Gayatri MalhotraThe past few months have been nothing short of chaotic in regards to major human rights issues being brought up through the Black Lives Matter movement. From social media influencers to news channels, people have come together to protest police brutalities against Black people.
These protests are precisely the fire behind the Black Lives Matter movement, and have been a way to express outrage and possible solutions to the struggles faced by Black People. One of the most important areas that could use more support for people of colour, however, is the academic community.
Members of the higher academic community highlighted this themselves when they conducted their own protest, known as the Scholar Strike, in September 2020. The strike was a call for professors to cease all teaching and technical duties on September 9 and 10 in response to police brutality. Instead, academics took these two days to bring awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement through creating virtual seminars on police violence across history, and how it still affects our communities today.
As students, and members of the higher academic community, a protest like this should give way to questions of how we can support scholars of colour in academia, and understand internalized racism and address it within ourselves.
Many people don’t consider academia to be a place of racism, but upon taking a closer look, there are many microaggressions we as a community should pay more attention to. Black people have been stereotyped as “angry” and “argumentative” for many years now, when a Caucasian person may be referred to as “firm” and “intent on holding their ground” in a similar situation. In cases like these, Black people are often made to hold their tongues, for fear of being labeled “like the rest”, which only serves to further isolate them from the academic community, despite claims of inclusivity made by many campuses and learning environments.
It is vital to the support of Black scholars that the community is on the lookout for passing comments like these, and to challenge these claims on the spot. It isn’t enough to feel apologetic afterwards to the Black scholar, because all that does is perpetuate the idea that Black scholars need to be submissive in public towards others.
The best way to tackle passing comments on Black scholars is to push back against these racist norms in the moment, and verbally support a Black scholar when they push back on claims against them that are baseless.
Looking on a larger scale, besides students being aware of and combating microaggressions, it would serve all of us if universities also supported Black scholars on a larger scale. Take a look at who is being invited to speak at various events. Chances are, there are plenty of opportunities to invite accomplished Black scholars to explain their research. Additionally, this will hopefully motivate many students who may wish to follow in their footsteps, but are hesitant to.
By inviting Black scholars to be speakers and researchers, we are empowering them in the form of credibility, acknowledging their abilities as capable human beings, rather than just keeping their findings in the dark. There are so many Black experts on topics that are relevant to every faculty in a university. It’s disheartening to see a lack of support for their research, and this is something educational institutions can and must address.
Overall, the Black Lives Matter movement has certainly provided all of us a chance to carry out meaningful, lasting changes to the way we support Black scholars. Pushing back against microaggressions, and empowering them through acknowledging Black accomplishment in academia are two things that would go a long way to changing the academic landscape for Black scholars. What remains now is only whether we take that chance to carry through or not.
