promoting black women in sociology: comments on a blog post by adia wingfield

Adia Wingfield, professor of sociology at Washington University, St. Louis, wrote an interesting post at the Gender & Society blog about the under-representation of black women in sociology. Here is Professor Wingfield:

Where are black women sociologists today? The ASA reports that between 2007-2010, only 6% of doctorates awarded in sociology went to African Americans. In 2016,  according to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, only 31 black women received theirs in sociology. A look at the representation of black women in tenure track and tenured academic positions reveals an ongoing trend of underrepresentation. Only 2% of full professors, 2% of associates, and 4% of assistant professors are black women.

And:

The kinds of challenges that are omnipresent for black women workers in predominantly white environments are present for them too—marginalization, micro (or macro) aggressions, difficulties finding mentors and sponsors who can facilitate their career advancement. As academics, black women professors also must confront colleagues’ tendencies to denigrate or dismiss their research (this is particularly present in the inclination to label work that focuses on race and/or gender as “me”search). There are also the heavy service burdens that come with being underrepresented, ranging from mentoring students of color to helping universities resolve their issues with diversity and inclusion.

I do not dispute the diagnosis of the problem, nor the facts that Professor Wingfield cites. I do disagree with the focus. Yes, it is true that women and people of color do encounter double standards, hostility, and burdensome service, but I don’t really see that as a core factor driving under-representation in the academy. Why? By the time you are on the tenure track, you will probably get tenured, even if some, or many, people are fighting you. The issue is getting people in the right place to start with.

I would focus on a different process: the interaction of the tenured faculty at the top 20 or 30 programs with the cohort of women and students of color. Why? Sociology, and most academic fields, are heavily slanted toward elites. Most jobs go to people in a relatively small group of PhD programs and the big awards go to people who publish in the “right” presses and went to the “right programs.”

But enrollment in elite programs is not enough because there are fewer jobs than applicants. This is where mentoring comes into play. What you will discover is that people get jobs via publication, often as co-authors with faculty, or the article benefited from tons of mentoring. In my informal count, about 2/3 to 3/4 of junior faculty at research intensive programs have a co-authored publication with faculty. And many of these publications are effectively “dude canoes,” to use one of Omar Lizardo’s terms.

So I worry less about micro-aggression and service burdens, even though they are real. Instead, I would have a frank discussion about how we can get the core research intensive faculty in the big doctoral programs to be more inclusive on their research teams. Until that happens, there will still be vast under-representation.

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