Choosing Life in Death-Dealing Institutions: On Black Thriving and Surviving in Academe by Aireale J. Rodgers

“Come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” — Lucille Clifton (1993)

Black intellectuals and scholars throughout history have used empirical work and personal testimony to chronicle the ways a whitestreamed higher education system, and the people committed to upholding it, have inflicted violence on Black people. From chronic underrepresentation (Fries-Britt, Rowan-Kenyon, Perna, Milem, & Howard, 2011) to epistemological erasure (Collins, 2003; Haynes & Bazner, 2019) and routine experiences of microaggressions and macroinvalidations (Haynes, Taylor, Mobley, & Haywood, 2020), it is clear that Black people in higher education face tremendous challenges. Moreover, literature exploring mundane environmental extreme stress (e.g., Carroll, 1998), racial battle fatigue (e.g., Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007) , and epigenetics (e.g., Sullivan, 2013) provides evidence for what we know to be true: Black folks, as well as our Native and People of Color kin, feel the violence of structural racism in our bodies. To invoke the infamous declaration of Fannie Lou Hamer, it literally makes us sick and tired. I can think back to multiple instances of experiencing microaggressions in class, being deviously mischaracterized as “angry” or “aggressive” by white colleagues, feeling tokenized in “equity” conversations, among others. In these moments, my body feels the threat of whiteness. My hands start to shake, my heart rate rises, my blood pressure elevates, and my tongue swells – almost as if it is attempting to protect me from saying something I might regret later. This type of emotion management, and the physiological dimensions associated with it, are exhausting and over time can cause irreparable harm to our bodies (Harlow, 2003). Thus, it is no hyperbole to assert that the academy, and its racist and sexist culture, would kill us if we let it.

Despite these real and damning conditions, Black folks have always chosen life. In fact, one of the most radical things that Black people have continuously done throughout history is to live. And I do not mean that passively; Black folks around the world wake up each day and, despite the imminent threats of violence and death that surround us, choose to live and create opportunities for more life. The context of academia is no exception.

While reflecting on the lessons of revolution gifted to us through the Black radical tradition, Cedric Robinson (2000) writes that we “discover it first in [our] history, and finally all around us” (p. 170). Re-membering ourselves with our past creates the possibility for a freer future. I find solace that our Black intellectual ancestors created pathways for us to re-learn how to assert our whole selves in our academic work. I am especially inspired by Black womanist foremothers like Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Barbara Christian, M. Jacqui Alexander, Patricia Hill Collins, and Toni Morrison among many others. They wrote us into being. With each sentence, they prefigured us. Their teachings are our inheritance and our writing is their legacy. Now each of us are called to write the next generation of Black folks to freedom with texts that breathe life and possibility into our descendants.

Choosing life in death-dealing institutions is not easy, but it is necessary. Black folks recognize the precarity of life; we know the power of stories. Given the structural realities of the ways racism, antiblackness, and misogynoir are designed into academia, we must build a community that is even stronger than the structures that feed on our demise. Each breath we take is precious. We have a responsibility to ourselves, our kinfolk, and the deep sense of purpose that calls us to teach, write, and share our brilliance, to take care of ourselves. We must live.

I invite you to consider the following questions: what gives you life in your academic work? What fills your spirit? What brings you pleasure and delight? How will you commit to finding joy? Because the truth of the matter is: we deserve nothing less.

Inhale: I am fully alive and I choose life.

Exhale: The academy will not kill my bodymindspirit.

Aireale Rodgers is a research assistant at the Pullias Center for Higher Education and a PhD candidate in the Urban Education Policy program at USC’s Rossier School of Education. Rodgers’ research focuses on affecting pedagogical and institutional change at white serving institutions of higher education as it relates to equity and justice. She holds a BS in social policy and an MA in learning sciences from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.

References

Carroll, G. (1998). Mundane extreme environmental stress and African American families: A case for recognizing different realities. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 29(2), 271-284.

Collins, P. H. (2003). Toward an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology Patricia Hill Collins. Turning points in qualitative research: Tying knots in a handkerchief, 2, 47.

Fries-Britt, S. L., Rowan-Kenyon, H. T., Perna, L. W., Milem, J. E., & Howard, D. G. (2011). Underrepresentation in the academy and the institutional climate for faculty diversity. The Journal of the Professorate, 5(1), 1–34.

Harlow, R. (2003). ” Race doesn’t matter, but…”: The effect of race on professors’ experiences and emotion management in the undergraduate college classroom. Social psychology quarterly, 348-363.

Haynes, C., & Bazner, K. J. (2019). A message for faculty from the present-day movement for black lives. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(9), 1146-1161.

Haynes, C., Taylor, L., Mobley Jr, S. D., & Haywood, J. (2020). Existing and resisting: The pedagogical realities of Black, critical men and women faculty. The Journal of Higher Education, 91(5), 698-721.

Robinson, C. J. (2000). Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. Univ of North Carolina Press.

Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., & Danley, L. L. (2007). “Assume the position… you fit the description” psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551-578.

Sullivan, S. (2013). Inheriting racist disparities in health: Epigenetics and the transgenerational effects of white racism. Critical Philosophy of Race, 1(2), 190-218.