And This Is Why I'm Writing This Dissertation. Because I Don't Have A Senator, And It Makes Me Fucking

And this is why I'm writing this dissertation. Because I don't have a senator, and it makes me fucking furious.

The SOPA blackout is an irritating reminder that D.C. residents do not have voting representatives in Congress.

(And, yes, we still occasionally use Microsoft Paint here in the Style section of The Washington Post.)

Deborah Gray White, distinguished professor of history at Rutgers University and author of the seminal book Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Antebellum South, concurs with Professor Painter’s assertions. Returning to Rutgers after a year’s leave as chair of the African American studies program, White recounts her meeting with an African American graduate student new to the department. After reflecting on the student’s admissions of alienation, loneliness, and anxiety, White laments, “All I could think about was that, as much as things had changed, they still had stayed the same.” White states that, despite a robust program in African American studies at Rutgers, this student was often the only African American graduate student in some of her courses. Professors and fellow students dismissed, or merely tolerated, what she had to say, expected her to represent her race or the black female perspective, and assumed she knew only about “the black stuff.” “I have moments,” states White, “when I feel like this graduate student. We all have stories, and I would bet, however, that the black women among us can still speak to an alienation in the academy that has its roots in racism. Yes, things have changed…but some things have only been altered and there is a big difference between change and alteration.… African American studies has come in from the margins, and African American women’s history is taken more seriously than before. But from where I sit, I’m not so sure that African American historians are taken as seriously as white historians.” White states that black women historians are still marginalized in departments across the country. Some find themselves the only black person in a history department or the only woman in an African American department. She concludes by saying, “Either way, they are catching hell.” While there has been a lot of progress, and the future looks bright as a result, there is much more to do. 

Links to interview videos are on the right.

For you history buffs out there, boy do we have a treat for you. Tomorrow at The New York Public Library’s Hudson Park Branch (66 Leroy Street, off Seventh Ave. South) preeminent historian Eric Foner will be discussing his 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning book The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. The program begins at 2 pm and admission is free. 

Jackpot. Why didn't I think of this before?!