Brother Abele designed its architecture, my father waited its tables at the WaDuke and now, finally inside these walls, I once again must do my part in educating this University of its own hypocrisy. The only difference between my forefathers and me: I don’t get paid for my job.
En este momento, countless students defrost their behinds from black tenting, trading in their heated housing for slushy tarps. At this moment, there are enough glass doors around the Bryan Center to make the entrance look like a giant Macy’s. There are cranes towering over construction centers for lavishly refurbished dining halls, a brand-new football stadium that lies at the outskirts of K-Ville and a personal gym for all Edens residents. I’ve yet to hear students mock these spectacles as absurd.
But for a minority group to declare systemic changes to an institution that mispronounces, misspells and misrecognizes their names seems far-fetched. To demand that this supposed bastion of higher learning match its peers across the country in establishing cultural centers, apparently, isn’t “pragmatic.” Indeed, inside the woke mind, Du Bois’ double-consciousness bursts in rude awakening as carte blanche politics collapses on concessions for marginalized groups. A sickness swells up inside us that forms its own diagnosis: our spaces are, at best, optional to the prestige but far from a necessity. Es decir, we see the utter hypocrisy of sparing no expense for gleaming buildings, which trickles down to scraps given to multicultural organizations. Día tras día, nos quedamos con la boca abrieta, pensando, “a lo mejor, este año será de nosotros.” But these lily-white aspirations were never meant for us. To them, you are nothing but a toddler in a high chair, chillando for your demands, too “substantive” to be taken (token) seriously.
This university—as it did nothing for the noose incident, as it did nothing for the BlackLivesMatter defacement, as it will continue to do nothing until we gut their pocketbooks—will promote a hostile environment that ceaselessly mocks our activism. Thus, a racist pathology emerges that Latinxs are being “too demanding,” “too emotional,” our activism a zoology that refuses its 15 minute exhibition. I’m reminded of the “uppity” pejoratives hurled at our black brothers, both in the Old and New Jim Crow eras. I’m reminded of President Brodhead’s words, “In a university, you have to actually think things through and work them through to find out what can be done…” Right, because we don’t think, because we absentmindedly outcry our pain, because our screams are impulsive. But never mind the premier talking head of this university performing a micro-aggression that ridiculed all our efforts before the fact. Are we truly surprised to see so many follow suit?
First, to my beloved crusaders of free speech, specifically, the Duke Open Campus Coalition, I wasn’t aware that my identity politics were diametrically opposed to “reasoned discussion.” It astounds me how your privileged “climate of fear” (Donald) trumps those of racialized bodies. If you feel threatened to voice your opinion, if you feel asphyxiated, tell that to Eric Garner. If a discursive rope encircles your throat whenever racism rears its ugly head, tell that to Sandra Bland. If a “climate of fear,” surrounds you, tell that to Flint’s indocumentados who are afraid to ask for potable water, for risk of deportation. Your framework of free speech imagines this set of atomized individuals who hold equal determination over their surroundings. But there are no melting pots, only lived realities. Therefore, allow me to offer just two: you have skeletons in your closet; I have mops and construction hats in mine.
But if you want see “disrespect,” walk with me to Franklin Street on Halloween, and let’s together count all the sagging pants, polyester ponchos, drunken cries of Spanish 201, pollos hervidos that escape the throats of suburbia. If you don’t believe acts of bigotry committed by individuals implicate an institution, tell that to the sexual assault victims whose offenders freely walk this campus. Why do you think these issues continue to happen? Because these inexcusable acts precisely are excused, festering under the spineless mismanagement that is the #DukeIndifference.
But if the issue is one of tactics, I urge all those who actually care to recall the late Dr. King’s words, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
Moreover, to say the quality of faculty wouldn’t remain identical is a white, liberal veil for saying people who look like me will provide you an inferior education. My identity is not a poverty nor an impediment to your pendejadas on objectivity, on the “reasonable person.”
To those Mi Gente alumni who criticize us: If you were sincere about shaping the direction of the movement, you would’ve contacted us privately, but instead, you chose to exacerbate our condescension through public forum. You, perhaps of all people, pose the most tragic threat to any sense of progress because those in opposition will utilize your puppet narratives.
To those administrators that want to help: Don’t give us excuses but unequivocal support. Spare us the semantic acrobatics. Publically stand with us. Yes, in the land (or janitor’s closet) of minorities, to request for the most meager of requests involves a litany of questions from administration: cost, location, feasibility, special treatment, “have you a proposal,” “why we were going to meet on this issue later this week,” “we’re shocked at your actions.” All are sedatives injected to the ethnic body to forestall its movement. Micro-aggressions are just the furniture, but the blueprints of institutionalized racism itself are in the ways the administration trivialize a people’s struggle. So if your job is to serve us, and this school isn’t currently doing that, then by default, you are not doing your job.
I come from a people that wait. All my life, I’ve seen us wait for citizenship, wait for recognition, wait for not even a fair chance, but for an opening. Endurance is an apellido quietly hyphenated to our names, ones we already Anglicize. So for my fellow Latinx students who disagree with us, sacrifices must be made in order to exact substantial change. Aquí estamos para servirles, so please join the discussion. But let it be in a fruitful manner, not that of sabotage, for I am saddened that, all too often, the people who believe in the least change for Latinxs are Latinxs themselves.
Many see this move(ment) as counter-productive, as injurious to the very causes we seek to champion. Our history with the University however is rife with negligence. Given our largely unpaid, thankless work, it is incumbent—to salvage any sense of self-respect and dignidad para nuestra comunidad—to cease what is nothing short of an abusive relationship. Así que considera esta acción como una huelga, a strike against a parasitic dependency upon brown bodies.
Y finalmente, to those tired, I simply say, we can’t afford to be.
Inshallah, venceremos,
Baligh ibn Antonio Lopez
Antonio Lopez is a Trinity senior.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.