Teaching the Retrenchment Generation: When Sapphire Meets Socrates at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Authority
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William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice Volume 6 (1999-2000) Issue 1 William & Mary Journal of Women and Article 3 the Law October 1999 Teaching the Retrenchment Generation: When Sapphire Meets Socrates at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Authority Pamela J. Smith Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl Part of the Education Commons, and the Law and Gender Commons Repository Citation Pamela J. Smith, Teaching the Retrenchment Generation: When Sapphire Meets Socrates at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Authority, 6 Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 53 (1999), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol6/iss1/3 Copyright c 1999 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl TEACHING THE RETRENCHMENT GENERATION: WHEN SAPPHIRE MEETS SOCRATES AT THE INTERSECTION OF RACE, GENDER, AND AUTHORITY PAMELA J. SMITH* "The story of black women law professors in the legal academy has yet to be [fully] told. This [Article continues].., the process of creating a record of our experiences as teachers, scholars, administrators,and participantsin the law school culture."' TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .......................................... 55 I. INTRODUCTION ......................................56 II. THE THEORY: TEACHING THE RACIALLY ISOLATED RETRENCHMENT GENERATION ............... 60 A. Resegregation: Guaranteeingthe Continued Uniqueness of Black Teachers .................... 61 1. Residentialand Educational Racial Isolation ............................ 61 2. EducationalRacial Isolation in the Northeast ............................ 65 * Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School; J.D., magna cum laude, Tulane University College of Law; M.B.A., with honors, University of St. Thomas; B.S. magna cum laude, DeVry Institute of Technology. After graduating from law school in 1992, Professor Smith clerked for the Honorable Robert H. McWilliams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Judicial Circuit, sitting in Denver, Colorado. Thereafter, she became associated with the law firm of Thompson & Knight in Dallas, Texas, where she practiced civil litigation, intellectual property, and computer law. She became affiliated with Boston College Law School as an Assistant Professor of Law in 1995. At Boston College Law School, she has taught Property Law, Introduction to Intellectual Property, Patent Law & Policy, and Computer & Cyberspace Law. In 1998, she became a Visiting Law Fellow at St. Hilda's College of Oxford University. This Article was presented as a work-in-progress at the First National Meeting of the Regional People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference: CelebratingOur Emerging Voices: People of Color Speak (March 25-27, 1999). I would like to thank Isabelle Gunning (Southwestern University School of Law), Margaret Chon (Seattle University School of Law), Joyce Hughes (Northwestern University School of Law), Wendy Brown Scott (Tulane University School of Law), Raymond T. Diamond (Tulane University School of Law), Elaine Shoben (University of Illinois College of Law), Pamela Edwards (CUNY School of Law), Deborah Brown, Karin Norrington, the women of the Northeast Corridor, and many others for their comments, insight, and support. 1. Emma Coleman Jordan, Images of Black Women in the Legal Academy: An Introduction, 6 BERKELEY WOMEN'S L.J. 1, 1 (1990-91). 54 WILLIAM & MARY JOURNAL OF WOMEN AND THE LAW [Vol. 6:53 B. Retrenchment and Retrenchment Denial ........... 71 1. Retrenchment Denial of African-American Law Professors ............................ 86 2. Retrenchment Denial of White Professors and Institutions .......................... 93 III. THE THEORY: THE PRESUMPTION OF INCOMPETENCE ..... 96 A. White Women: Positive Race But Negative Gender and Age .......................................... 96 B. Black People: Negative Race ................... 103 C. Black Women: Negative Race, Negative Gender .... 106 1. Seeing the Sapphire in All Black Women ...... 113 2. Seeking the Mammy in All Black Women ...... 118 3. Risking the Anti-Mammy/Sapphire Backlash .. 126 4. TransportingMammy and Sapphire into Academ ia ................................... 131 IV. THE THEORY: SYNERGISM OF NEGATIVITY AND THE REVERSAL OF THE EXPECTED POWER DYNAMIC ......... 133 V. THE THEORY/EXPERiENTIAL PRAXIS: STUDENT REACTIONS AND THE RESULTING PHENOMENA .......... 137 A. The Phenomenon of CredentialHostility .......... 138 B. The Phenomenon of AppearanceHostility ......... 146 1. Clothing as Threatening and Intimidating ..... 146 2. Hair as Threatening and Intimidating ........ 150 C. The Phenomenon of Authority Hostility: When SapphireMeets Socrates at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Classroom Authority ............ 157 D. The Phenomenon of Evaluative Hostility .......... 167 1. Explaining BCLS's Peculiar 1L Curriculum ... 169 2. Identifying Teaching Excellence before Exam Grading............................ 171 3. Exploring Post-Midterm Exam GradingHostility ......................... 174 4. Revealing Students'Attempt to Force a Midterm Grade Change: The Students' Meeting with the Deans ........ 177 5. Bearing the Burden of Others' Spring Grading ........................... 181 6. Analyzing the Express and Implied Hostility on the FormalProperty Final Evaluation .......................... 182 VI. ADDRESSING THE SYNERGISM OF NEGATIVITY THAT IMPACTS BLACK WOMEN'S ABILITY TO SUCCEED AND EASILY NAVIGATE LEGAL ACADEMIA .................. 200 1999] TEACHING THE RETRENCHMENT GENERATION A. ProvidingStrategies for Institutions to Recognize Race/GenderBias and the Potential for Hostility in Student Evaluations ................. 202 B. ProvidingStrategies for Sapphires to Navigate and Manipulate the Effects of the Synergism of Negativity ........................... 206 C. Be SapphireBound! ........................... 211 VII. CONCLUSION ...................................... 213 PREFACE This Article is about perceptions and the negative sociological factors that feed these perceptions as Black women attempt to teach the Retrenchment Generation. For purposes of this Article, the Retrenchment Generation is not limited to any particularage group or period of time. Rather, the Retrenchment Generation refers to a state of mind that makes race-based, sex-based, and race/sex-based microaggressionsacceptable and in fact normal. The Retrenchment Generation is defined by the synergism that is created by racial isolation,particularly in the educationalarena, retrenchment fervor, and the presumption of incompetence that inflexibly presumes that all professional Black women are angry, threatening,intimidating, and unintelligent. These negative behavior characteristicsdefine a Sapphire, a stereotypical myth that exploits the public's fear of, disrespect for, and denigration of Black women, especially their intelligence. As Black female academics try to teach the Retrenchment Generation, we cannot ignore the fact that the Retrenchment Generationis comprised of students, colleagues, and administrators, whose attitudes about the ability of Black women to "profess" are shaped by the above three powerful, though negative, sociological phenomena. This Article reveals the effects racial isolation, retrenchment fervor, the presumption of incompetence, and the negative Sapphire myth have on the ability of Black women to successfully and easily navigate the waters of legal academia. Further,although it is fairly clear that teaching students the substance of a particulararea of law is what Black women professors are paid to do, we can no longer hide from the reality that Black women are also requiredto "teach"ourstudents, our colleagues, and each other about the unique obstacles Black women face because we are Black, female, and otherwise vulnerable. This extra burden, fraught with danger,risk, and difficulty defines what it means to be 56 WILLIAM & MARY JOURNAL OF WOMEN AND THE LAW (Vol. 6:53 a Sapphire teaching the Retrenchment Generation. This Article explores and reveals these difficulties and the sociological phenomena that make it so. I. INTRODUCTION "In a world undivided along racial and gender lines, we would not have the occasion to ponder the relevance of race and gender to our role as professors of law."2 Unfortunately, we do not live in such a world. In our world, race and gender remain supremely relevant to whether some professors of law are perceived as too incompetent to profess.' Let me, therefore, introduce those facts about myself that are relevant to my perceived ability to profess successfully. I am an educated African-American 4 female who is a law professor. As such, I am a Sapphire.5 I am a Sapphire not because I choose to be or because I actually am. I am a Sapphire because of an inflexible characterization about Black women that concludes that I am angry, threatening, and unintelligent.6 As a Sapphire, I am not regarded as entirely unintelligent, but intelligent enough to use my wit in angry and threatening ways. My status and effectiveness as a law professor and my potential career opportunities are diminished by my identity as a Black woman, i.e., as a Sapphire.7 Given this peculiar state of being, I experience the burdens of teaching in legal academia during the late 1990's and will continue to experience these burdens in the next millennium. This Article explores some of the burdens of those who, like me, live at the intersection of race, gender, and authority.8 2. Linda S.Greene, Tokens, Role Models, and