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20 Chapter 1 Facing Down the Spooks Angela Mae Kupenda Early in my academic career, a white male administrator scolded me during my annual pretenure evaluation. He did not have any problems with my teaching or service or scholarship. The problem he stated was that I did not tell him and my colleagues enough about my personal life. He said I was beginning to be much too private, just like the other woman of color on the faculty. I assured him that my coworkers did know all the relevant information about me. More importantly, they knew at least as much about me as I knew about them. He wanted me to trust them more with the intimate details of my life. I explained that they already knew those details: I was single, had no children, was close to my family and friends, lived a quiet life, was active in my community, attended church, and enjoyed travel, my books, and the arts. Growing increasingly frustrated, he leaned forward in his chair, looked me straight in the eye, and, with his ordinarily pale face turning red, he yelled, “You must trust us more if you want to succeed here; there are no spooks behind the door!” That night when I recounted this story to one of my best friends, he said I should have replied, “You’re right; there are no spooks behind the door because right now the spooks are staring me in the face.” I wish I had thought of that retort, but instead I was uncharacteristically speechless. When I think back now to this experience, I wonder if the white male administrator was thinking of some stereotype that black women—especially perhaps southern ones—are afraid of ghosts and goblins and engage in all types of magic to rid their homes and lives of these pesky creatures. The thing about an imagined, or even real, ghost is that it is not actually blood and bones that you can get your hands on and rid yourself of easily. The belief is that although they are not physically present, ghosts have a haunting power and can appear from anywhere (especially behind doors or under beds) without any notice and at inopportune moments. As a black female academic with more than twenty years of experience in academia , to tell the truth, ghosts have haunted me: the ghosts of Jim Crow; the goblin of slavery-like, white, presumed superiority; and ghouls of sexism, racism, and classism just will not leave me alone! Beneath the surface of seemingly innocent Facing Down the Spooks 21 encounters with supposedly well-meaning white administrators or colleagues or students , these ghosts linger and haunt me with words and acts that torture my very soul and keep me from being able to experience academia the way a white male with similar credentials can. In this chapter, I plan to share with you some of these haunting encounters. I will recount the stories and what people said. Then, together, we will expose and examine the spirits behind the words that leave me struggling daily—even with all my experience—to maintain not only more than competence but also its appearance , yet seem never to receive an automatic presumption of competence because I am an academic who is black, female, southern, and from an economically disadvantaged background. The Spooks in the Story I’ve Just Told Although this story is just the beginning, it is very telling. The white male administrator knowingly or unknowingly seemed to say blacks must be entertaining to have a place with other faculty; they must share private details to appeal to the voyeuristic interest that some whites feel about blacks; and they are always afraid of what may be hiding behind the door. On the other hand, maybe he had just finished reading a book about spooks and did not mean anything, or had heard some rumor about me and wanted to know if it was true. I prefer to think that the more rational explanation is that this evaluation encounter was a visit from the enduring ghost of the slavery and postslavery treatment of black women and that academia is not immune from this ghost haunting its ivory towers. During slavery black women were not allowed any privacy, not even for their bodies , which were inspected, prodded, used for experiments, and vulgarly displayed for the economic profit of whites. Their innermost parts were available at the whim of the white master for his own personal...

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