Exec Director of
@UCWashington
. Prof at
@UCMerced
. Author of 6 books, including Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap (UC Press 2023).
I have worked on diversity in faculty hiring for several years and have studied racism for decades. I can thus tell you with confidence that the
#1
reason Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are under-represented among faculty is that people on search committees are racist.
I am White. I have studied racism for over 2 decades. I still can't claim to fully understand its impacts. If you are White, you have a lot to learn about racism, even if your spouse/children are non-White, even if you have read several books, even if your best friend is Black.
DEI professionals won't tell you this because there is no real solution other than taking the decision-making power away from racist faculty. You can't implicit-bias-train people out of being racist.
The real question is: why is Grandmaβs home often the only property in the family? What factors made it hard for successive generations to achieve what Grandma achieved, despite decades of civil rights bills?
There is far more inequality in academia than you think. If you are at a resource-poor institution, you likely are unaware of all the resources available at rich ones. If you are at a well-resourced institution, you likely have no idea you have access to things others don't.
My teen daughter just asked me if Latinx is a race or ethnicity. I told her to read Chapter 7 of my book, Race and Racisms, so we can have an informed discussion.
When I teach immigration, I show students a list of the top sending countries of immigrants and ask them to pick the ones where the US military or CIA has NOT interfered in the democratic process.
It's a trick question.
Three of the reasons I have published 75 books, journal articles, and book chapters since 2005:
1) I sleep 8 hours a night.
2) I write for 1-2 hours every weekday.
3) I donβt get in my own way.
Which of these 3 strategies is the hardest for you?
I donβt know who needs to hear this, but when a junior faculty woman of color tells you about the unique challenges she faces, donβt respond with βall junior faculty face challenges.β
Academics: It's not too late to check your syllabus and make sure there are works by women and people of color scholars on there. So, go ahead and double-check and don't give me any excuses for why they aren't there. You can use Google scholar just as well as I can.
Our new PhD program in Sociology at UC Merced currently has a grand total of 4 graduates. All 4 of them have secured tenure-track positions. Small "n" but impressive placement rate!!
My most highly cited article was rejected three times before it was published. My books were rejected by several presses before being published. Any successful academic has similar rejection stories.
OK. I set up Calendly with zoom integration 2 hours ago. It's already saved me from 3 email back-and-forths about a meeting time! Bonus: It's a Black-owned business.
Sitting here thinking about the fact that, in 1991, my bff and I bought matching outfits and went to the Sears Family Portrait Studio to sit for this photo! And, we did not smile.
The thing about patriarchy is that when a woman states her expertise, sheβs bragging. When she doesnβt, people presume she has none. Itβs basically a trap.
If you are a White mentor to students and faculty of color, read this piece by Marisela Martinez-Cola. It is honest and analytical in a way rarely seen. "Collectors, Nightlights, and Allies, Oh My: White Mentors in the Academy"
Performative allyship = having a BLM sign in your yard while refusing to send your kid to the primarily Black/Latinx public elementary school one block from your house.
A friendly reminder to resist the urge to tinker with your perfectly fine syllabus from last term. The only thing that needs to change are the dates. Leave it be and thank me in November.
I wrote for two hours and then went on a run. While jogging, I figured out how to re-organize my paper. This is why stopping instead of pushing through is often the best thing to do.
I can't believe I am still seeing all-White panels on immigration. If you are White and are invited to speak on a panel and find out that all the speakers are White, it's your responsibility to step down and make room for the long line of highly qualified scholars of color.
Exciting news: I am moving home to DC in January 2023 to start a new job as Executive Director of the University of California Washington Center
@UCWashington
Wow. I have been paying RAs at least $15/hr for years. Moreover, the vast majority of us who hire undergrad research assistants do so with grant money. This means you write the wage into the grant in the first place. So, this is being stingy with money that's not even yours.
The Editorial Committee at UC Press has approved the publication of my book βBefore Gentrification: Anti-Blackness and Racial Capitalism in the Nationβs Capital.β This labor of love about my hometown will be published in 2023!
Hey
#AcademicTwitter
- it's December. How much time do you commit taking *completely* off of work during the holidays? I am aiming for 17 days of Netflix, novels, talking to friends and family, going for walks, eating, cooking & staring at the wall.
Scholars I truly admire share one thing in common: they read A LOT. There's no getting around reading deeply and broadly if you want to be an excellent scholar.
I am SO proud of my PhD advisees at UC Merced, all of whom have secured tenure-track positions. This is no small feat, as they all hail from a new PhD program and entered an extremely competitive job market.
I am *very* excited to announce the launch of the first phase of the βMapping Gentrificationβ project.
My students
@ucmerced
and I used Google Street View to βwalkβ down every block of four Census tracts in Washington, DC to assess the level of gentrification.
I have a goal of co-authoring at least one publication with each of my graduate students before they graduate. Thus, before declining invitations to write, I think carefully about whether or not one of my students might be a suitable co-author for the invited piece.
People really think defunding the police is a radical left agenda. Sorry, but the radical left agenda is actually to abolish the police, ICE, prisons, and capitalism. Defunding the police is just rational, liberal capitalism.
In case you have high hopes for liberals Iβd like to remind you that several of my liberal colleagues moved 2+ hours away from our small town in CA to avoid sending their kids to majority Latinx kindergarten.
I am celebrating the fact that my grant proposal "Prisoner Re-Entry and Gentrification" has been awarded funding by the NSF!! This project is in my hometown, DC, and is near and dear to my heart!
Iβm proud and honored to announce that I will be joining the Biden-Harris administration as Senior Advisor of the Office of Smashing the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.
Race, real estate, and gentrification: A brief lesson
1953: Dr. Hinton purchases a home in NW DC for $15,000. He's the first Black resident in this all-White neighborhood.
1998: The Hintons sell the family home for $230,000 in what has become an all-Black neighborhood.
(1/2)
Wow. My blog "Get a Life, PhD" just reached FOUR MILLION page views. Here's the most popular post "6 Steps to Writing a Literature Review," which has been viewed 236k times (!!)
Audience & return on time investment for scholars:
My tweet (60 seconds to write): 1.5 million impressions
My blog (2 years to build): 3.5 million page views
My article (1 year to write): 14k downloads
My book based on dissertation (10 years to write): 700 copies sold
Affirmative action guidelines require a diverse applicant pool. If you are White and decline to identify your race/ethnicity, you make the pool look more diverse than it actually is. Refusing to identify your race when you are White is not advancing racial equity; it impedes it.
I have been able to maintain a writing practice during these times with the following schedule.
1. Donβt check email, news, or social media in the morning.
2. Turn off all notifications.
3. Meditate for 10 minutes.
4. Write for 60 minutes.
5. Go for a jog.
6. Write for 60 minutes
Bad Bunnyβs highly anticipated music video for βEl ApagΓ³nβ includes a short documentary in which journalist
@bgraulau
sheds light on the displacement and injustices the island has been facing
There were 1032 applications for the UC Presidents Postdoctoral Fellowship Program this year. About 30 of these applicants will be awarded fellowships. Thatβs less than 3%. This is a stellar group of scholars any campus would be lucky to hire.
One of the best ways for academics to counter the narrative that they are all about self-promotion is to help (and promote) others in their careers. Be generous and you are less likely to be seen as an asshole. Also works in life more generally.
The racial composition of the people and places you are studying are not what make you a race scholar. (You can be a race scholar and study any racial group including White people.) Being a race scholar simply requires you center theories of race and racism in your analyses.
If you are teaching race this term and end up having to move all or parts of your class online due to COVID2019, my Canvas site may be of help:
It has videos that I made as well as related videos and longer films and writing assignments.
@lopez_wd
My current practice is to avoid all electronic communications before writing. No email, social media, news, etc before writing. Just wake up, coffee, meditate, and write.
1,183 people applied for the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in 2020. Very soon, about 30 people will be notified of their award. The other 1,153 applicants will be among the less than 2% of people in the US who achieve a PhD and many will go on to do great things.
This might be a useful time to let you know that I did a colossally bad job of homeschooling my twins in the 3rd grade when we spent the year in 4 different countries. They are just now finishing up their first year in college and are perfectly fine academically.
This is a map of Washington, DC. The darker the blue, the higher the percentage of Black people. Gray flags are closed public schools. Purple flags are charter schools.
I made it a priority to write for 60 minutes every day for the past 6 weeks or so. In addition to making progress on scholarly articles, I have written six (!!) OpEds and advice columns - 4 of which are published or will be soon.
I like to rewrite reviewer comments and refer to those in the revision process so that I donβt have to re-read negative reviews.
For example, I changed: βThe paper lacks proper context for disinvestment/reinvestment.β to: βDevelop a clear context for disinvestment/reinvestment.β
Just in case you think being a full prof means you no longer get thrown under the bus, here is a comment I received on a single-blind proposal: "I do not see much evidence from the CV or description that the data will be analyzed with particular care."
[rewrite:]
In the context of a privileged academic appointment (2/1 teaching, research $), my publishing record is due to 3 additional privileges:
1. The ability to sleep 8 hrs/night
2. Having 1-2 hrs/weekday of uninterrupted writing time
3. The ability to focus when I want to
2019: The neighborhood is no longer majority-Black and the home sells for $700,000 to investors.
2020: The home sells for $1.3 million.
These investors turned a greater profit in six months than the Hintons did on a property they owned for 45 years. (2/2)
A cautionary tale: A few young, healthy friends had dinner on the outdoor patio of a restaurant. 2 days later, one friend took a COVID test. 3 days later he learned he had COVID. 5 days after that, 2 of the other friends started feeling ill. They caught COVID at the outdoor meal.
And, when she continues to explain that faculty from under-represented backgrounds face unique burdens because students of color seek them out for emotional support, donβt respond by saying we need to encourage students to seek out White faculty mentors.
I think this is actually extremely common: progressive White folks who profess social justice yet live their home lives in all-White (or all-non-Black) spaces. This is one of the ways that liberal White supremacy works.
A useful tip I learned recently: Don't check your email. Instead, process it. Set aside 15-60 minute chunks of time to process email on a regular basis. Don't check email otherwise. Also, turn off notifications for incoming messages. All this helps free up mental space.
If you are teaching race, you might find this playlist useful: 18 5-min videos on topics inc. the origin of the idea of race, colorism, media. The videos accompany the textbook "Race and Racisms" but you don't have to use the book to find them useful.
A diversity statement explains how you are sensitive to the needs of a diverse student body. That is not an affront to academic freedom. It bolsters academic freedom by creating a better learning environment.
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it.
2 yrs ago, my co-author and I submitted a quant paper on crime and gentrification in DC. It was rejected at that journal and then at another. We persisted and submitted to a 3rd journal. Today, after two rounds of R&R, the paper was accepted! Also: my 1st quant paper since 2008!!
One reason I left my AP job in Kansas is I wanted my kids to have more college choices. I was excited to move to California, which has 10 excellent UCs and 23 great CSUs. I am even more elated that all 3 of my kids got into UCs. Next year, I'll have 1 Bobcat, 1 Slug, & 1 Bear!
Today, with exorbitant prices for housing, many of the grandchildren of Black people who purchased homes in the 1950s are unable to become homeowners themselves because they do not have the intergenerational wealth they need.
Writing a book is an iterative, not linear, process. You write a draft, stop, figure out what your argument is, rewrite the manuscript to fit your argument, and then revise your argument to fit your manuscript. Repeat until it works.
I am so excited about this project! I am developing a series of videos on race and racism. The first video in the series explains the origin of the idea of race:
A useful definition of racial capitalism: "the process by which the key dynamics of capitalism β accumulation/dispossession, credit/debt, production/surplus, capitalist/worker β¦ become articulated through race.β
Leroy, J, and D. Jenkins. 2021 "Histories of racial capitalism" CUP
@FLImmigrant
@CustomsBorder
In the video, I only see CBP asking one person. Did CBP ask everyone or was this a targeted stop? It's a tense time and it's better to avoid spreading fear - if unwarranted.
Oxford University Press is offering free resources and access to help those moving to online teaching, including access to digital, course-specific resources such as videos, activities, quizzes, TBs and PPTs.
If I do these 4 things every day, I can stay centered even during extremely busy times: 1) Sleep 8 hours. 2) Exercise 30 minutes. 3) Write for 1 hour. 4) Have dinner with my family. What do you need to stay centered?
I just finished making the last of my 19 videos on race and racism. Wow. 19 5-minute videos amount to a full-length documentary! Anyway, check them out here:
Requiring job candidates to submit statements of diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an affront to academic freedom. It is a reasonable attempt to gauge their ability to do the job they are being considered for.
O M G - my book is finally in production. "Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap" will be coming to bookstores near you ... in Fall 2023, from
@ucpress
I mentioned to my very smart and successful friend that I do not give exams when I teach. She was overwhelmed with emotion for what that would have meant for her as a student. If you require exams, I encourage you to think about why and if there are any alternatives.
Hey teachers/profs! I created a series of 8 short videos for teaching race and racism. I encourage you to check them out, as they may be useful for teaching - either for a race class or a module on race and racism in a more general class.
Steadfastly holding the moral high ground on social distancing wonβt diminish the spread of COVID. Pushing for policies that allow people to survive financially without risking COVID infection will.
As a UCSC parent, I am disappointed UCSC has fired 54 graduate students. My daughter's future education will depend on UCSCβs ability to attract stellar graduate students and faculty and this decision will negatively impact that.
#COLAStrike
It ainβt over βtil itβs over. But, today, I am celebrating completing a full draft of my book manuscript and sending it to UC press for review! I have been working on this book manuscript since 2016 and am so looking forward to it being out in the world.
When Black people bought homes in cities in the 1950s, their neighborhoods often became majority-Black as White people fled to the suburbs (which were still off-limits to Black people).
The recent proliferation of the phrase βracial capitalismβ among race scholars is good, but race scholars need to actually analyze capitalism not just analyze racism and call it racial capitalism.
I am in 2 Facebook groups designed to share information with parents of college students. Despite the label βparentsβ only mothers participate in these groups. Another way household labor is clearly gendered.