Personal accounts and experiences are a valuable addition to the serious, complex and complicated academic researches in human sciences. I deeply valuate both of them because it balances the mind and offer information that creates a full picture of a specific situation or mentality pattern. One without the other guarantee in most cases a misrepresetantion.
I am thinking right now to the recent academic and media takes on racism and white privilege in general. My area of study has to do mostly with ethnic minorities but the research tools used in the case of ethnic minorities can be sometimes used as well for the research in other sub-domains, such as gender and race approaches.
I will talk less right now about race or my ethnic minorities studies. I want to share only some experiences regarding a certain condescending attitude that I´ve noticed myself among white, privileged, educated intellectuals - some of them academics, in a completely different context.
As a child, I grew up in a relatively privileged family. Although not always enjoying a top political appreciation, I belonged to a family that counted for at least three generation people with high-education, a high profesional mobility and urban background. High-education, that was intensively encouraged to acquire and was, actually, since now, a normal pathway for me and my siblings, was a guarantee against the ever changing political occurences. No matter what happens, you have a profesional qualification that will guarantee employment. Bonus: if you really want to be beyond good and evil, you gather as many qualifications as possible therefore your intelligence will be always praised, no matter what happens outside, in the world of decision makers. A theory that was at a great extent proved by my family members personal and professional journey. No matter how hard the dictatorship was at work in my country of origin, my uncles and mother were always needed for involvement in different scientific projects. No matter the country we landed for a long or short term, the knowledge of multiple languages, academic achievements and scholarhips always guaranteed a place among other intellectual peers.
On the other side, in relationship with the other professional and social groups, we knew our place so well that although some of my family members where genuinely sharing a very socialist/communist political belief, the ways in which those beliefs were put into practice ended up in a very condescending, kitsch-eque way. For instance, of course, we acknowledged the existence of illiterate members of the society, and we are keen to help on a voluntary basis to upgrade their level of knowledge, even teaching them an extra foreign language once their literacy was improving. But those people will always be those whom we helped to get out of illiteracy. Those people, no matter how far they will get, they will always remember based on their social class. Which was very unfair because, if communism did a lot of bad things the fact that it offered free education to everyone was one of the most important successes.
In fact, we never mixed with those proletarians. They were our ´bon sauvages´ that we cultivate, but we don´t share bread with. The experience acquired through the contact with the masses was purely experimental and exhibitionists. We were curious to have a look at the way in which those people live and think, but at the end of the day we are happy to be home in our educated homes.
I had later the same experience when I was doing some research about Roma minorities in the Balkans. NGOs and institutions provided with a generous budget were inviting journalists and academics active in the field of ethnic minorities to visit the villages of Roma. They were taking pictures, cautiously entering the mud huts where those people were living, were rolling their eyes looking at the children playing in the dirt together with various domestic animals. After one or two days or just a couple of hours spent in the midst of those people they were back to their clean offices, writing an academic report or some news and think nostalgically about those poor Roma and their poor destiny.
Practically speaking, no matter the attitude of the actors, the fact that people wrote sympathetically about those poor Roma or the illiterate people were taught to read and write were obvious gains. However, on the long term, the class/caste system was strengthned and further reproduced. Some of my relatives genuinely believed that a fair social system is needed and an equal access to education no matter the social background is normal, but they also accepted to hire other people to do for them the manual work and housework that was considered low level for people with an education or refused to accept as full members of the family people from a lower educational status.
Returning to the current state of the art in race and gender studies, I see some similarities. There is an open discussion right now about the white feminism and the fact that does not properly include and consider the needs of the POC women. In terms of racism studies, often the system is regulated by white researches that although are well intended it might not take into consideration the genuine list of priorities and problems that affect POC on a daily basis.
From the academic perspective, inclusion of more POC and people with a background relevant for the problem is very important for a balanced, realistic perspective. In a perfect academic world, the gender, social background and race are irrelevant, as what matters for academic progress is the quality of the studies and complex approach of a specific topic. Academic diversity in human sciences is very important as for now, because it adds to the theoretical background personal approaches and testimonies that might lead to the a critical take of the privileges. One cannot change his or her family but a progressive critical approach can help to acknowledge that you are not alone and not special or that you have a mission to avoid taking your privileges for granted. The permanent critical and self-critical analysis helps to avoid perpetrating this attitude.
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