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Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue On Historically White Campuses: A Critical Race Examination Of Race-Related Stress

January 2006

DOI:10.1163/ej.9789004203655.i-461.82

In book: Faculty of Color Teaching in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities (pp.299-327)
Chapter: Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses: A Critical Race Examination of Race-related Stress.
Publisher: Anker Publishing Company, Inc.
Editors: Christine Stanley

Project: Racial Battle Fatigue

Authors:

William A Smith

University of Utah

Tara J. Yosso

University of California, Riverside

Daniel Solorzano

University of California, Los Angeles

The young Black reporter looked at me patiently as I paused to gather my thoughts. Noticing that I was clenching my cup, she smiled reassuringly and calmly said, "I know this must be difficult to talk about, but please let me reassure you, my point is to get this out to our readers, to let people know more about what happened, and-" I interrupted, "Well, as I mentioned to you when you contacted me, I don't know exactly what happened, but I do want to make sure that folks know what this man was about. What he was doing. I think the link to what happened is his work- our work." I paused to sip my kava kava herb tea and take my stack of paperwork and notes out of my crocheted bag. Angela, Corky, Huey, and others had warned me about sharing too much information with reporters, but this newspaper had a reputation for serving the Black community in Boston for many years. I hoped I was making the right decision to trust this woman. "Well, Monday, March 6, 1972, was for all intents and purposes just another day ..."

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Faculty of Color

Teaching in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities

Christine A. Stanley

Texas A&M University

Editor

ANKER PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

Bolton, Massachusetts

Faculty of Color

Teaching in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities

Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan-

ical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or re-

trieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

ISBN 1-882982-98-3

Composition by Lyn Rodger, Deerfoot Studios

Cover design by Dutton and Sherman Design

Anker Publishing Company, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Faculty of color : teaching in predominantly white colleges and universities /

Christine A. Stanley, ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-882982-98-3

1. Faculty integration—United States. 2. Minority college teachers—United

States—Social conditions. 3. African American college teachers—Social con-

ditions. 4. Discrimination in higher education—United States. 5. United

States—Race relations. I. Stanley, Christine A.

LB2332.6.F33 2006

378.1’2089—dc22

2006010963

This book is dedicated to my parents, Dr. & Mrs. Victor Stanley, and

to my brother, Dr. Robin-Charles Stanley.

In loving memory of my maternal and paternal grandparents

Charles C. and Myrtle M. Demetrius

and

Ena E. Mighty

Table of Contents

About the Authors iii

Preface xii

Acknowledgments xv

1 An Overview of the Literature 1

Christine A. Stanley

2 Succeeding in the Face of Doubt 30

Stephanie G. Adams

3 Do I Have to Be Black or Brown to Count? An Appeal for

Broad Appreciation and Understanding of Diversity 41

Karla Anhalt

4 Free to Be the Me You See: Discovering the Joy of Teaching 54

K. Denise Bane

5 “Are You Here to Move the Piano?” A Latino Reﬂects on

Twenty Years in the Academy 68

James F. Bonilla

6 The Temple of My Unfamiliar 80

Fred A. Bonner, II

7 Racism Will Not Go Away and Neither Will We:

Two Scholars of Color Examine Multicultural Education Courses 100

Bryan Brayboy, Maria C. Estrada

8 In Search of Community: The Challenges and Successes

of an Isolated Engineer 115

Karen Butler-Purry

9 Solitary Sojourn: An American Indian Faculty Member’s

Journey in Academe 123

Karen Sunday Cockrell

10 Putting the Color in Colorado: On Being Black and

Teaching Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado–Boulder 139

Adrian Gaskins

11 Living, Breathing, Teaching Sociology: Using the Micro to

Illuminate the Macro 153

Sarah N. Gatson

12 Can a Brotha’ Get a Break? Teaching on a Majority White

Research University Campus 166

Jeffrey J. Guidry

13 Just Because I Choose to Be Me 175

Reem Haj-Ali

14 Anatomy of “Difference”: The Meaning of Diversity and the

Diversity of Meaning 182

Rashmi Jaipal

15 Color in the Interstice, or, What Color, This Faculty of Color? 196

Leswin Laubscher

16 Reﬂections From a Minority Faculty in a Majority Institution 216

Cheryl B. Leggon

17 Tenure on My Terms 225

Antoinette Halsell Miranda

18 Teaching and Researching “The Politics of Race” in a Majority

White Institution 234

Byron D’Andra Orey

19 Negotiating Identity and Learning From a Native Paciﬁc Perspective:

Contradictions of Higher Learning in Cultural Diversity Classes 247

Michael P. Perez

20 Learning to Play the Game 263

Anthony D. Ross

21 I’m Just a Black Woman Troubling the Status Quo 283

Shari Saunders

22 Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses:

A Critical Race Examination of Race-Related Stress 299

William A. Smith, Tara J. Yosso, Daniel G. Solórzano

23 Walking Between Two Cultures: The Often Misunderstood

Jamaican Woman 328

Christine A. Stanley

24 Institutional Barriers and Myths to Recruitment and

Retention of Faculty of Color: An Administrator’s Perspective 344

Christine Yoshinaga-Itano

25 Summary and Key Recommendations for the

Recruitment and Retention of Faculty of Color 361

Christine A. Stanley

ii Faculty of Color

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue

on Historically White Campuses:

A Critical Race Examination of

Race-Related Stress

William A. Smith, Tara J. Yosso, Daniel G. Solórzano

The young black reporter looked at me patiently as I paused to gather my

thoughts. Noticing that I was clenching my cup, she smiled reassuringly

and calmly said, “I know this must be difﬁcult to talk about, but please

let me reassure you, my point is to get this out to our readers, to let people

know more about what happened, and—” I interrupted, “Well, as I

mentioned to you when you contacted me, I don’t know exactly what

happened, but I do want to make sure that folks know what this man

was about. What he was doing. I think the link to what happened is his

work—our work.” I paused to sip my kava kava herb tea and take my

stack of paperwork and notes out of my crocheted bag. Angela, Corky,

Huey, and others had warned me about sharing too much information

with reporters, but this newspaper had a reputation for serving the black

community in Boston for many years. I hoped I was making the right

decision to trust this woman. “Well, Monday, March 6, 1972, was for

all intents and purposes just another day . . .”

We open this chapter with a counterstory preview to entice readers to en-

gage in a framework called critical race theory (CRT). CRT draws on

many areas of academic scholarship and centers the experiences of people of

color to document voices and knowledges rarely taken into account in tradi-

tional academic spaces or mainstream mass media venues. CRT scholarship

299

combines empirical and experiential knowledges, frequently in the form of

storytelling, chronicles, or other creative narratives. These counternarratives

can often expose traditional educational discourse as racialized, gendered,

classed storytelling.

Indeed, traditional stories about race do not seem like stories at all. Such

“everyday” narratives perpetuate myths that darker skin and poverty correlate

with bad neighborhoods and bad schools. This chapter and counterstory uti-

lize CRT in education to challenge the silences of “race-neutral” storytelling in

order to discuss the race-related stress faculty of color confront when navigat-

ing through historically white universities.

Racial Microaggressions and Racial Battle Fatigue ___________

Racism is structured into the rhythms of everyday life in the United States

(Feagin, 2000). Pierce (1970) defines racism as a “public health and mental

health illness” (p. 266) based on the delusion or false belief, in spite of con-

trary evidence, that innate inferiority correlates with dark skin color. He ar-

gues that in examining racism “. . . one must not look for the gross and

obvious. The subtle, cumulative miniassault is the substance of today’s

racism .. .” (Pierce, 1974, p. 516). He further describes these assaults as

racial microaggressions. In adapting Pierce’s (1970, 1974, 1980, 1989,

1995) work, we define racial microaggressions as 1) subtle verbal and non-

verbal insults directed at people of color, often automatically or uncon-

sciously; 2) layered insults, based on one’s race, gender, class, sexuality,

language, immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and 3) cumu-

lative insults, which cause unnecessary stress to people of color while privi-

leging whites. Critical race scholars have expanded on Pierce’s research to

address how people of color are experiencing and responding to racial mi-

croaggressions within and beyond the academy. For example, Carroll (1998)

extends Pierce’s work to describe that being black in the U.S. means living

in a society permeated by mundane and extreme racism and punctuated by

incessant microaggressions. She ﬁnds that African Americans are faced with

mundane extreme environmental stress—MEES. Smith (2004a, 2004b) fo-

cuses on the stress aspects of racism, explaining that constant exposure to

MEES reveals the cumulative effects of racial microaggressions. He argues

that the stress associated with racial microaggressions causes African Ameri-

cans to experience various forms of mental, emotional, and physical strain—

racial battle fatigue.

The stress ensuing from racism and racial microaggressions leads people

of color to exhibit various psychophysiological symptoms, including sup-

300 Faculty of Color

pressed immunity and increased sickness, tension headaches, trembling and

jumpiness, chronic pain in healed injuries, elevated blood pressure, and a

pounding heartbeat. Likewise, in anticipation of a racial conflict, people of

color may experience rapid breathing, an upset stomach, or frequent diarrhea

or urination. Other symptoms of racial battle fatigue include constant anxiety,

ulcer, increased swearing or complaining, insomnia or sleep broken by haunt-

ing conﬂict-speciﬁc dreams, rapid mood swings, difﬁculty thinking or speak-

ing coherently, and emotional and social withdrawal in response to racial

microaggressions or while in environments of mundane racial stressors. Ulti-

mately, these symptoms may lead to people of color losing confidence in

themselves, questioning their life’s work or even their life’s worth.

Indeed, constantly battling racial stress takes a toll on the lives of people

of color. Izard (1972, 1977) documented that African Americans tend to per-

ceive incidents of racism as personal threats, and this leads to an increase in

their emotional stress level. Krieger and Sidney (1996) reported that 80% of

1,974 black women and men experienced racial discrimination and self-re-

ported attempts to respond to unfair treatment, showing that both experi-

ences of discrimination and efforts to respond to unfair treatment were

associated with increased blood pressure. Similarly, Williams, Neighbors, and

Jackson (2003) concluded that perceptions of discrimination appear to induce

physiological and psychological arousal. Systematic exposures to such psy-

chosocial stressors may have long-term health consequences.

Experiencing racial discrimination as a stressful life event can reduce

one’s personal sense of control and elicit feelings of loss, ambiguity, strain,

frustration, and injustice. Smith (2004b) concluded that this activates a

stress-response system, originally evolved for responding to acute physical

and emotional emergencies. However, given the pervasiveness of racism in

U.S. society and its institutions, this emergency stress-response system is con-

stantly “switched on” to cope with chronic racial microaggressions (and

macroaggressions).

The accumulative stress from racial microaggressions produces racial bat-

tle fatigue. The stress of unavoidable front-line racial battles in historically

white spaces leads to people of color feeling mentally, emotionally, and physi-

cally drained. The stress from racial microaggressions can become lethal when

the accumulation of physiological symptoms of racial battle fatigue are un-

treated, unnoticed, misdiagnosed, or personally dismissed. Our critical race

counternarrative, which follows, acknowledges experiences with and responses

to racial microaggressions and racial battle fatigue reported by faculty of color

in predominantly white institutions.

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 301

Critical Race Theory (CRT) _______________________________

CRT provides a useful tool to identify, analyze, and challenge racism in educa-

tion and society. Through a CRT lens, the ongoing racism on college and uni-

versity campuses comes into focus, revealing that race conditions have not

improved signiﬁcantly as we move further into the 21st century as compared

with reports from the racially tumultuous 1960s (Carroll, 1998; Smith, Alt-

bach, & Lomotey, 2002). Faculty and students of color must cope with daily

incidents of racial microaggressions from white students, faculty, and adminis-

trators as they daily navigate institutions developed to beneﬁt whites (Bonilla-

Silva & Forman, 2000; Bowman & Smith, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1996;

Smith, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c; Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000).

Originating in schools of law, the critical race movement seeks to ac-

count for the role of race and racism in the U.S. and to challenge the many

forms of racism and its intersections with other forms of subordination such

as gender and class (Delgado, 1995a). Latina/Latino critical race theorists

have expanded the CRT framework in law to discuss issues of subordination

on the basis of immigration status, culture, language, and sexuality (Arriola,

1997; Espinoza, 1998). Similarly, a multiracial coalition of scholars have

worked since at least the mid-1990s to extend CRT to the ﬁeld of education

and implement its tenets into educational research, pedagogy, curriculum,

and policy (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lynn, Yosso, Solórzano, & Parker,

2002; Solórzano, 1997, 1998; Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Tate,

1994, 1997).

Acknowledging CRT’s roots in scholarly traditions such as ethnic studies,

U.S./third-world feminisms, Marxism/neoMarxism, cultural nationalism, in-

ternal colonialism, and critical legal studies, Solórzano (1997) identified at

least ﬁve tenets shared by CRT scholarship. These tenets acknowledge the crit-

ical strengths of other scholarly traditions while they reveal, critique, and ad-

dress some of these frameworks’ blind spots (e.g., Marxism’s blind spots

regarding race and gender, cultural nationalism’s blind spots on gender, class,

and sexuality). The basic perspectives, research methods, and pedagogy of

CRT in education learn from these academic and community traditions.

•The intercentricity of race and racism. CRT starts from the premise that

race and racism are endemic and permanent in U.S. society (Bell, 1987)

and asserts that racism intersects with forms of subordination based on

gender, class, sexuality, language, culture, immigrant status, phenotype,

accent, and surname (see Espinoza, 1998).

302 Faculty of Color

•The challenge to dominant ideology. CRT in education challenges claims of

objectivity, meritocracy, color blindness, race neutrality, and equal oppor-

tunity and asserts that these claims act as a camouﬂage for the self-interest,

power, and privilege of dominant groups in U.S. society (see Solórzano,

1997).

•The commitment to social justice. CRT seeks to advance a social justice

agenda. Such a goal emphasizes that the larger purpose of educational

research, teaching, and policy is the transformation of society through

the empowerment of oppressed groups (see Solórzano & Delgado

Bernal, 2001).

•The centrality of experiential knowledge. CRT recognizes that the experien-

tial knowledge of people of color is legitimate, appropriate, and critical to

understanding, analyzing, and teaching about racial subordination. CRT

explicitly listens to the lived experiences of people of color through coun-

terstorytelling methods such as family histories, biographies, scenarios,

parables, cuentos (stories), testimonios, dichos (proverbs), chronicles, and

narratives (see Olivas, 1990).

•The interdisciplinary perspective. CRT challenges traditional mainstream

frameworks by analyzing racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia in

historical and interdisciplinary terms (see Delgado, 1984, 1992).

Composite Counterstorytelling __________________________

Although CRT scholarship arguably serves counternarrative functions in gen-

eral, some scholars seek to be more explicit in presenting their research through

the genre of storytelling. There are at least three types of such counterstories ev-

idenced in the CRT literature: autobiographical (e.g., Aguirre, 2000; Williams,

1991), biographical (e.g., Olivas, 1990), and multimethod/composite (e.g.,

Bell, 1987, 1992, 1996; Delgado, 1995b, 1996, 1999, 2003a, 2003b; Yosso,

2006). For our purposes, we focus on multimethod/composite stories. Com-

posite counternarratives draw on multiple forms of “data” to recount the racial-

ized, sexualized, classed experiences of faculty and students of color (see

Delgado Bernal, 1998).

The counterstory that follows draws on findings from various research

projects to address the experiences and responses of faculty of color to the per-

vasiveness of racism and racial battle fatigue in and around college and univer-

sity campuses. Methodologically, we started by finding and unearthing

sources of data. Our ﬁrst form of “data” came from primary sources, namely

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 303

interviews with African Americans, primarily professors, at universities across

the country.1

Next, we analyzed secondary data from social science and humanities

scholarship, addressing experiences with and responses to racism in higher ed-

ucation (e.g., Allen & Solórzano, 2001; Bonilla-Silva & Forman, 2000; Lad-

son-Billings, 1996; Willie & Sanford, 1995). In sifting through this literature,

we drew connections with the interview data and uncovered the concepts of

racial microaggressions (Pierce, 1970, 1974, 1980, 1989, 1995; Solórzano,

1998; Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000) and resilience (e.g., Yosso, 2006). To

recover and recount the story evidenced in the patterns and themes of the

data, we added a ﬁnal source of data—our own professional and personal ex-

periences.2This included our individual reflections as well as the multiple

voices of family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Such experiential

knowledge echoed the related research literature and the interview findings,

which helped us to better understand the relationship between microaggres-

sions, stress responses, and resistance (Clark, Anderson, Clark, & Williams,

1999; Prillerman, Myers, & Smedley, 1989; Smith, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c;

Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001).

Once we compiled, examined, and analyzed these various sources of data,

we created composite characters to help tell the story. We attempted to engage

these characters in a real and critical dialogue about our data from the inter-

views, related literature, and personal/professional experiences. As such, the

characters personify our research and our analysis process. In the tradition of

Du Bois (1920) and Freire (1973), the dialogue emerged between the charac-

ters much like our own discussions in this process emerged—through sharing,

listening, challenging, and reﬂecting. We differentiate our work from that of

ﬁctional storytelling. Certainly there are elements of ﬁction in the story, but

the “composite” characters are grounded in real-life experiences, actual empir-

ical data, and contextualized in social situations that are also grounded in real

life, not ﬁction.

Introducing the Characters and Setting the Scene __________

We tell this counterstory from the perspective of a composite character named

Alice Canon, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California–Los An-

geles. As part of an interview with a reporter from a black community newspa-

per, Alice is reﬂecting on her work with her colleague, Chet Toboa, a professor

of psychiatry and education at Harvard University. Professor Toboa disap-

peared about two years ago, in 1972, and this is one of several trips Alice has

made back to Boston. She is continuing to conduct what was a collaborative

304 Faculty of Color

research project about the experiences of faculty of color in historically white

colleges and universities.3

Guided by CRT’s ﬁve tenets and the concepts of racial microaggressions

and racial battle fatigue, this counterstory invites the reader to approach the

counterstory as a pedagogical and empirical case study: to listen for the story’s

points and reﬂect on how these points compare with her or his own version of

reality (however conceived). We listen in to Professor Canon’s interview with a

newspaper reporter as she recounts the events preceding the disappearance of

Dr. Chet Toboa.

The Supposed Scandal: Questions About Chet’s Disappearance

“You probably have read the ofﬁcial versions of this scandal, but the story

begins well before Chet went ‘missing’.” The reporter wasn’t quite con-

vinced, so I showed her a few old newspaper clippings. “It was a scandal

that white folks couldn’t get enough of for a while.”

I showed her the Sunday, April 9, 1972, Boston Globe article with the

headline of “Harvard Professor Missing.” The Chicago Defender newspa-

per and Jet and Ebony magazines each ran front-page cover stories, under

the headlines of, respectively, “Harvard Yard Suspected of Murder”; “1922

or 1972? The Professional Lynching of a Black Professor”; and “The Acad-

emic Klan: Powerful Organizations Suspected of Murdering Distin-

guished Black Professor.” 4I looked up from the clippings and sarcastically

stated, “Most of those in the academic, medical, social science, and black

communities knew this was a scandal as soon as the word got out. We

were asking questions that no one could answer in their superﬁcial scandal

headlines: Was it just the typical race-related hatred for blacks in this hos-

tile era? Was it Professor Toboa’s standing up against some of the most

powerful institutions in the country? Was it his refusal to accept tenure if

his academic department did not hire another minority professor? Was it

his role in starting black professional organizations? None of us had an-

swers, but opinions were endless for how this terrible and unexpected situ-

ation occurred.”

“Of course there were the usual racialized assumptions. Many whites

claimed that this had nothing to do with race. Since Chet was a well-re-

spected Harvard professor whose research was international in scope,

some felt the only possible explanation was an international conspiracy

led by the Soviet Union. Other whites went as far as to suggest that it was

spontaneous human combustion that resulted in his disappearance.

When they were pushed further on this point to explain what happened

to the ashes, they suggested ‘the janitor must have swept them up not

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 305

knowing what they were.’ I always thought that was the funniest theory.

Most blacks, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans pointed to some combination

of racial conspiracies. Some suggested that orders were handed down

from President Nixon to the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, as one of the di-

rector’s last assignments before dying in May of that year.” I could see the

reporter wanted to hear my theory, so I smiled reassuringly and ex-

plained, “As you probably know, Chet and I are ﬁrst cousins and we basi-

cally grew up together like brother and sister. My theory isn’t so

over-dramatic. But let me tell you about our research because I think

that’s what your readers will really dig.”

Alice’s Theory About the Disappearance: Introducing a Racialized

Research Agenda

“As I mentioned, March 6, 1972, was a relatively ordinary day, at least in

Los Angeles. I was back in California, teaching a clinical seminar course

and it was about 64 degrees with blue skies. The meeting took place in

New York where it was slightly colder than usual. It dipped down to 33

degrees that night when Chet was seen watching Wilt ‘The Stilt’ Cham-

berlain assist the Los Angeles Lakers in a win against Willis Reed and his

New York Knicks. He attended with Bumpy Johnson, a longtime friend

who most folks thought of as a notorious Harlem gangster. Chet and

Bumpy met years before when Bumpy gave a generous donation to our

aunt who lived in South Carolina. She had been out of work and strug-

gling to make ends meet after some jealously angry white men burned

down her modest but successful business. The three white men fingered

for the arson mysteriously came up missing, never to be seen or heard

from again. Many black folks suspected Bumpy had something to do with

it since he was in Charleston visiting shortly after the situation occurred,

but—with a certain sense of pride—no one ever said an accusatory word. I

think Bumpy actually inspired some of Chet’s work. What a case study in

racism, that Bumpy. Like too many young black brothers subjected to

daily interpersonal and institutionalized racism, Bumpy’s initial responses

of anger and resentment led to his incarceration for a large part of his

youth. Bumpy in turn admired Chet, who had also grown up in Harlem,

but had channeled his anger to challenge racism through education and

participation in the civil rights movement. Anyway, Bumpy and Chet

ended up seeing one of Wilt’s last professional basketball games and LA

beat New York.” I smiled as I held up a picture of me around that time pe-

riod and another of Chet. The reporter commented that it must have been

quite a shock for folks to see a research team made up of a woman with an

306 Faculty of Color

Afro and multicolored shawl and a man in a three-piece gray suit, let alone

an academic with a gangster like Bumpy Johnson. I responded that the

clothes don’t make the man, and if anything, Chet’s dapper style was not

too different from Bumpy’s. If she only knew, I mused to myself, remem-

bering that some of my friends had crushes on Chet when we were ﬁnish-

ing ninth grade and he was the 6’4” zoot-suit-wearing high school

valedictorian.

I explained that Chet and I were developing a U.S. minority mental

health research agenda. As professors and clinicians of psychiatry, we had

documented the health effects of minorities living and working in extreme

conditions or dealing with the daily effects of racism. We had become in-

creasingly concerned with the mental and physiological health outcomes

of blacks, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans, especially as they were becoming

“integrated” into historically white spaces and institutions. Chet also kept

a journal of his private therapy sessions as well as his personal conversa-

tions with other black, Chicano, and Puerto Rican professionals, profes-

sors, students, and other community members about what he labeled as

their experiences with “racial microaggressions.” I pulled out one of Chet’s

earlier articles and read aloud: “Chet defined racial microaggressions ‘as

subtle, innocuous, preconscious, or (un)conscious degradations and put-

downs, often kinetic but capable of being verbal and/or kinetic, and/or

purposefully malicious or violent.’”5

I continued speaking, “So we were able to trace a rise in a new form

of stress-related psychological and physiological disease that resulted

from constant experiences with racial microaggressions. Chet’s prelimi-

nary diagnosis of the cumulative effects of racial microaggressions was

‘racial battle fatigue.’ Unlike typical stress, racial battle fatigue referred to

the cumulative result of a natural race-related stress response to distress-

ing mental and emotional conditions. These conditions emerged from

constantly facing racially dismissive, demeaning, insensitive and/or hos-

tile racial environments and individuals. Chet found a pattern that

showed that this race-related stress kills gradually and stealthily. It takes

an unending toll through various psychosomatic physical ailments, such

as hypertension and poor health attitudes and behaviors that combine to

give minorities a morbidity and mortality proﬁle similar to those living in

the developing world rather than in the industrialized world.” The re-

porter’s raised eyebrows indicated she was interested in racial battle fa-

tigue and whether it was connected to Chet’s disappearance. I didn’t want

to let her know that I wondered the same thing myself. My research with

Chet initially began after a long conversation during a family reunion

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 307

about the source of some of my physical ailments and Chet’s high stress

levels.

Revealing Experiences of Racial Microaggressions and Symptoms of

Racial Battle Fatigue at the Black Faculty Association Meeting: Friday,

February 4, 1972

“So the month before the March 6th meeting, Chet was preparing to ad-

dress the East Coast Black Faculty Association in Mather Hall at Harvard

University. As you may know, Mather Hall was named after Increase

Mather, who was part of the upper-crust Boston slave owning society and

a Harvard-educated preacher. He also presided over Harvard for 16 years

as its sixth president (1685–1701). The association held its meetings in

Mather Hall to remind them that within the institutional fabric of Har-

vard and outside of its campus, this multiheaded monster of racism and

elitism was ever present, despite their laudable achievements. This special

meeting was called to provide an update on the developments toward ad-

dressing the growing concerns about the racial violence aimed at black fac-

ulty and students at Harvard, as well as other schools across the East Coast

and the country. In addition, Chet and I wanted to seek further input on

the impending March 6th meeting. Chet was the current chair of the asso-

ciation.”

I paused and showed the reporter that I had the actual transcriptions

of association meetings because they had been trying out a new system

where they audiotaped their meetings and had a volunteer write up the

minutes at a later date. I didn’t tell her that in retrospect I suspected that

one of the newer association members was an FBI informant and he had

suggested the audiotaping. Initially, I had told Chet it was odd, but he

didn’t seem too worried.

As I continued, I referred to the transcripts. “The Sergeant at Arms

called the special meeting to order and Dr. Coleman, a black male history

professor interrupted and said, ‘Get on with it, Jesse. We know why we’re

here.’” I smiled thinking about how informal this formal group of black

scholars could be.

“And then Chet, who was always known to be courteous despite the

circumstances, welcomed everyone and explained who would be at the

meeting on the 6th. He listed the senior-level administrators from each of

the universities across the country that had been invited and who had on-

going campus racial unrest, including Harvard, Cornell University, Uni-

versity of Michigan, University of California–Berkeley, and University of

California–Los Angeles. He also noted that key members from the De-

308 Faculty of Color

partment of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) would be there.

HEW is a federal ofﬁce that has broad popular support for unprecedented

amounts of federal funds that are allocated for social programs, so many

people were pleased they accepted the invitation. The list also included the

American Council on Education, which is the major coordinating body

for all the nation’s higher education institutions; the National Institute of

Mental Health, which has a major budget to fund research projects, new

service initiatives, and train mental health professionals; the American

Psychological Association, our professional organization that has signiﬁ-

cant influence on the national practice of psychiatry; and the American

Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, which awards the credentials of spe-

cialist psychiatrists after the successful completion of its examination.”

“Now Chet turned it over to me because even though he was sched-

uled to be the main presenter Monday the 6th, I had done most of the

groundwork in organizing the meeting. We were trying to be strategic and

we knew that folks would probably respond more positively to a black

man, like you said, in a three piece suit rather than a black woman with an

Afro and a reputation for being a rebel-rouser and hanging out with An-

gela Davis, ‘Corky’ Gonzalez, Dolores Huerta, Huey P. Newton, Cesar

Chavez, Kathleen Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael—who was calling himself

Kwame Ture at this point—Carmen Valentin, and Jim Brown, the former

NFL fullback. Anyway, I outlined the six major points we prepared for the

meeting and Chet passed out mimeograph copies while I spoke. I’ll read

here my words:

‘As some of you may know, Professor Toboa and I have been

working together for a few years, following up on our epi-

demiological ﬁndings, which suggest that a positive correla-

tion exists between increased white-black, white-Chicano,

and white-Puerto Rican social integration and racial

microaggressions. With each civil rights effort, or with each

attempt at breaking down barriers of racial segregation in

historically white spaces, minority health seems to suffer. We

have identiﬁed that this experience of dealing with constant

racial microaggressions leads to a phenomenon we are call-

ing racial battle fatigue. These negative racial events and life

crises clearly contribute to minorities’ higher rates of affec-

tive disorders. Unfortunately, traditional research and

healthcare practices inappropriately focus exclusively on

poor diets, culture, poverty, and inadequate education as the

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 309

source of blame in black and brown poorer physical health

statistics.”

“And here,” I noted, “a colleague raised her hand and asked, ‘Am I under-

standing correctly that this work is based on the premise that staying at the

microsocial, proximal level of analysis offers a better prospect of obtaining

ecologically valid and practical knowledge about racial microaggressions,

emotions, coping strategies, and the racial battle fatigue phenomena?’

Chet responded, ‘Yes. However, I believe researchers must be free to

choose which approach they want to use, proximal or distal, just as it is ap-

propriate to ask which approach provides more useful information and in-

depth analysis.’”

I explained to the reporter that many of our colleagues knew the

growing bias toward quantitative, large-scale research projects when it

came to swaying the interests of major government funders. Then I con-

tinued, “These transcripts don’t really pick up on the emotion of the

room, but I remember pretty clearly. It was quite tense and so, at first, I

emphasized a few words sarcastically to bring a little humor to the situa-

tion. I said,

‘We believe that each of these leading and prestigious institu-

tions’—and Chet looked at me sideways to remind me that

some of our colleagues might not appreciate that humor, so

I continued on in a more serious tone. ‘These institutions

and organizations need to 1) be more cognizant of the needs

and interests of minorities; 2) elevate minorities in the hier-

archy of each institution; 3) be held responsible for the

abundance of unsophisticated, anti-intellectual, racist, and

sexist scholarship funded, produced, and rewarded in these

institutions; 4) acknowledge that racism and white resist-

ance to integration should be seen as a public health crisis

for the stress, violence, and terror it inﬂicts on the aggrieved;

5) consider classifying racist behaviors as a psychological dis-

order in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Dis-

orders; and 6) eliminate the homosexual classification that

considers homosexuality as a physical disease, a “third sex,”

or a psychological aberration.’”

I looked up from the transcript and explained, “That last statement caused

a mild disturbance in the room. People began to whisper to each other

their concern about grouping racism with homosexuality. A young conser-

310 Faculty of Color

vative black economics professor, Gleason Golightly,6stood up to make

his objections clearly known for the record.” I turned back to reading the

transcriptions: “Professor Golightly said,

‘So what you are telling us is that for the purposes of dis-

crimination, sexual orientation—or, more accurately, sexual

behavior—must be treated like race. Do you really think

that is a legitimate claim? When I got up this morning I was

a black man. When I drove my car through South Boston

and was stopped, it was because I was a black man. When I

go to bed tonight, I will still be a black man. If we are going

to treat sexual orientation and race the same, then what you

are saying is sexual orientation—read: behavior—is like race,

a condition beyond the individual’s control. If you want us,

or this group that you will be addressing next month, to

accept this kind of reasoning, then why should we stop at

this form of sexual passion? If we’re going to ask for special

considerations for homosexuals, shouldn’t everybody else’s

irrepressible sexual orientations be protected? Shouldn’t

adulterers, pedophiles, rapists, and other sorts of sexual aber-

rants be entitled to the same protections?’”

I sat back in my chair and said, “The room erupted after Golightly fin-

ished his diatribe. Whatever discomforts association members may have

felt about this issue were replaced with even more contempt for Go-

lightly’s message and him as the messenger. Golightly’s positions usually

had an adverse effect for swaying people his way. This was also true for the

more conservative blacks who appeared moderate in comparison. The

Sergeant at Arms had to call the room to order.”

“Now I could never really hide my disdain for Golightly, but I was al-

ways cordial. So I spoke up, and the transcripts actually caught me here.

I’d been doing this for years, and usually only if you were sitting very close

to me would you hear it. I said, ‘Look here, ‘Notlikely,’ I am not fully

comfortable with including this as part of our proposal but for very differ-

ent reasons than yours. What I do understand is that if we allow these or-

ganizations to continue to mistreat and misrepresent one group, then

blacks will never be free.’” I told the reporter that at this point the major-

ity of the room rose to their feet to applaud my comments, much to Go-

lightly’s chagrin.

I referred back to the transcripts and explained, “Chet began to talk

over the ovation to bring order to the room and said, ‘I will brieﬂy try to

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 311

answer part of Professor Golightly’s question and show the connection we

are trying to draw.’ Chet’s strategy was not to change Golightly’s name,

but to stare him down as he challenged his reactionary comments. Chet

looked right at Golightly and said, ‘Many psychiatrists, psychologists,

ministers, priests, rabbis, and even professors believe that homosexuality is

a curable condition. However, the various ‘cures’ they propose are highly

offensive and perilous, including castration, hypnosis, nausea producing

drugs, electric shock, brain surgery, breast amputations, and aversion ther-

apy. This is no different than the ideology held by the physician Sam

Cartwright, who believed that blacks had ‘drapetomania’ and ‘dysaesthia

aethiopis’ which justiﬁed our enslavement.’”7

“Then Chet addressed the rest of the room, using his ﬁngers to infer

quotation marks over the questionable words in these racist theories:

‘Cartwright also theorized that the black skin of Afro-Americans in con-

junction with a deficiency of red blood cells led to smaller brain sizes in

blacks, which resulted in both less intelligence and lower morals. The

‘cure’ for the ﬁrst disease was ‘whipping the devil out of them’ to prevent

them from ‘their crazy desire to run away from slavery.’ Cartwright be-

lieved that the second disease caused a slave to refuse to work and the

‘cure’ was to give the slaves harder work to stimulate the blood to the brain

and free them from their inﬂiction. Even the so-called father of American

psychiatry and one of the ‘founding fathers’ of this country, Benjamin

Rush, believed that the only ‘cure’ for blacks would be when our skin color

turns white. This is why he and others believed that blacks and whites

should always be segregated from one another. What we are witnessing

today are the modern forms of these ideologies.’”8

The reporter shook her head in disgust. I described the silence in the

room after Chet’s statement. “He pretty much put any lingering doubts

about whether we were on the right track to rest, but an awkward silence

and depression began to cover the room, so I spoke up and told them,

‘Look, if we can convince these powerful organizations about the errors of

their ways and the troubles ahead, then we can be more effective in inﬂu-

encing national policies and practice about the health consequences of mi-

norities ﬁghting against racism.’”

I paused and explained to the reporter that through our interviews

over the years, Chet and I had collected more than 300 personal state-

ments from minority professors across the country in varying ﬁelds. So we

put up on the overhead projector the major themes we had found so far

and asked the association members to think about whether their experi-

ences ﬁt into those themes or if we were any missing patterns that should

312 Faculty of Color

be added. As I read a few examples of faculty experiences with racial mi-

croaggressions, I also noted the psychophysiological symptoms as each

person had described them.

“A black male philosophy professor began the discussion about the

pattern of racialized classroom experiences. This older man explained that

his wife was concerned because he had been complaining much more than

he had in the past and he began swearing and just seemed to be withdraw-

ing both emotionally and socially. He explained,

‘This is a very sensitive area for me. You might guess cor-

rectly that there are not many black philosophy professors.

So I spend a lot of time sharing my struggles with black pro-

fessors in other ﬁelds and their struggles are all the same. In

spite of our efforts to demonstrate competency, black profes-

sors are challenged more on our intellectual authority than

our white counterparts. In most of these challenges, students

question our knowledge directly or indirectly in a way that is

inappropriate or disrespectful. These challenges might

include arguments on basic points of the discipline. For

example, students might argue that the sociological imagina-

tion is not deﬁned as I deﬁned it. They might question the

validity of lecture material or use more indirect forms of

resistance. For instance, this particular white student simply

thought he knew everything and that he certainly couldn’t

learn anything from me. He went so far as to say, when I was

trying to explain something, ‘That’s wrong, that’s just

wrong, that’s not true.’ This is very, very difficult because

you can’t go off on him because you’ve got to be respectful

and you’ve got to be this professional person, but it’s very,

very hurtful, particularly from someone who was not an

excellent student.’”

The young reporter nodded as if she heard something familiar in the state-

ment. I continued reading the examples. “Here’s a black female develop-

mental psychologist who had been experiencing tension backaches and

elevated blood pressure and spoke about constant microaggressions in the

classroom. She said,

‘Our white colleagues do not understand how our classroom

experiences qualitatively differ from theirs. White students

expect the traditional hierarchy of society to prevail in the

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 313

class. That is, white male on the top, and black woman on

the bottom. And they can’t get ready for the fact that a black

woman is teaching this class! And that the white males are

not in charge....I think that if I were white, that I wouldn’t

have to go through those sorts of things in my classroom . . .

but at every turn I have to remind students that I am the pro-

fessor. I’m not just the instructor...I have a Ph.D....I have

to tell students, ‘Look. I graduated summa cum laude; I got

two master’s degrees and my Ph.D....I published these

books and these articles, blah, blah, blah,’ to let them know

that I may be black, but what you think about in terms of

what it means to be black is not necessarily what I am, if it’s a

negative perception...being uneducated and being illiterate

and not able to think and basically being an affirmative

action kind of a person. So those are the kinds of things that

I think make my job more difficult. Much more difficult

than white professors. And it’s unfortunate that the so-called

standardized evaluation process that we have been using in

colleges and universities does not take these things into con-

sideration. In fact, if you raise the subject, the college will

look at you like you’re crazy because they don’t deal with that.

And they’re actually being honest because they don’t under-

stand the sheer level of complexity on the part of the profes-

sor and the student in dealing with these kinds of issues. So

I’m not blaming my colleagues. I’m just saying they’re really

very ignorant. Ignorant about what goes on in my classes and

the extent to which I have to use measures above and beyond

what they have to use to even survive in the classroom.’”

The reporter continued to nod in agreement and I read one more example

of classroom experiences with microaggressions. “This next one is a black

female chemistry professor. This very accomplished woman had little con-

fidence in her university and maintained even less confidence in herself.

She shared a pretty blatant example with us.” I found my place in the tran-

script and began to read, remembering vividly the pained expression on

this woman’s face as she shared this incident with us. “She said,

‘The ﬁrst time I walked as an instructor into a classroom in a

large research university, I immediately experienced such a

racially stressful event. I wrote my name on the board,

turned around, and, to my utter dismay, a white male stu-

314 Faculty of Color

dent was staring at me with contempt and holding up his

middle ﬁnger to me. ‘Can this be happening to me?’ I asked

myself. I began my lecture, but I was having an out-of-body

experience as the young man continued to stare at me in

contempt, still ‘shooting a bird’ until, finally, I could no

longer pretend that this was not happening. So I walked

slowly toward him and deliberately stared him straight in

the eye as I lectured. It was the longest walk. . . but it would

be one that I would repeat many times in the years to come,

in different circumstances.’”

I ﬂipped through the next few pages of the transcription to make sure

I was staying on track. I continued, “A few of the professors also shared

their experiences that follow in with the theme of a subtle yet stunning

and cumulative nature of racial microaggressions. And these here certainly

suggest that the cumulative effect of microaggressions is racial battle fa-

tigue. For example, a black male psychiatry professor who admitted to

having sleep broken by haunting conﬂict-speciﬁc dreams said,

‘What is it like to be a black person in white America today?

One step from suicide! The psychological warfare games that

we have to play every day just to survive. We have to be one

way in our communities and one way in the workplace or in

the business sector. We can never be ourselves all around. I

think that may be a given for all people, but us particularly;

it’s really a mental health problem. It’s a wonder we haven’t

all gone out and killed somebody or killed ourselves.’”

I shared one last example of the overall cumulative effect of racial mi-

croaggressions with the reporter. “A black male psychiatry professor re-

porting insomnia and rapid breathing in anticipation of conflict,

explained,

‘If you can think of the mind as having 100 ergs of energy,

and the average man uses 50% of this energy dealing with

the everyday problems of the world—just general kinds of

things—then he has 50% more to do creative kinds of

things that he wants to do. That’s a white person. Now, a

black person also has 100 ergs. He uses 50% the same way a

white man does, dealing with what the white man has to

deal with, so he has 50% left. But he uses 25% fighting

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 315

being black, with all the problems of being black in America

and what it means.’”

“And then I told the faculty, ‘So that’s what brings us to you today, to ask

humbly if you would share with us some of your stories so we can add

your voices to the testimony we give next month. We would like for these

folks to hear your story about the racial attacks—or what we call racial mi-

croaggressions—you may have had to endure just trying to be a black pro-

fessor on a white campus.” I paused from reading the transcript and

shared with the reporter the inspiring scene that followed. “One after an-

other, each professor in the room stood up to share stories of the racial mi-

croaggressions they faced on and around historically white campuses. We

could see as we had read the examples out loud that these professors were

realizing they were no longer struggling with incidents and symptoms of

racial battle fatigue in isolation, now they had a name for their pain. Al-

though some were hesitant to share their psychophysiological symptoms

in that large group setting, they noted that our dataset reﬂected their own

experiences and remarked that our thematic analysis had reached satura-

tion. Even Golightly conceded to experiencing racial microaggressions.

Although he tried to dismiss their effect on his personhood, I noticed he

tended to yawn and demonstrate extreme fatigue after drinking multiple

cups of black coffee.”

I smiled at the ever-patient reporter and said, “So there it is. The

meeting adjourned and each person stayed until they shared their experi-

ences. Chet was frustrated at the multiple experiences of racism his col-

leagues had been subjected to, but he didn’t let too much of this anger

show. Instead, he assured them that their voices would be heard at the

meeting Monday the 6th. Many expressed doubt as we headed off campus

whether folks from the organizations and universities would really listen,

but they thanked me for organizing the meeting and they thanked Chet in

advance for bringing their stories and this research to such a forum.”

Will Institutions Listen to and Learn From Effects of Racism? Waiting

for an Update: April 7, 1972

So I left a message for Chet the morning of Friday, April 7th, to let him

know I had arrived safely from my red-eye ﬂight from California and that

I’d see him at the association meeting shortly. I was anxious to hear about

any recent reports stemming from the meeting. I didn’t tell the reporter

that it was strange that he hadn’t called to give me an update earlier, but I

didn’t think much of it because I knew he believed his university phone

316 Faculty of Color

and perhaps his home phone had been wiretapped. I also knew Chet usu-

ally volunteered at the hospital a few days a month and also visited the

prison hospital on occasion, so I ﬁgured he may have been busy. He would

often remind me of how he would much rather be involved in clinical

work, challenging racism as a kind of street therapist who helped young

black youth learn to recognize and respond to racial microaggressions be-

fore racism took its toll on their mental and physical health.9

I described to the reporter that the association meeting was scheduled

for every ﬁrst Friday of the month while school was in session. “So since

we hadn’t had our usual meeting in March, everyone was in attendance for

that April 7th meeting. Most of us assumed Chet would be on time in one

of his customary three-piece Brooks Brothers suits and his camel brown

Allen-Edmonds shoes, with his calming and reassuring smile despite how

grave the circumstances. By the time I got to Mather Hall at 11:50 a.m.,

the room was packed. Since no one had heard from Chet since last

Wednesday, members thought that he had been planning something spe-

cial in response to what was rumored to be disappointing news. At noon,

the Sergeant at Arms called the meeting to order but Chet did not show.”

The reporter asked me to pause brieﬂy so she could start a new tape. I

took the opportunity to drink some tea as I noted to myself that recount-

ing the story today was the ﬁrst time that a lump in my throat had not de-

veloped. My emotions had grown numb over the years thinking about the

racial microaggressions that I have continuously experienced. But I have

always gotten exceptionally angry when I think about how Chet was

treated.

Once the new tape was recording, I continued, “After waiting for 20

minutes we decided to check his ofﬁce. Several colleagues volunteered to

join me and walk across campus to check on him. As we approached his

building, the Cambridge police met us in the hallway. They were looking

for Chet’s ofﬁce. One of the Harvard faculty members said that we were

on our way to get him for a meeting and inquired what was wrong. An of-

ﬁcer indicated that a missing person’s report had been ﬁled and they were

sent to investigate Dr. Toboa’s whereabouts. By this time there’s almost a

mob of folks heading up to Chet’s ofﬁce. And of course there was no eleva-

tor in that building, so we were all crammed together going up the stairs to

the third ﬂoor! When we got there, the door was wide open. On his desk

was an opened envelope, with a return address labeled ‘Committee on

Campus and Community Culture and Climate.’ We learned this letter was

delivered via certiﬁed mail Tuesday, April 4th, but there was no letter to be

found. Instead, there was a note written on the back of the envelope, in what

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 317

looked to be Chet’s writing. It referred to Supreme Court Justice Brown’s

opinion in the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896 and simply read: ‘It is only in

black people’s minds that racial conditions in America are oppressive.’”10

I excused myself momentarily to refill my mug with hot water and

searched through my bag for another kava kava herb tea as the young re-

porter looked at the writing on the empty envelope, still sealed in the po-

lice protective covering. I brushed away a few tears as I stirred some honey

into my tea, lost in my thoughts for a moment before I sat back at the

table and continued. “Not much is really known about what happened to

Chet. The department secretary reportedly saw him when he picked up

his mail earlier that day. No one saw him leave his ofﬁce or the building,

even though folks were there until late in the evening.”

“Noticing that there were various awards and certificates strewn all

over the ﬂoor, the police asked us not to touch anything, and I think that’s

what caused us to finally start getting scared that something may have

happened to Chet. So we were pretty much silent, almost frozen with fear

and concern, but you know, right then in the silence of the moment, we

heard Chet’s little transistor radio playing on the shelf.” I closed my eyes

and began to sing softly the song that was playing:

“People get ready there’s a train a comin’

Don’t need no baggage, you just get on board”

I opened my eyes and saw a blank stare from the young reporter, so I ex-

plained that Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions recorded “People Get

Ready” in 1965. The song symbolically described how people felt in the

midst of the civil rights movement, that there was a train coming, that his-

tory was moving with a sense of inevitability. I continued singing:

“People get ready for the train to Jordan

Picking up passengers coast to coast

Faith is the key, open the doors and board ’em

There’s hope for all those that love Him most”

I paused again to explain that the song goes on from there to issue a warn-

ing, and I sang this part to the young reporter as well:

“There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner

Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own

Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner

For there’s no hiding place from the Kingdom’s throne.”

318 Faculty of Color

I smiled thinking that since this interview was being recorded, someday

my singing might become part of an FBI ﬁle, as seemed to be the trend in

the last few years with many of my politically active friends. Realizing the

reporter was waiting for me to continue, I explained, “Well, as you might

imagine, the police quickly regained their composure and ﬁnished digging

around his office, asking each of us to ‘stay in touch.’ I walked with the

other faculty back to Mather Hall and broke the news to the larger group

that Chet had gone missing, and many of us were brought in for question-

ing over the next few weeks.”

The reporter thanked me for my time and confirmed my summer

contact information for possible follow-up questions. She noted that this

would probably be a series of articles. She hadn’t connected the date Chet

received the certiﬁed letter, April 4th, with the anniversary of the assassi-

nation of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I was sure that would be a future

follow-up question. Both Dr. King and Dr. Toboa were about nonviolent,

peaceful resolutions. Both had visions of a better condition for all people.

Each tried to break down the same system, which took an ultimate toll on

each of their lives. I had learned not to worry too much about such

ironies, but deep down, I knew it was no coincidence.

Alice’s Epilogue

I walked to a small campus cafeteria to grab a quick bite before heading to

the airport. The interview had gone longer than I anticipated. Out of the

corner of my eye I saw a familiar face across the yard. It was the janitor I

had met in Chet’s building. I thought back to when the university decided

to move another professor into Chet’s ofﬁce and asked me to prepare his

work for the archives. It had been such a short time since Chet’s disappear-

ance, yet the ofﬁce was almost all cleaned out by the time I got there.

The janitor was sweeping up Chet’s ofﬁce as I arrived. He smiled and

tipped his cap. Maybe he recognized my picture from one of Chet’s family

photos he used to have in his ofﬁce, I don’t know, but he knew who I was

immediately. Before leaving me to go through the stack of Chet’s papers, the

janitor handed me a small book that he said I might ﬁnd useful. Given the

huge task before me, I didn’t even open the book until a few hours later. I re-

alized it was Chet’s personal journal and I wondered how the janitor came

across it and why the police never mentioned it. I ﬂipped through it brieﬂy,

stopping at one of the pages titled “I almost killed a white man today.” Chet

sketched out a scene, which apparently took place at an airport, where a

white man verbally accosted him. He had just returned from a trip to Mc-

Curdo Base in the Antarctic, where he was studying how military personnel

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 319

and scientists adapted and survived the stressors of extreme climates after a

year of residency. Chet had mentioned some of this early work to me, and

how he was comparing the extreme climates of Antarctica with the extreme

climates of racism that blacks had been trying to survive for centuries in the

Americas.11 I sighed, thinking of how Chet must have looked in his full-

grown beard, snow shoes in his bag, facing an extreme climate of hostility in

the Boston airport terminal. Certainly there have been multiple incidents he

described to me where he was belittled in front of colleagues with comments

like “When I was talking about those blacks, I didn’t mean you, you’re dif-

ferent,” or nonverbal exchanges such as being followed at the supermarket

or not served at a restaurant. One night he was detained while walking to his

apartment near Harvard. Police insisted that he “assume the position” be-

cause he “ﬁt the description” of a burglar. I turned the pages to read a more

recent journal entry. It was apparently inspired by the poem “Whitey on the

moon,” by Gil Scott-Heron.12 Most of the lines had been edited from the

original poem.

Whitey needs more room

Those rats done sent us all to hell, ’cause Whitey needs more room

Bit my sister then wished her well, ’cause Whitey needs more room

Can’t live in those precious hills, ’cause Whitey needs more room

Ten years from now still taking pills, ’cause Whitey needs more room

No relief from the front-line, Black

One step forward 10 steps back

Feel my blood pressure going up

And as if all that crap wasn’t enough

Those rats done sent us all to hell, ’cause Whitey needs more room

Bit my sister then wished her well, ’cause Whitey needs more room

Never got our 40 acres and a mule, ’cause Whitey needs more room!

Need national guards just to go to school? Hmm. . . only Whitey’s in

the room!

You know I’ve just about had my ﬁll of Whitey needing room

I think I’d like to take my shot and send Whitey—Pow! Bang!

Zoom!—to the moon.

Thinking back now about that creative entry, I marveled at Chet’s multi-

ple hidden talents. For me, the journal was a gentle reminder that things

are never quite what they seem. I waved at the janitor, hoping he might

have a moment and walk over. The janitor smiled and tipped his cap, but

320 Faculty of Color

headed in the opposite direction. My questions would have to wait be-

cause I knew the plane would not. As I hailed a taxi to the airport, I real-

ized that something in the janitor’s smile back when he gave me Chet’s

journal and again today gave me an unexplainable sense of calm. The

gloomy feelings I had from recounting so many memories of Chet began

to ease, like the Boston sky, where the sun had ﬁnally broken through the

cloud cover only to begin its descent into the horizon.

Discussion_____________________________________________

Through this counterstory, we introduce the concepts of microaggressions

and racial battle fatigue as a way to examine some of the implications of

racism on the health and lifespan of faculty of color in historically white col-

leges and universities.

Our counterstory characters conﬁrm that a few or even one microaggres-

sion may cause serious emotional and physical stress. Yet as Carroll (1998) re-

minds us, in a society plagued by racism, people of color endure a lifetime of

mundane, extreme, environmental stress. In this context, people of color ex-

pend a tremendous amount of psychological energy managing and negotiat-

ing microaggressions.

The counterstory examines some of the effects of racial microaggressions

on faculty of color by allowing brief entry into a moment in the lives of two

composite characters—Professors Canon and Toboa. The composite charac-

ters analyze and personify data on racial battle fatigue. Indeed, as the black

faculty recount their individual experiences with racial microaggressions, their

collective experiences begin to demonstrate how a lifetime of microaggressions

and their corresponding cumulative stress leads to racial battle fatigue. The

psychophysiological symptoms of racial battle fatigue may cause lowered self-

esteem, social withdrawal from perceived racial stressors, and many negative

health complications, which can diminish one’s quality of life and even

shorten one’s lifespan. The research presented through the counterstory shows

that faculty of color report various psychophysiological symptoms as a result

of battling an accumulation of racial microaggressions on historically white

college and university campuses. Lomas (2003) explains that this tradition of

listening to and recounting testimonios (life experiences) of subordinated

groups can transform both the storytellers and listeners/readers. She asserts

that “in making sense of the text as a whole the reader is forced to go outside

the text itself and examine the real world in relation to the text” (pp. 2–3). In

format and content, the counterstory told in this chapter attempts to build on

the transformative capacity of narratives.

Challenging Racial Battle Fatigue on Historically White Campuses 321

This chapter and counterstory show that people of color experience racial

microaggressions, but the cumulative effect of this seemingly innocuous form of

racism—racial battle fatigue—remains underresearched. Without further re-

search in this area, the racial battle fatigue symptoms experienced by people of

color will remain misdiagnosed or even dismissed. As historically white colleges

and universities maintain structural barriers that deny access to students of color

while perpetuating a discourse of tolerance and diversity, racial microaggressions

and ensuing racial battle fatigue will continue to be an area in need of study. For

example, research should address some of the coping mechanisms people of

color engage in response to racial microaggressions and racial battle fatigue.

CRT, with its epistemological insistence on recognizing the knowledges of

people of color and methodological ﬂexibility in utilizing counternarratives,

represents a useful framework for challenging both macro and micro forms of

racism in education. Counterstorytelling holds pedagogical potential in its ac-

cessible story format embedded with critical conceptual and theoretical con-

tent. CRT counterstories can foster community building among subordinated

groups by recognizing shared experiences with racism, sexism, classism, and

other forms of subordination. The evidence is clear: External stressors can per-

manently alter physiological functioning. For people of color, racism increases

the degree of stress that one endures and this directly correlates to the physio-

logical arousal that is an indicator of stress-related diseases (Smith, 2004b). It

is our humble hope that this counterstory and the painful realities of racial

battle fatigue shared herein can help strengthen traditions of social, political,

and cultural survival and resistance.

Endnotes

1) Each interview is from one of four data sources and has been slightly edited only

to reﬂect the language use of the era: Feagin and Sikes (1994), Harlow (2003),

Smith (1993–2005), and Smith (2004b).

2) We acknowledge that our own racialized, gendered, and classed experiences in-

form this counterstory. We do not purport to be neutral or objective in the

process of sifting through the data and ﬁnding themes and patterns.

3) We use historically white institutions instead of predominantly white institutions

to distinguish that the gross numbers or percentages of white students have less to

do with the majority populations than with the historical and contemporary

racial infrastructure that is in place, the current campus racial culture and ecol-

ogy, and how these modern-day institutions still beneﬁt whites at the expense of

blacks and other groups of color.

322 Faculty of Color

4) While the early 1970s were rife with very real racial violence and scandalous

headlines, the headlines listed here are ﬁctitious.

5) See Pierce (1975, 1995).

6) We humbly and gratefully borrow the character of Professor Gleason Golightly

from Chapter 9 of Bell (1992). Such a conservative “minority” viewpoint up-

holds white privilege by blindly clinging to the majoritarian story while dismiss-

ing the lived reality of people of color. Although whites most often tell

majoritarian stories, people of color often buy into and even tell majoritarian sto-

ries. Being a “minority” majoritarian storyteller such as Golightly often means re-

ceiving beneﬁts provided by those with racial, gender, and/or class privilege.

7) See Citizens Commission on Human Rights (1995).

8) See Citizens Commission on Human Rights (1995).

9) See Pierce (1970).

10) We paraphrase Justice Brown’s majority opinion of the court in Plessy v. Ferguson,

163 U.S. 537, 538 (1896).

11) See Carroll (1998).

12) For the original poem, see Scott-Heron (2001).

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