A Call to Action for the Academy

Content warning: brief mention of student self-harm.

After the #SCOTUS ruling on affirmative action, I found myself really pissed. Don’t get me wrong, I knew this was coming. I’ve learned from my racialized immersion in the United States that when it comes to the justice system, you cope by anticipating the worst & feeling only slightly less heartbroken when you get better than that.?

Although I am incensed by those who ultimately made the decision, I realized I’m actually deeply angry at higher education.?

This goes back to my personal experiences in college at a predominately white institution—the first time I felt what it was like to be “one of the few.” Affirmative action existed at the time, but as research has persistently indicated, the primary beneficiaries have been white women. There were five visibly Black men in my first-year class, & I graduated with two of them. The only place I found a home on campus was in the multicultural center & with the Black Student Union. In other spaces, I encountered policing from RAs, a freeze out from white classmates, & a professor calling on me to translate “Ebonics” into terms the class could understand, joyfully declaring “Hayley, you should know” in a tone intended to let me know she was a “culturally aware” ally, yet having the opposite impact. And yes, that person still teaches at the school. Despite the lingering sting of these experiences, I realize I fared much better than many of my peers, especially those with darker skin.??

So yes, I am angry at higher education, because 18 years later, my students are still met with the same environmental conditions. The changes I’ve championed throughout my 14 years as a leader in the field have enriched individual lives, but barely chipped the iceberg of white supremacy that plagues our institutions. I’m angry because I’ve watched Latiné students lose their hair from the racial trauma in their classrooms. I’m angry because I’ve sat in “care meetings” where superiors refused to prioritize addressing anti-Blackness after a semester when two Black women attempted to take their own lives. I’m angry about all of the Black colleagues that I’ve lost due to the racially toxic work environments they could no longer tolerate. I’m angry because I remember listening with heartbreak as an advisee, a Black man, told me that he never engaged in self-harm until he came to our white campus, which brought up suffocating feelings of isolation that made him hate his beautiful dark brown skin to the point where he had to destroy it. And, despite my persistent data-informed pleas for change, faculty organizing, staff strategizing (led primarily by colleagues of color), & student protests, these issues continue to plague predominately white institutions.??

I’m angry at higher education because I think about those six justices, & the many institutions?they?attended that handed over credentials that allowed them to hold the keys to our democracy in their politically violent hands.?I'm angry because I know what is possible, if we engaged in collective, equity-centered structural change efforts.

What if those justices had been exposed to an antiracist curriculum, with highly skilled, compassionate faculty who taught them there is no such thing as race neutrality in a pervasively racist society??

What if they had learned first-hand about the rich gifts their peers of color could have brought into their lives if they had taken the time to be in right relationship with them? How might their views have been transformed??

What if there were embedded opportunities for students to engage in deep reflection on their positionality, & to learn about how privilege actually works??

What if Clarence Thomas had access to a counselor that could help him unearth the internalized racism that has so clearly been torturing him?

What if our degrees provided graduates with the competencies to exist in a complex, ever-changing multicultural society, & to channel our differences into even more nuanced, responsive solutions that move our nation forward??

What if we had actually done the work that decades of Black leaders have championed, embedding equity so deeply into our educational pipeline that this decision wouldn’t have as significant of an impact??

Now of course, there are many systemic flaws that led to yesterday’s decision, especially within our government. And while we are not solely responsible for our graduates' behaviors, it’s time for the academy to be accountable for the education we are providing our students. When they leave & do harm, we are culpable if we haven’t done everything in our power to provide them with the access to know & do better. Leaders of the academy, we have an opportunity to be an accomplice to ongoing harm, deepening the wounds of structural racism, or to be an accomplice in driving structural, pervasive equity-centered change.?

I choose the latter, & I hope you will too.?