Sam Carter Essay imitated: Resisting Blackmail by Yve-Alain Bois New object of analysis: Development of a young scholar of color VS 290A 11/8/17
Introduction: Resisting Blackmail Any developing scholar of color in an academic institution today, and most particularly at a United States university, faces certain intellectual pressures that require a response. Many maneuver their classrooms silent about the pressures they face, and this silence, though at times interpreted as acceptance or complicity, can also be a resistive response. The pressures I identify here are by no means an exhaustive list; nevertheless, they apply to scholars of color across disciplines and varying research interests. I respond to these pressures, because I ‘[l]ike anyone else, with whatever differences, [...] find some of these pressures oppressive, constituting a sort of intellectual blackmail’ (xi).1 My purpose is to resist these forces that remain at the horizon of my own development as a scholar of color. For it is my contention that if one can anticipate the troubles they may confront, one might do better to prepare and find systems of support early.
Objectivity I will first discuss objectivity, the obligation to be “objective,” for I sense that this obligation imposes itself from the moment a student begins to contemplate a research area of interest. Though a researcher’s positionality, by definition, impacts the research in ways that require critical reflection and discussion, young scholars of color often describe feelings of uncertainty when undertaking topics considered close to their own lived experience. In
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