So much happening here. Woooooo.
It’s important we give college students the space to work out their ideas and politics out loud. it’s going to be messy, because they’re young, but it’s also just going to be messy because theyre people and politics are messy.
(When people rail against the what’s supposedly the particularly noxious state of discourse on college campuses as if grown-ass people ain’t out here in the “real world” ain’t holding Nazi rallies to defend statues of slavers and rapists. 🤔)
That said: there’s a bunch of stuff in here that seems to flick out some of the weird dynamics of blackness at PWIs, and elite PWIs like NYU in particular.
One of which is a heightened sensitivity to stereotype.
One of which is a heightened sensitivity to stereotype.
(I remember how in undergrad at my PWI one of the ways you signaled your wokeness as a Black person was loudly railing against BET.)
Anyway, there’s a reason the BSU at NYU sounds this way but folx who went to HBCUs are like, “it’s mostly offensive if they fucked up the collard greens.”
The latter are working out their identities in spaces where their blackness is, if not affirmed, then at least unremarkable.
The latter are working out their identities in spaces where their blackness is, if not affirmed, then at least unremarkable.
Meanwhile, Black students make up abt 5 percent of NYU’s undergrad population.
There’s a way in which those kids are going to be The Only Ones in almost every class they take. That puts folks on guard in all sorts of ways.
There’s a way in which those kids are going to be The Only Ones in almost every class they take. That puts folks on guard in all sorts of ways.
Now look at that first graf again. The BSU folks say the food doesn’t represent the fullness of the diaspora. how could any meal —- or even 10 meals — do that?
But it’s worth asking whether NYU could ever do that, either.
But it’s worth asking whether NYU could ever do that, either.
A good friend of mine, a Delta who went to @FAMU_1887, is now a professor at a famous, elite college. And lots of kids in the small black student population always come to her for counsel and comfort.
She was telling me about how those students rail against the casual centering of whiteness that pervades even that famously lefty campus. And she affirms them.
But she also keeps it 💯with them, too.
But she also keeps it 💯with them, too.
She said: “Y’all CHOSE to come to [redacted] and not go to Howard or Spelman,” she said. “This school is never going to be that. And you need to do whatever you need to do to come to terms with the trade offs you thought you were making...”
”But I’m late and I need to get to the airport to take my black ass to Homecoming at Fam.”
Welp.
Welp.
But in a broader sense, and RIP to my mentions, it might be worth considering what it means as those Black people from those elite spaces accrue social capital and how we talk about race and justice.
I think it’s not a coincidence that representation and “diversity” in elite spaces gets more oxygen than equity and justice. Consider who is making the argument.
*ducks*
*ducks*
Apology for typos.
One more thing, from this old essay: npr.org/sections/codes…
it’s worth noting how long Black students on white campuses have been making demands of their universities, and how similar those demands have remained over the decades. 
That says a lot, I think, about the permanence of the problem of integrating college campuses and the impermanence of their student bodies: the turnover means undergrads have to constantly relitigate these issues as they acquire the language to identify them.
every year a freshman class has to come in and think about and debate this stuff anew. And every few years those students leave/graduate.
