#AcademicChatter
I have seen so many white academics posting their rage, solidarity, demonstrating their allyship by directing other to books, creators, thinkers who speak to anti racism and anti blackness in prticular. Yay! BUT
I have seen so many white academics posting their rage, solidarity, demonstrating their allyship by directing other to books, creators, thinkers who speak to anti racism and anti blackness in prticular. Yay! BUT
As a black academic, I’m slightly dubious because I wonder is this performative. How many of their black colleagues experience this solidarity and allyship? How many interventions have they made i their departments on their campuses for black lives?
#AcademicTwitter Black Lives Matter is about changing institutions. So organize, strategize, actualize what you theorize. Because this work is about saving lives. You value the work of black academics, scholars and activist by valuing their lives everyday, is all your work.
See, as the great Barbara Christian said, for us who are black (in look, thought, being, and work), our work is about “saving our own lives”. So the theory is our live not just stuff we put on pages to encourage thinking. The theory is our life, a call to action.
I appreciate the social media postings, the public remonstrations. But without hoeing your row, tilling in your own field, you negate that effort. Take to the hallways, conference rooms, and classrooms of tour institutions with the same energy you applaud in the streets.
You don’t have to carry a banner, you can be a banner. You can stop or disrupt the undermining of black voices, labor, and presence. You can end the practice of theoretical activism by challenging those who profess rather than protest.
Call out and demand accountability fromyour administrators, colleagues, and friends the same way you do the police. See them as extensions signs do the same white supremacy, that empowers the police. #AcademicChatter
So for all the #Academics4BlackLives how many times have you actively engaged in practices, conversations, supported policies, remained silent in moments that perpetuated the hostile work environment that is the academy; that threatens the lives of your black colleagues.
#AcademicTwitter Black Lives Matter is about changing institutions. So organize, strategize, actualize what you theorize. Because this work is about saving lives. You value the work of black academics, scholars and activist by valuing their lives everyday, in all your work.
The violence black academics suffer is a death by a million cuts. The myriad subtleties of white supremacy. Outlining the ways to make change is not making change. We can’t all take to the topography of American streets, but in these academic streets, you can march.
For this who know, keep on. For those who slighted, you doing projects which aren’t the objective. For those who want direction, #antiblackness #Academics4BlackLives, or a white colleague got you; OR support the black people #onhere who been tellin you. You know who they are
