“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
I’ve had several dreams for a long time. Some of them burn so violently inside me that it’s hard for me to sleep. I’m not the Student Association (SA) President of my institution anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can so easily turn away from gaping holes and innovative ideas to promote diversity and inclusion in ways where all people can feel involved. For years, I have watched as several students have tried to propose solutions to some of the problems our institution has when it comes to celebrating our unique diversity. Many of them, unfortunately, go unnoticed, can’t get their ideas off the ground, get lost in bureaucracy, or require the student to do the majority of the heavy lifting with minimal (if any) mentorship.
Years ago, my university was well-known for its acts of oppression. I have heard stories from my own community of the pain they endured because my university treated them negatively or chose not to address their pleas. I’m not the official spokesperson, but I have chosen to write this manifesto as a way to encourage us all to be better and right the wrongs of the past. I’m not asking for us to forget the past, but to embrace it and move towards a multicultural, inclusive future.
The reason why this all burns so heavily in my heart is because our school is still perceived to be a White (there is NOTHING wrong with being White, by the way), racist institution, and the history doesn’t help our case—no matter how much students have done to share positivity.
Yearbook 1940s-1950s
The Confederate Battle Flag was commonplace in the school gymnasium, for whatever reason. This flag is often seen as a symbol of hate towards people of color.
Yearbook 1940s-1950s
These are white students in Blackface, which was a common practice from non-Blacks to represent caricatures and stereotypes of Black people. Don’t believe me? Check out some of these banned cartoons.
“J.B.’s” or “Jiggaboos” are “black people with stereotypical features like a big nose, big and wide lips, and very dark skin.’”
If I showed you the pictures of a certain rebel flag or blackface in yearbooks from the very distant past, very many of you would be alarmed, but not surprised. Why? Because my university has a story. Founded 127 years ago, our university was to be the first institution of Adventist higher education in the American South. Throughout the past 100 years, the institution has gained an unfortunate reputation for people of color (POC) and their communities, an imperative reason as to why a sister historically Black college/university was established only two hours away.
Upon the frustration of my friends and the conversations I’ve had along my journey, I often wonder…. Am I “TOO BLACK” for my institution?
Sometimes, I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. Naysayers proclaim that I, along with my fellow students of color, are not working hard enough to “call administration and the institution out about its abusive, consistent racist acts.” The fact is that our work is often not shown. Years ago, I felt I was called to help us establish and redefine a new culture. I decided to run for the top student position to help implement those changes and use my voice to work with those in power who could make our goals a priority and a reality. While I feel that I was successful, there’s only so much a full-time student can do in one year. Yet, if I call attention to the lack of inclusive strategies or even racial perceptions, am I an angry Black man who constantly cries, “Wolf! I SMELL RACISM AND PRIVILEGE!”? Sometimes students like myself feel as though we are not taken seriously because we are not backed by a Masters degree nor any terminal degree. Such is the case in the realm of academia.
If you’ve never experienced what it means to be a POC at a predominantly white institution (PWI), could you please stop telling me how little I’m doing to advance inclusion? Students like me and so many leaders do their best to constructively address issues. But at the same time... is it wrong for me to also focus on getting my degree, establishing great relationships, learn skills, learn to coexist in mainstream culture, and live my life at the same time?
It was February 2018 and the majority of the country was watching the Super Bowl. I, on the other hand, watched as my Twitter feed exploded with outrageous claims and false ideas. These weren’t just fans blowing up about a Tom Brady loss, but angry Adventists of color attacking me for my apparent coonery. I’ve shared a piece of this story before, and I’d rather not beat a dead horse, but those nightmarish weeks were amongst the lowest valleys of my life.
Faced with incredible circumstances, I had to choose how I was going to respond to people who I realized were always going to take me out of context. They were angry at what I represented. Angry at what they felt I should have said, but didn’t say. The history I just told you? I knew it. I knew the KKK monitored the campus over fifty years ago, that a minority of White students threw parties when Dr. King was slain, that we were one of the last schools to desegregate, and the list goes on.
In fact, I was given a vision to plan a massive event at the time and I was continuing an ongoing initiative to get to the root of our issues--attacking it all straight on. The previous summer, I predicted what unfortunate event would take place, yet no one listened to what I had to say.
Instead, I was told the institution had other plans at hand and that they’d get to my request eventually. A day after my public humiliation in February, it felt like people were finally ready to listen.
My videos, which had accumulated several thousand views, my invitation to a member of the Little Rock Nine to speak at our assembly, my intentionality of bringing our sister HBCU campus’ equivalent SA President to invite students to his campus for a day, my purposeful joining of all cultural clubs and sitting in as many meetings as I could, and the list goes on... felt like they had gone unnoticed--until that moment.
I sat in a multitude of meetings and helped lead plenty of discussions, the institution made a video, and promises were made. Those promises are still ongoing, but I’d rather not wait until the promised “savior” administrative position comes to rewrite history. We have to do it ourselves. If students like me and those who are just as passionate can band together and create a multicultural performance night, an original program focused on educating the community through entertainment and celebration, we can do that much more.
The truth is…
We’re waiting for someone to come and may be putting way too much pressure on this administrator to do their job effectively. I think we’re also not realizing that the same resources we’re praying so earnestly for could be right in front of us.
The students are ready. The institution as a whole, I believe, simply needs to show what is already here. Be intentional. The university will keep taking steps backward instead of tearing down the wall of perception that’s been here for generations if we don’t show what the reality has actually been. In fact, my true vision is that within the next five years, this institution can be the home of yearly symposiums and conversations about race, privilege, culture, and the center of race relations in our Church, similar to the way a certain flagship institution in Michigan is a center for theological dialogue.
Maybe I am a little idealistic, but when a vision comes...I just feel like I have to do it. This is bigger than just myself. We need each other.
When I was SA President (2017-2018 school year), we were in a three-way tie for the most ethnically diverse university in the entire American South. Today, we’re the fourth. Yet, as I revealed that detail to my own community through word of mouth and on social media, my people were dumbfounded. How could this “racist” place be so diverse? Why don’t more people know the truth? Why does the Black community still feel so strongly against this place? Who will make the bridge between “Black” and “White” conferences? Who has the patience, commitment, perseverance?
I think it’s time for us to showcase inclusion in ways we never have before. The time is now. If we don’t do it, our past will surely catch up with us. If we are, allegedly, taking money from segregationists or alumni who feel as though our mission of inclusivity is against their ideals (these are only allegations and hopefully are not true by any means), then, in truth, it’s time to respectfully cut ties with those publics and effectively usher the institution into the new era. If you believe you will desperately need money if you cut off a donor who believes that they should add to the funds and scholarships set aside for only white males, perhaps it is time to trust God financially. You can’t cast a vision for tomorrow if you’re too concerned about what your past will say to you. If the students cannot see or feel like they matter and are included and celebrated, then they will not ever want to return.
For the next school year, the largest concentration of Latin Americans in my university’s history have been elected for Student Association, including the SA President. Hispanics and Latin Americans also make up about 25% of the population. I hope and pray that Latin Americans will not be targeted next semester when they celebrate their heritage and culture. This is, I feel, the last chance for us to prevent something horrifying.
I feel that through our institution’s history, the university has failed its Black students in more ways than one, whether today’s leaders have realized it or not. If it now fails its largest minority people group, Hispanics/Latin Americans, it’s over…the university could die within a generation.
Please don’t get me wrong. We have definitely progressed. I have had hundreds of conversations in the past three years alone that show we have advanced, people of all backgrounds are asking questions and wanting to heal the rift, and we are striving for excellence, but we need to do more.
Okay Phil, so what is more? Aren’t we doing enough for “you and your people”? I’m quite glad you’ve asked. I have several proposals, suggestions, and ideas that I cannot hope to accomplish anytime soon. If you’re reading this; whether you’re faculty, staff, students, or community members, I hope you’ll take these ideas and make them a reality.
The History and English Departments collaborated in January to make a trip down to Montgomery, Alabama to the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice as well as its Legacy Museum. Post about it on every platform and include possibly a short film and diverse student and faculty interviewees.
I worked with our library last year to start an initiative that supports media for all of our major people groups on our campus--an opportunity for all people to learn about each other through literature, film, and more. Why not promote the library’s media list to the institution’s publics?
There are classes taught on campus like Intercultural Communication and Racism and Oppression. Spotlight the students in these classes as well as their projects; for example, students in Intercultural Communication must conduct an ethnography report and spend at least fifteen hours in a culture foreign to their own. These stories are bound to be interesting.
Include the community in cultural food choices, specifically at the cafeteria, which is so often made fun of. Ask students their favorite recipes from home, make a contest, gather ingredients, make tutorial videos on different cultural foods...the list really could go on.
Sometimes, we have guests from our sister HBCU campus and it goes a bit unnoticed. Can we spotlight them and their stories more often as well as invite them to our massive cultural productions? When I created my multicultural performance night, some of those students from that same HBCU came and were moved to tears because they had no idea that such diversity existed on our campus. I repeat, they’re only two hours away. We can do better. If a significant amount of our HBCU friends want to come, there should be a budget somewhere somehow for these students to come and enjoy what makes us who we are. Does a donor believe in this mission? This is how you strategically build your reputation, and some of it is for free! We also should be reporting and researching the attendance of our “D.E.E.P. Sabbath” program every semester and from year to year.
As a way to digitally showcase our unique cultural diversity and international students, an interactive pie graph of some sort could be placed on the website in a place that’s easy to find. An ongoing testimony of the institution’s diversity. If it’s truly proud, we’ve gotta represent!
We have some sort of assembly every week. This is a primary time to teach history. Not the type of history teaching that leaves you bored and yawning, but interactive. Students love contests. As an institution trying to drive up attendance, you love inviting speakers, musicians, etc. to enrich the lives of students, albeit through a “cultural credit” system. If cultural credit is offered, offer a question on the screen for thirty seconds and have students respond through some electronic form. They learn the good and bad portions of our institution’s history and nothing is a surprise. Go for it!
A new student center is being built. Since this building is being advertised as a place explicitly for students, how about putting students’ faces who have advocated and overcame circumstances on the walls, specifically with diversity and inclusion in some hallways? Our cultural clubs do not have their own meeting rooms and in this moment in our institution’s history, they may among the greatest witness to how far we have come. Give them their spaces. Keep their histories alive with team photos along the walls. Keep their cultural performance nights available digitally for the community and the future officers to see.
Similar to corporations like Nike and Apple, why can’t there be a tab that says “Diversity & Inclusion” on our website’s homepage? Since we have such a unique cultural makeup, the institution should take up the initiative and be intentional about our real story and history. It wasn’t always sunshine and roses for people of color or even White advocates within our institution. Tell that story. Let it breathe. You may call it bad public relations, but it’s better than being accused of “sweeping it under the rug.”
There are quite a few more ideas I have had over the years, and I’ve recently learned that so many black students before me had very similar ideas. One Sunday I was talking to a great friend of mine, Mark Belfort, about the history of the black experience at our university in the 2010s. Unfortunately, I lived through one of those painful experiences in February 2016 when a Black pastor came to speak at our BCU-themed (Black Christian Union) service, only to be ridiculed and denigrated (along with other Black students) by a very small minority of unknown students on a then-popular app, Yik Yak. Mark Belfort was President of BCU then and was thrust into action along with so many other students as we fought to keep racism at bay. Deep down, we all know that these experiences are not what defines our time here, but to the world, it definitely seems like it.
Since it felt as though we were never heard, Mark passed along a document that he and other students drafted in February 2016 as an agenda for administration to follow.
“Out of all of these, they only did one of them,” Mark told me, as he sighed in frustration.
Unfortunately, it often seems as though racial crises are treated as though they are temporary, when in reality, it stems from a long history of feeling unheard, unappreciated, unsupported, misrepresented, and mistreatment.
I believe it’s one of the leading issues as to why enrollment continues to plummet and the Black population also declines.
As graduation weekend concluded weeks ago, there is one massive idea that grows deeper within my soul—something I spent the following year dreaming about. I have watched as our sister institutions and elite schools like Harvard and Stanford have followed a similar path. I’m talking about an example and showcase of diversity on the biggest stage.
I’m talking about Kente stoles.
What are those, you ask? They are a major ticket to showcasing to the community who the institution is in the twenty-first century. No longer the “old, white, racist institution,” this is an opportunity to let everyone know what our true identity is. My proposal has been done since Summer 2018, and unfortunately I’ve been told that it just cannot happen yet. Some are even afraid that it will cause some sort of problem and break apart “the union.”
If these students can get out there and create their cultural performance productions every year and bring so many people together, why can’t they celebrate at a ceremony that has traditionally been Eurocentric and exclusive of different people groups?
My ultimate vision for graduations moving forward is that my institution will do a Rite of Passage Ceremony for students of color for the first time. It takes guts. ALL of the public will see it. Families will see it. Communities. Churches. Alumni. Donors. My idealized dream is that students of Latino/a descent, students of the African Diaspora, students of Asian/Pacific Islander descent, will all be able to celebrate their accomplishments, their journeys, and their experiences in ways unique and culturally relevant. Nia Darville, a woman I have come to know and greatly respect, chose to tackle this issue at her own institution of higher education. She was successful and her institution supported her. Throughout the second half of 2018 and up until now, I have been asking for such support. I mean, who wouldn’t want something as beautiful as this for their graduation?
Photo taken by Connor Yonkers
What about the White students, you may ask? Here’s the thing. Graduation ceremonies are inherently Eurocentric. Those grad caps? Western European. The robes? Definitely western European. By participating, we are thereby involved in majority culture. Can they participate in helping to create these events for their counterparts? Absolutely. Would this ceremony be open to the community? You bet. Where could we do it? I’m sure our churches and departments would support us and we’ll find a place. What about all the logistics? Some of us have done harder things before, and this one could be the most personal. Such inclusion would bless the entire campus as a whole.
Why not just wait a few years until the campus culture is ready?
No. Such proposals have happened before and have been rejected. This is what I say to my beloved institution. I’m here. Students are available and ready to move and I have an entire team that’s ready to make this all a reality. We don’t need a $50,000 grant to give us permission to be inclusive. We just need to show up and show out. Let’s be strategic and build context for cultural initiatives in ways that help everyone understand that diversity and inclusion, does, in fact, include ALL people.
The answer to my question: Am I “TOO BLACK” to attend my institution? If you equate being “too Black” to the same as too “progressive, idealistic, liberal, angry, or an emotional social justice warrior,” you might be right...or you might be dead wrong. I just think it’s time to move towards the future, and I never want to leave our institution feeling like I didn’t give it my all or I never talked about the things so many of us have been feeling. I hope that you don’t lump all Black people into a group who “crazily” advocate for those who are less fortunate. If you’re a Christian, isn’t that what Jesus would do?
It’s time to stop talking and get to work. We do not need constant external sources or “experts” to try and show us how to be inclusive. We know our institution’s context so we should know how to address these concerns. I know some White students, faculty, and staff are annoyed at this conversation, but I believe all it needs for all of us is context. Make that change.
If we don’t do it, who will?
As for you on the outside...could you stop adding fuel to the fire? There are some of you that would rather entertain yourselves with generalizing, stereotyping posts on social media for likes and retweets about us. It doesn’t help nor add positivity to the conversation. You’re not overseers when you come to our campus, watching us oppressed by slave masters. Be collaborators. Be bridge-makers. Clout is temporary. Legacy is forever. We’re all trying to make a difference. Are you with us?
To all of the Black student leaders of the past, the present, and the future: I see you. Thanks for paving a way for people like me and helping our university see us for who we are and thanks for continuing our vision of inclusion for all. You’re not alone out there.
*Future topics on this subject include: the policing of my culture, cultural appropriation as party themes, and model minority treatment* <<<
Can’t wait to share them with you.
“Walls of separation have been built up between the whites and the blacks. These walls of prejudice will tumble down of themselves as did the walls of Jericho, when Christians obey the Word of God, which enjoins on them supreme love to their Maker and impartial love to their neighbors. For Christ’s sake, let us do something now.”