CENTERING THE EDGE: Addressing Institutional Racism and Habitual Exclusion in the Academy, A Response to Kathryn Takara

Extract

Kathryn Takara's “A View from the Academic Edge” is a commendable effort to speak to the unique problems confronted by Black women in academia. Many of the concerns raised by the author are elaborations of arguments made by other Black feminist intellectuals, who highlight the ways in which race and gender intersect to produce experiences that alienate and stigmatize Black women in academic settings. Takara relies heavily on these previous works at times, which may lead some to ask exactly what her original contribution to this body of knowledge is supposed to be. While she defines her primary focus as “the institutional features of the academy which help to explain the particularly bad situation of Black females in the academy,” the greatest strength of the essay is its attention to forms of racism and exclusion that are both institutional and interpersonal. Though the author does not explicitly make this distinction herself, the coexistence and interdependence of both institutional racism and habitual, interpersonal race/gender-based exclusion is what motivates her to write this piece, and it is the need to address both of these areas that makes the message of “A View from the Academic Edge” valuable.