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The South That Never Fell
In the wake of the Charleston Massacre, defenders of the Confederate flag have emerged en masse in an attempt to maintain the lie that the flag is a benign and significant symbol of Southern heritage. When I enter the fray to object, I am told that it isn’t my place to tell other people how to relate to their heritage. The implicit understanding behind this being that I, as a black woman, am an outsider who could never understand.
What they don’t know is that I am a biracial black woman born and raised in Georgia. Both branches of my family tree have roots that stretch back through Jim Crow, Reconstruction, and the Civil War all the way to the American Revolution.
So let’s talk about our Southern heritage.
Many people argue that the flag’s prominence is a reflective of a deep commitment to history and to being faithful to the entire history of the South. However, the Confederate flag is a prominent feature in Southern life, because for many Southerners the values of the Confederacy still resonates.
So what is the root of this resonance? Some pro-flag folks argue that they admire Confederates’ commitment to states’ rights. It is apparently irrelevant to these people that the Confederates took no pains to hide the fact that their own commitment to state’s rights stemmed primarily from their desire to continue owning slaves.
Surely people who have a more sincere theoretical commitment to limiting the power of the federal government can find a better intentioned, less fraught example in support of their ideas than the civil war.
Still, my favorite reason I’ve heard people give for why they fly the Confederate Flag is that to take down the flag is a form of historical censorship that sugar coats the past.
Personally, I am all for remembering the Confederacy, and I appreciate that so many pro-flag folks share this commitment. That’s why all of these Confederate memorial plaques include tidbits like:
The rape of female slaves was a pervasive part of plantation culture.
It was not uncommon to cut off the foot of a slave who attempted to run away.
After giving birth, female slaves were forced to leave their infants on the side of the fields where they were sometimes killed by snakes.
At this point, all that’s left is for someone to say is “You’re denying my ability to celebrate any of the history of the region I love. What’s even left?”
If you would like to celebrate an enslaved Southerner who demonstrated extraordinary bravery and whose story is related to the history of Emanuel African Methodist, I would suggest you look into Denmark Vesey.
But if flags are what really do it for you, might I suggest that the symbol of the Lowndes Country Freedom Party, a black third party alternative to the segregationist Democratic Party in Alabama, would make a good flag?
And if the thought of the above listed drum majors for justice and revolutionaries who lived and died fighting for freedom doesn’t fill you with Southern pride, and if you choose to place the Confederate flag at the centerpiece of your Southern heritage — then you’re a racist.
Because when it comes down to it, flying the Confederate flag is a racist act done by racist people. All the explanations in the world are just red herrings meant to distract people from the fact that the flag is a symptom. What we really need to fight is the underlying disease of racism that permeates every aspect of life in America, not just the South.
As a Southerner, hate is neither my inheritance nor my heritage. The will to fight injustice is. It is a potent legacy, and one that when put at the center of Southern heritage has the power to do more than displace a symbol of hate. It has the power to pull racism up by its very roots.
By Micah Jones
On the Irrelevancy of Rachel Dolezal
The internet is ablaze with the widely circulated story of Rachel Dolezal, a woman from Spokane, WA who after years of passing herself off as black, has been revealed to be a white by her own parents.
As Steven W Thrasher said in an astute article for The Guardian:
“…the reason that her story is so fascinating to me and to the rest of the world is that it exposes in a disquieting way that our race is performance – that, despite the stark differences in how our races are perceived and privileged (or not) by others, they are all predicated on a myth that the differences are intrinsic and intrinsically perceptible.”
But that’s not the message most people out in the universe of blogs, twitter, and television seem to be taking away from the scandal. Instead of recognizing this as an opportunity to nuance our collective understanding of race, we are spending our energy mocking Dolezal because she was delusional enough to think that she wouldn’t get caught.
On twitter, the hoopla has taken the form of the hashtag #AskRachel, where people post questions from black pop culture and list multiple choice answers that black people ought to get, but a white person wouldn’t (You can check them out here. As much as I’m annoyed by the phenomenon, they’re funny as hell).
On the other end of the spectrum, people are expressing outrage that a white woman would be so absurdly presumptuous that she not only tried to pass as black, but also is raising black kids and is the President of her local NAACP – I mean really!
Y’all. We need to get it together.
If we truly believed what the so-called “woke” among us like to post on Facebook – that race is a social construct – then those of us who aren’t from Spokane or in the Dolezal family would pay this woman, and this story, no mind.
Because Rachel Dolezal is small potatoes. She’s a distraction. So what if she passed as black for a bunch of years? At least she used that time to participate in the struggle for civil rights through her service to her local NAACP. Is her net contribution to the black community any less than somebody like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who uses his position to actively tear down policies that the black community so sorely needs?
Thrasher’s point that Rachel Dolezal’s strange racial charade shows us the artificiality of race, should also remind us that in our work to ultimately tear down those categories, we must avoid playing harmful identity politics.
As much as race, class, sexuality, etc. are important in terms of how we engage in social justice work, what’s most important is who’s doing the work. And it seems as if Dolezal was not only doing the work, but also went about it in a way that garnered her respect in her local community.
And so as we waste our energy debating the meaning of why a random white woman tried to pass as black – what are the costs?
One of the costs is that we’ve redirected our energy away from the black folks being murdered by the white supremacist system that gave someone like Dolezal the gall to think she could become a black person.
We’ve focused our attention on a random white woman.
While black people are out here dying and protesting and fighting for justice.
Let that sink in. Then let’s get it together and refocus on what actually matters.
by Eshe Sherley
Feminism Out of Context: I’m Still Waiting for the 4th Wave
My freshman year, I signed up to take a freshman seminar called “Feminism, Racism, Gender, and Sexuality” because I had never thought of these four terms in conjunction with one another. By the fourth class meeting, I realized that this class was a safe space for me to speak about my own experiences as a Queer Black woman in the United States. By the eighth class, however, I realized that navigating Feminist theory is more complicated for Black women than the Feminist movement is ready to acknowledge.
Learning about the intersectionality of racism and sexism helped me to realize that my problems were complex, and that I was not alone in my feelings. The texts that we read validated my confusion, and liberated my mind. I saw Feminism as a way to empower myself through the support of other women. As long as I tacked the term “Feminism” onto my statements, I believed, other women (especially women of color) would both agree with me and defend me, and men would bow down and listen to whatever I had to say.
Instead, Feminist discourse made me bitter. Throughout my efforts to speak for myself and defy the odds that are stacked against me, I am still struggling to connect with other Feminists.
In the freshman seminar we read several authors who showed how expressions of Black femininity resisted racist misogyny. We further learned how transgender women utilize the tools of Black femininity to empower themselves. Theory about Feminism told me that Queer Black women are the most underrepresented, misunderstood, and mistreated demographic in our society.
Realizing that I was severely oppressed was depressing. I always had high self esteem growing up, and never saw myself as a Black woman in society, but rather as an individual being. I never realized that there were elements of the social world that I did not have access to because of my race, gender, and sexuality.
Rather than using healthy introspection to deal with my issues, (as I always have) I started to look outward and blame the patriarchy for my problems. Because I did not have a balance, contemporary feminist theory has handicapped my emotional growth. I am obsessively searching for power in every stratosphere possible, and this is a draining and depressing chore. Because of this unfair burden of power-seeking, I have blamed my issues on people in my life who do not embody my version of Feminism. I have answered my moral qualms with Feminist theory, and this is very dangerous, because Feminism was not created for me as a Black woman.
Black Feminist intellectual discourse collides with Black Feminism in pop culture in a way that offers no satisfying answers. Because of this contention, I am surrounded by contradictions and complications that obscure my path toward empowerment.
Like third-wave Feminist icons Audre Lorde and bell hooks, I publicly denounced Beyoncé because she called herself a Feminist, placing me in conflict with a younger generation of Black Feminists who see the pop star as a Feminist icon. When Beyoncé is on stage and moves in ways that I don’t ever want people to expect me to move; when she Photoshops in thigh-gaps on Instagram; when she tells other “bitches” to “bow down” — I want to tell everyone that she is not a Feminist. In a world where Beyoncé is the “Queen” of Black Feminism, I have been expected to straighten my hair, put in blonde streaks, and have a certain body figure. Like her.
Beyoncé’s feminism offends me, but it is not fair for me to say that Beyoncé is not empowered, nor is it fair to antagonize other women who own their sexualities differently than I do mine. I also do not want to be coopted into Beyoncé’s feminism when it does not serve my liberation.
I want to point at women like Lauryn Hill, and demand that she be the face of Black Feminism in pop culture. Why? Because Lauryn Hill looks like me. I want to decide who represents Black female power, and that’s a problem.
by Karléh Wilson
Selected Poems from Other & Unruly
Alonzo Page is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. He wrote a collection of poems, Other & Unruly, for his senior project as an English Major in the writing concentration. Contact him at alonzo.a.page@gmail.com.
By Fire
I want to be
a little bit irrational
with you. Let you know
I don’t mind being residual,
what’s left after fear
sneaks in, singeing things
you thought you could save.
Even as everything burns,
the ash from my forehead
mingling with yours so that
by daybreak we’ll only be
scorch marks and bare skin.
SoftNegroLoop
a playlist
For that low-down,
when in doubt listening.
That late night, all-alone,
lights still on listening.
That thinking too much
after two, leftover memory,
maybe it’s me listening.
That this could’ve been us
but you were playing listening.
That seeing someone else,
but never really liked her
anyways listening.
That text I never sent,
naked picture, not sorry
I saved a screenshot listening.
That this time will be different,
same old shit listening.
That overplaying on player-hate,
not another encore listening.
That miserable in the club,
make it a double, damn,
I’m on one listening.
That old voicemail, in my feelings,
I’ll get high if I want to listening.
That binge, brooding blackout,
Where is everybody? listening.
That one more question,
Why has it been so long?
please don’t judge me listening.
That little truth listening.
That you almost think
you love her listening.
Rihanna Leaves a Voicemail
Stop hitting on me,
calling me out in public
saying you know something
about this body.
Yesterday, I filled up the tub too far
and didn’t feel like getting out
to clean what spilled over the side.
I let the water get cold
and started to like
that I couldn’t feel
the wrinkles on my fingertips.
I don’t know how long
I was laying there
watching the bath salt eddy
around the drain, but
the current in the water
reminded me of the back roads
we took to see the sunrise
on the PCH, the way it wound
around and around as we drove
down the coast, away from all the lights.
I can’t tell anymore, whether
it’s the bruises
or the bad dreams, but
I keep thinking about
how fast I’d have to hit the guardrail
to break the barrier, and have you
call me something other than crazy
or beautiful.
Drake Sends a Passive-Aggressive Text
When I asked you what you wanted,
not everything you told me was a lie.
Now, I wonder what
I lost when I met you.
The thinnest air I ever breathed
was through your lips.
**All images provided by Alonzo Page**
Ask Audre #1: An Advice Column
Dear Audre,
How do you deal with white people who act like they “get it,” but clearly do not?
Best,
It’s Hard Out Here
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hey It’s Hard Out Here,
First things first, you have the right to be annoyed. So often, people of color who are friends with white folks don’t call them out for being ignorant because they’re genuinely trying to be sensitive or participate in conversations about race.
Sometimes that’s not good enough and it’s okay to acknowledge that and ask for more from our white friends.
The problem with the dynamic you have highlighted is that one friend is assuming that because they’ve read some literature about race, or consider themselves “down” with their friend’s culture, they fully understand their friend’s experiences as they relate to race.
That’s the first big no-no of being a good ally. Don’t assume. Lean into not knowing, because while there are rich opportunities for you to learn from your friend’s relationship to their race/ethnicity/culture (and you ought to try!), you will never fully understand their experience.
Now, It’s Hard Out Here, what are some strategies you can use to deal with your friend?
- Have a talk
If this is someone you consider a good friend that you want to build a lasting relationship with, it might be worth it to sit them down and explain why their behavior makes you uncomfortable. As stressful and uncomfortable it can be to have a direct conversation with a friend about things they do that make you uncomfortable, if the relationship makes it to the other side, it’ll be stronger for it. - Employ the power of the side eye
Sometimes friendship is about giving each other a hard time. In combination with strategy number one, casually side-eying your friend when they make inappropriate comments that assume they understand the “Black experience” is a way to remind them to knock it off, but keep the tone light. If you’re a part of a larger friend group that includes folks who understand how this particular friends’ comments are problematic, enlist them to help shade your friend when they say silly things. The power of peer pressure. - Cut them off/shrug them off
If this person is basically a casual acquaintance you see at parties or in groups of friends – they aren’t worth any of your emotional energy. Take some sort of joy in aggressively not caring about their thoughts in race or how much they think they know. Don’t let it get to you! However, if you feel like they’re spreading ideas that should be combatted, refer to strategy number two. If this person is a good friend who doesn’t respond productively to options one and two, maybe consider not being close friends with them anymore and downgrading them to acquaintance level friendship.
Some people ain’t worth your time. Doesn’t have to be dramatic. It might not even merit an intervention or long conversation. Instead use that time to do you.
Go forth,
Audre
Trading Races
My skin is somewhere between caramel and yellow. My ex used to describe it as going from Mexican to Middle Eastern to lighter than him, a natural redhead. It was always a comparison of how dark I was compared to his pale, ghostlike skin.
I didn’t realize anything was strange until after a conversation with my current boyfriend, a dark-skinned man of West African descent. While jokingly trading stories of our most awkward hookups and encounters, he offered a tale of being praised for his blackness, and then promptly being called daddy. He concluded with a final punchline “She was a white girl so she must have been confused.” As I got over my fits of laughter I tried to push through my own story.
“He told me to say I wanted to have his white babies.”
Laughter faded from the room as quickly as if the ceiling fan had captured it. My man looked at me and said somberly:
“That’s really fucked up.”
Uncomfortable, I acknowledged that it was, and the fact I had stayed with him for years after that made it worse. We could both relate to the pain of being the objects of “jungle fever” by well-meaning paramours. We empathized with each others’ experiences and acknowledged our shared struggles as Black people however different our complexions were.
I didn’t question it until other people began to. Members of his family saw pictures of us together on Facebook, and were amused that their boy had a persistent habit of dating white girls. I laughed extremely hard when I first heard this over the phone, picturing myself as the perfect complement to his Yale education. Of course he would be dating a white girl, he should be as romantically successful as he is academically.
Growing up in a small, rural town in North Carolina and dating a white guy made people perceive me as Black in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. Back in my days living in North Minneapolis in a Section 8 housing district I was considered “white.”
I spoke “white,” didn’t go to Black church (I’m Muslim), tried to make my long hair pressed straight, and tied it with ribbon instead of beads and rubber bands. I hated to be called white. I was painfully aware that the lack of pigment in my skin was the dream for the illegitimate children of slave masters, the nightmare for Black mothers, the stain on white family trees.
Remembering this sparked anger at being called white once again. I expressed my indignation and my man assured me he had attempted to explain to his family the fact that I was mixed: part Latina and part Black and part “other.” But it didn’t matter; my light skin only means one thing and that was its color. It was closer to white so I was white. “They always thought I had a thing for white girls.” He sheepishly stated.
I grimaced at the thought, a common fear for Black women.
“Why does it matter? You know what you are,” he asked.
The summer before my junior year of high school my ex and I were buying sandwiches at a local shop and struck up a conversation with the owner. Small town businesses always have time for small talk and the subject of my race and his whiteness always made conversation.
She was so inspired by our young love that she gave us a free sandwich, with promises for more if we returned. I was delighted to receive positive attention rather than the stares we usually received. Aside from the race difference, he was generally known as a wrestling and football jock and I a quiet bookworm. Positive attention was few and far between.
The opposite is true of my man now. Though we elicit the same stares wherever we go: getting froyo, dancing at parties or even grabbing a meal in the dining hall, the attention is almost always positive. People will remark on how we are a beautiful couple or call us stunning. I can’t help but wish to be left alone.
I suppose it’s because in our picturesque appearance I am the “white” one this time, the daring one who dates a dark skinned person despite the stigma of doing so. My man is seen, to the general and colored community, as having the ultimate prize, a beautiful light skinned woman on his arm. I am the trophy, not the trophy winner.
Some part of me thinks I’m crazed, tainted by the hypersensitivity that plagues our campus and race relations today. After all, how could anyone mean anything negative when calling my man and me a beautiful couple?
I don’t want to be the light skinned Black, non-Spanish speaking Latina or the white girl with no white blood to speak of.
by Sarah Pearl Heard
The Veil: Evaluating Race Relations at Yale
“Ignorance is a cure for nothing” – W.E.B. Dubois
For the last stop on our route, we tour guides like to end with a brief anecdote about why we chose Yale. For me, the exact words of the speech change every time, but the larger theme is the same: community. That is why I chose Yale.
Yale was one of the last schools that I visited and, up until that point, it was not my first choice. When I stepped on Yale’s campus on that fateful day in October of 2013, I was stunned by the sheer beauty of campus. More compelling, however, were the people. From my very first moments on campus, the sense of community was palpable and that sensation has continued to grow with the number of Yalies I encounter. I never cease to be amazed by the complexity, authenticity and exceptional quality of the Yale student community.
A recent event on social media, however, has called my understanding of the Yale community into question and, based on conversations I have had regarding this issue, I am not the only one who has been somewhat disillusioned.
On April 9th, a Black freshman was bullied, berated and threatened on the social media platform Yik Yak. The comments posted were backlash resulting from an exchange that occurred on Facebook earlier in the day.
The incident was sparked by a status posted to the Facebook page “Overheard at Yale” describing a mugging that occurred near campus earlier that day. The status encouraged students to be on the lookout for a suspect described by the author of the post as a, “Black male wearing black hoodie, black scarf with white “F’s” on it, and black pants headed towards Whitney near Edwards.”
The young woman, concerned about what she feared was too vague of a depiction, responded urging the author of the post to increase the specificity of his description. The author responded with a more detailed outline of the suspect’s appearance, but was certain to include his frustration at the request in light of the crime – to which his wife had been made victim – and the sensitive emotional state of both he and his family as a result.
Other Facebook users also responded criticizing the Yale freshman for her commentary on the post, stating that the original description was “reasonable” and the request to edit it, “unnecessary” and “poorly timed.”
The conversation then shifted media platforms and devolved. What resulted can only be described as a baffling mixture of social commentary featuring brief moments of rational rhetoric – both critiquing and supporting the young woman’s request – completely overshadowed by reoccurring notes of bigotry, hatred and violence. Yik Yak was overflowing with comments calling out the freshman by name, berating her, and even threatening her life on a few occasions.
All of this occurred, of course, under the veil of anonymity making it impossible to identify any of the cyber-assailants by name, gender, or race.
The popular response to this incident has been a mixed bag of horror, skepticism and (shockingly) support and understanding for the cyberbullies. Students have responded to other reports of this event basically stating that responsibility lies with the victim. That is to say, if she had not made the request or criticism of the original Facebook post, none of this would have unfolded. Other students claim “hypersensitivity” is the issue, claiming minority students, specifically Black students, are too quick to brand a comment as “racist” or “micro-aggressive.”
One Yik Yak comment even affirmed the “angry Black woman” stereotype, citing it as accurate and using this case an example.
As a Black woman myself, someone who was incredibly disturbed by this incident and an opponent of bullying in any form, I disagree. “Hypersensitivity” is not the issue. This perceived “alertness” within the Black community and all communities of color is a result of a perceived threat.
An apparent danger to our community that has been in existence since our arrival to the Americas and, just recently, dominating news headlines, air waves and social media. Today’s media platforms have brought the racial undercurrent of our country to the surface, making it ever palpable and impossible to ignore. That is a kind of droning fear that white student cannot and will not ever be able to fully understand.
by Julianna Simms
Bring Our Power Back
Between the grassroots support that emerged from #BlackLivesMatter, the student-led organizing of cultural center reform campaigns, the Fossil Free movement, financial aid reform protests, and now the project to Unite Yale, there has been an immense growth of activism on campus. Although there have always been a handful of Yalies who were willing to throw together signs or grab a bullhorn, the momentum as of late has definitely been different. The crowds have grown; the demonstrations have gone on longer. Clearly, direct action is gaining ground at Yale, and as the activism grows, one question keeps bothering me.
Where are the cries of Black/Red/Brown Power?
Now that Unite Yale has finally brought forth the bold utterance of “student power” (hearkening back to the days of Students for a Democratic Society and the growth of the New Left in the late 1960s), maybe it’s time to bring it all back.
But why should we bring it back? In 2015, there is no war in Vietnam. There is no draft. Our President is Black. The so-called “Civil Rights Era” is long behind us. What place is there for this kind of rhetoric today?
It is in reading Stokely Carmichael’s 1966 address at the University of California, Berkeley that I find the answers to these questions. This 1966 speech is entitled, “Black Power,” and it resonates intensely today.
Are we willing to be concerned about the black people who will never get to Berkeley, who will never get to Harvard, and cannot get an education, so you’ll never get a chance to rub shoulders with them and say, ‘Well, he’s almost as good as we are; he’s not like the others’?
First and foremost, these are the kinds of questions we need to start asking our fellow Yale students. Students of color at this university have the opportunity to get Carmichael’s “Well, he’s almost as good as we are; he’s not like the others.” In the eyes of privileged society, many of us have a shot at individual power, but racism was never about individual power, and there is no way that its solution can be. Carmichael reminds his audience:
“We are oppressed as a group because we are black, not because we are lazy, not because we’re apathetic, not because we’re stupid, not because we smell, not because we eat watermelon and have good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are black. And in order to get out of that oppression one must wield the group power that one has, not the individual power which this country then sets the criteria under which a man may come into it.”
And there’s the truth of the matter. Your Yale education may save you. Your ability to code switch may save you. Growing up middle class may save you. Your parents’ education may save you. Your individual status, granted to you by a system that was only designed to oppress you in the first place, will never save your people. Only power can do that.
So we must escape being remarkable individuals. We must reject the temptation to allow ourselves to be “not like the others.” After all, when we’re walking down the street, we will be perceived as little more than our race. Even at a place we might like to call home, we might get guns pulled on us because we “fit the description.”
Through our racialization, we are deprived of power. By being coded as something other than “white” in the United States, we are marginalized, and our very being is delegitimized.
In “Black Power,” Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee find a solution to that delegitimization.
Who has power to make his or her acts legitimate?…[In] this country, that power is invested in the hands of white people, and they make their acts legitimate. It is now, therefore, for black people to make our acts legitimate.
Carmichael and SNCC did not wait to be taken seriously by the government. Carmichael and SNCC did not follow proper channels. Carmichael and SNCC simply decided that they had the ability to legitimize themselves. The power that gave Carmichael and SNCC their own legitimacy in the face of the opposition from the hegemonic state was Black Power.
For the American Indian Movement it was Red Power.
For the Chicano Movement it was Brown Power.
In 2015, it’s time to bring our power back.
The project of nation-building may be a lofty one, but it is one that can, and should begin with us. Even with the smallest of fights. Even here at Yale. After all, Carmichael didn’t believe that students should sit back and wait until graduation to make a difference:
I don’t think that we should follow what many people say that we should fight to be leaders of tomorrow. Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today. And God knows we need to be leaders today, ’cause the men who run this country are sick, are sick. So that can we on a larger sense begin now, today, to start building those institutions and to fight to articulate our position, to fight to be able to control our universities–we need to be able to do that–and to fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by destroying them and building new ones?
Carmichael’s “today” was in 1966, but his charge retains its urgency. Can we rededicate ourselves to that fight?
by Javier Cienfuegos
Say My Name
My first name is Karléh – the Ghanian word for “lovely”. My middle name is Ashanta, which is an extension of the Swahili word for life, “Asha”. In some Southeast Native American tribes, Ashanta means Princess. And for the Ashanti tribe in Ghana, having the name Ashanta denotes royal blood. So, my name can be interpreted as meaning “Lovely Life” or “Lovely Princess”. Either way, my name has always meant more to me than just an arrangement of letters on a birth certificate.
My mother is a Creek Indian, and family names are an important part of her culture. She wanted to recreate a Creek naming ceremony used to name Native children. However, because one of the elders in my family is Nigerian and speaks many languages from the African continent, he was the one he picked the names. So while my names are Ghanaian, the way that I received my name represents my mother’s Native American culture.
People often mispronounced my name as Karlee Wilson. It did not even occur to me that people were mispronouncing my name, I just assumed that they weren’t talking to me.
As a young girl, I never had a problem correcting people when they mispronounced my name. By default, I was able to relate to the kids in my class whose names were Marissa Sanchez, Abel Gonzales, Joceline Silva, Giovanna Leyva, etc. I recognized these kids pronounced their names differently from the way the teachers did. So I made it a point to repeat their names to them in the Spanish accent that I heard them say them in.
When I moved to California, some of my new classmates asked me if it would be alright if they just called me “Karlee” since it was easier for them. I was dumbfounded by the question, as I’d never received it in Louisiana. I had always just assumed that white people lacked an ability to pronounce words that were not English. But in California, I quickly learned that this proposal to go by Karlee was essentially an invitation to participate in whiteness with them.
There were no Mexican immigrants at my new school in California, but there were Asian Americans. I was surprised to learn that these Asian Americans had Anglicized names to use at school, but usually went by names from their respective Asian countries when at home. I asked them what their real names were in an effort to stand in solidarity with them. I was appalled at their unwillingness to teach me how to say their names. I eventually realized that I was actually offending them because they didn’t want their names mispronounced by their American peers.
Still, using Anglicized names allowed Asian American students to more easily connect with their white peers – even though it was still on white peoples’ terms.
The strategic use of identification by many people of color allows them to enter into white spaces while evading unnecessary hostility. But our names are our treasure, and they hold more meaning to us than an identifying marker. For people of color whose names are phonetically mispronounced by American English standards, our names are acts of resistance against microaggressions that stifle our cultural creativity.
Today, I wear my name proudly. My Facebook account features the accent mark on the E so that people know that my name is not simply a stylized version of Karlee. I am thankful for my teachers and friends who pronounce my name correctly the first time, for they are complimenting me more than they realize. To say my name correctly is to stand in solidarity with my cultural heritage.
by Karléh Wilson
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