Not Just a Student
Today as I was helping my son pick out his favorite pink shirt for school he noticed my rainbow wristband. He asked what it was for and I explained that I got it when I went to see my friends yesterday. Our parenting rule is that we never lie to our kids when they ask us direct questions. No redirecting, no white lies, we answer it as fully as we can in that moment.
I explained that I had some friends who were camping outside and that I was worried they weren’t safe and wanted to check on them so had to put on the bracelet to get closer to their tent. He then asked why they were camping outside instead of going to class. I then tried to explain solidarity to my five year and help him understand that sometimes it’s not as important to go to school if you feel like you need to stand up for what you believe is right.
He looked at me blankly.
After giving him too much detail on how I worry for all of my friends who are impacted by the ongoing genocidal war and hostage situation in the Middle East he calmly looked at me and asked, “do you think I can get a rainbow wristband? It’s pretty.”
In that moment, I realized that there is so much that is heavy in the world causing my heart to constantly break. Yet, I have two little kids who love pink and rainbows, and who get worried at the thought of anyone they go to school with being hurt or sad. For their sake, I knew I needed to get on with my day.
After all, I’m a PhD student and I had an assignment due at noon. I dropped them off at school, gave them hugs tighter than they thought were necessary and headed home to submit my reading response to the two articles I read for my racial capitalism course.
As I started to type about the obvious ways our readings on this week’s topic, Black & Indigenous Life: The Debts of Slavery, are tied to everything we’re experiencing today, I couldn’t stop thinking about a quote from the assigned piece by Katherine McKittrick. In “Plantation Futures,” McKittrick writes:
What stands out are the ways we can trace the past to the present and the present to the past through geography. The historical constitution of the lands of no one can, at least in part, be linked to the present and normalized spaces of the racial other; with this the geographies of the racial other are emptied out of life precisely because the historical constitution of these geographies has cast them as the lands of no one. So in our present moment, some live in the unlivable, and to live in the unlivable condemns the geographies of marginalized to death over and over again. Life, then, is extracted from particular regions, transforming some places into inhuman rather than human geographies.
I wanted to just be a student and use this assignment to speak directly to what we’ve all been witnessing. But as I read the quote over and over I was stuck. I couldn’t write my academic posting where I sounded smart while clearly articulating the arguments of the articles and sharing my questions or critiques. Instead, I just stared at my screen.
Many friends and family who have reached out to ask how I’m doing. I keep going back to what I am feeling. I keep going back to the fact that I am so much more than just a student. I’m a Black, queer mother and daughter and sister and friend and colleague and person fully experiencing all that is around us. Sometimes I can’t and don’t want to compartmentalize and just shut everything off. I want to bring my full self to all spaces I inhabit. So I decided to write what I could. What I am feeling.
Below is what I have been able to put together and shared on our class website for my weekly reading response.
Continuing my trend of honesty, I want to acknowledge that I will likely be late with my posting this week. I promise to try to get it in today.
It’s just that every time I sit down to write something I find myself struggling. I know this week’s readings tie to so much happening in the world and on campus, but at this moment I’m unable to put together meaningful sentences. I was in the encampment yesterday helping with legal stuff for a student (and dear friend) that was injured when detained by police. Like many of us, I have been glued to watching what’s unfolding on campus and seeing images of students and friends being vilified and physically harmed while fighting for justice. I’ve been reaching out to friends still inside and spiraling into panic when I can’t reach them.
Beyond that, I’m disgusted by a “both sides” narrative that is spreading when anyone watching or who has been present has seen the aggressive attempt to escalate by agitators outside of the encampment. It’s also not lost on me that if Black or brown students were caught on camera by multiple news sources throwing fireworks, assaulting, and spraying pepper spray on anyone that it wouldn’t take hours and a mayor flying back from DC to stop it. We would be and have been stomped out violently and swiftly. It’s tough to see police presence increase, Jewish students hurting, and our comrades in the encampment terrified and facing physical and mental harm.
I keep hearing that a campus is a learning environment and that the encampments and protests across the country are a distraction. I keep hearing that we should just get back to class. But what we are seeing is a learning experience in real time. We’re all learning much about ourselves, others, and decision-makers who idly stand by and blame students instead of taking accountability for how they govern and lead. Why claim this is a great democracy when many of our rights are being rolled back and repressed? Why speak out for our democracy when speaking freely is impinged?
Underlying all of this is a deep concern that rather than students being a distraction, decision-makers are centralizing what’s happening on campuses to distract from their lack of leadership. My deepest concern is that the people in Palestine who have no university to protest at and are fighting for their lives are lost in this. That the families waiting to hear about the status of love ones are being forgotten. That’s what should be centered. It feels like so many in positions of power and influence have lost that thread. News programs reporting that the encampments are like war zones are talking about campuses like UCLA and Columbia in ways that indicate they have not taken the time to actually understand the violence of settler colonialism and imperialism that has left generations of war torn countries in their wake.
Hurt people hurt people. Militarized police forces will not protect us. I want to have some eloquent ending to this, but I don’t. I’m just at a loss. I grieve for my Jewish friends in Israel now and here in the US who are deeply impacted, have lost friends and family who are hostages or dead, and are facing increased acts of antisemitism. I grieve for my Palestinian friends who have lost and continue losing their people, their homes, and their land. I don’t know where or how this ends. But I grieve for all of us.
I am especially dismayed by those who naively refuse to confront that none of this should be surprising or unexpected. Those who fail to see that some form of violence is always utilized by those in power to justify their suppression of those they have deemed as “other.” This is the settler colonialism and violence our country was built on. For so long college campuses have been places to confront this, dialogue, and pledge to do better than our ancestors. Rather than trying to shut down students who seek to remind us of that and push us with a hope and love to do better, we should protect them, celebrate them, and listen to them.
