"White students received 74% of all history bachelor’s degrees, but only 56% of all US resident students enrolled in 4 year colleges and universities were white...Black students were just 5 percent of all history majors: just over 1,300 students nationally."
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"Additionally...Asian American students, particularly women, have been deserting the major since the Great Recession. Although the share of majors who are Hispanic (as the government refers to them) has increased slightly."
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"But that doesn’t mean students of color aren’t studying history. Interdisciplinary majors—such as African American studies, gender studies, and ethnic studies—typically offer historical content."
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Read the rest of the article for more gems, but a few things to think about if this piece resonates with you as a student, as an educator in a history department, a writer of history, or are dismayed by the state of domestic+global politics...trust me, you have a stake in this.
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So, in an age of austerity, tenure under threat, declining enrollments, and general malaise of living in a post-facts world, I can hear the cries: "We would make these changes if we could but we can't afford new faculty lines..." or "Faculty of color don't like living in XYZ."
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Better yet, "If we have a Department of XYZ, aren't we replicating the content if we offer the history of XYZ." And, there are the whispers, "Is there really any history to teach about ABC people?" In light of these responses, you see why history has these, and other, problems.
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And, as departments share this excellent article and get reflective, I wonder how many faculty consider taking the time to reflect on not only what they teach, but how they teach?
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Faculty who never update their syllabi to reflect changes in their field, cordon off topics about race into 1 section or lecture (usually toward the end), and make no effort to pitch classes to student groups in order to welcome a wider swath of students are part of this problem.
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All students of color are not 1st-gen students or financially disadvantaged, a significant number are. History will not solve its race problems without being reflective on how rigid classroom policies, unreal expectations of prior knowledge, impatience with weak writing skills...
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So, history's race problem and its class issues reinforce each other. Often, history departments--like other units-- only address these issues when concerns are raised about graduate student demographics, institutional diversity demands, or student activism.
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Nonwhite faculty and nonwhite students at predominately white institutions sometimes parallel each other. As outliers in the class and at the front of the class, exhaustion and isolation can easily set in. Students drop majors. Faculty experience burnout.
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It's easy for history departments to say that history is just a 'declining major.' It's also easy to say that ethnic students and American Studies is merely poaching students of color to their majors. It's easy to say that we have a tenure crisis, so we won't have grad students.
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It's far more difficult for history faculty (and the community at large) to grapple with the fact that a majority white classroom or cohort or field or profession may be more comfortable for them because they were educated in a similar classroom or cohort.
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But, historians can't decry this era's fake news crisis and believe themselves to be defenders of the humanities and its truth telling, without confronting the harsh realities of our profession and professional worlds.
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So, read Allison Miller's
@Cliopticon piece in the@AHAhistorians magazine. Determine if the statistics and arguments made in it actually matter to you. Talk to a colleague; ask them if it matters to them. Go to a conference and ask your field colleagues, if it matters to them.Show this thread -
Then, talk to your students about it, and ask them if it matters to them.
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Then, think about what we all can do to respond to history’s race problems.
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End of conversation
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