“When people ask me what my favorite part about college was they are often shocked at my response. It wasn’t the friends I made (although they are incredible), the parties, the memories, food and live music in Austin, or the degree I got from the best public university in Texas that has opened up doors for me, it was a CLASS. A class that I wasn’t even enrolled in but would clear my schedule twice a week to go to because I knew what I would gain from it would greatly outweigh the two extra hours of sleep I would get. A class called “History of the Black Power Movement” taught by a man named Dr. Leonard Moore who for the first time in my 15 years of schooling at that point, made me feel understood. It was the first time in all of my education that I had been taught by a black teacher or professor. It was a class always filled with over 300 people from different backgrounds, some black students, some white students, some athletes, some members of fraternities and sororities, some adults that accompanied their children to class because they heard about the riveting discussions that happened, some alumni, some that just like me that weren’t enrolled but came to learn and listen for the sake of moving forward. I didn’t love this class because all my friends were in it, I loved it because I felt HEARD.
We were able to have discussions that were DIFFICULT but ultimately left everyone leaving that class a better student, friend, family member and ultimately human being. I loved that class because I felt as if a group of people had finally listened and tried to see my pain and could reach out to walk with me and articulate it in a way that so many people around me that I called my friends couldn’t understand for years.
For years I had been told by my peers that “racism is a thing of the past, it doesn’t exist.”
It existed every single time I was told by a classmate growing up that i was “really smart for a black girl.” or I was “really pretty for a black girl” or even that I talked “really well for a black girl” as if people who have a darker skin color aren’t capable of articulating their words the same way their counterparts with lighter skin are.
It existed when I got a random message on Facebook from someone that went to my middle school about how my “black oversized features were ugly” and it existed every time I brought up how painful that message was to my friends as an impressionable 13 year-old girl and was told that “I needed to get over it.”
It existed when a “friend” of mine told me his dad was worried every time he would come over to my house that he would get AIDS because my family was from black and from Nigeria.
It existed when, while playing a game of truth or dare in 9th grade, a “friend” of mine was dared to kiss me (LOL) and he responded with “I can’t do that, my dad would never forgive me if i kissed a black girl.”
It existed when a “friend” of mine tried a new drink and let everyone in the group around us taste it but when it came time for me to taste it told me i probably shouldn’t because i would “get my n*gg** lips on it.”
It existed when I sat in a car in front of MY OWN house with my friends and my neighbor called the police because, “it was suspicious that mixed races were in a car in front of a house on his street.”
I can probably name about 60 more instances in my personal life where it existed.
I don’t post this for sympathy, I’m posting this to IMPLORE and quite literally beg you to have the hard conversations. To search within your heart and your homes to identify the biases that you hold. To have conversations about them and to LISTEN to your black friends, neighbors, friends, community. I have had friends and people I consider family reach out to say they are doing the hard work, they are having the hard conversations that people have shied away from and considered “taboo” for years, they are reading books, listening to podcasts, and trying to understand the pain. There are few words to reconcile the DEPTH of the pain, hurt, frustration, and FEAR that black people in this country feel, not just because of the murder of George Floyd but DAILY because of the color of our skin. It has to end. There is no “neutral” when lives continue to be treated as disposable and dispensable day after day.
To my non-black friends: After seeing a video like the one that surfaced in early June, it should stir up a righteous indignation within you. Use your voice with conviction. when you call out racism and injustice, IT MATTERS. When you use your social media platforms (however small or big they may be) to discuss what you know/are learning about implicit bias, IT MATTERS. When you ask your friends and family of color about their experiences and you point people in the direction of LISTENING and LEARNING for the sake of moving forward, IT MATTERS. When you call evil evil, IT MATTERS. I promise you can handle the dissent and discomfort that comes with having hard conversations. It has to happen, it is the ONLY way that this will end.”
Story by Temi Adejuyigbe and Claire Schenken
Other stories by Claire Schenken:
Nmeli Anene:
Read about Claire Schenken and the SAPP team: https://sapeopleproject.org/about-us-sa-people-project/