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BN: Now, I want to ask you, going back to your academic career. You had mentioned that just the that -- the fact that you were a woman and Asian and that you had trouble with people taking you seriously in your field. I wonder if you could talk a little about that.

SH: Well, the last conference that I went to -- well, no, I went to one after that. But right before I retired, the last conference I went to was in Ottawa. And I was part of a workshop on film history. And I knew a gal named Marina Heung who was teaching in the CUNY system. And she and I and another gal named Esther Yao -- we had met at a coffee shop in Pittsburgh and organized the -- what we call APAC, Asian Pacific American Caucus. Anyway, I talked her into coming to the workshop; it was well-attended. And then afterwards she said, "You know, this Black guy was there and he left. And after he left I was the only nonwhite person there." So, you know, I don't think it's changed all that much. A friend of mine with whom I have stayed in touch--but not so much lately--she told me that she went to these conferences and always noticed how white it was. And she organized a panel of Black women and she said, "Guess where they put us? Eight o'clock in the morning." So I think this is a real issue.

Right before I retired, (I went on the internet and) I wondered, "Who gets to write about what, and why?" If you are a so-called person of color, your expertise is limited to your culture, or the history of your racial or racialized people, etc. And I went to school before multiculturalism so I didn't pay attention to that. But it has not been lost on me that I could have gone much further in my academic career if I had written about --oh, you know -- about Issei women who immigrated to this country, or something like that. But you know, I'm writing about silent film. And my last book and my last two essays have been about the fan magazines. All right, so I'm not writing about subject matter that has to do with Asians or Asian Americans. And I find that because that's not the case, that I'm much more suspect as a scholar. Already I'm suspect. I remember having this discussion with a guy who I phoned one night. I wound up on the nominating committee of the Society for --well, it's now the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. And the person who was selected to run for office decided not to run, and then there was this opening. And it was dumped in my lap and I thought, "Oh, I'm not going to -- well I'm tired of this anyway." And I called this, you know, Asian guy and I said, "Do you want to run for this office?" And that was a way of getting him on. But, you know, he did not start out being interested in Asian American cinema but he wound up specializing in that field. And I heard somewhere that Gary Okihiro started out writing about Blacks. Okay?

So, you know, now there's all this brouhaha about appropriation. If a white person -- I mean, like, why is a white woman the president of JANM, the CEO of JANM, or whatever? Okay, so is that a form of cultural appropriation? What do you want to do about that? I mean these are real, very difficult issues because they involve resources, jobs, you know, positions, money, power, recognition, etc. You name it. All right, it's all on the line here. And so I'm always suspect about positions that people take on this issue, but I am really fed up. I mean just because you're Russian doesn't mean that you're not qualified to write about Scandinavian history or Japanese history. But, you know, if you're a so-called person of color, your area of expertise is severely delimited. And I once asked someone, "Why is it that you're" -- this is a nominating committee too --"Why are you running two people of color for this office? Why is that?" She said, "Well, otherwise people wouldn't vote for them." So, you know, what exists is a result, too, of trying to circumnavigate around the issue, but it's there. It's there and it's not going away. So, you know, I've had a lot of problems because I'm Asian American and a woman -- that I'm not writing about . . . . I did write about women a lot, that I did do.

BN: Do you think the situation has improved over time, or are we, yeah, has it not changed much?

SH: Well, you know, I haven't been in academia since I retired over twenty years ago. My guess is that I don't think it's improved. You know, there was this series on called The Chair; it was on Netflix.

BN: Oh right, yeah.

SH: I wrote a letter about a review of that in the TLS, and my letter was published. Basically what I said was that as a woman who was, you know, a woman of color, who was a professor, I found that my relationships with white women as well as with women of color in academia could become rather toxic. And so we're not natural allies; we're just not. And I think it's just better to be wide-eyed about that. I don't think it's changed all that much. I'm just guessing because I'm just irate that all these right-wingers think that academe is a hotbed of liberalism and radicalism. No, it's not. It's very conservative, it's elitist, it's racist.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.