"You Must Be Retarded" or "Deported": How to Harass a Scholar of Color Out of Safety

• In Event: Cutting Out Your Tongue: Scholars Under Fire in the Age of Neoliberal Education and White Nationalism

Abstract

In this paper, I will make links between the rhetoric of hate that was increasingly legitimized during the presidential campaign and what I experienced when Campus Reform did a story about my social media presence. There were several levels within the activity system that were automatically activated during this targeting. Individually, the assaults on me concentrated on two things: my foreign name and my position as a faculty member in a department of special education, creating harassment focused on being deported and being called “retarded”. Considering the increasingly xenophobic and ableist comments coming from the current president, it is no wonder that his supporters employed this same rhetoric when targeting an academic. Moreover, situated in the Historically White Institution (HWI) in which I was employed, this rhetoric was ever present as the campus reported an increase in harassment against Muslim, Black, and transgender students in the 2016-2017 school year. Alongside this campus environments of harassment and the larger societal discourse, guns have also been allowed on campus, meaning that any person can carry a gun without a permit. All of this has resulted in academics being stifled, harassed, and threatened. These macrolevel trends of white supremacy have reflected the conflict between the neoliberal articulation for diversity and inclusion at many HWIs while being committed in practice to ableism and misogynoir. Finally, this individual silencing is overwhelming I was advised to get off social media, not to put anything in writing, and even be careful what I say in public; I argue to silence a scholar in the face of assault is to cut off our tongues in the name of safety. The scholars on this panel are not necessarily well-known, something that is often desired in conference programming. However, choosing to attack lesser known scholars–often people of color who are studying whiteness or race and the intersections with other marginalized identities–is a strategic move on the part of these organization, as they are some of the most vulnerable (see recent firings of Drs Jonathon Higgins and Lisa Durden). The coordinated assault on public education is increasingly well known and this is one major component of that strategy, targeting scholars who speak truth to power, that impacts all AERA members.

Author

• Subini Ancy Annamma, The University of Kansas