“Decolonize the canon.” Sounds innovative, creative, and timely and has so much potential to ignite social change in ways academia has never imagined. As a student who’s traveled through “colonized” academia, decolonization is music to my ears. But as a first-generation Eritrean American, graduate student, and woman of color, I struggle to answer, are our professors ready for this drastic shift? Ready, meaning are they prepared to answer the difficult questions about the sociological canon that for many years centralized the academic work of predominantly white men, often disregarding scholars of color and women because they deemed them incapable of producing meaningful intellectual thought? To think brilliant minds like W.E.B DuBois at a point in history were viewed as unable to produce meaningful scholarship that was “objective” is mind-boggling; of course, we now have contemporary theorists, like Julian Go (2020), who argue no one can be objective, rather everyone theorizes from different social positions. It also makes me question where the objectivity police were when white scholars were advancing Eurocentric work about themselves? The fact that those beliefs still permeate academic spaces today perpetuates harm in deeply rooted ways, ways that only a student of color can really fathom. Imagine sitting in a classroom where you are already in the racial minority. Still, then you read the work of solely white men and sometimes women, who theorize about your existence without your consent. People of color transform into objects of study yet cannot serve as subject matter experts. Don’t we have a problem here? Having been a sociology major as an undergrad, my doctoral program is the first time I am seeing the names DuBois and Frantz Fanon, to name a few, on a course syllabus. And quite honestly, 2022 is a little late to recognize how the exclusion of scholarship forwarded by people of color inflicts harm on students. 

 The lack of diversity in thought is an issue I have always struggled with, but the lack of classroom safety is even more disturbing. I am not naïve to the fact that I was exposed to scholarship that was excluded from the canon because I had a forward-thinking African American professor who took the challenge to recreate his classical theory course into a theory of social foundations course. What I note above constantly makes me think about the concept of safety. If people of color were viewed as objects of study by white scholars, such as Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, whose scholarship was socially accepted. How can we assume students of color are safe in classrooms today while we discuss and dissect the harm their work inflicted on communities that deviated from Eurocentric ways of thinking and living? If safety wasn’t at the forefront when problematic scholarship was developed and forwarded about people of color, people with disabilities, or mental health issues, how can we expect engaging in dialogue to be safe? More importantly, how can we expect teachers to facilitate difficult conversations? I ask these questions because I have often felt unsafe in classrooms and quite honestly I am tired. 

It was a theory course, and on the first day of class, we found ourselves reading a text which cited a problematic scholar as required reading. I was unfamiliar with the scholar, but one of my classmates was and she subsequently asked about the rationale for continuing to include highly problematic scholarship when the purpose is to decolonize the curriculum. What I view as a very reasonable question was one that was responded to with such anger. I found myself asking, why is this student and our class being shamed for asking a legitimate question? Students come to the classroom to learn and are challenged to ask questions, bring forth ideas, and engage in dialogue to understand and apply theoretical and conceptual frameworks to current social problems. So whose class is it? It quite certainly does not feel like it’s mine. Observing how one question led to one hour of scolding by our teacher quite honestly gave me very little hope in decolonization. My training in human behavior taught me that this emotional response was much more than answering a challenging question. We can proclaim decolonizing the canon, but what about our mindset? How do we decolonize that? Can we? What do we do with the mindset that has emboldened people with the privilege to do what they want, when they want, and how they want it? More importantly, how do we address this in the classroom? Why aren’t we asking about safely decolonizing? Why aren’t we focusing on how that might feel? It will most certainly feel uncomfortable, but it is critical to reflect on why our classrooms quickly cater to white discomfort, while normalizing students of color who experience these feelings incessantly.

An inability to think about how decolonization changes the classroom will inevitably set classes up for failure. My class was a failure. It is not that I did not read exceptional scholars, but my professor created an unsafe environment making my voice unwelcome and my perspective insignificant. The questions set forth by people who looked like me were responded to as though they lacked merit. I was blatantly ignored. I felt anxious every class, despite loving the content. So, I love the idea of decolonizing but am skeptical. Some ways I think classrooms and professors could “safely decolonize” is by reflecting on personal bias. Thinking about the trigger points for professors. I don’t expect professors to be invincible and magically hold no opinions about most issues that come up in our classroom, but I do hope they can realize their blindspots and consult their colleagues about how to maintain safe space for students that have drastically differing viewpoints and perspectives. 

Decolonizing is long overdue and happening way too fast, all at the same time. My class taught me that some of our professors aren’t ready, and maybe I am not either. I also wonder whether decolonization means disregarding the work of scholars like Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. I don’t think it can because that would be hypocritical. You left us out, so now we are leaving you out doesn’t seem like the right approach. I do think there could be more explicit context on the historical underpinnings that were present when these works were written and a more thorough conversation as to why they are detrimental. I think there is a way to address their contributions to society while acknowledging they were constructed to represent a specific group of people – white people. Either way, much more work is needed before we can decolonize the canon. It has to be  more than updating syllabi. There needs to be an ideological shift that relinquishes the power dynamics that currently give students and professors of privilege the perceived right to delegitimize contributions made by students of color with no consequence. We have to be willing to completely reimagine how we understand human behavior and its social implications for how we produce meaningful social change as global citizens.

Selam Kidane is a doctoral student in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at UCSF.

This blog is part of the series called Inquiring Minds: On Decolonizing the Sociological Canon. Students came together to write this series on harmful literature in the sociological canon, which features 5 blog posts.

1. Confronting Canon and Empire by Kourtney Nham
2. What Does the Writer Owe the Reader? by Kate LaForge
3. Embodied Experiences Navigating Harmful Literature by Brittney Pond
4. Institutions of Higher Learning Must Do More by Berty Arreguin
5. Whose Class is it, Anyways? by Selam Kidane