After years of writing, I have come to believe that liberty of expression is at the core of what makes people free. At a liberal arts college, we see it all the time: actors who transcend themselves in order to embody characters, poets that evoke the innermost emotions from their souls, dancers who give physical life to elegant and yet intangible rhythms, and filmmakers who take images still unseen to find the perfect medium to present it to the world. Artists all, each finding a way to put forward their visions and make their voices heard. When these voices are censored, however, we find something far less ideal.
Recently in a Writing and Reporting the News I class at a liberal arts college, an African-American female (who has asked to remain anonymous) decided to write a balanced feature on race relations in higher education after her professor asked the class to compose an article with the potential to be put into the school newspaper. As this professor was the advisor for said paper, this was an opportune moment for the young writer to get some experience.
On April 4th, the writer messaged me and asked if I would be willing to be interviewed for her assignment. By April 13th, when I asked if she had completed the article, I was told me that the entire focus had changed.
After turning in the piece, she had been told by her white professor that her assignment would not be graded because, as a minority, there was a “conflict of interests” in her writing about the issue and that she was “too invested in the subject matter.” Thus, because the professor found it inappropriate for her to write about other minorities, she was asked to either write about another topic or to remove the word race from her work altogether. Before the student was able to escape this highly upsetting conversation, her teacher also found the chance to question her ability to compose such a well-written article.
Seeking the advice of other faculty members, this freshman found that the professor’s colleagues did not share her instructor’s suppressive stance. However, she was advised that attempting to pursue the issue could lead to her name being sullied on campus. She showed one African American professor the article who said that even though he did not find any sign of bias within the piece, she might be labeled as “that race kid” on campus if she published it. In the end, she chose to remove “words that might ‘offend’ people” and shift her article’s focus from race relations in high education to diversity.
Incidents like these are not isolated. They belong to a long-running vein of unpublicized stories in this society that all too commonly go unexamined. For this reason, I would like to analyze the racist implications of this girl’s experience in order to shed some light on where we are as a country.
Firstly, what does it mean for people of color in this country when there are professors and professionals who believe that a person of color discussing matters of race is inherently biased? I can tell you that what it does is send the message that we are not trusted to talk about the matter, that any attempt to do so on our part will be met with skepticism by a white populace, and that therefore any talk about racism on our part is unwanted by a majority of the white collective.
On the flip side, we know that if they want to, white people are allowed to talk about racism. More than that, where we would be seen by some as overly sensitive or complainers, white people who speak about the systematic racism that oppresses people of color in this country are seen as morally sound. They are not automatically held under the microscope of scrutiny that is placed over activists of color and this, again, tells us that our claims are not as legitimate as our white peers.
Also, lest I do not talk about it at all, let me briefly touch on the fact that this white professor openly questioned the ability of an African-American student to create an article because it was well-written. My initial reaction was “What the fuck.” This professor should have known better. There is a narrative in this country, born out of racism, that says black people are usually somehow more ignorant or unintelligent than white people. Given the context of what was going on, whether she knew it or not, this professor was compounding on that history and sending a message to her student that her excellent work did not match the Eurocentric view of black intelligence. Frankly, I’d be more surprised if this white professor teaching at a supposedly liberal college in the North had not already told her student that her work would not even be graded because she was black!
But what is this supposed to tell us about this country? For one, that we are currently doomed to retain a racist system. As the eradication of such a system would require a willingness to engage in a substantial dialogue about racism’s existence and effects, it seems that the discomfort and unwillingness of the many will continue to oppress the few. However, what this student’s experience also shows me is that we still do not all share the same freedom. Even after being told by a number of faculty members that her professor was in the wrong, this student was still discouraged from fighting to publish her article because we live in a nation where talking about racism as a person of color is not safe for one’s reputation or physical well-being. This troubles me because I am of the belief that freedom of expression is inseparable from freedom as a whole. Thus, in a system where cannot express our stories, freedom is still out of reach.