This is not to say it's okay to be racist or sexist or homophobic if you're not North American, but please keep this in mind when getting into conversations about diversity.
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Replying to @ivanflis
To be clear, not at SIPS probably never will be, but given you mentioned NAs... I personally have always been at least with one foot in the anglosphere and I struggle deeply with how harmful overrepresentation of NAs is in every facet of academic life both on and offline.
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I like to call this whole thing very vaguely Western privilege because North Americans might be at the epicenter but North and Central Europeans and Australians also are highly highly represented and understood, while people from outside this sphere are just not.
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I feel like every experience I have and every social-work interaction (like at conferences but also other events with similar networking components) I have to explain myself deeply including even giving a short history of my own country to have a full conversation with people.
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It might sound as not that bad, but imagine if every time you interacted with somebody about your research you also had to give a quick history of you & your homeland. It might seem like I'm exaggerating but I'm sadly not. I have to go through genocide, war, what ethnicity I am.
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This deeply taints my interactions with people and makes it much harder for me to have a chat with them. I feel respected often and listened to, but I also feel like a museum exhibit too.
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And I'm not that clueless or arrogant to assume this is just me, anybody who has roots outside the West (I have seen it) is expected to do this type of education to their academic peers. It's epistemic exploitation, see:https://philpapers.org/rec/NOREE-2
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Replying to @o_guest
Yup, pretty much. I kinda stopped thinking about it and have a relatively well practiced a) tourist board answer or b) short history lesson.
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I do feel how this outside gaze molded my own relationship to where I'm from - I kinda developed a reflex to orientalize my own heritage, a reflex I'm trying to consciously control now.
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I don’t know if I get this or if I’ve just been foreign for most of my life so I’m stopped noticing... I guess I also come across as pretty “generic foreign” because I have a very neutral accent (sometimes people even think I’m British despite only having lived here for 4 years)
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People think I'm British (legally I am) but many react quite strangely some even with a tinge of disgust when they realise I'm not as British as they like.
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Just makes me think how much worse it would be for somebody who passes less as British (whatever that even means) or as white, etc. Not ideal.
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