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research-article2017
SREXXX10.1177/2332649217716473Sociology of Race and EthnicityZambrana et al.
Three on Mexican American Experiences with Racism
Mexican American Faculty in Research Universities: Can the Next Generation Beat the Odds?
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2017, Vol. 3(4) 458–473 © American Sociological Association 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649217716473 DOI: 10.1177/2332649217716473 sre.sagepub.com
Ruth Enid Zambrana1, Brianne A. Dávila2, Michelle M. Espino3, Lisa M. Lapeyrouse4, R. Burciaga Valdez5, and Denise A. Segura6
Abstract Mexican Americans represent the largest Latina/o subpopulation and have the lowest levels of educational attainment in the United States. Mexican Americans are underrepresented in all professional fields, including academia, and thus warrant attention. The purposes of this study are to describe the experiences of early and mid-career Mexican American faculty, emphasizing key sources of inspiration, support, and mentoring, perceived discrimination, and their coping responses; assess the ways in which these factors influence their careers; and examine differences by gender and maternal education. Mixed methods were used to obtain information from 133 Mexican American faculty who participated in a larger national study of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty at research universities. Five major findings emerged: (1) early life course support sustained and encouraged educational aspirations, (2) mentorship from significant others provided valuable advice in developing social capital throughout higher education and early faculty experiences, (3) female respondents were more likely to report inadequate mentoring and higher levels of distress due to recurrent experiences of racially gendered discrimination, (4) strategies of resistance reveal high levels of emotional labor as respondents deconstruct the hidden curriculum to perform effectively in environments that are imbued with implicit bias, and (5) maternal education contributed to improved mentoring experiences and active resistance strategies. The findings suggest that expanding social capital–driven strategies and increasing understanding of persistent anti-Mexican social policy that leads to misidentification and implicit bias are key in retention and professional success for Mexican American faculty.
Keywords faculty, maternal education, higher education, Mexican American
1
Department of Women’s Studies, Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 2 Psychology and Sociology Department, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, USA 3 Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 4 Public Health and Health Sciences, University of Michigan Flint, Flint, MI, USA 5 Department of Family & Community Medicine and Economics, RWJF Center for Health Policy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA 6 Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Corresponding Author: Ruth Enid Zambrana, University of Maryland, Department of Women’s Studies, Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, 1208 Cole Student Activities Building, College Park, MD 20742, USA Email:
[email protected]
Zambrana et al. Higher education is in the midst of powerful social, economic, and cultural transformations fueled by challenges to traditional financing arrangements, changing needs of students, and the changing demographics of American society (i.e., increasing numbers of racial and ethnic minority and first generation college students). This impressive growth in student diversity has not been matched with increased numbers of faculty from historically underrepresented groups, particularly Mexican Americans, who represent only 1.2 percent of faculty at baccalaureategranting institutions, yet approximately two thirds of all Hispanics nationally are Mexican Americans (Hurtado et al. 2012). Approximately 5 percent of faculty at baccalaureate-granting institutions selfreport as Hispanic (who can be of any race as well as from any part of the world). Understanding why there are so few Mexican American faculty is an understudied area of inquiry for a number of reasons. First, research on Mexican American education and faculty is typically subsumed within the broader Hispanic category, which is problematic given the distinct social histories and incorporation of each Hispanic “country of origin” group in U.S. society (Telles and Ortiz 2008; U.S. Census Bureau 2015; Zambrana and Hurtado 2015). Second, a salient characteristic of Mexican American faculty members is that they are disproportionately likely to be first in their families to have graduated from high school and completed college. In 2012, approximately 55 percent of Mexican American students had a parent with less than a high school diploma, a proportion that has modestly changed over three decades and is much higher than among any other racial/ethnic group (Hurtado et al. 2012). Third, Mexican Americans are underrepresented in all high-prestige professional fields, including the professoriate. Significant concerns have been voiced about the importance of understanding racial/ethnic and social inequality in educational pathways and its consequences within the professoriate (Espino 2015; Zambrana et al. 2015). The body of knowledge that informs the absence of a Mexican American professoriate derives from three strands of research: historicity, educational pathways of first-generation students, and narrative experiences of students and faculty in higher education. A modest but significant corpus of work addresses how phenotype, race, economics, and racism serve as barriers to Mexican Americans’ opportunities to social mobility and achievement in U.S. society (Valdez 2015; Vallejo 2012). The first strand of research lays bare the historical record of discriminatory and exclusionary practices that denies Mexican Americans educational opportunity. Linguistic differences and phenotype
459 are central in understanding past and contemporary patterns of exclusion. As early as 1916, discriminatory educational policies segregated Mexican American children from White classrooms and placed Spanish-speaking students and children with Spanish surnames in segregated schools, which dispossessed Mexican Americans of their culture and Spanish language. The de facto marginalization of Mexican Americans along the educational pipeline up until the early 1960s was systematically enforced by local and state school systems (MacDonald and Rivera 2015). Seven years prior to the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended segregation in the United States, Méndez v. Westminster ended almost 100 years of segregation between Mexican Americans and Whites that remained a practice in “white” public institutions since the end of the U.S.-Mexico War of 1848. During the 1960s, Chicana/o1 student protests instigated significant reforms in higher education that resulted in the creation of Chicano studies programs and research centers and a cohort of newly minted Mexican American PhDs who, either intentionally or via job placement, were committed to changing a traditionally “Anglo”-centric academic culture (MacDonald and Hoffman 2012). Expectations that Chicana/o and other faculty of color were responsible for diversifying the curriculum, admissions, and many organizational processes was a daunting responsibility and a source of significant stress, particularly if they were “solo” or “token” hires without institutional support (Niemann and Dovidio 1998). A second strand of research explores the determinants of Mexican American underrepresentation in the professoriate using a plethora of studies about the lack of Mexican American educational achievement in elementary and high school because of “cultural deficiencies,” including English-language proficiency, inadequate motivation to excel, and lack of interest. Such research overlooks poverty, the historical segregation of Mexicans into secondrate schools, and organizational practices of schools (e.g., educational tracking) that limited the access of Mexican-heritage children to college preparatory classes (Gonzalez 2013) and contributed to intergenerational low educational achievement. The civil rights movements of the 1960s ushered in new educational opportunities that expanded access to a majority of Mexican American students (about 70 percent), who were the first in their families to graduate high school and attend college. However, firstgeneration college students are reported to have less academic preparation, information, and parental assistance in the college application and financial
460 aid process; more self-doubt and feelings of alienation; and little knowledge of the college environment (Tym et al. 2004). Economically disadvantaged Mexican American students confront a host of additional barriers, including racial microaggressions (Solórzano, Allen, and Carroll 2002), discrimination in access to college preparatory programs, and low teacher expectations. These barriers are exacerbated by the high levels of student employment, which prevent them from developing the types of mentoring relationships with faculty that are critical in higher education to pursue doctoral degrees (Lowery-Hart and Pacheco 2011; Lunceford 2011). The third strand of research involves a growing body of knowledge on the educational pathways to the doctorate (Gardner and Holley 2011) and the lived experiences of faculty in the academic workplace. A small but critical body of scholarship on Mexican American faculty conducted in the 1980s and 1990s emphasizes the role of institutional practices and policies (Delgado-Romero et al. 2003; Ornelas and Solórzano 2004) that may derail their educational trajectory. Prior schooling, strong support from family and advisers, social networks in departments and on campus, and a strong sense of self-efficacy play important roles in doctoral degree completion (Cuádraz 2006; Espino 2014; González 2007). Segura et al. (2011) confirmed instances of Latino graduate students’ perceptions of racism, discrimination, less respect from peers, and less mentoring compared with white students. These studies focus on individual experiences that hinder doctoral completion, such as overt and covert forms of racism, “multiple marginality,” elitism and sexism (van Anders 2004). Other experiential accounts use personal faculty first-person testimonies and analytic narratives (Balderrama, Texeira, and Valdez 2005; Cueva 2014; González 2007; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012; Niemann 2012; Ramirez 2011, 2013; Robinson and Clardy 2010). Although these studies provide in-depth insight into the barriers that graduate students and faculty encounter in the academy, few studies include a significant number of Mexican American faculty or have mixed-methods data with gender and parental education indicators to inform the discourse on educational and workplace inequality. The absence of research on Mexican American faculty in the sociology of race and ethnicity, professions, and work inequality demands correction.
Inequality in the Workplace Much of the sociological literature on social inequality builds on racial, ethnic, and gender inequality, organizational practices, and power
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(4) relations and the ways in which organizations reify inequality by gender and race by incorporating both structural and interactional features that can be applied across workplace settings. Acker (2006) identified “inequality regimes” that operate “as loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions, and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender, and racial inequalities within particular organizations” (p. 443). Organizational processes that produce and reinforce inequality include tokenization (Kanter 1977), the racialized glass escalator (Harvey Wingfield 2009), and organizational analyses that disavow the role of gender stereotyping in perpetuating discrimination (Bobbitt-Zeher 2011). The gender experiences of Mexican American faculty show that race and sex discrimination are prevalent in the workplace (Garza 1993; Padilla 1995; Romero 1997; Segura 1992, 2003). One scholar described the experiences of Chicana faculty: As marginal members of mainstream departments, Chicana scholars craft scholarship that expands the discourse of their disciplines and challenges definitions of scholarly value. Chicanas in interdisciplinary departments struggle to legitimate departments marginalized in the university hierarchy and carve spaces for the intellectual work that nurture this struggle. (Segura 2003:48) In recent decades, sociologists have exposed the ways in which historically URM faculty occupy marginalized positions in academia, which influences their work environment. More recent investigations describe gender stereotyping of women of color in sociology graduate programs, which exposed alienating aspects of the “hidden curriculum” (Aguirre 2000, 2010). What was found in the early 1990s and described below has not changed significantly in two decades: informal structures of control, including the treatment of race in the curriculum, the validation of paradigms deemed “appropriate” or “mainstream,” intellectual support for specific ideas and perspectives, the awarding of teaching and research assistantships, mentoring, the stigmatization of students of color as “affirmative action cases,” the maintenance of double standards, and the privileging of certain cultural capital and perspectives at the expense of others. (Margolis and Romero 1998:9) Explorations of the experiences of Latina/os in professional occupations yield additional findings: “tokenism is a racialized and gendered process
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Zambrana et al. shaping daily interactions with white women . . . racist Latino/a stereotypes permeate work environments” (Flores 2011:332), and tokenism informs workplace experiences through misidentification, invisibility, case assignments, and pay disparity of Chicana attorneys (García-López 2008; Niemann 1999). Consequences of workplace inequality are illustrated in the ways that URM women faculty engage in hyperprofessional performances and experience “embodied stress” that imposes strategic choices about their professional priorities to challenge the invalidation they experience at the institutional level (Castro 2012).
Historicity, Racialized Ethnicity, and Institutional Bias Interdisciplinary bodies of knowledge are invoked to critically analyze the race, ethnic, and class challenges in the career pathways of Mexican American faculty. Our analysis draws from three major sociological lenses: acquisition and maintenance of social capital (Bourdieu 1986), critical race theory, and intersectionality that engages multiple levels of analyses, including historicity, social status identity, and power relations, that drive institutional inequality and racism (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016). Sociological theorists have argued rigorously that racism is not an individual phenomenon but is emblematic of institutionally embedded racist practices in U.S. society and is based on a White-overcolor ascendancy that advances White supremacy (Bonilla-Silva 2006; Delgado and Stefancic 2001). Scholars advance the argument that racism is embedded in institutional structures where it is enacted (Feagin 2013; Ridgeway 2013), and visible and invisible normative expectations serve as barriers or hidden curricula “that hinder progress of the historically underrepresented” (Delgado and Stefancic 2001). Multiracial and Chicana feminists and intersectional scholars (Baca Zinn and Thornton Dill 1996; Hill-Collins and Bilge 2016; Romero 1997; Segura 2003) extend our understanding of the role of structure and agency in the reproduction of social status and gender inequality. In this article we explore the professional experiences of Mexican American faculty, drawing attention to the ways that race, class, and gender inform social interactions in the workplace. The purposes of this study are to describe the experiences of early and midcareer Mexican American faculty, emphasizing key sources of inspiration, support, and mentoring, perceived discrimination, and their coping responses; assess the ways in which these factors
influence their careers; and examine differences by maternal education and gender. New knowledge regarding the pivotal points and support resources that must exist to counter institutional barriers in their educational trajectory are proffered. This rich insight points to new areas of research that significantly influence academic mobility and inform institutional policy on faculty retention.
Methods Study respondents are part of a larger study of URM faculty who hold tenure-track assistant or associate professor positions at research universities that are predominantly White institutions (PWIs). The sample includes 133 Mexican American participants: 112 participated in Webbased data collection, and 21 participated in individual and group interviews. Participants were identified through network sampling techniques, such as academic list servers, personal contacts, respondent referrals, and university Web sites. All participants provided written informed consent. Participants in the qualitative portion of the study were compensated for their time with small gift incentives. Adjuncts and lecturers, who hold temporary teaching positions, and full professors who have already successfully completed tenure and promotion processes were excluded.
Data Instruments and Procedures We use mixed methods: a Web-based survey, individual and group interviews, and a postinterview survey that has comparable items to the Web-based survey. For purposes of this analysis, we combined responses for all comparable survey items regardless of administration mode. Survey items include sociodemographic data; employment and education; and mentoring and perceived gender, race/ ethnicity and class bias scales. Demographic indicators include gender, age, annual individual income, marital status, and number of children, if any. Employment and educational variables, place of employment, number of URM faculty colleagues in their department, academic rank, and discipline were also obtained. Two mentoring scales and mentoring items from the National Faculty Survey (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 1995) were used. The Mentor Facilitated Activity Scale consists of five items with yes-or-no response options, and scores range from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating more activity. An example item is “How often did your
462 mentor facilitate invitations to conferences and opportunities for research collaboration?” The Mentorship Relationship Functions scale assessed whether the respondent has a current mentor and current mentorship experiences by asking five items on how frequently one’s mentor is available to provide the following: critique of scholarly work, promotion of visibility outside institution, prospective advice about criteria for promotion, progress meeting criteria for promotion, and emotional support and inspiration in academic career. Response options range from 1 = never to 5 = always. Scores range from 5 to 25, with higher scores signifying more relationship functions. Last, a cognitive appraisal item on the perceived impact of inadequate mentoring on career growth was asked. The overall α coefficient for the mentoring scale was .910 for Mexican Americans. The six-item Perceived Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Class Bias scale measures perceived bias in academic institutions and discrimination in professional advancement. We asked participants whether they had ever encountered gender, racial/ethnic, and/or class discrimination from superiors or colleagues. Additionally, respondents were asked whether they were ever left out of opportunities for professional advancement on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and/or class. A four-point, Likert-type scale (1 = never to 4 = always) assessed the frequency of encounters, and scores ranged from 6 to 24, with higher scores indicating a higher frequency of perceived discrimination. The cognitive appraisal impact scale asked respondents to rate how upsetting these experiences were on a five-point, Likert-type scale (1 = extremely upsetting and 5 = not upsetting at all); lower scores indicate that the events were more upsetting. The overall α coefficient for the bias scale was .876 for Mexican Americans. Comments posted at the end of the Web-based survey, many of which provided detailed narratives of workplace experiences of discrimination, are noted. Qualitative data were gathered to deepen our understanding of survey data. The individual and group interview protocols were each composed of a total of 20 open-ended questions. Questions were adapted from prior instruments used with URM professionals (see Trower 2009; Zambrana, Dorrington, and Bell 1997). Data were collected over a 20-month period ending in 2012. All individual and group interviews were conducted in private locations either on or off the participant’s home campus by URM senior faculty. All interviews were recorded digitally and professionally transcribed. The average interview lasted 1 hour and 51 minutes,
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(4) while the average group interviews were 2 hours and 42 minutes. These qualitative data provide insight into life-course milestones and chronicle faculty experiences on sources of support and inspiration, mentoring, discrimination, and coping strategies. For this article, we used responses from seven questions (available upon request). Descriptive analyses were conducted on sociodemographic characteristics and scales in the survey. Two additional subanalyses were conducted to assess differences on major demographic, mentoring, and perceived discrimination variables by gender and maternal education. Maternal education, particularly high school graduation, has an impact on offspring education, economic mobility, and college aspiration and completion (Restuccia and Urrutia 2004). To test for differences by maternal education, we divided the sample into three groups: those with a mother who had less than a high school diploma (n = 51 [38.9 percent]), high school diploma and some college (n = 44 [33.6 percent]), and college graduate and beyond (n = 36 [27.5 percent]). Results of analysis of variance show that respondents whose mothers had less than a high school education were significantly different compared with those with mothers with greater than a high school education. For comparison purposes, we created two groups: group 1 included respondents with mothers with less than a high school education, and group 2 included respondents whose mothers had completed high school and beyond. For qualitative data, analyses were completed in Atlas.ti 6.2, which systematized the efficient emergence of themes, coding, and interpretation of the interviews. An initial coding scheme developed by the first author was based on pilot interviews and a comprehensive literature review. Each interview was coded independently, line by line, by two trained qualitative coders; disagreements in coding were reconciled by a third independent coder (Rubin and Rubin 2005). Thematic content analyses of interviews by the research team yielded 13 main codes, including subcodes. A codebook was created to standardize codes and as a reference in the case of discrepancies between coders. For this article, we focus on four major themes: choosing an academic career (subcode: sources for inspiration and support), mentoring, perceived discrimination, and coping strategies to respond to stress-producing work-related events. We adhered to a process of synchronizing data with research questions that depend on a “conditional matrix” and allow the researcher to continually ask, for example, how gender, race, ethnicity, and
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Zambrana et al. socioeconomic status influence the experiences of respondents (Strauss and Corbin 1998). Discipline and department were recoded and collapsed into larger National Science Foundation (2012) disciplinary categories to avoid violation of confidentiality and anonymity (Espino 2014). Two major strategies were used to ensure reliability and credibility of data: “analytic triangulation,” which includes the use of multiple coders not present during data collection (Patton 2002), and credibility checks through peer review and debriefing and presenting preliminary data (15 times) to peer groups. (Methods are fully described elsewhere; see Zambrana et al. 2015).
Study Limitations We did not use a random sample selection process but rather relied on voluntary participation of a network sample that was identified by peers of senior professors known to the authors. Generalizability is limited because of selection bias and social desirability bias. Participants may have provided responses they perceived to be agreeable or conversely feared consequences of disclosing attitudes they expected to be distasteful to the interviewers. Colorism or phenotype is an important factor in racialized experiences that were not measured. Faculty may not be representative of all Mexican American faculty at PWIs. Nonetheless, the richness of these data provides deep insight into the perceptions and experiences of contemporary early and midcareer Mexican American faculty.
Results The majority of participants (63.1 percent) were assistant professors, with the remainder associate professors. The participants represent a wide range of disciplines: arts and humanities (25 percent), social sciences (26 percent), science, technology, engineering, and health and medicine (36 percent), and education (13 percent). Most respondents completed their doctoral degrees in approximately five years, and about one third had engaged in postdoctoral fellowships. More than half of respondents reported being mentored in the past three years (58 percent). About one in five respondents (19 percent) reported that inadequate mentoring had a “very significant/great deal” of impact on their academic careers. Many participants (41 percent) responded “often/always” when asked if they experienced racial/ethnic discrimination by a superior or colleague. One third of the participants (33 percent)
also responded “often/always” to gender discrimination, and a quarter (25 percent) reported class discrimination by a superior or colleague. About one fifth (21 percent) recalled being left out of opportunities on the basis of gender “often or always.” Similarly, a quarter (25 percent) recounted limited opportunities because of race or ethnicity bias, and a fifth (20 percent) perceived that class bias limited their opportunities. Overall, more than half (55 percent) of the respondents reported the impact of discrimination as “extremely/very upsetting.”
Does Maternal Education Matter for Mexican American Faculty? A Subanalysis On average, respondents whose mothers had less than a high school education (group 1) spent 6 years (SD = 2 years) in their PhD programs, compared with only 4 years (SD = 0.9 years) for those whose mothers had completed more than a high school education (group 2) (p < .05). Significantly more respondents with mothers with less than high school completion reported experiencing higher levels of discrimination (M =15.54, SD = 4.43) compared with those with mothers who had high school education or more (M = 13.39, SD = 4.47) (p < .05). Concurrently, those participants whose mothers had less than a high school education were twice as likely as those with mothers who had more than a high school education to report that inadequate mentoring had a “very significant/great deal” of impact on their academic careers (28.6 percent vs. 14 percent), which suggests the need for further exploration.
Does Gender Matter for Mexican American Faculty? Gender also revealed significant differences among respondents. Men, on average, spent significantly more time in their PhD programs (M = 6.33, SD = 1.87) than women (M = 4.45, SD = 1.508) (p < .05). But female respondents were more likely to report significantly greater impact of inadequate mentoring (M = 3.07, SD = 3.22) than men (M = 3.48, SD = 1.037) (p < .10), report significantly higher levels of discrimination (M = 15.55, SD = 4.29) than men (M = 11.83, SD = 4.04) (p < .01), and report greater impact of discrimination (M = 2.21, SD = 0.95) than men (M = 2.91, SD = 1.24) (p < .05) (analyses available upon request).
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Narratives of the Lived Experiences: Interpretive Context Qualitative data provide rich insight into the experiences of respondents. Three major themes emerged that deepen our understanding of the intersection of institutional structure and agency. First, the role of mentors was key, such that early exposure to mentors shaped career aspirations and provided essential resources. Additionally, in most cases, helpful mentors were visibly absent at their home institutions and departments. Second, respondents displayed a high sensitivity to discriminatory institutional practices. Third, respondents reported varying levels of willingness to confront perpetrators of discrimination. Data are presented by theme and differences by maternal education (group 1, less than high school; group 2, high school and more) and gender.
Pursuing the Professoriate: Inspiration and Support in the Early Life Course Although all faculty report similar sources of inspiration and support, group 1 and group 2 participants articulate their decisions to pursue the professoriate very differently. Group 2 respondents express more intentionality and explicit desires in their decisions to pursue the professoriate. A group 2 female respondent expresses her personal drive to earn the doctorate: We don’t get here by accident. We get here by a lot of hard work. Somewhere along the line, a part of me aspired to do this . . . even though I never had anyone in my family, or anyone around me get a PhD. Part of me wanted it, for some reason. So you have to honor that part.
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(4) because it seemed like once I realized that this is the path I was going to take, it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice as to what else would make me happy as far as a career. The limited agency expressed by these respondents regarding a critical career decision extends previous research that highlights that first-generation college students emphasize the “accidental” nature of enrolling in higher education (Bensimon and Dowd 2009) and the respect and gratitude they feel in having the opportunity to attend college, as opposed to feeling entitled to receiving educational benefits, which is most evident among those who possess a more privileged parental educational background (Gloria and Castellanos 2012). Participants articulated a sense of social responsibility and a commitment to addressing social inequities regarding the larger Latina/o community. For example, a female participant selected her doctoral program because “their whole model is moving knowledge to create social justice, or knowledge for the advancement of social change.” In addition, a male participant states, “If we get somewhere, we have to open doors so others can walk through them, too.” These narratives provide insight into the accountability felt by many Mexican American participants to “pay it forward.” The majority of participants attributed their inspiration and support to family members, community members, and educators who served as role models and mentors, and parental values. For example, a male respondent explains the role of his parents’ immigrant experience and personal sacrifices in shaping his professional aspirations: [My parents] were very inspirational for me, and I’ve always told them . . . that they are my heroes because I don’t think I would ever be able to do what they did, which was to leave their country, go somewhere where they don’t speak the language, know the culture or anything and start from scratch.
Strikingly, group 1 participants generally described their pathway to the professoriate as “happenstance,” with a limited sense of agency toward this particular career option, unlike those from group 2 who described their decision as more deliberate, with a focus on individual success and potential benefits. For example, a group 1 male participant, states, “I did not choose an academic career, the academic career chose me.” Similarly, a group 1 woman reflects,
Other participants emphasized how significant role models in their communities inspired them by offering guidance and encouragement. A male participant recalls an early mentor, who demonstrated an activist orientation:
It wasn’t like I felt like I decided at some point that this is something that I thought was a wonderful idea that I was going to go ahead and do it. It was more like it almost chose me
When I was an undergraduate, the one person who had a book . . . on Chicanos was a man who I ended up . . . being a colleague of. . . . He was . . . an academic activist, which was very
Zambrana et al. inspiring to me . . . because he did the work that he felt was more important rather than the intellectual or disciplinary flavor of the week. . . . [Instead] he would look at what’s more valuable [to study] in our world as Chicanos. Although family members are important sources of support, the emotional support and institutional brokering provided by teachers and educators in high school and especially by mentors during their undergraduate years provided the grit to attend and persist in college. Respondents’ narratives unveil a life-course approach to their educational journey with parents, teachers, and then the importance of access to campus resources that facilitated their pathway. College counselors and undergraduate mentors were central to their progress as they provided guidance with funding opportunities and support through the graduate school application process, as well as a willingness to discuss the racial context of higher education. As participants created their educational trajectory narratives, they discussed the role of graduate school advisers who made crucial interventions at different points along the academic pathway (Brunsma, Embrick, and Shin 2017; Schneider and Segura 2014). These advisers often served as inspirational and helpful guides to navigate institutional culture, the tenure process, and personal relations with peers, collaborators, and superiors. Although all participants attributed their professional success to their support system, those who had more highly educated mothers (group 2) were more likely to benefit from effective and invested graduate school advisers. Parents with higher levels of education often expose their protégés to different institutional settings, interactions with a more educated social network, and often are more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods. These assets appear to result in more access to social capital throughout the life course, including the likelihood to develop external professional networks and to report discrimination rather than ignore it, unlike faculty whose mothers had not graduated from high school. Although those participants whose mothers had less than a high school education (group 1) benefited from sources of support and encouragement, their educational pathway was significantly longer—from those whose mothers had completed high school or more (group 2).
Navigating the Academic Career Dixon-Reeves (2003) defined mentoring “as a process by which persons of superior rank, special achievements, and prestige instruct, counsel, guide,
465 and facilitate the intellectual (or career) development of persons identified as protégés or mentees” (pp. 15–16). Two striking findings emerged: (1) the critical role graduate advisers play in helping respondents transition from graduate student to early-career faculty and (2) an expressed desire for mentors to assist in professional socialization. Respondents identified three forms of social and navigational capital they found most valuable: (1) direct advice, (2) access to professional networks, and (3) information on how to meet major career milestones and navigate their institutional roles. Connections to former graduate school advisers served a critical role in helping participants successfully transition to the professoriate. One participant describes her adviser’s role in networking: [My graduate school adviser] also connected me with other scholars in my area of interest, so that’s been something that’s been carrying me through now as I’m in my career. . . . When I think about . . . the benefits of having worked under her and gotten her mentorship is that the benefits of the people . . . that she’s connected me to is really helping a lot. Other former graduate advisers continue to provide feedback on career trajectories, as another female respondent notes: That mentoring relationship has just transitioned out of me being a graduate student to her helping me as a new faculty member do what I need to do to be successful. I know that [she] feels that my research is important. And I think that’s really important for me right now is to have someone that says, “I really think you’re doing something really good, and I think your contributions are going to be substantial.” In this case, the mentor provides valuable feedback on her research, support in the publication process, and validates the importance of her research. Mentoring in graduate school is enhanced when the mentor provides access to professional networks in the mentee’s particular area of focus. These networks are then invaluable as mentees seek employment, transition to the professoriate, and form research collaborations. One female respondent discusses her graduate school mentors and how they contribute to her social capital as she states, One of the most useful things that my mentors have done for me is helping me to network. They took me to conferences and introduced me
466 to everyone they knew, and said wonderful things about me, and not just writing letters of recommendation, but really helped me to get to know the people who would make my career successful. The knowledge shared by graduate mentors provides insight into power relations in faculty members’ new institutions and establishes a basis from which to compare and understand the nuances of institutional culture in the next setting. Graduate school mentors’ role demonstrates the importance of accumulating social capital throughout the educational trajectory. Conversely, it highlights the difficulties that participants who had an ineffective or absent graduate adviser can experience and its long-term implications. Mentoring and professional socialization are core features of university departments upon which graduate student and faculty success hinges; unequal access to this resource is therefore problematic. Institutional climates promote a culture of “standing on [your] own” where new faculty perceive that they have to “beg for someone’s free time.” Others described institutionally designated “mentors” who were available but unable to provide specific forms of knowledge or did not appear to value their research. A female respondent expresses her disappointment at her mentor’s inability to provide the guidance she needs: I feel like my current mentor, I know he respects me, and he values my opinion. But I think it’s just we have different ideas of . . . how we should conduct research. And I realize a lot of it has to do with his ignorance because he just doesn’t have experience with certain things and he’s not willing to say, “This isn’t my area”. So he tries to be helpful . . . but what he knows isn’t usually in line with what I think [is helpful]. Participants express a desire for both direct guidance and emotional support that facilitates a sense of belonging in academia and a consciousness of the intersectional microaggressions they face in the workplace.
Discrimination All respondents report experiencing discrimination. Racial/ethnic discrimination (40.5 percent) was most likely to be reported, followed by gender (32.8 percent) and class (20.8 percent) discrimination. These discriminatory practices took many forms,
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(4) including misidentification, being subjected to racial/ethnic stereotypes and lowered expectations, and biased institutional hiring and promotions. Numerous participants discussed being “misidentified.” For male respondents, their identities as “dangerous criminals who do not belong” on college campuses shape their interpersonal interactions. One male participant describes this phenomenon: For me personally, as a man [I get discriminated against] maybe in the typical ways, [as] a man of color, in a kind of criminalized way. People might fear me for some reason, if I’m on campus late at night people might doubt that I’m a faculty member here. People question if I’m a faculty member all the time, maybe because I look relatively young but I’m not young. One female participant reports, “I always make the joke that people always think I’m the secretary, and it’s because people always do think I’m the secretary.” These narratives capture respondents experiences of misidentification as blue- or pink-collar workers in professional settings (García-López 2008; Nadal et al. 2014; Smith, Yosso, and Solórzano 2007). Being one of the “only” in the workplace can also result in one’s presence being questioned and a perception of not belonging (Stanley 2006; Turner and Meyers 2000). Another male participant describes a specific experience with being subjected to a stereotypic type of misidentification: I was working late at the office. I go to the bathroom and it was one of those unisex, one stall deals. I come out and this administrative woman, this White woman, is walking towards me. And as I’m walking out she said, “Are you done in there?” And I was like, “Obviously, if I’m walking around the hallway.” And she was like, “Okay, thanks.” And I was like, okay, that was weird. Why would she ask if I’m done if I’m walking out? And then I stopped to think. I looked next to me, and I saw a mop and a large [bucket]. . . . So she thought I was a janitor. It was extremely clear what role my identity played at [that Ivy League school], and that’s basically, “The Mexicans come here to clean. They don’t come here to study; they come here to clean.” Although the aforementioned participant indicated that the woman was not malicious, her assumptions of his presence fit into stereotypes about Mexican
Zambrana et al. Americans. This experience demonstrates the ways in which institutions of higher education are racialized spaces where Mexican Americans are misidentified on campus (Segura 2003; Solórzano et al. 2002; Zambrana et al. 2016). Group 2 participants were more likely to report the presence of stereotypes in their workplace settings such as colleagues’ and administrators’ use of derogatory terms such as wetback or lazy when referring to people of Mexican heritage. According to Embrick and Henricks (2013), “Epithets and stereotypes are instruments of power because they legitimize hierarchical arrangements when acted upon” (p. 199). In higher education institutions, where there are few Mexican American faculty, use of such derogatory terms is a form of cultural racism (BonillaSilva 2006) that serves to rationalize their absence and justify their marginalization in a high status profession. Stereotypes also informed interactions with others, as many reported having to navigate their colleagues’ assumptions and story lines about their educational and career pathways (BonillaSilva, Lewis, and Embrick 2004). One male respondent shares, I can recall even at [a large diverse state university], even the department chair saying, “Oh, you’re gonna get a job; you’re Latino.” You know? Not having anything to do with that my record was strong, or I worked my butt off. As this participant points out, his academic and professional efforts had been dismissed by the campus administrator’s assumption that his race/ethnicity would guarantee him a job. Another female respondent articulates the internal dialogue she experiences after encountering such stereotypes: I think there’s also been a sense of that feeling like a quota system, so, “Oh, well, we have enough of you.” If you get into a good school, people say, “Did you get in because you’re an affirmative action person?” And that’s a very difficult place to be, and I feel like I’ve been there both in the workplace and in school like that. These examples demonstrate the way Mexican American faculty are consistently reminded of their “otherness” in their workplace. Contemporary scholars emphasize the subtlety of such assaults in their delivery, but not in their impact, which take a cumulative toll over a lifetime of them (Smith 2004). One man describes the “weird” nature of such experiences,
467 There’s a lot of context still where you’re the only woman or you’re the only person of color in the room, and that plays out in the typically weird ways that it does in any workplace. People treat you as if you’re some sort of foreigner or a different person. Some respondents articulated a clear sense of racial microaggressions taking place in the form of lowered expectations. One woman describes, It’s not so much kind of that direct sense of racism, you know, like based on color or. . . . But it was more of that insidious kind of thing, like, “Oh, you know how to read,” or, “Oh, you know how to do that,” or, “Oh, you speak without an accent.” These lowered expectations are similar to racial microaggressions that include stereotypic assumptions and implicit bias such that their presence in academia is questioned, are assumed to be a result of affirmative action policies that lower standards, and/or they are misidentified as thugs, janitors, or secretaries. Respondents also cited several instances of witnessing racial/ethnic discrimination via institutional hiring and promotion practices. One woman explains the problematic nature of minimal URM representation in leadership positions and its potential detriment to the surrounding communities: And we’re a public institution, and we have these excellent leadership opportunities, like a chair of research, or this position, or that, and they fill it with people who don’t know the communities and don’t have the commitment to giving back, who don’t give a rat’s ass. . . . And they can go to the neighborhoods they live in, and never have to go to the [communities we serve], except when they have clinic. That’s racism, to me. Another female respondent provides an example of someone being promoted to an administrative position despite demonstrating a lack of understanding of institutional racism: And they did a national search, and [this professor they are thinking about hiring] completely does not get . . . oppression, how it plays out in the system, institutional racism . . . and he’s in a position to mentor. They put him as interim vice-chair of [redacted] and they recently promoted him. And this is the guy who
468 told me, “I don’t understand your work. Why don’t you just pick a disease area [instead of your interest]?” These data confirm previous studies that document the minimization of racial and gender equity by organizational leadership (Embrick 2011). Implicit biases in these practices demonstrate the institution’s priorities, which are at odds with participants who value mentorship and a research agenda that addresses social and economic inequalities. Participants were aware and vigilant of their presence in white spaces where they do not feel welcomed. Thus, how they countered the toll of racism and managed the impact of discrimination to protect their well-being required engaging in strategies of resistance.
Strategies of Resistance: Coping Responses Consensus exists on the consequences of discrimination on health and mental health and the importance of using coping strategies (Lewis, Cogburn, and Williams 2015). Respondents engaged in several strategies to resist racial discrimination in the workplace, differing by maternal education. Group 1 participants were more likely to dismiss incidents as insignificant. Several respondents framed their decisions to do so as efforts to protect themselves from the draining effect of racial/ ethnic discrimination. A group 1 female respondent described the feeling of relief that resulted from not battling workplace discrimination: Once I’ve kind of accepted that that’s the way things were and then I just had to work with it because I wasn’t going to change the whole world, I think that kind of made me feel like a hundred pounds lighter. According to another group 1 male participant, not putting energy toward discriminatory experiences was a survival strategy: I realized that I don’t care. I just presume that we’re . . . not going to be judged on the same criteria, and part of, I think, my survival strategy was not to contest it so much as to overcome it. Ignoring racist incidents to avoid the emotional drain of confronting discriminatory institutionalized practices is used as a survival strategy for some. The effort to forget such experiences is another self-protective strategy used to mediate racial battle fatigue (Smith 2004; Yosso et al.
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(4) 2009). A group 1 man articulates being “blessed with a very spongy memory,” while another group 1 participant recognizes, “If I remembered everything, it would take me down.” Dismissing or forgetting incidents was not a strategy reported by group 2 participants. On the contrary, this group reported more willingness to speak up and confront perpetrators of racial/ethnic discrimination. One group 1 male participant describes his careful approach in doing so: More often than not, you talk to somebody intelligently like that, and they’d say, “You know what? I didn’t mean it in that context. This is what I meant to say.” [Rather] than it’s just, “Well, here’s how I and others would perceive what you said, and this is why you probably shouldn’t use that word, or that statement, or that example, because that’s how it’s going be read by others.” In this case, the participant perceives speaking up as an opportunity to educate others. However, such efforts of educating others do not always ensure institutional change as much as individual policing of behaviors. A female respondent stated, “I confront people. I just tell them that it’s ignorant and I think people just don’t say anything around me anymore.” Several participants reported redirecting their energy to professional achievement as a strategy of resistance as they navigated discrimination in the workplace. For example, one woman stated, I have students who count on me. I’m affecting minds. I have manuscripts that, a lot of them are sitting there, and they need to go out, because they’re interesting things around immigration and [redacted], and the local context of that. And I need to focus on that. In this statement, she draws attention to the competing demands in her life and the manner in which she chooses to prioritize her energy. Similarly, a man cites experiences with discrimination as motivation in his pursuit of professional success: Those kind of comments . . . stick with me, and I probably got a pretty big chip on my shoulder because of some of that, but it’s a motivator for me, not a detractor from success. That’s fuel, as far as I see it, to keep working hard. This strategy of redirecting energy and focusing on professional achievement is similar to research
Zambrana et al. findings on the desire to “prove them wrong” (Ek et al. 2010; García-López 2008; Segura 1989, 1992) and build community via academic and social counterpaces (Cerecer et al. 2011). These data underscore what Harvey Wingfield (2010) labeled the outflow of emotional labor.
Discussion and Conclusions Five major findings emerged: early mentoring support promotes educational aspiration; active mentorship that guides and helps navigate the professoriate is crucial; recurrent, adverse experiences of racial and gender discrimination make it difficult for participants to establish professional legitimacy; resistance strategies that involve high levels of emotional energy affect productivity; maternal education shaped both mentoring relationships and resistance strategies. Overall, there were no significant differences by gender on mentoring experiences, but differences were observed on perceived racial/ethnic and gender discrimination. Our findings extend prior research on Mexican Americans regarding the barriers to access social capital in institutions of higher education. These findings illustrate the impact of multiple hidden factors of history, racialized ethnic identity, and institutionalized bias and discrimination that operate as invisible institutional practices and derail academic careers. Despite the evidence that graduate school and faculty mentors are crucial, many participants lacked adequate mentoring and were unable to access adequate mentorship opportunities at their institutions. Hence, many respondents sought external mentors which alleviates their home institutions from this responsibility. The transmission of professional socialization skills and institutional knowledge are much-needed resources for those who bring strong aspirational capital from families, communities, and formal schooling but have limited social capital to negotiate their agency on predominately affluent “white habitus” (Bonilla-Silva and Embrick 2007). Mexican American faculty are less likely than their White counterparts from college-educated families to have a keen understanding of the informal institutional rules, social networks, and access to other professional development opportunities. As a result, many participants reported less likelihood to reach out or be reached out to by potential faculty mentors. Strikingly, respondents with mothers who had greater than high school education (group 2) were more likely to report a larger number of
469 mentors. Institutional agents (Stanton-Salazar 2011) or “pivotal moment educators” (Espinoza 2011) are essential for repairing adverse educational milestones and intervening at different points along the academic trajectory. Many participants reported encountering racial/ ethnic discrimination in the workplace, such as misidentification, stereotypes, and lowered expectations (Zambrana et al. 2016). Women reported higher perceived discrimination and higher levels of upset by these incidents. Respondents with mothers who had greater than high school education (group 2) were more conscious of racism in institutional practices and had heightened political consciousness. Higher sensitivity to discriminatory practices may be associated with higher socioeconomic status (higher maternal education), navigational capital, and feeling entitled to receiving educational benefits (Gloria and Castellanos 2012). For many female participants, the intersection of racialized ethnicity, gender, and class signify even more unwelcoming spaces that contribute to perceptions of “unbelonging” (Ek et al. 2010; Oliva et al. 2013). Thus, they experience a “double minority” syndrome and confront triple jeopardy as they face racism, ethnocentrism, classism, and patriarchy. The contemporary body of scholarship on the sociology of work and inequality, and the professions is fraught with theoretical and methodological limitations that prohibit a clear understanding of the intersecting identities of racial, ethnic, and gender inequality among historically URM faculty. Empirical works often omit historicity, parental education, and self-reported ethnic identity, all of which serve to inform inequality in the workplace and professions. One limitation that obscures our understanding of Mexican American faculty is the lumping together of all faculty of color, especially Latino/Hispanic aggregations. This erasure of the Mexican American professional experience represents a major gap in our sociological understanding of social status, institutional racism, and its association with faculty representation in the academy. Greater diversity is an important step, but increasing the numbers of Mexican American faculty is inadequate if there are limited organizational commitments to addressing systemic racism and offering programmatic initiatives dedicated to supporting early career faculty to tenure and beyond (Schneider and Segura 2014; Zambrana et al. 2015). Three important strategies include (1) increasing the understanding of century-long antiMexican educational policies that have segregated
470 and severely impoverished Mexican Americans, (2) understanding the importance of social capital and ensuring that senior institutional agents engage in social capital–driven mentoring of Mexican American faculty throughout the life course (Gardner and Holley 2011; Zambrana et al. 2015), and (3) promoting awareness of the stereotypes and implicit biases that are associated with racialized Mexican Americans professionals. Overall, participants report an unwelcoming campus climate and do not articulate a sense of “belonging.” “Beating the odds” is not an adequate response to increase representation in tenure-track faculty lines; institutional change and investment are required.
Acknowledgment We wish to thank Dr. Laura A. Logie for project management, Lenora Knowles for research and editing assistance, and Wendy Hall for manuscript preparation. Most important, we thank the URM faculty across the United States who participated in the study.
Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this research was initially provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (grant 68480) and the University of Maryland Tier 1 seed grants, Division of Research, Faculty Incentive Program; the research is currently funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (214.0277) to the first author and principal investigator, Ruth Enid Zambrana.
Note 1. Chicano became a popular label used by many activists during the Chicano movement, much in the way that the term Black was reclaimed during the Black power movement. Currently, the term Chicano has been revised to include women, hence Chicana/o. For a more complete history, see National Archives (2016) and Gonzalez (2013), which provide a sociological history of Mexican school segregation in the Southwest.
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Author Biographies Ruth Enid Zambrana is a professor of women’s studies and director of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity at the University of Maryland College Park. Her research examines the sociology of race and ethnicity and inequality in higher education and health, with a specific emphasis on historically underrepresented populations. Brianne A. Dávila is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Psychology and Sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of sociology of education, social inequality, and Latina/o sociology. Michelle M. Espino is an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education at the University of Maryland College Park. Her research focuses on understanding how institutional cultures, policies, and practices as well as community contexts affect and inform educational achievement, outcomes, and experiences along the P-20 pipeline for racial/ethnic minorities, particularly for Latinas/os. Lisa M. Lapeyrouse is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Michigan Flint. Dr. Lapeyrouse’s teaching, research, and service records demonstrate a strong commitment to addressing health inequities experienced among vulnerable populations, particularly foreign- and U.S.-born Latinos. R. Burciaga Valdez, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Professor of Family & Community Medicine and Economics, served as the founding executive director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico, a center dedicated to doctoral and postdoctoral training of historically underrepresented minority group members in economics, political science, and sociology. Denise A. Segura is a professor of sociology and an affiliated professor in the Departments of Chicana/o Studies and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. With Patricia Zavella, she coedited Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader (Duke University Press, 2007). She is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently as the 2015 Feminist Mentor of the Year by the Sociologists for Women in Society.
