The Trauma of Historically white Institutions
Life as a Black student — particularly as Black student conscious of interlocking systems of oppression— at a HWI (Historically white Institution) is violent. This violence we face is sometimes physical, but the violence most often manifests covert and overt ways. So we, as Black folks, cannot merely live in the current moment; we cannot forget our past or else we are destined to repeat. We are constantly healing from intergenerational trauma while enduring new traumas in our fight for a more equitable system. We must also look toward the future, a future where people recognize white supremacy and battle to right the wrongs in our broken systems.
As Black students, #Mizzou’s pain is all of our pain and the incidents occurring at HWIs are not isolated. I do not say this as hyperbole, but empirical fact: #Mizzou, #FeesMustFall, and #Yale are the most recent national and international examples, but more many cases exist.
Our daily survival depends on acknowledging our intergenerational trauma without living solely in a place of Black Rage. But for Black students attending HWIs, “microaggression” is a misnomer. Microaggressions describe unintentional racism, sexism, or heterosexism, but the effects of these small pockets of time are far from “micro.” One particular aggression — like shock at how well-spoken we can be, “despite” our Blackness — does not break us down, but the barrage of microaggressions certainly doesn’t build us up.
Yet true concessions are only made when students demand an adequate and timely response to the onslaught of not just microaggressions, but blatant anti-Blackness. We saw this with Black student mobilization that led to the resignation of the Chancellor and President of the University of Missouri. We’re watching it happen at Yale, and we are paying close attention to the details in South Africa. And earlier this year at my own campus (UC Berkeley), our Black Student Union demanded change. But as I wrote before, an African American Student Initiative is not enough to stop anti-Blackness.
Alluded to in that same article is a professor whose behavior was so anti-Black that I dreaded attending his class twice a week. In fact, I stopped attending class at the end of the semester because of his constant microaggressions and the oppressive teacher-student dynamic that rendered me powerless. This cishetero white male professor had a habit of weaving racist and misogynistic rhetoric into almost every week of class. So much so that after one particularly disgusting comment in lecture, I began furiously scribbling in my notebook to keep from checking his behavior. Below is an excerpt from my poem, Adaptation:
at 11:10 on the dot
the professor’s words zoom out his mouth
like paper airplanes with one mission:
paper cuts so rough you suck your finger to recover
jelly-like arms gesticulate, lets call him an octopus
phrases dive bomb from ledges like adrenaline junkies
& he pauses to solicit responses but his
bassy ‘uh huhs’ slice eager mouths because
his bear belly & quick hands recall a stopwatch
forcing students into a rushed relay
trying to catch up to prof’s east coast speak
his mouth tosses epithets like
‘primitive’
to describe Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk
with the flick of a wrist as if swatting away a fly
The burden of being #BlackOnCampus is not ever feeling physically, mentally, or emotionally safe. A classmate wrote down his phrasing word for word: “rough and tumble primitive culture.” In a situation where your white male professor openly and repeatedly admits to seeing Black people as primitive, what do you do? One: do you try to get him fired while he still has control over your grade? Two: do you call him on his anti-Blackness? Three: skip number one, proceed to number two, and continue a career as a white apologist by writing poetry about your unfortunate physical reaction to these “microaggressions?” I chose the last option, after realizing that the battle would leave me with more scars than I could handle that semester. Others take action against anti-Blackness, and after seeing the bravery of so many Black students all over the world, I can’t help but wonder: did I make the right decision?
