The Price of Not Knowing Your Place
When an unparalleled opportunity turns into a painful reminder
Last Thursday, we met Jon Stewart. As he graced the stage, his demeanor felt familiar, perhaps because it was. And that is why when given the opportunity to meet him, we found ourselves waiting to do so at a private reception. As we inched through the line of students, we began eagerly discussing our appreciation for the man who had bested Fox News Hosts and interviewed President Barack Obama. That is until we were interrupted by a stark reminder of our shared reality.
It happened in a flash. Two non-Black students cut us in line. When asked to recognize our place, one of them, a person of color, dismissed us, citing their need as more urgent than ours. Ironically, moments before, that same student had invited us into the room. Which is why both of us, the only Black female students present, looked at each other and recognized how our experience was emblematic of something bigger than that moment.
What our colleagues showed us in a split second was that no amount of inconspicuousness, gratitude or respect erases our visible identity. Oftentimes, as Black women, we are expected to play small and be grateful for being invited into exclusive spaces even when our pedigree affords us the opportunity to assert our existence. It’s what Professor Koritha Mitchell calls, Know-Your-Place Aggression or simply,
“[The belief that] certain people do not belong. [The assertion that] they should be grateful if they are tolerated but never presume decent treatment to be their birthright.”
“They” signifies anyone who is part of an underserved population. And across higher education, that is the collective experience of being Black in the Ivory. It is why the institution cannot love us as Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom puts it. Without fail, we are told that our presence can never be earned, but rather only benevolently bestowed upon us. A presumption that stems from a looming problem in higher education: The belief that Black people are incapable of merit and all of her spoils.
At our home institution, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), the representation of Black students based in the United States declined from 11 percent in 2020 to 9 percent in 2022 — nearly a 23 percent decrease. This trend persists amidst student efforts to improve the Black student experience and admissions process as well as address concerns surrounding how data is used to inform decision-making. It should be noted that HKS is not alone in its overall decline in of Black student representation. Across higher education, enrollment is falling and yes, all of the reasons explaining why are rooted in systemic failures.
The added insult to injury is that at places like Harvard, many attribute the absence of Black students to lack of ability, or capability, rather than non-merit-based measures favoring white students. What does not help is that academic faculty remain overwhelmingly white, which leaves few opportunities for culturally sensitive mentorship for students and courses that reflect a wide array of experiences. At present, HKS only houses nine Black faculty with less than half of them being tenured. In the words of Dr. Khalil G. Muhammed, one of the few Black tenured faculty at HKS, “The pace of change at this point appears to be glacial.”
This is precisely why measures to ensure accountability in equity are needed. Court documents provided by Harvard project that the elimination of Affirmative Action, for example, will lead the Black and Latino student share to decline from approximately 28% of the student population to 15%. At present, there exists no study that shows that the GRE (Graduate Readiness Exam) is predictive of graduate school success, research ability, or career trajectory, yet the test continues to be used in a way that excludes the bulk of Black and Brown applicants. Though increasing representation is not a silver bullet solution, diversity does help address the ways in which Black people, especially Black women, are undermined in the academy.
At the crux, assuming Black people are undeserving of opportunity derives from the notion that minorities should know their place within the system. This is why our shared disappointment lingered even beyond the moment. In our attempt to meet opportunity face to face, we were once again reminded that Black existence is conditional until it becomes inconvenient.
This piece was written by Taylor Jones and Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman. If you are interested in reading the HKS Diversity Report of 2022, click here.
