In one of my classes I have just spent two weeks on some Afro-Cuban poetry and it is not because we are studying Blackness but because we are studying the ring of words and these poems contain some very good examples. As it turns out the class has a fairly large Black contingent. These students seem very interested in the poems and it cannot be because they are all poetry enthusiasts – this is a general education class and people have majors like EECS. I said to the T.A., “Does this mean Afro-Hispanic literature is not normally revealed in school?” She said, “Yes. White professors shy away from presenting it for fear they may inadvertently say something offensive.” Is the state of whiteness still that bad?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I don’t believe the “state of whiteness” is that bad. A good professor is a good professor regardless of race!! Some white professors are more attuned to understanding certain nuances than their other peers without engaging in a liberal stupidity/rhetoric that usually demonstrates a cultural/racial ignorance.
Aside from curriculum issues (is this stuff in the things that teachers are finding in their state and university-approved materials) and training (have the teachers come across these materials before so that they feel some confidence in approaching them in class), there is the question of “first do no harm.” I do think a fair amount of people are hip enough to think that maybe they shouldn’t touch this stuff (or should be extremely careful) for fear of getting it wrong. (This is something I would like to discuss on my blog sometime soon.)
Also FWIW, I earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish language and literature at a SLAC in a southwest state about fifteen years ago. The upperdivision courses I took at the SLAC covered a two semester general introduction to Spanish peninsular literature, an introduction to magical realism that was only García-Márquez and Allende, a semester on Don Quixote, a semester on Golden Age lyric and one on Golden Age drama, and a one semester introduction to South American literature that in my recollection included mostly books written by women. When I was “studying abroad,” I took a year survey in the literature of that country that covered its “classic” literature. As far as I know I never read anything by an Afro-anything author in all that time. When I look at the research specialities of my alma mater now, I think there might be some different material being taught. But in general I thought at the time that it was a pretty stringent degree.
I have felt more and more in the last five or six years ago that my education is failing me. E.g., I took an undergraduate “introduction to Islam” course in the religion department during the semester that the fatwa against Rushdie was issued, but very little of what I learned in that class seems to apply to what is going on in the world nowadays.
Oops. I should mention that in one of these classes we did cover some songs by Silvio Rodriguez, who was Cuban. But I don’t think that counts.
‘State of whiteness’ not that bad, good – whew!
Degree from the SLAC – yes, it was stringent, and Quixote / Golden Age are *key* and I do not say this as a canon defender. Education failing one – well – educations do go out of date in some ways…no?
“hip enough to think that maybe they shouldn’t touch this stuff (or should be extremely careful) for fear of getting it wrong”
This I disagree with, it isn’t hip, although it may mean having an inkling. To me it seems that one might make more of an effort. But then I deal with otherness 24/7, if “Latino” is a race, I’m not in it, but I’m a Hispanist…
I guess the problem is that the need to constantly educate oneself gets overwhelming. I can’t see stopping, but at the same time I have sort of been blindsided about the amount of information about Islam that is necessary to understand the world these days. I am trying to keep up but I ahve a lot of sympathy for people who just shut down and say “I have my framework for the world and I am sticking to it.”
Ok, hip was more of a sarcastic term–we may not be hip, but we are aware enough to know when we are way off of our usual terrain.
I am not saying those teachers are justified in ignoring Afro-Cuban literature, just that I understand the impulse behind it. Despite the undergrad degree I did not study anything Hispanic in graduate school, and one of the reasons for that decision was my fundamental realization of how unhip I was, and the amount of effort that it was going to take to get past that frightened me. When I meet Hispanists now I tend to think that this was probably the right decision, even though it means that people make other assumptions about me because of what I study that are mostly wrong…
re the disappeared post: i wish the keywords you seek in job adverts existed for me too!
JustMe – the post is coming back! It was one of the pre-programmed ones, and then I wrote new ones, so it came up too soon and I pushed it back a day.
Servetus – there’s a lot I can’t keep up with! I guess my sensation is that I’m always off terrain … to study something like medieval literature is off terrain for moderns, etc. etc. … and I’m off terrain in most of the U.S. … so being off terrain is comfortable. Oddly, that is what I see as the main difference between me and my Hispanic colleagues. They are like English professors in the U.S., studying themselves and what is familiar, and it is a whole different gestalt …
Then also, I seem to have been raised to be half Hispanic. Mexicans in California used to forget I was Anglo, although I definitely look it, and here in Louisiana people constantly suspect me of being Hispanic or Creole, or foreign. There are three people in my department here who have just grocked that my parents were born in S.F. – it turns out they thought my parents were from somewhere in Europe! So it appears that I am somehow international from way back, and that that is Why.
I had a related experience teaching Martí with Rizal this week. I have to say that I really struggled. I was out of my field and my period, and I was using a frustrating piece of literary analysis. My cross-racial transnational interdisciplinary ambition outstrips my knowledge!