Backlash but no backbone
After nine months, MSU’s policies on slurs remain the same
EAST LANSING — With the few remaining weeks of 2018 getting marked off the calendar and 2019 rapidly approaching, issues of racial strife still exist, even on college campuses. Miyanna Fowlkes knows this from first-hand experience.
When Fowlkes was still a freshman at Michigan State in March, a few of her friends showed her a tweet they saw from MSU sophomore, Jillian Kirk. In Kirk’s tweet, she had a white post-it note attached to her forehead with the N-word written on it, as well as a series of other tweets where Kirk used the slur.
Kirk has since deleted her Twitter account, but before that, Fowlkes was motivated to raise attention to the tweet in question.
“ I was fed up with no one paying attention to students of color and our struggle,” the sophomore social relations and policy major said.
Fowlkes retweeted Kirks tweet with the caption: “Let’s play a game, it’s called ‘How many retweets does this girl need before MSU kicks her out.’”
Over 50,000 people retweeted Fowlkes tweet a few days after she first tweeted it.
Her tweet drew the attention of Michigan State and the national media as well. MSU was compelled to respond to Kirk’s tweet after it garnered so much attention.
In a letter first sent to the Detroit Free Press in March, MSU spokeswoman Emily Guerrant stated “Many of you have heard about and seen racist images circulating on social media tied to a member of our campus community. There is pain and anger being felt by our community members, students of color and especially our African American students.”
Guerrant went on to write that “Actions and words that are meant to hurt someone based on their identity have no place in our community; hate has no home here on our campus. We know that this is not an isolated incident. Acts of discrimination, racial discrimination, and microaggressions against Black students and students of color are often unreported for many reasons, including the fear of invalidation and backlash.”
The aftermath of tweeting
Not all of the reactions Fowlkes received were positive ones.
“I had racial slurs thrown at me,” she said. “I had people looking into my personal life, digging up videos of me (on YouTube) and emails to me calling me a chimp and stuff and MSU never reached out to me to support me.”
Fowlkes told one of her professors about the harassment, but she didn’t know who to speak to from an administrative level.
According to scholarly articles, what Fowlkes dealt with in the aftermath of her tweet drawing national attention can be defined as “racial battle fatigue.”
In a peer-reviewed article authored by Jeremy Franklin, a research associate at the Utah Education Policy Center, Franklin suggests that “Racial battle fatigue can be defined as the psychological, physiological and behavioral stress responses due to the cumulative impact of racial microaggressions resentment or fear.”
The interactions Fowlkes had were online. She didn’t have any verbal or physical confrontations with her harassers, but that doesn’t mean incidents like that are unheard of at MSU.
According to the most recent Fire and Safety Report released by MSU, there were six hate crimes committed on campus grounds between 2015–17.
Though, none have been recorded on the Clery Crime and Fire Log which the MSU Police update every two days with crimes committed on campus.
Where help comes from
Tama Hamilton-Wray, an associate professor of Africana film studies in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, said she doesn’t know of any university that specifically addresses racial battle fatigue.
To her knowledge, scholars are writing about it, but there has yet to be campus policies, programs or initiatives to address students who are coping with those feelings.
On top of that, not all incidents of racism or racial microaggressions can be reported to the authorities because they don’t warrant that.
When that’s the case, Hamilton-Wray said the goal is to then find allies with similar values.
“(It’s best to) build coalitions because often times we think of this as a black peoples fight,” she said. “Well, there are some ways where it’s also a poor peoples fight so, who can you build coalitions with so you are stronger in your fight matters.”
It’s also a matter of mental health because students feel like they have to keep fighting until change occurs Hamilton-Wray said.
When Fowlkes felt attacked, she found comfort from her coworkers at the Residence Halls Association (RHA) and from members of the Black Alumni Association, for which she works as a campus liaison.
To her, there weren’t any places on campus she could go to help her with the harassment she was getting from strangers online.
“I think often times, people who aren’t of marginalized identities, they don’t realize the things we have to go through on a daily basis,” she said. “Not just on a larger scale, but a micro scale of every day having to live the life of dealing with these kinds of things.”
What’s next for MSU
Because Kirk’s tweets weren’t directed at a particular student, as the MSU Code of Conduct is currently written, she could not be expelled for her actions.
MSU met with Kirk, as Guerrant wrote to the Detroit Free Press in March to “make sure she understands her actions and the impact it’s having on the MSU community,” but that’s as far as the universities involvement went.
Fowlkes said she felt undersupported by MSU when the university responded to the situation and did nothing to reprimand Kirk’s use of a racial slur.
To Fowlkes, MSU failed in their response to the situation by not going far enough to address any concerns students of color may have had about the racial climate around campus.
“I think the university could issue a statement of support for the black community,” she said. I think often times, they try to cover up the things that happen instead of giving support because they don’t want to pick a side.”
Another suggestion Fowlkes had is for the university to change its student code of conduct.
But nine months after the initial incident and hundreds of article, columns and blogs written about Kirk’s tweet and Michigan State’s response, nothing in the code of conduct has changed.
