The Chair is an emblematic display of how our institutions are white supremacist to their core
“Why should they trust us?” Ji-Yoon says of the students protesting outside her office. “The world is burning and we’re sitting here worried about our endowment.”
Sandra Oh’s performance in The Chair has been resonating with me in the ways in which it engages with the interactions of women of color in predominately white institutions, where tenure is hard to come by, and even more impossible to make a reality given the current state of academic and the instability that comes with the institution. Although this was a show about academic, it quickly resonated with me because it spoke to my own experiences of having to work with white priviledged people and how I continue to deal their own calousness toward women of color who begin the climb upward.
One thing (out of the many) that Ji-Yoon touches on is how her mother refused to make her do housework and instead told her to study so she become somewhere and do things with her life. While not denigrating homemakers, it spoke to my own mother and the values she instilled in me of focusing on my studies and fight to take opportunities that were not otherwise available to her. I think our mothers have been very early examples of how we should be focusing on the things that really matter instead of trying to tidy up other peoples spaces and trying to be the crisis manager everywhere. I believe the show attempted to carry on that messaging as well. Ji-Yoon struggled incredibly to manage many fires and was involved with having to repeatedly advocate for Bill in front of the university leadership, or running around to try prevent university donors from buying themselves a seat at the table and the rocky relationship Ji-Yoon has with her adopted child. He was also interesting to see how she defies the traditional gender expectations to drop everything and move with their partner wherever they're going.
What people do not understand -what white people do not understand- is that being in one place is a privilege that not many have. Whether it be in an university setting, geographic location or occupation. Throughout the show it's apparent that the white faculty that are tenured in the university feel a sense of entitlement to either putting Ji-Yoon in her role as department chair, just to make it look like they are on board with having women of color lead in the time that they set her her up to fail. Ji-Yoon even mentions this when she says:
“I feel like someone handed me a ticking time bomb because they wanted to make sure a woman was holding it when it explodes,
It's like they let the match blow up in their faces but still delegating to her that she has to keep trying to put it out. The faculty also act entitled to their positions despite not updating their syllabus and being receptive to student feedback that could help improve the quality of their courses and not doing anything to further connect with their students in the new era that they are in in order to best teach the course material. Professor Holland’s attitude towards students submitting Rate My Professor reviews and lighting her reviews on fire [where she actually had to put out a literal fire] shows just how little regard she has for the opinions of those who might help her become better at her job. Something that didn’t sit right was how Professor Yasmin McKay is forced to teach her class with Professor Rentz (who clearly felt like his position as a old white man entitled him to take his failed teaching methods to her exciting class and treating her like a TA).
Bill's continued arrogance towards understanding what his students are mad about (making a Nazi salute in class) ultimately led to his own downfall however, he keeps looking to Jeeyune to clean up the mess that he leaves behind even though he is not apologetic at all. While he makes it clear that he is not a Nazi sympathizer, the problem continues to fall on the department chair to continue to swoop in and try to save this white man from himself. Ji-Yoon even mentions this when she says:
Professor Elliot Rentz also made me irritated because it was as if he could not accept that he needed to respect Professor Yaz McKay and the scholarship that is clearly drawing students to take her courses and succeed at them. What is interesting to see if the combined efforts of Dean Paul Larson, Professors Holland and Rentz to pile on crisis to Professor McKay and Department Chair Ji-Yoon as if they — as women of color nonetheless, were waiting near by with a broom and a mop to help with the spill of emotions that white faculty are having with changing times and an inability & unwillingness to help change with the times.
In the organizing world I feel like I've encountered these things myself we're white folks have been so uncomfortable with the fact that organizers of color are taking up more space and demanding more resources be given to their work that they just don't know how to deal with all of this while making it the fault of people of color and blaming them for being in the space in the first place. I acutely felt the pain that was radiating off of Ji Yoon as she tried her best and it still wasn’t enough.
I've been thinking about the political world that I exist in where white folks have the same entitlement when it comes to running for office or taking up space. They feel like it's their God-given right to demand their place as they see fit. It's never about giving marginalized people space to help solve the situation is that we are being impacted by the most but always a demanding that they have power instead of people of color who are under-represented for.
I would highly recommend watching the six episode series, because it's a hilarious, cringe he, eye-opening experience. Sandra Oh put together in six episodes what faculty no doubt feel across a lifetime.
Academics Comment on The Chair
Critiques of the show gathered on Twitter to express how the show is an inaccurate portrayal of academia but also the accurate show of how women of color in the show feel weighed down with the white expectations and are mistreated.
What is also interesting is the fact that the dynamics between women of color on the show makes it harmful for them both to be active in their own view. Meaning the professor McKay as mentioned earlier before in this post has been paired with Professor Rentz when it is clear that he doesn’t value the new and bold ways of teaching that Professor McKay brings into the classroom.
Nancy Wang Yuen interviewed Sandra Oh about playing Ji-Yoon about her role on The Chair says that the show is emblematic of how women of color inherit ‘broken systems and are in charge of changing them.’
Nancy Wang Yuen was the first department chair in her own university too. Here is what she had to say which was insightful:
Despite never attending a traditional university herself — she graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada — Oh approaches each of Ji-Yoon’s calamities with so much verisimilitude that I squirmed and laughed in recognition. When she tells dean Paul Larson (David Morse) the college faculty is “is 87% white” and “for the last five years you’ve put the same picture of me on our recruitment brochure,” for example. Or when she says, “Why should [students] trust us? The world is burning and we’re sitting up here worried about our endowment? Our latest ranking on U.S. News & World Report?” And when she talks about her lifelong love of teaching, I saw my own love for students reflected.
The term "Glass Cliff" is a phenomenon that I've never been able to put into words when it has come to my own life experience but now that I know that is used to define when organizations put women and BIPOC into a crisis situation because nobody else wants to deal with it so they think that women will be more inclined to help "clean up the mess". So while we are encouraged as women at home to focus on our homework and studies, we end up going into the professional world with people who are inclined to see us fail because they've already set us up to fail. If we are unable to deal with situations that are clearly not going to work out, we can become the scapegoat for an organization when they do not accomplish goals that they set out to accomplish.
Beyond the reasons boards of directors or other decision-makers within organizations decide to elevate women in times of crisis, there is also the question of the women themselves and the personality traits some of them possess that cause them to step in while others might stand down.
Cook and Glass in separate research interviewed top executives at Fortune 500 companies and looked at their career trajectories over time. What they found was that women who reached the C-suite took risky positions throughout their careers in order to be more visible and prove their leadership capabilities. Some characterized themselves as “turnaround artists.”Beyond the reasons boards of directors or other decision-makers within organizations decide to elevate women in times of crisis, there is also the question of the women themselves and the personality traits some of them possess that cause them to step in while others might stand down.
It makes me think about the fact that New York State has never elected a female governor. Now that Governor Cuomo is leaving on Monday because of his sexual-harassment allegations in the fallout from being held responsible for his actions towards those who worked for him, we are seeing the first female governor in Kathy Hochul. In a scenario where people would never elect a woman to elected office much less governor of a state like New York, this is New York's glass cliff moment. This speaks to the moment of crisis that we are in not only because of COVID-19, but also because of the natural disasters that threaten to peel back what little recovery New York has managed to get to.
Time will only tell whether or not, Governor Kathy Hochul will be able to defy the odds of the glass cliff she’s been thrust on to.
