Because we already know what happens if we do not try

"Can a white, middle class, heterosexual man teach about racism, classism, heterosexism, and sexism?  And if so, should he?"

This is the question the professor of my "Teaching Sociology" pedagogy class wrote on the board at the start of one memorable class session about a year and a half ago.  She asked our class to share our response to that question.

One (white, middle class, heterosexual) male said, "Yes, of course.  We should be objective and practice value-free sociology when we teach."

The professor asked if there were any other comments to add.  A (white, working class, ambiguously queer) woman said, "Yes, of course, because he should be trained to teach every field.  Like, say I teach Introduction to Sociology.  Even though I don't study them, I need to be able to teach about race and gender and sexuality just like I need to be able to teach about criminology and families, even though I don't study those, either."

These two students, within moments, articulated a shared expectation that value-free research is both acheivable and desirable, two things Harding and Norberg (2005) state it is not.  Despite decades of feminist arguements to the contrary, it is still possible to obtain a doctorate in sociology believing that 'objective' and 'value-free' are realistic and preferable goals.  Believe me, I have witnessed it first hand.

The man's comments, cynic that I am, did not surprise me.  The woman's, however, were jarring.  Her words pointed to a much more insidiuous pathology in a discipline divided by numerous fields...that "race" and "class" and "gender" and "sexuality" are merely fields of study.  The question was not whether this hypothetically uber privileged man could teach the sociology of race or class or gender or sexuality, but if he could teach racism, classism, heterosexism, and sexism.  She saw the '-isms' and saw "separate fields of study some other sociologists do."  The woman's response showed that she felt race, class, gender, and sexuality were not already part of every other field of study.  She saw race, class, gender, and sexuality as separate from the rest of sociology, separate from, even, the rest of her life.  There were things to 'study' or 'subjects' teach, not power structures embedded in the fabric of our institutions.  Not unavoidable.  Not inescapable.  She could put them away in a folder and teach them next week.

That is the myth feminist methodology saves us from, as Harding and Norberg claim.  Because to think otherwise is to resign ourselves to our doom.  If we do not see these hierarchies as always already present, then we are indeed "complicit in the exercise of power."  While it is true that, for the past few weeks, the complications of attempting to account for this ever present power has left us feeling as though there is no right path, it seems that attempting to account for this ever present power means we do avoid a definitively wrong one. 

Even Harding and Norberg write, "In spite of feminists' heroic attempts to eliminate such power differences, this goal has proved impossible."  See?!  All the generations of brilliant, fierce, badass feminists that have come before us have ALSO never managed to be perfectly power-neutral researchers!  Instead of feeling defeated by this (or feeling pressured to be the first to come to some miraculous, publishable and tenure-worthy conclusion), perhaps we can take consolation in it.  That we are still trying to eliminate power differences means, well, that we are still trying to eliminate power differences.  That the battle wages on means that we're still fighting it.  No one has shrugged their shoulders and said, "You know what? *pops knuckles of white privilege*  I'm going where people don't recognize that I am the default racial position.  It's time to colonize people and call it objective!"  Through all the brambles and overgrowth, we keep striving to make a new path.  Sometimes we must pause in desperation, or when the grief of it all is too much to bear, but pausing is not the same as stopping. 

Never, ever, ever, ever forget that we are still here.  And we will keep trying, together, in the face of all its impossiblities, to prove the goal possible.