on being 'marked'

I just need to put this down in words before it slips out of my consciousness. As South African's our research is marked - for being strange and exotic or for not being strange or exotic enough. These are thoughts of LT who did a presentation at the Ethnographies of Academic Literacies seminar I attended on Friday. Today sitting in a session about 'disadvantaged' as a deficit term in SA higher education discourse - I felt marked - in a negative way. I almost thought as if 'we' - meaning all the South African academic's contributing to the discussion, at the almost exclusion of everyone else in the room, were just navel gazing at our 'strangeness' and I wondered if we are as strange as we believe we are. I felt that burden of being marked.

Then another black South African raised the issue of how discussing the notion of 'disadvantaged' reflects so much on her, she was wondering how researching 'disadvantage' might be enhanced by the researcher being 'disadvantaged', so that the 'disadvantaged' persons voice could be heard. She continued, saying that in order for her to become an academic she had to give up a lot of her blackness  (I'm paraphrasing here so probably I'm not fully capturing the essence of her feelings) BUT what I want to say is that my immediate response to her comment, already framed by this overwhelming sense of being 'marked' was - hang on - I'm Black and I've researched 'disadvantage' students - recognise me, or am I not Black enough? Also the argument that only woman, black people, disabled people etc...can research issues affecting this as no theoretical or methodological basis any more.Secondly, I thought, why do you have to give up the one thing to take on something else? Not all Black academics give up their blackness in order to fit into a white academic culture.

To really challenge deficit thinking in HE firstly we have to embrace and recognise the differences that our students bring to the academic context and then we need to help them negotiate the choices and options they have, helping them to understand the different practices that make up the academic environment to the extent that they can, at that moment, of their learning. With choice comes consequences, and choices aren't neutral or equal to everyone, so that is a further layer that we should help students navigate. Education is inherently unequal and its in the interest of the powerful in society that this hegemonic view persists - do we will also have some version of the deficit discourse floating around out there. Its how we choose, if we have the courage, the understanding, the support, the inclination, to confront those discourses - even when they refer to us - that might help us to deal with the 'marking' such discourses ingrain.