Open Letter to the Black students in the Princeton University Class of 2020
Welcome to Princeton!
We are students in the Black Justice League and we want to welcome you to Princeton’s campus. For the past two years, we have worked tirelessly to make Princeton University a more just place for Black students from across the diaspora. We have protested, organized, held a sit in, attended early morning meetings with administrators, laughed with one another, cried when things became overwhelming, and built community with one another. We believe in using our education here at Princeton to think critically about systems of oppression, and we speak out so the students behind us can walk this lush campus with some ease.
While we do not demand that you all become student activists for racial justice, we want you to know that the privilege of being a Princetonian comes with the responsibility to ensure that you graduate Princeton having made it a little better than it was when you arrived. Black people around the world have a rich tradition of resistance to racism, and Black Princetonians are no different. In 1971, students of color organized to establish the Thirld World Center, or what is now the Carl A. Fields Center. In the spring of 1973, Black students demanded a space specifically for the Black community, since the number of Black students was increasing. In the fall of 1973, Black students protested having physicist William Shockley as a guest speaker in a public debate. He was still able to come, and argued that Black people were genetically inferior to white people. In 1978, Princeton’s Association of Black Collegians demanded Princeton divest from stock in companies that facilitated apartheid in South Africa. Since then, Black students have been building community within affinity spaces, and in 2014, we began organizing to continue what our Black predecessors had started. We stand on the backs of the people before us who have resisted, and so do you.
The excitement of being admitted to Princeton can be equal parts overwhelming and wonderful. This does not mean that when you see injustice, you are to simply be grateful for being admitted and suffer in silence (but beware, that is what many of your classmates and alumni claim). It does not mean that it cannot stand to be a better place for your future Black children, should they choose to attend your alma mater, or any other black student coming here in the future. During your tenure at Princeton, in your studies, professors will ask you not to just analyze what is there, but why it is there, and how it got that way. Just as that applies to a poem or a coding assignment, it applies to campus life outside of the classroom. Use this time to ask why, and to think about how systems of power work. How are they at work on this campus, specifically? How do they manifest themselves in our quotidian experiences? We are still learning these things, and invite you on the emotional and intellectual journey of making Princeton a more just place.
Yet moving toward justice does not mean seeing everyone under the fallacy of colorblindness, nor does it mean silencing marginalized voices for the comfort of the powerful. Justice means recognizing the many ways Black people on this campus were marginalized before they became Princetonians, and how we continue to be marginalized now that we are here. We will continue to do that and we want you to know that should you choose that path, you have partners in us. First, there are some things we encourage you to keep in mind about campus protest and organizing.
Black students initiated nation-wide conversations on the meanings of protest, intellectual freedom, and constitutional freedom of speech. What began as an attempt to address and redress racist legacies has been diluted into a debate on whether or not it was acceptable to make racist statements in a living and learning community. We, the Black Justice League, called for Princeton to mandate racial competency training for faculty, require that one of the distributional requirement courses include a class on the history of a group of marginalized people, Black affinity spaces, and the removal of the name of Woodrow Wilson from the Public Policy School. Last school year, we, the BJL, along with many other students, held a sit-in in President Eisgruber’s office to call his attention to the aforementioned demands. This was the last straw after many meetings with President Eisgruber, current Vice President Calhoun and her predecessor VP Cherrey, and countless other administrators. Many of us even suggested and then co-chaired and sat on the University Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, as well as served on various other committees dedicated to these issues.
We are still pursuing amendments to the distributional requirement, competency training for faculty and staff, and a critical thinking of legacies on Princeton’s campus. As of yet, Princeton’s administration has done very little, if anything, to address any of these concerns.
Still, we have not forgotten the backlash from our peers and some faculty during and after the sit-in. While some students and faculty fallaciously believe that Black students seeking affinity spaces separate ourselves because of fear of disagreement in ideology, the truth is that we simply seek space to build community free of the burdens of anti-Black microaggressions. The arguments of many who oppose campus protest seek to prevent change from occurring and seek to silence those who advocate on behalf of change. Such arguments focus on the methods used to redress institutional racism instead of institutional racism itself. They also rest on the racist trope of the Black person who is never satisfied, who always complains instead of just being grateful to be part of a community that does not fully accept them. Their arguments center the voices of the privileged instead of the voices of those whose experiences are the direct result of history colliding with an apathetic present.
We want to tell you that your experiences are valid. We want to tell you that the complaints you might come to voice are valid. We affirm your experiences, and we affirm your presence, even when it may feel that no one else does. We want you to know that we stand with you.
