In Memoriam

Aaronette M. White

By Dean Sheldon Kamieniecki, University of California, Santa Cruz

I write with great sadness to inform you that Professor Aaronette M. White, associate dean of equity and social responsibility in the Division of Social Sciences, has died unexpectedly at age 51.

Her passing is a tremendous loss to her family and friends and all of us at UC Santa Cruz. She was a gifted professor of social psychology who loved teaching and was beloved by her students. She was an exceptional scholar who believed in putting theory into everyday life.

Professor White was the keynote speaker at the College Ten commencement exercises in June.

Just last month, she agreed to become associate dean in my office to help me maintain and increase the diversity of the faculty, staff, and students in the Social Sciences division. She told me she was excited by the challenge, and she also made it clear to me that being an associate dean was not going to keep her out of the classroom.

Professor White joined UC Santa Cruz in 2008. She earned her A.B. from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, she had affiliations with a variety of institutions around the world including Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University, the Missouri Institute of Mental Health, the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, and the University of Amsterdam.

She edited the book African Americans Doing Feminism: Putting Theory into Everyday Practice, her second collection of personal stories. Her earlier book, Ain’t I a Feminist? African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom focused on the feminist experiences of Black men.

She was working on two other books based on her year teaching and conducting research in Ethiopia on a Fulbright Fellowship. One would describe how Ethiopian women applied feminist theory in their everyday lives; the second was based on interviews with female combat veterans who fought in Ethiopia’s 17-year civil war.

Professor White was an incredibly dedicated researcher, teacher, and campus citizen who felt very strongly about increasing diversity in the Division of Social Sciences and across UCSC. Please join me in extending our heartfelt condolences to her family and her many friends and colleagues, on and off campus. Professor White will be very much missed by all who knew her.

Previously published:  http://news.ucsc.edu/2012/08/aaronette-white.html

Where She Entered:

Remembering Dr. Aaronette White

and Doing the Work of Feminism

By Stephanie Troutman, Ph.D., Berea College

This article was previously published on Mark Anthony Neal’s blog (New Black Man in Exile) at:

http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2012/08/where-she-entered-remembering-dr.html

It was with great disbelief, followed by sadness that I encountered the news of the untimely passing of scholar and activist, Dr. Aaronette White.  Her scholarship—focusing on feminism, critical psychology of race, trauma, and masculinity(ies)—is her legacy to the academic community.

Upon entering The Pennsylvania State University in Fall 2006, I registered for Dr. White’s Feminist Pedagogy and Research course.  Although I was impressed with her audacious brilliance, I cannot say that the road with Dr. White was an easy one.  When I reflect upon my time spent in her graduate seminars, I think of the many challenges, gauntlets, and outright confrontations encountered in that space.  However, older now—and hopefully wiser—I now recognize the deeper issues that drove Aaronette’s (as she insisted on being called by her students) passion and commitment to feminism and social justice.  Myself, now struggling to make a life in the academy as what some consider to be an ‘outspoken Black woman’, I look back on the times I spent with Aaronette with compassion, empathy and a greater sense of appreciation for all that she was striving to do with her feminism, her scholarship and her pedagogical practice.

Hers was what we might characterize as a ‘tough love’ approach to the realities of navigating the terrain of often hostile, institutional environments.  However, in spite of departmental drama (as she held multiple appointments and line structures) she was steadfast in producing critical, groundbreaking work.  She remained committed to activism.  She shared boldly, generously- and controversially, from her own personal experiences, demonstrating that the personal is indeed political.  She made it clear early in the course (a 6-person graduate seminar) that she was a stickler for timeliness and deadlines: no exceptions.

She openly spoke of her decision not to have children, and of her unwillingness to change the rules for those who did.  At the time, as a single-parent graduate student and mother of two—a toddler and a newborn—I experienced this information as an affront to my own choice of motherhood.  In spite of this, she went on to professionalize me in other ways, proving that feminism is not about being all things to all people, but that Black female scholars can support each other with other resources.

Recognizing the dearth of Black female graduate students in the Women’s Studies program at Penn State, she helped me prepare materials for application to the Dual Doctoral program.  She spent time showing me how to do more efficient research on areas that interested me.  In fact, the research skills she helped me to cultivate led to a successful final paper in her class, which would later become the basis and material of my first peer-reviewed journal publication.  Dr. White also made recommendations for coursework with other professors who became instrumental in my development as a feminist scholar.

Dr. Aaronette White’s work was always stellar and her uncompromising nature, I now understand to be the culmination of the treatment Black women are too often subject to when we dare to talk back and refuse to retreat.  In reminiscing with a few from my Penn State cohort who were in Dr. White’s class, upon the news of her death, I was reminded of how her model of difficulty met with varying degrees of classroom success: sometimes her methods, intended to encourage a healthy stretching of boundaries, left those boundaries shattered instead.  She not only assigned the text Teaching to Transgress (bell hooks, 1994) but insisted upon transgressive behavior through praxis: a lifelong commitment to the interrogation of the psychological possibilities of feminism toward changing interpersonal relationships and social institutions.  Intellectually excellent, her course curriculum was demanding, achieving both depth and breadth—leaving no stone unturned, no argument unexamined.

Dr. White’s research spanned the disciplines of Psychology, African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies.  She was beyond well versed in each of these fields and their subfields.  Her commitment to the publication of her book, Ain’t I A Feminist?, was her primary concern during the time I was student at Penn State.  Published by SUNY Press in 2008, Ain’t I a Feminist?: African American men Speak Out on fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom is a one of a kind book that explores masculine identity across a variety of sexual orientations through the lens of critical feminist psychology.  Ambitious in scope, the book also queries and exposes the multiple social and interpersonal ways in which Black men understand and practice forms of feminism.  While Dr. White published numerous articles across the fields of African-American Studies, Women’s Studies, and Psychology, Ain’t I a Feminist? is, definitively, her academic swan song.  It is a contemporary classic with relevant ongoing implications for studies in Black masculinity and Gender and Feminist Studies.

When the book was released; I pre-ordered it in spite of some of the difficult moments I’d had with Aaronette…why?  Because of her scholarly acumen; because of my own commitment to finding solidarity on the other side of conflict and disagreement; because as a feminist scholar I was beginning to understand that when she had spoken in class of the challenges associated with securing a book contract, it was for my future benefit—so I would know what the road ahead might hold for me. I thought a lot about the tense moments in class; in retrospect I realize that Dr. White’s transparency about her own personal/professional (the line often blurred) struggles was her way of showing vulnerability.  So much of her life at that time was dictated by institutional drama, the demands of going up for tenure, and finishing the book.  Ultimately, Dr. White was unable to resolve issues at Penn State, and in 2008 she accepted a position at UC Santa Cruz.

On some days, like for most scholars, the professor-grind was clearly weighing on her and weighing her down.  But at her best (which is how I prefer to remember her) she was an energetic, unyielding feminist scholar unlike any other I have met.  She encouraged her students to “not wait to start speaking up and speaking out,” warning us that as women (and women of color) the academy is all too prepared to silence us as graduate students, then again while waiting for tenure, and again while waiting for the next promotion or for the move into administration, etc.

She also acknowledged that fierce dedication to speaking one’s truth has consequences: that liberation comes with a price. I will never forget how she defined herself on her own terms. She shared once in class, that when one of her doctoral committee members asked her whether she intended to be an activist or a scholar, she boldly stated, “I didn’t know the two were mutually exclusive.”  True to form, she remained dedicated to achieving feminist praxis through her anti-rape, activist work on sexual violence against women and through her research and scholarship.  From what I can ascertain, Dr. Aaronette White shares her one of her most significant and abiding truths with us in the conclusion of Ain’t I Feminist?, stating that “…a feminist is not just someone you are automatically; it is a type of person one must continuously become.”

Stephanie Troutman is an Assistant Professor Women & Gender Studies and African/African-American Studies at Berea College.  She may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.