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Ethnic/racial minority faculty continue to be underrepresented in the U.S. professoriate, representing only about 6 percent of all professors in the academy.1 Obstacles for reaching the academy abound, including institutional racism, socioeconomic barriers, and, for Latinas, traditional gender role expectations.2 Once Latinas overcome these obstacles and "make it" into the academy, they, like other faculty of color, face yet another set of obstacles, including experiences of racial tokenism, overt and covert racism, and stigmatization. These experiences are generally grounded in the undermining attitudes and behaviors of people within the institution.
Largely as a result of these experiences, faculty of color may also undermine their own competence. That is, they may fall victim to stereotype threat, which is defined as being vulnerable to internalizing the negative stereotypes about one's own group in a given situation, even when one does not endorse these stereotypes.3 A prevalent stereotype about Latinas/os and African Americans is lack of competence in academic domains, making faculty from these groups particularly vulnerable to the self-undermining effects of stereotype threat.4 This situation reflects a threat and vulnerability independent of the behavior and attitudes of colleagues. As a result, the obstacles faced by faculty of color involve interactive forces of two types of undermining-that done by others, and the self-undermining of competence.
Such was the case with my first faculty experience. I went from having strong feelings of self-efficacy in the academy to wondering why I had the arrogance to think I could succeed in an academic career. Only distance from that experience has enabled me to analyze the processes that occurred during those first four shaky years as an assistant professor. Based on a daily journal I kept during that time period, the following is an analysis of that situation in which I illustrate how the insidious, psychologically damaging processes of stereotype threat, tokenism, stigma, and related racism may occur. While publishing this personal essay represents a certain amount of personal risk, I believe it is important to openly discuss the effects of what is a reality for many people of color in academia. It is my hope that this article will help illuminate these processes such that others either just entering academia or struggling to survive in the academy may benefit from enhanced...