Discourse, Orientalism, and Diversity at the University of Washington
By Marie Shimada
The mission statement of the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity at the University of Washington states:
The mission of the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity is to ensure the access and academic success of diverse populations through the advancement of knowledge, academic excellence, diversity, and the promotion of values, principles, and a climate that enriches the campus experience for all.[1]
In order to ensure this, the University has employed services to achieve this mission by offering special advisors, tutors, and other programs geared and appropriated for ethnic and financial minorities. These minorities, according to the OMA&D website, include “underrepresented, low income, first-generation and other underserved students.[2]” Because this explanation of minorities, found on the University of Washington’s website, is based on preconceived demographics, it does not appear that the individual students (who find themselves placed in these programs) have a say in whether they can identify themselves as any of these listed minority categories. To understand why the individual students may not have enough agency to label themselves as minorities, the works of Michel Foucault (via Stuart Hall) and Edward Said are introduced: Foucault’s definition of “discourse” presents a way to navigate how discursive practices may be harmful to minorities, and Said’s interpretation of “orientalism” and personal investment contributes to the understanding of how the OMA&D is the result of a discursive ideology.
By introducing Foucault’s systems of discourse the relationship of the OMA&D and the university as a form of discourse becomes clear. Stuart Hall, in “Foucault: Power, Knowledge, and Discourse”, explains how Foucault shifted attention from the use of “language” to “discourse” so he could demonstrate “discourse as a system of representation” (72). In reference to the University of Washington, the system of representation is the Office of Minority Affairs, and the minorities are what is being represented. Hall explains how Foucault believed that discourse was a characteristic way of thinking, not just one text, by stating how “discourse also influences how ideas are put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others” (72). The discursive “influence” that Hall mentions relates to how the OMA&D functions within the university because the OMA&D “regulates” the conduct of its minority students (by instituting them in programs based off of “underserved” demographics). Thus, minority is a discourse. This is not to say that “ethnicity” is a discourse, rather, just the concept of “to be” a “minority” is discourse. Hall writes: “Foucault argues that since we can only have a knowledge of things if they have a meaning, it is discourse- not the things-in-themselves- which produces knowledge” (73). Since the University has a knowledge of its minorities (“UW Undergraduate Enrollment Trends”[3]) then this must be a product of discourse, according to Foucault’s description of the production of knowledge.
There are elements enlisted by Foucault to strengthen the visible discourse surrounding “minority”. The first of these is a certain statement which gives knowledge about minorities: ethnic, financial (class), or even educational minorities exist within the University, as is noted on the Academic Data Management report from the Office of the Registrar (chart reporting statistics for minority enrollment, as well as general statistics).[4] Second, rules set up ways of talking about topics (“minorities”) at a particular historical moment. The third, and perhaps easiest to convey, is “subjects who in some ways personify the discourse…with the attributes we would expect those subjects to have” (73). The personification Foucault explains can be stated as “stereotypes”, and these provide the University with justification to categorize and assimilate its minorities because there are (presumably, according to Foucault) students who initiate or personify behaviors acquired to their minority’s discourse. The fourth of these elements states that this “knowledge” acquires authority- something which can be traced for minorities through histories of immigration, slavery, and hegemonic white culture. The fifth element describes the regulation of subjects within institutions. Is this not the very action of the OMA&D? It regulates its subjects (minorities) by allowing, even forcing (in my case, as I never applied to the program), them access to “instructional” practices. The sixth, and final, element states, “acknowledgement that a different discourse will arise at a later historical moment”: this has (and will) already happened (74). It has been noted that minorities are only minorities within a discourse, hegemony, or majority, and this is proven true by evidence indicated in the graphs for UW Undergraduate Enrollment Trends.[5] The result of these six elements is a clear one: “minorities” are not a minority until a discourse forms which points out the need, or space, for a minority.
Summarizing his views on what “orientalism” is, Edward Said, in Orientalism, states, “I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (1). Although the OMA&D is not literally “oriental,” the concept of the minorities represented within the OMA&D translates to Said’s concept of the Orient, situating the University as the “Western” experience. Said’s thesis of Orientalism is that “orientalism” is very real, but it is appropriated by European experience in the “West” (France and England). “Orientalism” demonstrates that minorities are, likewise, a real thing, but their “minority” experience relies very much on that of hegemonic white culture in the University. To make this point clearer, Said explains that the designation of Orientalism is one of an academic pursuit. Orientalism is studied. There are doctrines and theses and statistics and demographics all arranged upon ideas of Orientalism. The same situation can be applied to the OMA&D. As evidenced by the graphs and statistics from the Enrollment Trends and Data Management websites (previously cited), there are studies regarding minorities and minority studies within the University and academia. These studies may produce different results than those on Orientalism, but including the academic pursuit of “minority” while also attempting to assimilate minorities within the University is easily applied to what Said is talking about when he describes “orientalism.”
In Orientalism, Said describes “the personal dimension” (25). Here, Said quotes Gramsci stating, “The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date…” (25). So, at this point, I find it appropriate to insert myself into this writing- personally. That is what this is, after all, a critical elaboration of what I really am: a minority. And, it is only through Said that I am able to insert my minority-ness into this paper to produce awareness of the discursive practices occurring within the University of Washington, as well as the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. Said explains that his personal investment in Orientalism comes from being labeled an Oriental himself (he was a middle-eastern growing up in the cultures of Western Europe and the United States). Mine, not as drastic, is similar in that I am labeled a minority, whether I choose to be or not, within the University. This labeling would not be so significant if not for the OMA&D always protruding onto my identity. Now, whenever I need advising, I must consult options within the OMA&D. Should I find myself in a scientifically challenging course, I am told to consult with tutors trained to work with “minorities” at the Instructional Center. And finally, most damaging of all, I am grouped and categorized together with hundreds or maybe thousands of other minorities when the University needs to publish its statistics on “minority education” (referring to Enrollment Trends and Data Management). What I am not, however, is a student incognito, performing “student” without having to be reminded of my ethnic make-up. Just as Said writes in his attempts to remain critically conscious, he (and I) has never lost hold of the cultural reality that surrounds us, one of discourse, as we are observed by the institutions containing us.
Now that I have explained my own stake in “minority affairs,” I can retroactively insert Said’s clarification of “political knowledge” (9). Said writes, “No one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life” (10). No knowledge is nonpolitical, which helps me demonstrate just how political the OMA&D really is (by appropriation of Said). The existence and product of the OMA&D allows for nearly all minority work to exist, given their office’s mission statement. This is political because the University of Washington has a vested interest in maintaining certain “diversity” protocols in order to appeal to prospective students and organizations (companies-such as Boeing) from whom the University wishes to gain monetary support.
Because I am tired of being a price tag while also attempting to fund my own cost, I propose using Foucault’s discourse as a call to action, both by the OMA&D and its students, to attempt to dissolve the need for minority discourse within academia and within the University. Hall explains how Foucault described that “it was only after a certain definition of ‘madness’ was put into practice, that the appropriate subject- the ‘madman’ as current medical and psychiatric knowledge defined him- could appear” (74). Is it not obvious that we, the students belonging to the OMA&D and its affiliated minority programs, are the very “madman” being discussed by Foucault? It was not necessary to label us “minority” until the University realized the potential to capitalize on us. We are “minority” only so long as academia continues to call us “minority.” But the only way to navigate away from the label of minority is to understand why we are minorities, to understand why the University does and must capitalize on us, in order to benefit from our statistical underdog achievements. Why can’t we be minority without having to get discursive?
A solution to the originally proposed dilemmas I faced can be uncovered by combining, instead of comparing, Said and Foucault. In his introduction to Orientalism, Said states his belief that “Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a veridic discourse about the Orient” (6). When Orientalism and the OMA&D are situated with each other, however, discourse about minorities is just as real as discourse about the Orient. True, power signs are definitely occurring between Western Europe and the Orient, but that does not mean discourse is occurring any less so, as Said believed it. What I need in order for the OMA&D to be viewed by others as a discursive power is for Said to allow for Orientalism to likewise be viewed in a more discursive aspect, since I am aligning Orientalism with the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. This will then help (hopefully) students and individuals labeled “minority” by the University to realize their role within this discourse, which should (also hopefully) spark a new discourse to arise on how the University is to label its subjects. I shall also have to insist on rearranging the role of the individual within Foucault’s concepts of power, knowledge, and discourse. Foucault believes, as Hall explains, “It is discourse, not the subjects who speak it, which produces knowledge” (79). As much as Foucault wants to believe this, I must argue against it, for the individuals, at one point, produced a discourse which labeled individuals as they (those in power) saw fit. If Foucault, as Said has demonstrated, could understand the significance of the role of the individual within discourse, then those labeled “minority” could have more reason to initiate space for a new discourse to arise. In an attempt to understand how the Office of Minority Affairs functions within the University of Washington, we can use discourse and orientalism to demonstrate how minorities arise in academia. A new discourse, I believe, could allow minorities to grasp their own educations and not allow the University to appropriate their experiences by means of a “minority” discourse.
Works Cited
Hall, Stuart. “Foucault: Power, Knowledge, and Discourse.” London: Sage, 1997.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.
[1] Mission Statement. http://www.washington.edu/omad/about-omad/
[2] OMA&D Assessment. http://www.washington.edu/omad/about-omad/omad-assessment/
[3] Graph labels all specified minorities according to UW enrollment, 2011. http://www.washington.edu/diversity/diversitystats2011.pdf
[4] “Quick Stats” Seattle Campus, 2013. http://depts.washington.edu/reptreq/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Quick_Stats_Spr2013_Seattle.pdf
[5] The graph for “Asian” is no longer grouped with that of other minorities. http://www.washington.edu/diversity/diversitystats2011.pdf
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