#(the current institution i am at has 27% asians for undergrads and yeah that's a world of difference)

[foyernormanchapel]

i had a friend talk about a convo she had with another white student about how young poc faculty members tend to be harsh or how they had bad experiences with young poc faculty members and this is in the context of her having a truly objectively terrible experience with an asian faculty member (intentional grade sabotage) but it was.. really awkward. like a lot of complicated issues tangled up into one..

i get it because there is the sense that young poc faculty members tend to be.. not harsh but strict? precisely because they can’t afford to be chummy since they know the students will walk over them otherwise. white tenured faculty members have the luxury of being able to be chummy and informal and still command respect, but imagine being a young untenured poc faculty-- think about all the bullshit they’ve had to go through to arrive at to this place and the extra effort they have to put in to command minimal respect. so i’ve seen young poc faculty being more formal and I totally get why they are like that.

but it still felt so weird for a white student to relay to me how another white student told them “i’ve had similar bad experiences with young poc faculty members” like... what warrants that kind of generalization? also do you not feel weird telling me a poc person in academia that? even i (an asian) would never talk that way about other poc faculty or just people in general..

she’s a good friend who bc of her queerness suffered/suffers a lot, and she is well meaning and all, but idk i guess this is where the insurmountable whiteness comes in. lowkey sad and weird