Mentoring White Guys

A black English professor explains why the white-privilege set needs her help.

- Salamishah Tillet

I was skeptical when Sam entered my office asking me to be his mentor. He was a twenty something white man with blond streaks and the laid-back vibe of a native Californian whose dream was to do money ball analytics for Major League Baseball. I’m an African American assistant professor of English who teaches classes on race, gender, and popular culture. Was Sam one of those whites who wished he were black? Could he be trying to get a better beat on a black girlfriend, or feeling guilty about some racist incident in his past? Don’t get me wrong—Sam was an English major and seemed like a good guy, but not considering the motives of white people is a luxury black people can’t afford.

I also remembered something one of my undergraduate mentors, Farah Jasmine Griffin, the first black woman tenured in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania, had warned me about: Whatever their race, students tend to assume that young African American female professors will always be available to them. “Sometimes they act like we’re their mothers,” she said. “Or worse yet, their mammy.”