Academentia: Physiological Stress, Toxic Work Sites and the Neutralization of Blackness by the Whiteness Standards of Professionalization

Authors

Enoch H. Page Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts

Date of this Version

October 2001

Abstract

Using auto-ethnographic methods, supplementing by current race theories, along with interviews from other scholars, I regard academentia as a form of professionalism most readily communicable to academics of color seeking advance. It can also infect those whose embrace of blackness (widely defined across cultures) is the least tolerant of the racial designs of white cultural practices. Where in the interest of students and colleagues, such academics challenge the whiteness criteria defining academic success, most of their peers adhere to the racial standards of professionalism.