Racialized professors bring up concerns about having to “act white” in academia

In a recent article for The Star, Aaron Hemens discusses the challenges faced by immigrant professors in Canada who have to “act white” to succeed in academia. MacEwan University Associate Professor Hellen Gateri has raised concerns that racialized professors are continuously having to “transform themselves” for colleagues and students to accept them and their work. Gateri says that the concerns of racialized faculty members are ignored, and that they are seen as threatening because they are outside the status quo. Several racialized faculty members had also experienced having their pronunciation corrected by students or colleagues, being asked to repeat things, and receiving comments on their teaching evaluation responses on how they are difficult to understand. Gateri also notes that racialized academics do not receive training and promotion opportunities equitably, and that other colleagues may be unsupportive or hostile, making it difficult to network. The Star Note: Archived stories may contain dead links or be missing source links.