Sorry, I missed the part where you proved or even provided suggestive evidence that your friend's race was the cause of this treatment. As you may recall from the old fora, many white Ph.D. candidates can tell similar stories of arbitrary rule in doctoral programs. Not every bad thing that happens to a "B"lack person is due to anti-"B"lackness. Assuming a causal relationship where non exists is sloppy thinking. Try to knock it off.
Give me a break, buddy. You shouldn't go around discussions applying stronger standards of evidence to your interlocutors than you're willing to apply to yourself.
It's entirely possible my friend is an illiterate moron whose work just isn't up to snuff. I know that's not the case, however, so I can easily dismiss that explanation. Since I'm acquainted with people in that department, and know some of the (explicitly racist) things that were said to and about her, I can start to form my own conclusions. Since her experiences in other departments have been different, and her experiences in that department were so consistent and limited to her, because her experiences are so similar to the experiences other Black people and people of colour report about their own graduate educations, and because I've had similar experiences of my own when I've been mis-raced (which happens a lot even though I'm white), I'm pretty satisfied that my read of the situation is accurate. In fact, when these things started happening to her I dismissed them for a while, figuring that it was probably something else at work. As more and more incidents accumulated, however, and as I came to know some of the people in that department, that explanation became less and less plausible. I take it as a pretty strong indication that these problems have disappeared now that she's transferred again.
But this isn't a legal proceeding. I'm just reporting on a friend's experience trying to make it through the professional meat-grinder, which hasn't been especially easy (contrary to your own entirely unsubstantiated claims, I might add), and expressing the
opinion that I wouldn't trade my (easy!) experience for hers.
It's entirely possible--even likely--that when you look at individual instances, other factors are involved. Misogyny, for instance, was probably involved in some of the cases. Some of those factors might even seem entirely benign. There's nothing wrong with holding students to high standards, for example. But when you're only holding some students who share a particular characteristic in common to those higher standards, a problem starts to emerge. When you put all the incidents together a pattern emerges, and it's not a pattern that reflects well on that department, even if they don't all go around wearing white hoods. 'Systemic racism' doesn't mean the system is full of racists.
For comparison's sake, I know a few female professors who are much harder on their female students than their male students. They're even explicit about doing this, and about holding them to much higher standards. The rationale is that it's hard to be a woman in this profession (true!), and you need to develop a thick skin and indefatigable attitude (true true!), so they're doing them a favour by helping them learn these lessons early. They mean well. But it's clear for all to see that their male advisees sail through the process without any trouble, while almost none of their female advisees graduate. In departments where it's already hard to be a woman (e.g. because there are almost no female faculty or graduate students), this kind of "advising" is not actually all that helpful. In fact, it's paradigmatically
bad advising. It makes a bad situation much worse. And yes, it's discriminatory, even if their hearts are in the right place.
Apparently the actress playing Harriet Tubman was unacceptable in the recent film since she wasn't the right kind of black. (Not "ADOS" or American Decedents of Slavery but a ((!)) British actress).
"British people taking our roles" is the Hollywood version of "immigrants taking our jobs".
FWIW, this is a real issue in British cinema. There are very few opportunities for Black British actors at home, especially in leading and key supporting roles, but comparatively many in the US. So there's this whole acting drain going on. Things have gotten better in Britain in recent years, but it's still especially hard, and so the pipeline is still there.
But as far as Zoë Saldaña is concerned, the problem wasn't that she's British, because she's not. She's American. Her mother was Puerto Rican, and her father was a Haitian Dominican. Nor, as I understand the controversy, is the problem that she's not Black--she is, unquestionably. Rather, the problem is that the filmmakers darkened her skin and gave her facial prosthetics so that she could better approximate Nina Simone's look. And that cleaves a little too close to blackface, especially when the people in charge of making these decisions are white men.
