{"id":611,"date":"2016-08-03T13:05:52","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T17:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/?p=611"},"modified":"2021-10-27T14:22:47","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T18:22:47","slug":"critical-reflections-on-being-a-visible-minority-in-political-science-a-conversation-with-wendy-wong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/critical-reflections-on-being-a-visible-minority-in-political-science-a-conversation-with-wendy-wong\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Reflections on Being a Visible Minority in Political Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wendy Wong is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her main research interests lie at the crossroads of International Relations and Comparative Politics. \u00a0She is interested in the politics of organization, why human beings choose to act collectively, their choices to go about doing it, and the effects of those choices. <\/em><\/p>\n

As a woman of color who studies Black women in politics, I think deeply about the impact of\u00a0one\u2019s identity on her political behavior and how she is perceived in the world. My research\u00a0interests often lead me to engage in advocacy work on behalf women of color \u2013 inside the\u00a0academy and within the larger political discourse. Because this is my area of study and life\u2019s\u00a0work, I often take for granted the salient role of identity politics in everyday life for women of\u00a0color. Fortunately, my interactions with Wendy H. Wong – Associate Professor of Political\u00a0Science and Director of the Trudeau Center for Peace Conflict, and Justice at the University of\u00a0Toronto – opened my eyes to how other scholars may view the impact of identity on their\u00a0research and their life in the academy.<\/p>\n

In April of 2016, Professor Wong (along with co-author Professor Sarah Stroup) had a featured\u00a0in PSNow, which highlighted a recent article on authority in global politics and international\u00a0nongovernmental organizations. APSA posted a stock photo of random Asian woman in place\u00a0of a picture of Professor Wong. In response, Wendy Wong contacted APSA and the post was\u00a0deleted. Of course, the post went viral. This incident coincided with annual meeting of the\u00a0Midwest Political Science Association. The topic of conversation at the bars in the Palmer House\u00a0that evening was of the photo of a random Asian woman that ASPA tweeted instead of Wendy\u00a0Wong. Thankfully, Professor Wong posted her thoughts on Duck of Minerva to express her\u00a0frustration with the APSA and why merely deleting the tweet was insufficient. Professor Wong\u2019s\u00a0articulation of the simultaneous invisibility and hypervisibility of women of color in our\u00a0profession spoke volumes to why the discipline of political science must continue to study this\u00a0population, document our experiences, and respect our narratives.<\/p>\n

How can our discipline and its identity-based auxiliaries do more to support women of color? Currently, the majority of the members of the Women\u2019s Caucus for Political Science (WCPS)\u00a0and the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession are gender and politics scholars.\u00a0These organizations are open to women of all subfields \u2013 particularly those, like Professor\u00a0Wendy Wong, whose primary research interests are not gender. Our caucuses, status committees,\u00a0and other identity-based groups are preaching to the converted. I wonder how the WCPS and\u00a0CSWP can do more to reach out members of our discipline who aren\u2019t predisposed to think about\u00a0issues of race\/gender.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this column is a starting point? My work with Women Also Know Stuff has helped me\u00a0to see that our discipline is filled with scholars who commit acts of implicit bias against women\u00a0(and people of color \u2013 and particularly, women of color). It is my sincere hope that this column\u00a0will help to ameliorate the biases that women of color political scientists endure. By highlighting\u00a0the experiences \u2013 and most notably, the deep thoughts of and response by Professor Wendy\u00a0Wong \u2013 this article seeks to move one step closer to presenting a holistic picture of women of\u00a0color in our discipline. This interview contains Professor Wong\u2019s reflection on the PSNow\u00a0picture debacle as well as her recommendations for challenging biases faced by visible\u00a0minorities in our field. Professor Wong\u2019s narrative is instructive. She is in the process of turning\u00a0lemons into lemonade.<\/p>\n

What are your current research projects?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Generally, I\u2019m interested in questions of non-state governance and the role of international\u00a0nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) in particular. I\u2019ve got two big projects underway, first\u00a0and foremost a book manuscript with Sarah Stroup that is under contract. The book is called The\u00a0Authority Trap. The punchline of the book is that having more authority does not actually give\u00a0INGOs more choices. In fact, we argue that having more authority constrains the types of\u00a0choices that INGOs make, pushing them to moderate their demands. The book has some\u00a0synergies with other research on power and authority in International Relations, including work\u00a0on hegemony, so we think it has implications beyond INGOs as specific actors. We\u2019ve also got\u00a0some articles that will come out of the data that we collected for the book.<\/p>\n

My colleague Ron Levi and I have been working on a project on the Ford Foundation and its\u00a0influence on the development of human rights since the 1950s. Broadly speaking, we\u2019re\u00a0interested in how Ford shaped the trajectory of the international human rights movement from\u00a0very early on, and we want to know how its vision of human rights moved throughout the INGO\u00a0sector. To measure the movement of ideas Ford has about human rights, we\u2019re currently\u00a0tracking 1) the distribution of funds from 1953 to 2013, and 2) the movement of people into,\u00a0within, and out of the Ford Foundation. We\u2019re presenting some of the preliminary findings this\u00a0summer, with the hope of publishing a series of articles in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Explain how you became interested in questions around diversity and inclusion in the\u00a0profession<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one is tough \u2013 I\u2019m not sure I consciously thought about this in a sustained manner until the\u00a0last year or so. This is partly from choice, and partly institutional.<\/p>\n

I think early on in graduate school, I chose to move away from questions of ethnicity in\u00a0particular. I had applied to several programs with the intent of researching ethnic conflict, but\u00a0quickly switched out of that for many reasons. One of the main reasons was that it felt very\u00a0personal because I was a racialized person in a largely-white subfield, and I didn\u2019t think I could\u00a0maintain the appropriate distance from the work. But also, I had a number of situations, so to\u00a0speak, in graduate school that made me think that getting involved in diversity issues was a\u00a0losing game, and I didn\u2019t want to make waves. That leads me to my next point.<\/p>\n

Institutionally, as a junior faculty person, you\u2019re taught to keep your eye on the prize of tenure,\u00a0and so you work towards that goal. I worked towards that goal with a singular focus that\u00a0sometimes surprises me now. My clock at U of T was particularly short at the time, by North\u00a0American standards, so I did the best I could to dot the I\u2019s and cross the T\u2019s. As a researcher of\u00a0non-state actors, diversity and inclusion to me were questions of why and how we could remedy\u00a0the glaring imbalance of Western\/Northern INGOs working on issues in the Global South, and\u00a0rarely the other way around. So my main thoughts around diversity and inclusion were very\u00a0much work-focused for a long time. My main goal early on was to get published and get tenure.\u00a0I think now, with some distance from that process, I\u2019m less blind to some of the things that may\u00a0have given me pause, but I would have never thought to pursue publicly, or even socially, before.<\/p>\n

Certainly, it\u2019s also a good time to be attuned to these issues, especially along the lines of gender,\u00a0but also, as I am happy to know, along race and other visible minority markers.<\/p>\n

What ways has being a woman of color shaped how you engage with the profession and\u00a0how you are read in professional spaces?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a caveat\u2026Although I am a woman of color, I prefer the term \u201cvisible minority\u201d because it\u00a0captures what I think is the fundamental concern. My minority status and my femininity are\u00a0visible markers in ways that perhaps other markers might not be. And there are other types of\u00a0race or ethnicity-based markers that are not as well-captured with the term \u201ccolor\u201d as \u201cvisible\u00a0minority.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was talking to someone about how being a visible minority woman shapes my view of the\u00a0profession, and I think that it is a struggle once you see how easily those qualities about you \u2013\u00a0that may have no bearing on your research \u2013 become magnified. Once you turn on the antenna,\u00a0you can\u2019t turn it off.<\/p>\n

This really cuts against the kind of thing academics value: our ideas, our arguments, our\u00a0methods, and our evidence. Over the years, you develop defenses and coping mechanisms to\u00a0challenges to your research, and you can make changes in response to peoples\u2019 critiques. But\u00a0how do you respond when you feel that you are being treated differently in a professional context\u00a0that doesn\u2019t have to do with your research? Am I not being invited to that workshop because\u00a0they don\u2019t take me seriously as a visible minority woman? Did I just get asked to be on this\u00a0panel because I check two boxes for a diversity quota?<\/p>\n

And then sometimes people tell you very directly that you somehow help them satisfy one\u00a0diversity criterion or another, and that reifies the concern you had to begin with. That\u2019s a real\u00a0challenge.<\/p>\n

What advice would you give to others who faced similar challenges in our discipline?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Realize that you\u2019re not alone<\/em> \u2013 because of the way the academy works, you can exist in a\u00a0pocket where it feels like you might be alone. But realize you\u2019re not. One of the most amazing\u00a0things about this particular period we\u2019re in is that a lot of the hard work of engaging women and\u00a0visible minorities has started bearing fruit, and you can see it in the conference attendees at the\u00a0major meetings. There is official recognition of the problem of having too few women, and too\u00a0few visible minority women in the discipline (e.g. APSA\u2019s Committee for the Status of Women\u00a0in the Profession\u2019s 2016 report \u201cPipeline to Tenure,\u201d work by Sara Mitchell and Barbara Walter\u00a0and their collaborators, a recent FP blog about women and tenure, this blog), which is a crucial\u00a0step. We are all part of the process, whether passively or actively.<\/p>\n

Seek out friends<\/em> \u2013 they can be anybody you feel comfortable talking to about challenges. One\u00a0thing I noted when I was thinking this through recently was the paucity of senior visible minority\u00a0women in IR. And I only started thinking about this because I had some problematic\u00a0experiences, and wanted to see if I could seek some advice for promotion and future career plans.\u00a0For a moment, I felt very isolated. But I\u2019ve since spoken to many trusted men and women about\u00a0what I\u2019ve experienced, and truthfully, what helps is having someone listen and help you sift\u00a0through what you\u2019re struggling with — not necessarily having someone who is in \u201cyour group\u201d\u00a0who has had exactly the same frustrating experience(s).<\/p>\n

Do what you\u2019re comfortable with<\/em> \u2013 the academy is a privileged place \u2013 we have flexible hours,\u00a0we do what we want intellectually, and we get to interact with students who constantly expose us\u00a0to new ideas and perspectives. There\u2019s no need, unless you feel comfortable with it, to \u201cdo\u201d\u00a0anything. There are problematic practices and beliefs in society at large that are reflected within\u00a0the academy, and sometimes we as individuals get to experience those problematic things\u00a0firsthand. But if you feel vulnerable or unsure about bringing issues forward beyond a close\u00a0circle, don\u2019t. On the other hand, if you are comfortable with the attention, and indeed, feel that\u00a0you must speak out, you should. Help bring attention to the problems of living and working even\u00a0within our privileged place, because your voice matters.<\/p>\n

What are the challenges\/benefits to being a visible minority and a \u201cmodel minority\u201d?\u00a0<\/strong>What lessons have you learned?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing that happens is that you\u2019re expected to champion a certain perspective, or even a\u00a0collective perspective. So I have been pretty cautious about saying anything about my\u00a0experiences in a public context, in part because I don\u2019t want to speak over anyone, or claim that\u00a0my experiences somehow represent the \u201cwomen of visible minority status experience.\u201d I don\u2019t\u00a0think I was ready to speak out regarding these issues until APSA\u2019s recent posts regarding my\u00a0work with Sarah, and even then, I struggled with how to write about what I felt.<\/p>\n

As someone who has for the most part shied away from tying my visible minority-ness, and my\u00a0female-ness to my work, one of the most difficult realizations is that my efforts may not matter\u00a0in a larger context. What I mean by this is that I don\u2019t tend to work on topics that are solely\u00a0gendered or racialized. I think this is what really struck home with the APSA posts \u2013 that folks\u00a0would tie me (and my work) to a random, generic representation of my race and gender \u2013 that\u00a0was both strange and illuminating. Being visible means that you can\u2019t get away. That\u2019s not\u00a0necessarily negative or positive, it just is. That realization has helped me embrace different\u00a0possible avenues of future work, and topics for writing!<\/p>\n

In a profession where science is defined by its objectivity, how do you strike the balance\u00a0between merit, ideas and your identity as a woman of color?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is no objectivity in our work and our social identities as political scientists. We know\u00a0that if we change the names on the top of identical CVs that people tend to think the male CVs\u00a0are smarter-sounding and tend to discount the ones with obviously \u201cminority-sounding\u201d names.\u00a0If that\u2019s the case, then anyone reading my research, unless it\u2019s under blind review, will know\u00a0very clearly what kind of person it belongs to.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s hard to know what constitutes \u201cstriking a balance.\u201d My goal as a social scientist is to do\u00a0the very best work that I can. But you do that, knowing that people can have any number of\u00a0biases against your research, including your identity, but then also your research topic, approach,\u00a0and other things that perhaps have less to do with merit, ideas, and objectivity, and more to do\u00a0with academic and personal bias. I think we have to be willing to accept that reality as reality,\u00a0but then also know that we have some agency in shifting the way that those biases are\u00a0experienced through research or speaking out in other ways.<\/p>\n

How does being a minority woman in IR impact your experiences \u2013 i.e., promotion,\u00a0interactions with colleagues and students?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In so many ways, it doesn\u2019t perceptibly do so. Yet, I know that it must with students in\u00a0particular, beyond the ways that we know appearances affect student opinions of you (e.g. in\u00a0reviews). But it\u2019s hard to put your finger on a certain type of experience I get because of being a\u00a0visible minority woman. It may help certain students feel more comfortable with me and others\u00a0more reluctant.<\/p>\n

And I think that\u2019s really the \u201ctrouble\u201d here: you never really can fully know how bias might\u00a0work, how genderization and racialization can swing both ways, and you have to deal with it.\u00a0The hardest part about it, for me at least, is not knowing (I\u2019m a researcher, after all!) how it all\u00a0plays out, and that is tiring. As an academic, I\u2019m no stranger to being judged and being\u00a0judgmental. That\u2019s all part of the job. But not knowing when and if and why I\u2019m being judged,\u00a0that\u2019s not what they teach you to deal with in seminar and on conference panels.<\/p>\n

What we need to do is to actively recognize bias in our profession, and engage people who feel\u00a0that the visibility of their differences affects their intellectual work. People need to be able to\u00a0talk about what they have experienced, and others need to respond constructively to those\u00a0experiences. These things aren\u2019t \u201cstupid\u201d or sui generis or made up \u2013 they\u2019re systemic, they\u00a0affect some individuals and groups disproportionately, and they create disparities in spite of our\u00a0good intentions. Our efforts may not create the apocryphal \u201clevel playing field,\u201d but I certainly\u00a0hope that having more voices means speaking for oneself, rather than being spoken over or told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wendy Wong is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her main research interests lie at the crossroads of International Relations and Comparative Politics. \u00a0She is interested in the politics of organization, why human beings choose to act collectively, their choices to go about doing it, and the effects of those choices. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women-of-color"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web.apsanet.org\/cswp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}