies and African American

studies more Black women entered the field of

anthropology. Given the history of the marginali-zation of White women scholars in anthropology,

it seems “expected” that the discipline would

embrace the Black women who chose the field as a

career. There are great champions among women

anthropologists who took great strides to open the

doors allowing more women to enter the academy

and who remained in departments. If this is the

case, why are feminist Black anthropologists

excluded among those scholars who are cited? I

contend that the White privilege of European

American feminist anthropologists is at the root of

this exclusion.

Critical race theory posits that White privilege

is a way of conceptualizing racial inequalities that

focuses as much on the advantages that Whites

accrue as on the disadvantages that people of

color experience. White privilege views European

Americans — the dominant group — as the social,

cultural, and economic experience as the norm and

the model that everyone else should experience. Its

reliability rests on White appearance as a marker

of social consent. It is an overarching, comprehen-

sive framework of policies, practices, institutions,

and cultural norms that undergird every aspect of

U.S. society (www.the praxisproject.org/tools/

White-Privilege.pdf). Furthermore, institutional

racism ideologically shores up and reconfirms

White privilege that operates on the ground indaily activities reinforcing this dominant systemic

cultural practice (Rothenberg 2004; Lipsitz 1998:

Brodkin 1998).

Let us just consider Peggy McIntosh’s popular

classic piece, “White Privilege: Unpacking the

Invisible Knapsack”(www.nybp.org/reference/

WhitePrivilege.pdf) that demonstrates how White

privilege works on the ground. First published in

1988, “The Invisible Knapsack” is used in high

schools, colleges, and universities across the Uni-

ted States in all kinds of classroom settings, and

cited in a wide spectrum of academic publications.

It serves as a mainstay in Women’s Studiesbecause it is a good illustration of how racial and

gender dominance works in U.S. society, particu-

larly for those who question this fact. My use of

the familiar “the Invisible Knapsack” demon-

strates the power of White privilege to those who

may teach it, but do not actualize or realize its

message in their own daily lives. The normative

power of White privilege is conveyed in overt rac-

ist practices, as well as in the subterranean quietly

hidden ways of benign and subtle tendencies of

racism. Understanding this normative power helps

to validate the “but I should have realized” com-

ment often rendered by colleagues in defense of their exclusionary practice of White privilege in

feminist anthropology.

Peggy McIntosh admits that she chose skin-

color privilege over class or religion to best illus-

trate the most obvious daily practices of White

privilege to drive home her point. There are 26

social conditions she wants us to consider. From

my own use of “the Invisible Knapsack” in the



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classroom, just the last one, “I can choose blemish

cover or bandages in ‘flesh’ color and have them

more or less match my skin” was taken care of by

the health aids industry as was the issue of “flesh”

tinted crayons. Several of McIntosh’s conditions

are applicable to the experiences of most Black

feminist anthropologists in the predominately

White academy. Included are issues of physical

and social isolation, constantly being asked to

speak for and represent one’s race, feeling out-

numbered and unheard in professional organiza-

tions, and taking a job without suspect of a

affirmative action agenda by coworkers.

The importance of understanding power and

who controls it is a critical element in understand-

ing “the Invisible Knapsack” and its applicability

in contemporary feminist anthropological practice.

As theoretically minimalist as the “Knapsack”

might be, the contents of the concept demonstrate

how White privilege is conveyed in ones’ own per-sonhood and actions. Without an intense under-

standing of the ingrained power of White privilege

by European American anthropologists their

exclusionary practices continue and the efforts of

decolonizing feminist anthropology, effective inter-

sectional research, and acting as fellow citizens will

be muted. The self-acknowledgement of the power

of White privilege cannot be overrated. The next

generation of White feminist anthropologists needs

to unpack the invisible knapsack to challenge the

politics of the department that explicitly impact

the status of the Black woman intellectual in

academy.In her essay “Balancing the Personal and

Professional,” Black feminist anthropologist,

Adrianne Andrews (1993:179) states, “I have been

plagued with feelings of ambivalence surrounding

my membership in the group of others known as

anthropologists.” She goes on, “there was a cer-

tain arrogance, associated with the assumption of

the right to ‘study people,’ that is yet another out-

come of the European pursuit of an identity by

using the ‘other’ taken literally and with Cauca-

sian implicit.” Andrews still found something of

value in her wide reading of anthropological texts.

She concludes that African and African Americananthropologists can enable Black people to reflect

on “our multifaceted selves.”

In many conversations with other Black

women anthropologists, similar concerns are often

repeated. How complicated the story becomes has

to do with the depth of my personal relationship

with the teller. Nonetheless, many of these stories

are survival stories passed down from one genera-

tion to the next. This is critical point because most

Black women anthropologists work in isolation.

This isolation begins in graduate school and can

continue into the fieldwork experience (compli-

cated by nationality, education, class, gender, and

other differences) and on the job, particularly in

predominately White institutions. The case of the

isolated Black woman anthropologist is changing

somewhat as more women than ever choose the

field of anthropology as a career. Still, many

young women must still meet their first fellow

Black woman anthropologist at the annual AAA

and Association of Black Anthropology (ABA)

meetings because of the overall low numbers in

departments across the United States.

POLITICS OF THE ACADEMY

In her coauthored book with Cornel West, Break-

ing Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life bell

hooks remarks about the invisibility of the Blackwoman intellectual. She (1991:151) states, “This is

why it is so difficult for students to name us.” The

term “intellectual” here refers to being dedicated

to activities of reading, writing, producing knowl-

edge, and conversing on subjects as an expert. In

the discipline of anthropology, this dictum is pro-

found and complicated further if the individual

woman identified herself as a feminist or “woman-

ist” (code for being a trouble maker) in these

isolated academic settings (hooks 1991:149).

This persona of the Black woman intellectual

counters the historical perception of the Black

woman whose body is to be controlled throughphysical or stereotyped innuendo. It is the body

that is expected to selflessly serve others, cleaning

up, and “mothering” (McKay 1997). The “mind”

was something included in the package, but

received little recognition. The production of

knowledge emanating from a Black female intellec-

tual body has relatively little sway in the large

scheme of the academy. Hence, as hooks suggests,

our students cannot name Black women anthro-

pologists or other Black women intellectuals out-

side of the handful who have crossed over into the

mainstream in the past 20 years. Who gets to cross

that road of acceptance?Without a doubt, the academy is a hierarchical

system that rewards those who it deems worthy of

celebrating and providing the opportunity for pro-

motion, particularly when individuals fulfill more

than the usual faculty duties. How this system

operates depends on each institution and its inter-

nal politics. This means that all scholars in the

system are under scrutiny and expected to perform

Lynn Bolles 61


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at some rate that is valued by that institution.

Recognition on an international level, publication

in preferred journals and book publishers, acquir-

ing large grants and funding from prestigious

agencies including the U.S. Government, placing

newly minted graduate students in top-tier institu-

tions as their first site of employment, and quality

teaching are just some of the criteria for this kind

of reward. A similar evaluation system applies for

small liberal arts colleges, where a premium

emphasis is placed on good teaching. Clearly, there

are a limited number of individuals who garner all

of those qualifying valued elements. What does this

mean for Black women in higher education at

large? According to an article by Sheila Gregory

(2001) only one percent of full-time Black women

faculty are members of academic departments in

predominately White institutions (PWI) whereas

the rest are found in historical Black colleges and

universities (HBCU). The Journal of Blacks inHigher Education collected data in 2007 that

looked at the 27 highest-ranking institutions in the

United States. Only five had a Black faculty of at

least five percent (www.jbe.com/feature55_blackfa-

culty). Those institutions were Columbia, Brown,

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Univer-

sity of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and all offered

the doctorate in anthropology. And according to

the five department websites, only three Black

women were listed as members of that faculty. The

2011 National Research Council (NRC) report

(www.nap.edu/rdp) used data collected in 2005/6

and ranked institutions of higher learning by theproductivity of their doctoral granting depart-

ments. The ranking is based on the scholarly out-

put of their faculty with emphasis on who cites

whom, how often they were cited, and the stature

of the publication in which they were cited. There

were 83 anthropology departments in the NRC

report. Clearly, the burden and the standards of

scholarly productivity make it difficult for any

scholar in the academy to be rewarded. According

to Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (www.

jbhe.com/news_views/62_blackfaculty.html) thirty-

five percent of Black faculty held tenure in 2007

compared to 44.6% of Whites. The JBHE reportalso noted and commented that in a period of

economic crisis, nontenured Black faculties are

disproportionately vulnerable to tenure denial.

Therefore, in addition to a structure that is dis-

criminatory in the first place, Black women in

anthropology must also contend with exclusionary

practices within the discipline and deal with the

politics of publication.

As any woman faculty member can attest to,

being multitask oriented is the key to survival in

the academy. Whether on a tenure track line or

hoping that an adjunct position will become one

with a promise of permanent status, the pressure

of succeeding in the academy is real. Although the

role of teacher, advisor, and department represen-

tative to every diversity initiative on campus earns

status points in both historically Black and pre-

dominately White institutional settings, a Black

woman being too intellectual is another matter.

What to do with the Black female body with a

mind? Dull her wits with countless collegial duties

on top of everything else, such as a personal life

and a professional career? Collectively, these kinds

of activities undermine any capacity to convey skill

and intellectual abilities and of course, drain per-

sonal energy. The late Black feminist literary critic

Nellie McKay wrote (1997:21) “the Black women

I know complain constantly of overwork, more isexpected of them than of others by students, other

faculty, administrators, and the professional orga-

nizations to which they belong.” Significantly,

what this suggests is “being weird, strange and

dangerous,” (intellectual) all the while unselfishly

serving is something only a Black woman who can

double (race and gender) or triple (race, gender,

junior or senior level hire) a departments’ human

resource accounting. Former president of the

American Anthropological Association, Yolanda

Moses (1997) analyzed the situation in a mono-

graph for the Association of Colleges and Univer-

sities on the Status of Black Women Professionalsin Higher Education. Moses examined quantitative

and qualitative data regarding the amount of ser-

vice to the institution, heavy advising and mentor-

ing loads, and the paucity of citation of Black

women scholars by the majority in their fields.

The study concluded that Black women serve

more leadership and subservient roles in university

life than their Black male colleagues or White

female counterparts.

Maxine Baca Zinn, Lynn Weber, Elizabeth

Higginbotham, and Bonnie Thornton Dill (1986:

290-300) warn, “Without serious structural efforts

to combat racism and classism so prevalent in oursociety, women’s studies will continue to replicate

its bias and thus contribute to the persistence of

inequality.” These founders of the Center for

Research on Women in Memphis implore col-

leagues (1986:302) “we must commit ourselves to

learning about each other so that we may accom-

plish our goals without paternalism, materialism,

or guilt …take the personal and professional risks



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involved in building alliances, listening to and

respecting people who have firsthand knowledge

of how to cope with oppression.” That 1986 essay

came at an important developmental moment in

Women’s Studies, and over the years, the process

has seen some success stories and some dismal fail-

ures across the disciplines of the academy.

Marilyn Saunders Mobley, a Black feminist

literary critic examines the institutionalized privi-

lege that benefits Euro-American feminist scholars.

Mobley’s chapter in Sister Scholar (2002:231-253)

looks at the politics of labor for Black women

scholars as they shift from identities of professor

to administrator, to institutional service workers

and who are then alienated in their own disci-

plines. Citing Black feminist critic Anne DuCille,

Mobley says (2002:247), “We experience both

hypervisibility and a super isolation by virtue of

[our] racial and gender difference,” on one hand,

even as we find ourselves “drawn as exemplarsand used up as icons [and]…find [ourselves]

chewed up and spit out because we did not

publish.”

Mobley also examines the ways in which

Black women’s scholarship often goes unnoticed

and unquoted in the work of other literary schol-

ars. She remarks, “When Black women are

quoted, it is often our anecdotal human interest

contributions rather than our scholarship that is

valued.” How can Black women interrupt this

dominant pattern so that their scholarship can be

heard/read/used/included/critiqued? Mobley argues

that the critical weight of writing and publishingbooks is a double burden for the isolated Black

scholar who must survive (self and family), take

care of departments, be mentors, and often be

responsible for all of the students of color and

their issues on campus.

Historian Deborah White-Gray’s Telling His-

tories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower

(2008) is a collection of essays written by 16 prom-

inent women scholars and their trajectories in the

profession of history. Wanda Hendricks notes

(2008:153) that a senior White colleague insisted

that as her minority status was in two categories

this meant that she had responsibilities to thedepartment, the university, the students, particu-

larly African American students, and to Black

people in general. He did not ask any junior White

faculty to meet these criteria nor did he engage in

similar discussions. In her own essay, Deborah

Gray White (2008:99) writes, “I can still go to

AHA (American Historical Association) conven-

tions and wonder if I am in the right professional

place. After thirty years, it still feels alien. I can

still open books, even those written by feminists,

and not find African American women in places

they should be.”

The absence of African American women in

the field of anthropology is similar to that of liter-

ature and history. Anthropologist Catherine Lutz

(1991:611-627) points out that writing, citation,

and other canon-setting patterns in the recent liter-

ature of sociocultural anthropology reveal the

impact of gender relations. Let us push this

argument a bit further than Lutz proposed. The

scholarly production by certain groups of anthro-

pologists does reveal gendered situations, but these

are compounded by race. Scholars of color, in this

case African American women anthropologists,

are in very specific locations for becoming faceless

and voiceless in the anthropological record. It is

no longer the case that there “aren’t any” Black

anthropologists available to hire as the trendsshow otherwise. The number of Black anthropolo-

gists found in any one department is still in the

low single digits or in the case of University of

Maryland where there are four (www.jbe.com/

feature55_blackfaculty). According to my own

counting there are at least 76 Black women

anthropologists with doctorates, currently

employed on various faculties in higher education.

(Supplemental Information: BOLLES: LIST OF

BLACK WOMEN ANTHROPOLOGISTS). At

issue is not if they are better than, or equal to

their White counterparts. Rather, the issue is that

because of their “double jeopardy” status Blackwomen work under the burden of double duty, as

mentioned by our historian colleague Wanda Hen-

dricks (2008). They often work in isolation and

are still required to fulfill the standard expecta-

tions for promotion and tenure. Furthermore,

these women work under the weight of White priv-

ilege systems that are reinforced by the academy,

which reproduce the isolation?

The intellectual work of Black women feminist

anthropologists competes against this combination

of forces by which academic success is measured.

One does not receive tenure for the number of

committees one serves, or for the number of stu-dents one mentors. What counts is acceptable

scholarly production, the standards of which vary

according to different institutional expectations.

The assessment of what counts in the academy

may not satisfy the scholar, or represent what are

that woman’s own scholarly pursuits.

Sometimes Black woman intellectual’s work is

more oriented toward activism rather than toward

Lynn Bolles 63


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the academy. Clearly this kind of work is not

rewarded by the academy’s scheme of what

“counts” as scholarly production. However, it

serves as a model of what scholars could be doing

as public anthropologists and not be discounted

by the academy. Given the scope of concerns

addressed by Black women anthropologists, these

issues often require two kinds of submissions for

the same set of materials. One submission may be

in a popular format (verbal or written) whereas

the other attends to an academic audience. There

are numerous examples of publications written for

multiple audiences. Irma McClaurin’s 2002 ethno-

biography of Zora Neale Hurston appeared in

popular publications whereas her academic study

was slated to appear elsewhere. Leith Mullings

and Alaka Wali’s publications of their Maternal

Health Project in Harlem arrived in three formats:

one report for the sponsoring agency, one report

for the community, and one book for the acad-emy, Social Context of Reproduction in Central

Harlem (2001). In a similar fashion, the multiple-

authored book In the Shadows in the Sun (Deere

and Safa 1991) also came in three versions — one

written in popular language (English and Spanish)

for dissemination to the rank — and file of U.S.

organized labor — one written for members of con-

gress on “the Hill” in Washington, DC, and one

for the academy. The incomparable Angela Gil-

liam publishes in various forms and in different

languages. For example, her article “From Rox-

bury to Rio — And Back in a Hurry” first appeared

in the Journal of Black Poetry (1970). The workwas expanded for an academic audience as “Black

and White in Latin America,” published in Pan-

African Journal (1974), then republished in French

for Presence Africaine and then once again in Eng-

lish as a chapter in the edited volume, African-

American Reflections on Brazil’s Racial Paradise

(1992). Gilliam’s scholarship, written in Portuguese

and other languages, appears in Brazilian popular

and academic texts.

In addition, Black women have long made

unaccounted for theoretical and methodological

contributions. Black feminist anthropology has

been engaged in discovery, and has used all of thetheoretical trends that have captured the anthro-

pological imagination to assess if they were the

answer to the social nemesis — racism. After all,

looking for the cure for racism and other forms of

inequality has been the focal point of Black

anthropological discourse since the time of Caro-

line Bond Day. She was a “race woman” and a

graduate of Atlanta University in 1912. She went

on to earn an undergraduate from Harvard (BA

Radcliffe 1919). Bond Day became the first Black

American to earn a graduate degree in anthropol-

ogy in 1932, also from Harvard (Bolles 2001:29).

Her work argued against eugenics and the biolo-

gizing of racial differences that was the prominent

theory of the day.

There is more recent examples Black women

anthropological vanguard work. For example in

2010, the School of American Research hosted a

seminar, “Katherine Dunham and the Anthropol-

ogy of Dance: Theory, Experiment, and Social

Engagement” organized by Elizabeth Chin. This

seminar, out of which an edited scholarly produc-

tion is forthcoming, includes the work of three

Black women anthropologists, A. Lynn Bolles,

Aimee Cox, and Dana Ain Davis. During the June

seminar at the Santa Fe campus, the participants

performed an interactive, interpretative presenta-

tion of Katherine Dunham’s scholarly productionin anthropology and her artistic contributions.

The group also took part in the National Dance

Institute in Santa Fe participating in a master

class on the Dunham technique, led by Elizabeth

Chin. They danced the research to performance

method that is fundamental to Dunham’s produc-

tion of anthropological theory. But who teaches

Bond Day and Dunham in anthropology

departments?

Another example of multimethod scholarship

is Deborah A. Thomas’s film “Bad Friday: Rasta-

fari after Coral Gardens” and her book, Excep-

tional Violence (2011). The volume includes achapter on the Coral Garden incident, an almost

forgotten story in Jamaican history except within

Rastafari communities. The chapter provides the

methodologies used to make the film and its use

of participatory research techniques.

Some of the new bodies of theories, such as

self-reflexivity, poststructuralism, and multiple

methods, are not particularly new from a Black

feminist anthropological perspective. Alternative

methods in anthropology were a mainstay of the

Black women pioneers, Zora Neale Hurston,

Katherine Dunham, Irene Diggs, and Vera Green.

These pioneers developed theories that were fash-ioned through their political actions as artists,

leaders, teachers, and policy critics, all of which

made them public anthropologists before it was in

vogue.

Setting the standard of the discourse on

colonialism and imperialism, Diane Lewis’ article

in a 1973 issue of Current Anthropology predated

the discussions of world systems theory. The



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intersection of class, nationality, gender, and racial

relations between the woman “native” anthropolo-

gist and the kindred folk in the fieldwork experi-

ence was explored by Niara Sudarkasa (nee Gloria

Marshall) during the 1960s, well before feminist

reflexive anthropology came into being. And the

list continues on as the pioneering work of Black

women anthropologists goes unrecognized by not

only the mainstream of the discipline but also

those who considered these issues decades later

and thought that they had invented the wheel.

Some of these critical theories are taken up by

contemporary Black feminist anthropologists (e.g.

Thomas 2002; Slocum 1999; Simmons 2009; Wil-

liams 2011) and has hopefully expanded everyone’s

knowledge.

INVITATION TO CONTRIBUTE, CITATION,

AND RECOGNITION

The important work of Black feminist anthropolo-gists is not only marginalized or made invisible by

the canon-setting White men, who, until quite

recently, controlled anthropology and are its pri-

mary practitioners, but as I emphasized earlier,

also by their European American feminist counter-

parts. As I suggest below, many of the writers of

the key canonical texts in feminist anthropology

reproduced the practices of exclusion practiced by

the discipline at large. A quick review of six major

texts of women, gender, and feminist anthropology

provides a clue to the answer.

The two foundational texts in feminist anthro-

pology were published within months of eachother, Women, Culture and Society (1974) edited

by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere and

Toward an Anthropology of Women (1975) edited

by Rayna Rapp (then Reiter). Between the two,

only one of the contributors was African Ameri-

can — Susan Brown, who like many of the contrib-

utors to the text was advanced anthropology

graduate student at University Michigan. At the

same time, Black women anthropologists, as grad-

uate students, untenured and the few tenured ones

were working toward building the Association of

Black Anthropologists as their research on women

was embedded in the struggles of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and racism at home and abroad. They

knew each other’s names and supported one

another. Outside of Susan Brown, they were not

invited to join the feminist anthropological pub-

lishing collaborations of that time.

During the 1970s, the classic text All the

Women were White, all Blacks were Men, But

Some of us were Brave (1982) edited by Black fem-

inist scholars, Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott,

and Barbara Smith, was published. Although this

text relies more on literary scholarship, it attested

to the fact that Black feminists were not on the

agenda in nascent women’s studies programs. This

kind of feminism was an outgrowth of Black

women’s activism in the 1960s Black power move-

ments. Many White feminist anthropologists did

not know just how brave Black women anthropol-

ogists really were as they tried to bridge, to

appease, and to satisfy the demands of the aca-

demic units of anthropology, African American/

Black Studies, and women’s studies programs.

The two foundational texts, Women, Culture

and Society (1974) and Toward an Anthropology of

Women (1975) drew criticism from Black feminist

anthropologists and sociologists, with most of the

disapproval directed toward some of the chapters

in the Rosaldo and Lamphere volume. For exam-

ple, Sherry Ortner’s essay was faulted for itssupposed universality of the gendered domestic

division of labor and supported by a theory of

universal sex asymmetry (see Sudarkasa 1987).

Toward an Anthropology of Women did not

contain any research coming from Black America,

but the Black world was represented in chapters

on Nigeria, Colombia, South Africa, and the

Dominican Republic. Outside of Brown’s chapter,

the only readily identifiable Black scholar cited

in the bibliography was Black womanist

anthropologist, Diane Lewis.

Fast forward to 1988, when The Association

for Feminist Anthropology (AFA) became a sec-tion of the American Anthropological Association.

Feminist Anthropology gained credibility as a

body of knowledge, and gender studies relied

heavily upon feminist anthropological resources

for its scholarly production. During those years,

more anthropologists than ever before joined

Women’s Studies departments, programs, and

clusters across the globe. Sandra Morgen’s (1989)

Gender and Anthropology made a deliberate effort

to be inclusive of Black feminist scholars and

scholarship. The text was written as a guide to

anthropologists to be inclusive of feminist work in

the discipline and to transform introductorycourse offerings. There are two Black American

(A. Lynn Bolles and Leith Mullings) and one Afri-

can-born (Lina Fruzzetti) women contributors to

the volume. Morgen’s exceptionally thorough and

edifying introduction (1989:1-20) provided an

up-to-date, state-of-the-art discussion of feminist

anthropological research as it challenged the domi-

nant paradigms in all subfields of the discipline

Lynn Bolles 65


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and its relationship to Women’s Studies scholar-

ship. It was in those pages that British feminist

anthropologist, Henrietta Moore’s book, Feminism

and Anthropology (1989) surfaced as an important

text.

Moore’s text provided a significant amount of

information about the history of anthropology

and its women contributors. However, it was a

great disappointment in terms of the way women

of Africa and those of African descent become

subjects from the “field” and any other theoretical

contributions were viewed as “just” identity poli-

tics. Moore contributed to the invisibility of Black

feminist anthropologists because she relied on

White feminist anthropologists to provide her

material, all of who drew a blank on the scholar-

ship of their Black feminist colleagues. As a scho-

lar of great stature herself, Henrietta Moore could

have looked more carefully into who was excluded

from feminist anthropological scholarship andincluded those scholars in her own work. There

are seven Black women anthropologists, six of

whom are African born or based (five working on

the continent, one primarily in India), and one is

African American, Diane Lewis. Moore found her-

self relying on the theoretical contributions of

Black American literary critics such as bell hooks,

and the But Some of us Are Brave contributors to

make her argument. U.S. feminist anthropologists

did not cite their Black feminist colleagues; there-

fore, their body of work was excluded from this

influential, but exclusionary scholarship.

Another example of exclusion came from ahighly acclaimed volume, Michaela di Leonardo’s

(1991) Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge. In

her introduction, Di Leonardo recounted her per-

spective on the theoretical shift staking place in

feminist anthropological projects and its relation

to the history of the discipline at large. A point is

made that unlike the “early bibles of feminist

anthropology, not all the contributors are White

women.” Here in Gender at the Crossroads the

contributors include one man, and two women of

color, (Patricia Zavella and African American bio-

logical anthropologist Nadine Peacock). In terms

of the inclusion of Black feminist anthropologicalthought, there was none. There were no references

in the introduction and a handful of names were

randomly scattered in citations throughout the

essays.

Following the celebration of the 25th anniver-

sary of the two foundational texts, Louise Lamp-

here, Helena Ragone, and Patricia Zavella

published Situated Lives Gender and Culture in

Everyday Life (1997). The chapters of this volume

position the constructs of gender in relation to the

historical and material circumstances where race,

class, and sexuality intersect and impact on every-

day life. Of the 26 chapters only one Black femi-

nist anthropologist is included in the text. In her

chapter, Faye Harrison cites her sister Black femi-

nist anthropologists, especially those who work in

the Caribbean. As a matter of fact, the invisibility

was more apparent in the index that only refer-

ences the following Black scholars: anthropologist,

Delmos Jones; literary giants, Toni Morrison,

James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison; and feminist

sociologist Patricia Hill Collins.

In 2006, Ellen Lewin edited Feminist Anthro-

pology, A Reader. Overall it is a collection of some

of the valuable contributions of feminist anthro-

pology to the larger body of feminist and gender

research across the disciplines. Lewin’s “Introduc-

tion” is an act of recovery and reconnection. Ittakes a genealogical approach that contextualizes

and positions the contributions made by a numer-

ous groups of anthropologists in the United States

and Europe that led to what is now called feminist

anthropology. Ellen Lewin recognizes the rele-

vance of positioning the work of marginalized

scholars of old in this context for continuity pur-

poses and for understanding gender in its most

varied forms. Despite the inclusive referencing to

Black foremothers and citing Black feminist

anthropologists in the introductions and indices

there is but one chapter written by an African

American feminist anthropologist, Paulla Ebron,whereas Afro-Surinamese Gloria Wekker offers

the African Diaspora contribution.

The point still remains clear, as revealed in the

review of six important texts in feminist anthropol-

ogy that even though African American feminist

anthropologists publish, their works fail to be ade-

quately recognized and cited by anthropologists,

including those who count as allies and colleagues.

The verification of the merit of the work — the cita-

tions that references to the original work — is

absent in the majority of those six influential texts.

Anthropologists, like other scholars cite authors

whose opinions they concur with, or are of usevalue to them in their research. This is a practice

learned in graduate training. Renato Rosaldo

(1989) notes that the site of canon formation is in

the history of theory course. In that setting, gradu-

ate students learn who is “good,” become skilled at

presenting evidence to the contrary, and become

critical in their analysis of methodology, theory,

and other aspects of research and scholarship.



11/15

Without exposure, there is no scholarly location to

provide evidence for assessment.

A quick perusal of a combination of graduate

course syllabi posted on the web gives a hint at the

absence of Black anthropological thought and

specifically of Black feminist contributions to the dis-

cipline in this critical course. This was a totally unsci-

entific exercise, but it does illustrate my point. There

are two graduate syllabi found under a Google

search for “syllabus for history of anthropology the-

ory.” Retrieved are two highly ranked departments,

Michigan (sitemaker.umich.edu/historymatters/…/

core_seminar_final.doc; Cohen et al. 2005) and Rut-

gers (anthro.rutgers.edu/component/docman/doc…

/305-505mascia-lees2008). Both syllabi paid good

attention to feminist anthropology. Black anthro-

pologist and historian of the discipline, Lee Baker,

and theoretician Michel Rolph Trouillot were found

on these graduate syllabi. However, none of the syl-

labi cited the scholarship of any Black womananthropologist. In the United States, there are 83

departments of anthropology that offer the doctor-

ate. These two cases do not make a case of prece-

dence, but they do direct our attention toward the

practices of exclusion.

Citation indices are an important source for

documenting the differential rates of citation of

anthropologists, including feminist anthropolo-

gists. By and far, anthropologists of color, espe-

cially those of African descent, have been out of

this citation loop. As mentioned earlier, African

American feminist anthropologists tend to cite

each other, particularly in similar subfields, butoften their contributions to the wider field are not

recognized — virtually absent. If the citation wars

have meaning in the modern academy, as Lutz

and others who have carried out similar research

claim, then in both short and long runs African

American scholars are/will be faceless and voice-

less in the anthropological record.

In the US academy, the citation count is used

as an essential mechanism to do three things for

scholars: they render respect within the community

of anthropologists, provide recognition of produc-

tive contributions (writing) which then leads to

prominence in the field and the academy at large.A central part of academic writing is citation — the

evaluation of the written work of others. Lutz

states, “To engage in scholarship is to involve one-

self with the ideas of others, to attempt to support,

amend, or overturn them, but first of all to take

them under consideration. The citation is an index

of a judgment made by an anthropologist of the

article in which the citation appears, that the

persons cited has been taken seriously.” Citations

implicate relations of power, both based on race

and gender, and form of symbolic capital, for the

cited author, as scholarly status or reputation

depends, in part, on the frequency. Citation capital

can be transformed not only into respect, recogni-

tion, and prominence but also into real capital in

the form of higher salaries and merit pay, even for

those whose institutions that are in financial

distress.

I examined data from the 2001 Social Web

focusing on 15 Black women anthropologists

featured in Irma McClaurin’s 2001 “Introduction”

to Black Feminist Anthropology.4 The Social Web

categorizes journals and authors under headings,

such as education, race, history, and area studies

(e.g., Latin American Perspectives); anthropology,

sociology, the social and behavioral sciences, and

law reviews; and feminist studies. Overall, there

were 409 citations considered. Not unexpectedly,the two former presidents of institutions of higher

education, Johnnetta B. Cole and Yolanda T.

Moses, were cited in two-thirds of the listings in

education (N = 27). Legal scholars, along with

social science medicine, nursing, sociology, and

psychology showed significant numbers (N = 128)

citing the work of Black feminist anthropologists

on issues of gender and race. Area studies and his-

tory journals noted (N = 67) citations across the

two headings. The category with the least number

of references of Black feminist anthropologists was

in feminist journals (N = 34). Furthermore, most

of the authors who referenced Black feministanthropologists were themselves, Black women

anthropologists. Of the 153 citations in anthropol-

ogy journals, 40 percent resulted from two

authors, Faye Harrison and Audrey Smedley. The

numbers came from two pieces of work, Harri-

son’s review in the Annual Review of Anthropology

(1995) and Smedleys’ text Race in North America

(1993). Again the majority of scholars citing these

works were indeed other Black anthropologists,

both women and men and their allies.

Another example of how recognition in the

field works is the volume Gender and Anthropology

by Frances Mascia-Lees and Nancy Johnson Black(2000). After telling their stories of how they

became college-educated women, how they found

anthropology and other self-reflexive positions, the

authors render a history of feminist anthropology.

Reclaiming foremothers was an important part of

this effort. Mascia-Lees and Black mention the

reclaiming of Zora Neale Hurston as a foremother

of feminist anthropology, but do not cite Black

Lynn Bolles 67


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feminist anthropologist Gwendolyn Mikell whose

writings addresses Hurston in the discipline (1999).

The authors frame Hurston as a novelist, essayist,

and playwright but not as a Boasian anthropolo-

gist. It is not that the artist stance is incorrect, but

that Hurston is not put in a comparative position

with the other anthropologists on the author’s

foremother reclamation list.

In a chapter on women’s social organization

that challenges male dominance, Mascia-Lees and

Black cite Irma McClaurin’s 1995 ethnography on

Belize, and mention Faye Harrison in the bibliog-

raphy. Chapter eight examines the reflexive

approach, and notes (2000:93) that the roots of

these efforts began when “many African Ameri-

cans began to associate their own oppression with

that of Black Africans fighting colonial domina-

tion in other parts of the world and fueled the US

civil rights movement.” Here there is an implica-

tion of familiarity with 1960s Black activism with-out a Black intellectual history as a foundation.

Exotic at Home (1998) by Michaela di Leo-

nardo comes close to giving Black feminist anthro-

pology credit. In the chapter entitled, “The Dusky

Maiden and the Post war American Imperium” Di

Leonardo spends a good deal of time on Margaret

Mead, “virtually a mother figure of anthropol-

ogy.” According to Di Leonardo none of Mead’s

biographies are critical of her work or life except

for Leonora Forestal and Angela Gilliam’s text,

Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy (1992).

With that citation, Di Leonardo does not even

examine the work for further comments, whichimplies that their work is not worthy of exploring.

HIRING AND TENURE

Beyond the initial struggle to get hired, there is

also the struggle to get tenure. The following are a

few tenure stories that will help to reinforce why

decolonizing must begin at home. I cannot identify

the scholars whose stories are repeated here

because the sources were gathered around the

intellectual watercooler. Nonetheless, every story

told about the tenure process has a message and

conveys a lesson that needs to be learned by all.

By the early 1970s, a sizable cohort of Blackwomen anthropologists came of age. This number

doubled the number of Black women in the field5.

They received their doctorates from prestigious

graduate programs, and often their advisors made

very little effort to help make their entry into the

profession uneventful. For many of them, there

was no old boy networking, no old girl network-

ing on their behalf. Nonetheless, on their own

merit, other prestigious universities hired them.

Doing what junior faculty do, these women did

more so because they were Black activist/scholars.

Three with prestigious credentials were all turned

down for tenure. Between them, there were five

books, and an ample number of articles. Each case

was resolved; one changed jobs and the other two

had their decisions reversed after massive lobbying

efforts by the senior Black anthropological com-

munity. None of the cases acquired the notoriety

of the Lamphere et al. vs. Brown decision because

they never reached litigation stage.

In one promotion and tenure case, one depart-

ment solicited and received 50 letters from senior

scholars. One senior woman reviewer remarked

that she already knew the manuscript included in

the tenure packet because Cambridge University

Press had sent the book in its dissertation form

for her evaluation for publication. She wrote a let-

ter for tenure based on that reading. The interest-ing part is that the junior scholar up for tenure

never submitted a manuscript to Cambridge.

Therefore, the letter used in consideration for her

promotion and tenure was based on somebody

else’s book. The actual author of the Cambridge

submission was also a young Black woman

anthropologist who was also coming up for tenure

at another prestigious institution. Clearly, this

senior woman reviewer could not tell one Black

woman anthropologist a part from another. The

young Black woman did not receive tenure at that

institution. The woman who was caught in the

confusion did not pursue the process, left academ-ics and the country. In personal conversations

with three of these women they remarked on feel-

ings of isolation, second-class citizenship, and

being overburdened with student responsibilities.

Black women who continue in the academy

are often pressed to show their allegiance to at

least two other fields of study — African American/

Africana/Black Studies, Women’s Studies, and

whatever is their subfield. All of those constituen-

cies claim possession of time, energy, and ideas.

There is the doubling up of students and the col-

lege/university committees that need the “double-

dip” point of view. In the past, when book manu-scripts were produced it is hard to find a publisher

willing to take a “chance,” especially if the con-

tents were on Black subject matter. It was assumed

that the audience would be “too specialized” or

“too small” and not worth the investment, particu-

larly for university presses or even trade publishing

houses. Foremother Black anthropologist Irene

Diggs recalled with great bitterness that she sent



13/15

her manuscripts out to countless numbers of pub-

lishers, but no one was interested even in her life

history of the seminal Cuban anthropologist, Fer-

nando Ortiz. Even today when the rejection letters

arrive, it is either straight to the point, or it

includes the reader’s comments. Here, academics

enjoy being rather viscous. A reviewer for a

recently rejected manuscript on anthropology,

racism and the academy implied on how could a

well-respected (read White) feminist scholar be

associated with such ridiculous ideas and worthless

scholarship.

When the work is finally published the pub-

lisher becomes a cause for concern, especially for

consideration for tenure and promotion. This pol-

icy is repeated in the evaluation of journals. Even

though Transforming Anthropology is a referred

journal, published under the auspices of the Amer-

ican Anthropological Association, an institution

engaged in a debate whether or not considered ina Black scholar’s promotion and tenure file.

CONCLUSION

The goal of “Telling the Story Straight” was to

address the omissions, the exclusions, and extra

burdens faced by Black feminist anthropologists

who, as Langston Hughes reminds us, are “Black

and beautiful.” White privilege permeates the very

fabric of U.S. society and is found in the personal

and politics of anthropologists and in the academy.

Without understanding this fundamental aspect of

U.S. culture and society, the efforts of decolonizing

feminist anthropology, entails doing homework inevery field of endeavor, particularly at home, in the

office, and at the university. There must be broad

transformative practice of inclusion in hiring, earn-

ing tenure, inviting contributors on annual meeting

sessions and in editing collections, reviewing pro-

cesses, and in the practice of citation. When these

efforts are in place in one’s mind and actualized in

practice then we can all move forward to a more

equitable place. As of 2011, there were approxi-

mately a dozen Black women anthropologists who

hold the rank of full professor. The academy, as a

reflection of society, is not a crystal staircase for

women, especially if they are non-White. Naturallythere are exceptions and they have their own sto-

ries to tell. Included in the group are those who

not only achieved the highest level in the academy

but also maintained that stature, such as Johnnetta

B. Cole, Claudia Mitchell Kernan, Yolanda T.

Moses, and Leith Mullings.

A number of years ago, after presenting a

paper at Barnard College, a senior colleague asked

if I realized that most of the research I discussed

was by Black women anthropologists? The reply

was yes, as most do not recognize their existence,

somebody has to do it. My colleague, who is a

supporter, thought the answer was a bit flippant,

but in fact it was the truth.

Consider this a challenge to young scholars.

Expand your list of whom you cite on a particular

topic and the politics of that decision. Black

women anthropologists are productive and are in

need of all the support they can garner by their

peers and colleagues. If feminist anthropology is

going to learn from the past, it must maintain a

constant vigilance of the process. The cost of not

doing so continues the practice of miseducation

and omission in the field and the invisibility of

Black women’s intellectual thought in the field of

anthropology.

Lynn Bolles Women’s Studies, University of Maryland College Park, 2101 Woods Hall,College Park, Maryland, 20742, USA;

[email protected]

NOTES

1. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers,

Cheryl Mwaria, Alaka Wali, Karen Brodkin, and

my Sister Black Women Anthropologists, espe-

cially the ancestors.

2. www.aaanet.org/about/Governance/commit-tees-commissions.cfm.

3. The Department of Anthropology at How-

ard University, a Historical Black College/Univer-

sity (HBCU) was targeted for elimination in 2011.

4. Research on citation by and on Black

women anthropologists using the Social Web as a

primary source is an aspect of new project.

5. Among this group are Leith Mullings,

Gwendolyn Mikell, Sheila Walker, Patricia Guth-

rie, Carolyn Martin Shaw, Yolanda Moses, Susan

Brown, Yvonne Jones, and Victoria Durant

Gonzalez.

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Supporting Information

Additional Supporting Information may be

found in the online version of this article:

Appendix S1. List of Ph.D. Black Women

Anthropologists in the Academy 12/12 Unoffi-

cial.

Lynn Bolles 71

telling the story straight_lynn bolles.pdf

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