An(other) Open Letter

Sinking deeper and deeper into the perils of unproductivity, I pen this letter. I have not done much homework since Tuesday afternoon, when I received an obscure, four-line email telling of a “community conversation” in which members of the Duke collective would have an opportunity to “reflect on our aspirations as a community.” The e-mail, which came the day after the President of the University of Missouri’s resignation amid racial tensions on that college campus, also declared that this “community conversation” was to be held on Friday at noon, when most Duke students would be in class. In the days leading up to the community conversation, as I do most days, I spent hours on end reflecting on my experiences as a black student at Duke, talking to other students about how they had experienced Duke’s social and political culture from the perspective of marginal identity and imagining the kind of tangible and intangible changes that are necessary to change Duke for the better.

Now that I am days behind on class work, the dysfunctionality of my schedule over the past week could not be clearer. For those who do not do race work, you would probably be surprised at the stronghold that the work can have on your conscious and unconscious mind, especially as a person of color. Living daily the marginality that you seek to eradicate often causes it to consume your entire body and soul. Each night, when I am trying to fall asleep, black students’ experiences and black peoples’ lives are what I think about. The names of black women and men slain at the hands of police rise up off the pages of my Chaucer textbook. There are not yet enough black faculty at Duke for me to escape the pervasive reality of overworked, underpaid black staff labor. And I am dismayed, as are most of the black students with whom I have spoken, not at the responsibility we feel to the black student experience and the worldwide sense of racial equality but at the fact that, in pledging responsibility to the black student experience, we were seemingly also pledging to be chiefly responsible for black student safety, university policy and administrative management around issues of race and anti-black racism, pro-bono.

Black students are actually doing the work of trying to improve our campus culture proactively throughout the year, but we are never listened to until a national spotlight threatens the fictional sense of effortless perfection this university prides itself on maintaining. There is absolutely no excuse for President Brodhead not having known that there was a policy and report page for “bias-related incidents” on campus, especially given that I have talked extensively with him about changing that policy. On Friday, many students were frustrated not because they were having to talk about their experiences of race on campus or provide suggestions for institutional improvement but because they were having to repeat their experiences, suggestions and demands to a president that they were not sure had listened the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh time they had mentioned them previously. When President Brodhead threw a series of tantrums on Friday in response to challenging questions at a conversation he had assembled on race, he said to black students that, on this campus, they never actually have the privilege of being listened to. He said that he would continue to do what he wants to do, not what black students need him to do, regarding race on this campus.

I have no doubt that in the coming months our President will establish a series of symbolic implementations to fabricate a commitment to diversity and inclusion on campus. There will probably be some kind of new (and likely ineffective) diversity officer or administrator appointed. Students will not be listened to. By February, headlines will feature Duke’s latest racial aggression chanted at a student, hung from a tree or inflicted upon a black body. That lovely student health building all of the black and brown construction workers are building beside Penn Pavilion should have a ‘racial trauma’ wing.

Henry Washington is a Trinity junior and the President of the Black Student Alliance.