LoveYourBodyLoveYourself’s blog

Submitted to Diverse Issues in Higher Education 11/30/09

©2009 Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin

Stop in the Name of Love and Legality: HBCU Fat Discrimination

I am a plump African American professor at the oldest HBCU in the country and a national expert on media weight discrimination and people of color in the professoriate.  I am concerned about some of the statements in Dr. Marybeth Gasman’s response to the Historically Black University Lincoln’s policy that penalizes its students who are “heavy” in body as well as mind  by forcing them to pass an additional “Fitness for Life” course or refusing to graduate them.  The policy is certainly unethical, probably illegal and ironically racist, sexist classist AND counter-productive.

The policy is racist because African Americans whose ancestors survived slavery – i.e. were able to work 12 hours a day on little more than a single chittlin’ and a biscuit under horrific psychological stress – have a very efficient metabolism and for a many reasons tend to be fatter than other Americans.  Most of these reasons don’t have to do with being lazy or pigging out.  We are constantly facing so much discrimination based on our body size already that it is a scary second (third, fourth…) slap in the face to have an HBCU that has a concentration of African American women, should discriminate against us too when the students are supposed to be showing intellectual rigor to graduate rather than be punished by an extra course to pass than those who were born with a luckier genetic draw from the deck.

The policy is sexist because African American women tend to weigh more than all other race women in the country and Understanding Gender At Public HBCUs reports that females are 63% of the students enrolled at HBCUs.  It’s also physiologically harder for women to lose weight than it is for men.

The policy is counterproductive because fat people, especially fat women, are already under full attack on every front.  We know we are fat.  Others who feel they have the right to openly harass big people, just as it used to be okay to harass us because we are Black, wouldn’t let us forget it even if the media did.  Just last week, as an HBCU African American full, tenured professor, a male student screamed repeatedly at me from an open dorm window “Dr. D -  Fat Ass!”  The female students are under even MORE harassment. 

The policy is classist because as a group, students who go to HBCUs are more likely to be first-generation college students; poorer than any other 4-year college student; often overscheduled and over working to earn part or all of their way through university, usually with no financial help from their impoverished parents. Lincoln’s policy places greater time AND financial demands on students who are struggling with far more than their weight.   Also poor people are more likely to be bigger too because they have less access to affordable, tasty, healthy food.

Preventing students, no matter how brilliant, from graduating from college just because they are big is counterproductive.  It only adds to their humiliation and stress, increasing the likelihood that they will exercise less and, if they do compulsively eat – eat more of the wrong kinds of foods.

If Lincoln University really cares about the obesity epidemic in the Black community it ought to require ALL students, not just the ones with “more bounce to the ounce,” to complete their Fitness for Life class as they do (or as part of) Freshman Orientation or any physical education requirement.  The thinner students may be as unhealthy as some of the fatter students or worse.  Notice I said, “SOME” of the fat students because one can be fit and fat.  I eat a well-balanced, health oriented diet, exercise 5 times a week and I am still a plus-sized woman. I refuse to use the “O” word because I am NOT a walking disease or symptom for that matter.  I am not alone.  Many of our thinner counterparts are couch potatoes and eat far more so-called bad foods.  Also thinner students who eat poor diets and don’t exercise regularly will find themselves slipping in to the discriminated size range as their youthful metabolisms age.

I hope Lincoln University stops this ugly size discrimination before a big student with deep pockets successfully sues them for a gigantic number of dollars and contributes to the demise of another precious HBCU.  Gasman is wrong when she says physical education has long been part of our intellectual development.  It’s part of our physical development that, in the effort to attract more students with faster-to-complete programs, most colleges have dropped. Also at a time when colleges are offering more online degrees, ending physical education and even exit exam requirements, Lincoln University should be ashamed of their nasty fat phobic fitness course. I would implore them that as their namesake “freed the slaves,” may Lincoln University let my chubby people go.  Let freedom ring and let my chubby people graduate if they’ve got the grades… to go.

To see Gasman’s story go to: http://diverseeducation.com/blogpost/183/1.php

            NPR stories on how race is no longer an issue in our country are frustrating personally and misleading to the public.  Rather than political strategizing, one of the reasons African Americans often object to notions of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” rather than curing the ills of racism, more accurately white supremacy – is that so many people of color have to deal with some form of unearned white privilege or racial discrimination every day.

            Comedian Chris Rock’s recently released documentary Good Hair wouldn’t have been controversial if Black women weren’t pressured on so many fronts to repeatedly do what is for so many an expensive, painful and shame-full ritual of chemically straightening our hair at the root just to be considered acceptable socially, professionally and psychologically.  For example, at the eve of 2010, a White doctor I visited for the first time clowned around in his reception area in his imitation of what he thought was a Black man’s voice talking about how some Black people didn’t have “good hair.”  When I objected to his unprofessional, disrespectful behavior, he told me maybe I wasn’t a “good fit” for his practice.

  A few years ago I left the Montgomery (Alabama) Area Black Journalists Association because a black woman executive editor with chemically straightened short hair verbally attacked me and a few male and female student journalists for wearing our natural kinky hair. She said that our hair wasn't "professional," and that if White subjects we were interviewing called us, "The N-Word," it would be our fault because we wore our neat, clean kinks.

Also a few years ago, a white television news director, with the blessings of an older black female reporter who straightens her hair, sent a national award-winning black female communications student out of the room crying because they verbally attacked her neatly styled kinky hair as "unacceptable."  Afterward the victimized, dark skinned student returned to my class,  in a white-scalped, pin-straight “Tina Turner – Rollin’ on the River” type wig because her self-esteem was so wounded from that, not-the-first,  attack on her blackness. 

As an African American journalist and media scholar who studies white supremist notions of beauty in the media, including good hair, I am the author of "What I Dreaded."  It's one of the chapters in the book, Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America, about the dramatic change for the better it can make to stop the painful, time-consuming, expensive, shame-full experience of straightening our hair.  “Dreading” my hair into Nubian locs allowed me to stop dreading my natural self.

 I also belong to a local group of Black women who wear our hair kinky and support each other in that powerful self-esteem promoting decision that sometimes makes us the target of racial discrimination whether from people of other races or those of our own suffering from their own internalized racism.  Learning how to love our naturally kinky hair can be painful but in the frizzy end is … as good as it gets!

Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin is a professor of communication at the nation’s oldest public Historically Black University, Alabama State.

Submitted to NPR's Morning Edition 11/23/09

The Historically Black University Lincoln’s policy that penalizes its students who are “heavy” in body as well as mind by forcing them to pass an additional “Fitness for Life” course or refusing to graduate them is certainly unethical, probably illegal and ironically racist, sexist, classist AND counter-productive.

It’s racist because African Americans whose ancestors survived slavery – i.e. were able to work 12 hours a day on little more than a single chittlin’ and a biscuit under horrific psychological stress – have a very efficient metabolism and for a many reasons tend to be fatter than other Americans. 

The policy is sexist because African American women tend to weigh more than all other race women in the country and Understanding Gender At Public HBCUs reports that females are 63% of the students enrolled at HBCUs. 

The policy is counterproductive because fat people, especially fat women are already under full attack on every front.  Just last week, as an African American full, tenured professor at the nation’s oldest public HBCU, a male student screamed repeatedly at me from an open dorm window “Dr. D -  Fat Ass!”  The female students are under even MORE harassment. 

The policy is classist because as a group, students who go to HBCUs are more likely to be first-generation college students; poorer than any other 4-year college student; often overscheduled and over working to earn part or all of their way through university, usually with no financial help from their impoverished parents. Lincoln’s policy places greater time AND financial demands on students who are struggling with far more than their weight.   Also poor people are more likely to be bigger too.

Preventing students, no matter how brilliant, from graduating from college just because they are big is counterproductive.  It only adds to their humiliation and stress, increasing the likelihood that they will exercise less and, if they do compulsively eat – eat more of the wrong kinds of foods.

If the university really cares about the "obesity" epidemic in the Black community, it ought to require ALL students, not just the ones with “more bounce to the ounce,” to complete their Fitness for Life class as they do (or as part of) Freshman Orientation or any physical education requirement.  The thinner students may be as unhealthy as some of the fatter students or worse.  Notice I said, “SOME” of the fat students because one can be fit and fat.  I eat a well-balanced, health oriented diet and exercise 5 times a week and I am still a plus-sized woman. I am not alone.  Many of our thinner counterparts are couch potatoes and eat far more so-called bad foods. 

I hope Lincoln University stops this ugly size discrimination before a big student with deep pockets successfully sues them for a gigantic number of dollars and contributes to the demise of another precious HBCU.  At a time when, in the effort to attract more students, colleges are offering more online degrees, ending physical education and even exit exam requirements, Lincoln University should be ashamed of their nasty fat phobic  fitness course. I would implore them that as their namesake “freed the slaves,” may Lincoln University let my chubby people go.  Let freedom ring and let my chubby people graduate if they’ve got the grades to go.

11/12/09

©E-K. Daufin, 2009

The Montgomery Advertiser big Sunday story about Black women's "good hair" opinions surprised me.  A few years ago, I left the Montgomery Area Black Journalist's Association because a Black woman with chemically straightened, short hair, who was the executive editor of a local national chain newspaper, verbally attacked me and a few male and female student journalists for wearing our naturally kinky hair.  She said that our neat, clean hair wasn't “professional” and that if White people we were interviewing called us, "The N-Word," it would be our fault because we wore our naturally kinky hair. 

Also a few years ago in Montgomery, at a local, top-rated, television news station Associated Press Broadcasters seminar, the White news director at the time, with the blessings of an older Black female reporter who straightens her hair, sent a national award winning Black female communication student out of the room crying because they verbally attacked her neatly styled kinky hair as “unacceptable,” though news director said he would hire me with my longer kinky locks.  I immediately offered my services for hire.  He turned red and laughed nervously but didn’t make me an offer.    The victimized student returned to my class on the Monday after the seminar,  in a white-scalped, pin-straight “Tina Turner – Rollin’ on the River” type wig because her self-esteem was so wounded from that, not-the-first,  attack on her blackness. 

As an African American journalist and media scholar who studies white supremist notions of beauty in the media, including "good hair," I am the author of "What I Dreaded."  It's a chapter in the book, Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America, about the dramatic change for the better it made in my life to stop the painful, time-consuming, expensive, shame-full experience of straightening my hair and "dreading" my hair into Nubian locks.  “Dreading” my hair allowed me to stop dreading my natural self.  I also belong to a local group of Black women who wear our hair kinky and support each other in that powerful self-esteem promoting decision that sometimes makes us the target of racial discrimination whether from people of other races or those of our own suffering from internalized racism. 

It was sad to me that your illustrious list of all the beautiful Black women you interviewed didn't include anyone with our powerful perspective on what learning how to love our naturally kinky hair can be -- painful but in the frizzy end is … as good as it gets!

Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin is a professor of communication at the nation’s oldest public Historically Black University, Alabama State.

Prof. E-K. Daufin, Ph.D.

Department of Communication

ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY

Travel Report for: The 92^nd Annual Convention of

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

Washington, D.C., August 4-8, 2009

AEJ was founded in 1912 to promote excellence in journalism in United States colleges and universities.  Ninety-seven years later it has grown to over 3,700 members from across the world and also includes the disciplines of mass communication.  More than 2,400 attended the convention that featured teaching, professional freedom and responsibility and research sessions.  Related organizations presenting at the conference include the ASJMC (heads of JMC programs)and CCJA (j-educators at 2-year colleges).

Howard University sponsored a touching celebration of Dr. Lionel Barrow’s legacy, noting his outstanding scholarship and advocacy for racial minorities in AEJMC, the journalism industry and JMC higher education.  The University of Alabama’s Department of Journalism published and distributed a special full-color commemorative Tribute to a Trailblazer edition of The Standard, Newsletter of the AEJMC Commission on the Status of Minorities.

The Minorities And Communication Division (MAC) and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) co-sponsored four research presentations on, “The Beauty Myth and the Status of Women.” (See attached flyer.) Head, Entertainment Studies Concentration California State University, Fullerton Dr. Laura Triplett, moderated.

After confessing to having eaten three donuts that morning and hoping for redemption in my and Dr. Guerra’s papers, Dr. Jennifer Greer, Alabama, presented, “Women, Credibility, and Appearance.”  Dr. Tom Reichert, Georgia presented for co-authors Drs. Michael Nitz, Augustana College; Shuhua Zhou, Alabama; and Steve Smith, Georgia "Prevalence of Sexy Cable Newscasters and Potential Effects." They made the assumption that sexual attractiveness is defined as a white, busty-but- otherwise-extremely-thin, and (with one exception) blonde, and blue-eyed woman.  Dr. Petra Guerra, University of Texas Pan American, in “Women Anchors and Weight,” noted that virtually no research on women television news anchors focused on weight or race, perhaps because researchers worked on false assumptions that perpetuate the racist, sexist notion that “attractiveness,” as well as “woman-anchor-worthiness” is defined as white and thin.

My paper, “Fat is a Feminist (and Womanist) Media Issue,” argues that the media create and/or perpetuate the racist, sexist, classist and ageist false assumption that beauty is defined, especially for women, as thinness at any cost and that fat people are increasingly demonized and discriminated against in the media in a time of global financial and environmental crisis.  The paper attempts to debunk the false, damaging myth that all fat people, in addition to other negative stereotypes, are by definition more greedy, lazy and unhealthy than thinner people.  It calls for more ethical, accurate and balanced coverage and depiction of fat people in the media and media support industries.

Conference keynote, “She Said…She Said – And It’s a Wrap,” featured the African American mother-daughter team Carole Simpson (ABC’s World News Tonight former alternate anchor/Emerson “Leader-in-Residence”) and Malika Marshall, M.D. (WBZ-TV medical reporter, HealthWatch anchor and practicing physician) respectively.  In a playful, well-performed, scripted hour presented in oral interpretation style from two lecterns, stage right and left – the journalists talked of the degradation of broadcast investigative reporting and the time management and social responsibility/relevancy challenge of emerging news modalities in addition to the live broadcast including on-line live sessions and columns, twitter and the like.

            Both pleasingly plump (as African American woman are more likely than any other race-gender demographic to be) TV journalists were a visual reaffirmation that how big you are is largely hereditary.  Simpson shared that her medical doctor daughter asked her to stop offering unrequested broadcast criticism such as, “That outfit made you look fat.”  This calls attention to a way that many a queen-size mother, under media influence, undermines the confidence of her plump, princess progeny.

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            MAC and the Mass Communication and Society Division sponsored a session on advancing inter-ethnic and interracial communication research.  Jiayun Feng (New Mexico) hosts a website that teaches media literacy regarding Asianness in Hollywood. To get the new URL for this visual and textual guide, write vonniefeng@gmail.com.  She also proffers a useful definition of cultural appropriation as, “The unauthorized use of a culture’s aesthetic, physical and virtual symbols by another culture.”

Temple’s Dr. Donnalyn Pompper found in, “Methodological Issues Associated with Researching Difference,” that according to research subjects, if careful and empathetic, white researchers seeking equity for underrepresented Latinas and African Americans can encourage rather than distort  or stifle research outcomes and subject self-disclosure. Wisconsin-Madison’s Dr. Michael Thornton in, “Black-Asian American Relations: India-West Perspectives 1993-2000,” found that Indian newspapers in L.A. showed oppositional relationships between the two groups during the Rodney King Decision Uprising but often showed cooperative racial relations in business endeavors though not in social ones. Dr. Yuki Fujioka of Georgia State in “Researching Minority Audiences’ Responses to Racial Images in the Media,” said that other racial groups see African Americans as unhealthy because we are big.  This finding underscores my point that demonizing fat people increases racism against African Americans (Latinos and American Indians) who are more likely to be big.  Fujioka found that African Americans were also seen as more threatening.  Could fatness be a factor in this finding too?

“Doctors Are In: Scholar-to-Scholar Roundtable Discussions on Teaching” (Dr. Diana Rios, moderator) on diversity and another on teacher evaluations gave useful information including: how to help White students work through their unconscious racism/resistance to learning about racism by allowing them to vent in written assignments for which the students get full credit for simply completing the assignment, and to print syllabi on ultra bright paper to help students keep track of their syllabi for the entire semester.

            For my Officer Presentation for 40^th Minorities and Communication Division Meeting, I personally solicited over 250 people to attend the meeting with written and verbal invitations, 58 accepted.    Over thirty-five new attendees accepted the invitation to join the MAC listserv.  During the year, membership activities/listserv postings included: MAC’s Co-Sponsoring the Alabama State University Ida B. Wells Lecture Series, Professionalism/ Electronic Voting Suggestions; Frontline Link: The Old Man & the Storm; Reminder to vote for AEJMAC Officers; Link for a new documentary on results of emphasis on weight; Did U get your AEJMAC Elections e-notice?; MAC reviewers NEEDED! – Posted for Yuki; AEJMAC Service/ Panel approved for Dr. Lionel Barrow in Boston; A Message from Free Press; Media agenda setting in effect; PBS poll on Palin; To Dr. Carstaphen - Please re- add Co-former Division Head Linda Callahan;

Controversial MAC link Education vs. partisanship RE: A MUST SEE VIDEO- Obama;  Free Press vs. NAB issue;  and 3 assistant professional jobs in Montgomery, AL.

            The Cultural and Critical Studies Division gave Dr. Sut Jhally a lifetime achievement award for his work founding the independent Media Education Foundation beginning with his groundbreaking work exploring the depictions of women in music videos and their negative effect on women and men in DreamWorlds.

            Another MAC panel on teaching about diversity offered helpful techniques and information.  New MAC Division Head Dr. Jennifer Woodard offered selected Census data to help us make students in denial understand their true socio-economic class (which is usually lower than they think).  Dr. Woodard says that using this material to teach about class in the media is an excellent entry point to begin talking about race as the students already will have experienced that their notions about their own class were in error.  She is willing to send the material to others and you may reach her at: jwoodard@mtsu.edu.

            I attended half of the CSW and half of the Commission on the Status of Minorities meetings because they were scheduled at the same time.

            At another MAC research session, “The Evolution of Cultural Citizens in the Media,” Kelly Poniatowski of Duquesne looked at the “whitening” of the most prominent Black 2006 Olympic hockey player.  Dr. David Oh of Denison gave a fascinating analysis of the media depiction of Michelle Rhee as a, “wicked Asian witch,” that plays on traditional negative stereotypes of Asians.  Western Washington’s Dr. Carolyn Nielsen compared the second level agenda setting messages about undocumented immigrants in Spanish language and mainstream U. S. newspapers.  Dr. Ali Mohammed of the University of the United Arab Emirates did a historical analysis of newspaper Civil Rights Movement coverage.

The Status of Women and the Media Beauty Myth

Wednesday, August 5, from 11:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m.

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

2009 Convention   *    Boston, Massachusetts   *   August 5-8

The Status of Women and the Media Beauty Myth

          In the media women, more than men, are regularly held to invalid, non work-related standards of so-called beauty that are an extension of racism, sexism, classism and ageism.  This panel explores how the media are teaching the public to hate and fear the queen-sized.

·         Jennifer Greer, Alabama: “Women, Credibility, and Appearance”

·         Tom Reichert, Georgia; Michael Nitz, Augustana College; Shuhua Zhou, Alabama; and Steve Smith, Georgia : "Prevalence of Sexy Cable Newscasters and Potential Effects"

·         Petra Guerra, University of Texas Pan American (MAC officer): “Women Anchors and Weight”

·         E-K. Daufin, Alabama State University (MAC officer and CSW member): “Fat is a Feminist (And Womanist) Media Issue”

·         Moderator: Laura Triplett, Head, Entertainment Studies Concentration (& CSW member) California State University, Fullerton

Contact Info: Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin, National Media Weight Discrimination Expert, Communication Department, ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY, 915 S. Jackson St., Montgomery, AL 36101-0271, 334-229-6885 and during the convention – Sheraton Boston Hotel