ABSTRACT
In his historic 2008 presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama inspired thousands of his supporters with an inspirational slogan he borrowed from South Carolina community activist Edith Childs. In the call-and-response tradition of plantation field slaves, the black church, and the civil rights movement, Obama, along the campaign trail, asked throngs of supporters if they were fired up. The crowd responded, “Ready to go!” With enthusiasm similar to that which the Millennial electorate exuded at those historic political rallies, so do Millennial faculty entering their first tenure-track position. However, emerging faculty of color need to be aware that academia operates in a vacuum of microaggressions, such as microinsults, microinvalidations, microassaults (Sue, 2010), and other forms of hostile behavior designed to curb your enthusiasm. JoAnn Moody also argues academia is a complex environment in which majority white campuses treat faculty of color as though they are “invisible” at times; when convenient, they become “super-visible” (2004, p. 153). On their way to tenure, their contributions are often devalued, marginalized, ignored, and, in some cases, appropriated. Because of these challenges we encounter in academia, faculty of color belong to an endangered cohort.
