Harold Marcus draws attention to the lack of response to Philip
Curtin's opinion piece on "Ghettoization of African History". I
think the *Chronicle* may be planning to print a group of responses
(as they sometimes do). I sent a response to them and also have
heard indirectly that a group of scholars may be sending another.
Unless they are censoring critical responses, which seems unlikely, I
imagine that we will see some printed soon.
I wrote my response as a white male Africanist historian who has not
been having great luck on the job market to say that I thought
Curtin's piece deeply wrong-headed and a bit pernicious in its
implications that white job candidates are facing substantial
difficulties due to racial preferences. The real issue is too many
Ph.D.s chasing too few jobs. The number of African-Americans
competing for them is small and the number of Africans not much
larger. If one thinks about who has got the jobs advertised in
African history over the past few years, and especially those at
institutions which support research, the vast majority have gone to
white scholars. If all of the black candidates were to disappear
from the market, the chances of any given white candidate getting any
given job would only go up by a minuscule amount. If all of the
black candidates were to turn white, it is a nice question as to
whether the chances of current white candidates would go up by less
than if the black candidates disappeared, or whether the chances of
white candidates might actually decrease. (The implication of the
last point is that we have to seriously consider whether views which
scapegoat black candidates for the difficulties of white candidates
on the job market may not produce new prejudices against black
candidates in the hiring process.) In any case, I found Professor
Curtin's statement that he encourages his graduate students to
analyze their difficulties on the job market as a result of their
being victims of racial discrimination discouraging and poisonous.
I would urge senior scholars who as Professor Marcus puts it "turn
out doctorates" in African history to think seriously about the
numbers here and ask themselves if they are "turning out" too many
for current market conditions, perhaps paying more attention to
building programs, getting teaching assistants or other matters than
to the consequences for graduates. This is tricky and not at all
clear; perhaps such gate-keeping would be wrong. Even if I have to
find other work, I wouldn't trade my graduate study & research on
Africa. I knew the risks when I went into it. The real issue though
is to make sure your grad students know the risks and not to use
racial scapegoating in a way which misleads them about the real
issues.
What Duke did is complicated. I don't like it very much mainly
because they advertised the job as if it were open to everyone when
it really wasn't. But as I understand it, what happened is that they
got money to support the position from a fund in the University which
is dedicated to increasing the number of minority faculty. That is
to say, if the position had not been defined in those terms, there
would have been no African history position at Duke this year. In
which case the chances of potential white candidates to get the
non-existent position would have been no better than they were for
the one advertised. In a marginal way, they probably raised the
chances of all candidates, black and white, to get the other
positions offered, assuming the person they hired would have been a
strong contender for one of the others. Nonetheless there is a
serious debate to be had about institutional practices like this and
"target of opportunity" searches which resemble them. But it seems
to me that debate must occur in the context of recognizing the
massive under-representation of African-Americans in the ranks of
scholars. If we want to change practices like this, we will have to
change the distribution of doctorates "turned out".
Professor Curtin also makes an important contradictory statement.
He says that certain positions are reserved for black people. He
later says that many of those "reserved" positions are ultimately
filled by white people, when suitable black candidates are found
wanting. This suggests that they weren't reserved at all, and also
supports my argument about the small number of black candidates
available.
Professor Curtin makes a much stronger point in my view when he
discusses the pressures on black historians to specialize in African
or African-American fields, and the concommitant implication (which
exists much more strongly in an overt way among undergraduates than
among scholars as far as I know) that it is somehow not appropriate
for white scholars to study and teach African history. In this sense
I agree with Professor Marcus regarding "a hundred flowers of many
colors" in all historical fields. But if we want to argue against
the intellectual vacuity of that sort of race-typing fields, I think
we need to keep the issue strongly separated from using racial
scapegoating to evade looking at the realities of market dynamics.