Black college students have always intentionally chosen their battles, speaking loudly and … [+]
The 1960s witnessed powerful social and political movements designed to stand against racial injustice and secure equal access to opportunities and basic human rights for Black people. Courageous acts of resistance—business boycotts, campus takeovers, mass marches, and demonstrations—raised critical awareness and actively organized against antiblackness. Among those who demonstrated a capacity to organize and sustain freedom movements were Black students—a tradition of protests and uprisings that evolved into new and different forms and that continues today.
I use the concept antiblackness because Black people across class, gender, and sexuality spectrums do not encounter the same ongoing coordinated and relentless attacks on their humanity as their nonblack counterparts. Scholar João H. Costa Vargas asserted that “Blacks experience gendered violence not because of what they do, but because of who, structurally, they are—or rather, who they are not.”
The evidence is compelling: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there has been a significant uptick in hate crimes and antiblack incidents on college campuses. And Black people are 3.23 times more likely to killed by police in the United States than their white counterparts.
In Minneapolis—almost 5 months ago—George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, had the life squeezed out of him by a police officer who kneeled on his neck while pinning him to the pavement for nearly 9 minutes.
The video footage of George Floyd, whose last words of “Please, I can’t breathe” continue to reverberate across college campuses, is ominously reminiscent of Eric Garner’s death in 2014. And the outrage, pain, and terror is exacerbated by the horrific killings of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Nina Pop, among far too many other Black people.
Not surprisingly, Black college students and other racially minoritized students have always been poised to act and have intentionally chosen their battles, speaking loudly and confidently in the name of fairness and justice on predominately nonblack campuses. They have also employed strategies to protect themselves and respond to otherwise oppressive environments, including a long history of state-sanctioned violence and police terrorism both on and off campus.
These actions take multiple forms, including the co-creation and sustainability of spaces—physical spaces and virtual platforms—and new ways of existing and being on their own. Black college students move collectively through the spatial boundaries of exclusion to imagine, co-create, and experience new places of expression and new sites of possibility.
Space and place are indeed linked concepts; they are often used interchangeably, yet Steve Harrison and Paul Dourish explain that “space refers to the structural, geometrical qualities of a physical environment, and place is the notion that includes the dimensions of lived experience, interaction and use of a space by its inhabitants.” This is to say that Black students have the ability to transform everyday spaces into places through their intentional social interactions and activities.
Building on the critical work of Marcus Anthony Hunter and his colleagues, I view colleges and universities as complex and dynamic sites where Black students struggle and engage in what I call campusmaking. Through campusmaking, Black students find pleasure and also share similar histories, experiences, ongoing struggles, and various forms of resistance.
On one campus, Black students engage in a group chat room I’ll call Black Chat (a pseudonym), which was established more than 10 years ago. When I interviewed them, these students reported that they rely on this virtual platform to build community, propagate resources, and organize and coordinate protests against inequities and injustices on their own campus and in their communities. For example, one Black student described Black Chat as “an inclusive place where I can be up front and share ideas without feeling uncomfortable.…It’s very different from most campus spaces. On [Black Chat], you can look for information, some friends, network, new music or art, COVID resources, you know.…It’s the best place to get Black perspectives.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s brutal murder, and with the COVID-19 public health crisis disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities, Black Chat became a vital place of expression and resistance in the face of racial injustice in Black students’ communities and campus environments. Through the platform and other communication channels, the students created—and then released—a list of demands aimed at addressing campus racial climate issues, including divestment from campus and noncampus police, leadership accountability, and enhanced support for Black students, staff, and faculty.
A Black student commented, “We don’t feel safe or adequately supported on campus. Our campus leaders need to do better, and we will continue to demand better conditions on campus….We’re going to keep the pressure on and push for real change.”
Through this constructed place, these students can share recognition of the oppressive antiblack structures on campus.
Black students, no doubt, continue to struggle and fight against racial injustice without any guarantee that structural changes will be made. They are indeed mindful that colleges and universities have never been facilitators of social change. Too often, structural change is an inevitable uphill, ongoing struggle.
Still, the organizing and the collective protests themselves—in virtual and physical spaces—make it clear that Black students will recognize, resist, and challenge injustice. It’s what they have always done.
Importantly, the notion of Black campusmaking does not suggest that various structural forms of antiblackness do not continue to undermine Black students’ ability to actively engage within the broader academic community. Rather, it describes a reality—and hopefully new possibilities—that Black places do exist on predominately nonblack campuses, and they are not inherently inferior. Black campusmaking and articulations of space can shift otherwise oppressive, antiblack environments into sites of humanness, community, organizing, resistance, and even restoration.
My next book is Organized Captivity: Control, Hyper-Surveillance, and Disposability of Black Athletes in the Corporate University.
