Do you remember your first Pride? I remember mine. I woke up early, and anxiously watched the sunrise fade from the kitchen window as I packed my lunch for the day ahead. The pressure building in my chest slowed my walk, and I accidentally missed the first train. When I finally arrived at Grand Central Station, I followed a group of twenty-somethings holding cardboard signs and little rainbow flags to the march. I never actually joined the march as I had intended, but seeing the passion and joy of those who marched– unapologetic about being visible with love–was enough. I was enthralled by the parade of glitter and starstruck when several cast members of the Orange Is the New Black passed by.
I also saw signs emblazoned with slogans: “Remember the Stonewall!” “The first pride was a riot!” I Googled “Stonewall” after returning home and read about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. I didn’t realize it at the time how much this new knowledge would change my self-understanding and my relationship with those around me.
That initial awareness expanded in my first college course in Gender and Queer Studies, which introduced me to a video of Sylvia Rivera, a speech in which she condemned the hypocrisy of gay people who did not advocate for trans people. She spoke to my own feelings of anger toward cisgender gay friends, who perpetuated transphobia and then excused their behavior with “but I’m gay.” Listening to Rivera made me realize how deeply those excuses hurt. Watching the video felt like inheriting a legacy of radical love, which extended from Rivera to me to those in my trans community. I felt connected to her because of our similarities. I celebrated her bravery.
At the same time, seeing Rivera in this video made me aware of how much we were different. I was white and upper middle-class. Acknowledging this privilege helped me see her as she was– a Latinx trans woman who had experienced homelessness, and whose intersecting gender, sexuality and race has shaped her vulnerabilities. I began to understand that Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson were courageous because of ways they differed from me. Their activism was not for me, even though I have benefited greatly from their work. Their activism was for and with those standing at the same crossroads of racial, sexual, and gender oppression.
My whiteness has protected me from ever experiencing racism. When the police were targeting Stonewall, they were targeting LGBTQ+ people of color, people with low incomes, and sex workers. The story about Stonewall that I learned at Pride did not teach me about its connections to the Civil Rights movement and the struggle for Black freedom. I realized that the inheritance of radical love is also a debt: Black LGBTQ+ people are why I have been able to change my name, to go on testosterone, to be true to myself. By virtue of my whiteness, queerness is something I can hide. Being Black, on the other hand, does not have an invisibility option. Pride is about envisioning the future and striving for change. It is about being visible.
At Pride marches, I am reminded that community action cannot happen without individual action. This year, I take Pride as a reminder to dig deep into my discomfort. To ask myself: Are you showing up for the community or are you celebrating your white individualism?
This year, we are participating in Black Lives Matter protests as we also celebrate Pride. We should see them in continuity, as the same movement. As a white trans person, it is up to me to let go of my ego and transform my privilege by listening to black leaders and educators. It is because of my white privilege that I can take up this space with my words. At the same time, merely recognizing my privilege is not enough to make tangible change.
Here is my challenge to myself, and to you, fellow white LGBT people:
We must work tangibly to embody the spirit of Stonewall and its inheritance of radical action. We must extend and transform the political agendas that grant some of us the ability to get married, to change our gender on identifying documents, and to benefit from the new employment non-discrimination laws. We must reframe Pride so its legacy does not merely empower some of us to fit into the existing status quo. The legacy of Stonewall challenges all of to change the very systems that require people to fit in in order to prove their worth.
I now understand that to honor those who came before and to continue their activism requires me to become intimately familiar with my whiteness and to challenge the white privilege that drives mainstream LGBTQ agendas. To do so is critical to everyone’s liberation. The invocation of Stonewall, at its roots, is a call for LGBTQ militancy, for mutual aid, for supporting ALL of our community.
Yours in the struggle, Odhan
About the Author:
Odhan Mullen recently graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a double major in History and Gender & Queer Studies. They are interested in public history and they completed an oral history collection with members of Tacoma’s LGBT+ community in 2019. They hope to continue to engage in recording oral histories as a way to preserve the histories of underserved communities, particularly focusing on transgender and non-binary lives.
Listen to this letter in audio form. Be sure to open in a new tab, to read along.
A Prelude: I love being a professor, at times I loathe being both a professor and an empath, and a trained counselor. I loathe it because I often pick up on things that many of my colleagues do not, or if they do, the intentionality of responding is not always there. I loathed seeing my students on virtual classes after our spring break. But mostly, I loathed seeing the removal of joy in my seniors. And as professors, we all did, I am sure. But at moments I would feel the depression they had, and their removal of excitement—excitement that had been building and worked towards for seventeen years, and some change. It was gone—almost. And I couldn’t allow that. So I sat down to write this letter to you all.
My Dearest Class of 2020,
The reality is… these are moments you will remember.
Since childhood you’ve thought about what college you would
attend. What friends you would make. Wondering what you would major in. Places
you would go for breaks. The type of freedom you would feel away from home. And
most likely, you dreamed about what it would be like to walk across that stage,
with your cap and gown, in front of your families and friends. The moment you
knew would represent seventeen years of schooling, seventeen years of homework,
seventeen years of being tested, seventeen years of new friendships, broken
friendships, and forever friendships. Seventeen years of awesome teachers,
teachers that did the best they could, teachers who changed your life, teachers
you would like to forget, and teachers you can’t wait to tell, “I did it!” For
many of you, college has been a part of your future since you knew what a
future was.
Well guess what, that future is now.
Those seventeen years of yearning are coming to a close.
Unfortunately, your culminating moment comes in a time of crisis, of
uncertainty, of quarantine, of social distancing in a time where social over-exaggeration
is THE requirement, you are in a pandemic—Covid-19. And this virus, that has no
vaccine, or guaranteed cure, is out there removing your seventeen years of
accumulated joy. And we have come to know that the only cure for this vaccine, is
to have patience, perseverance, unknown health strength, and perhaps quite a
bit of luck;
My Professorial last assignment to you, is CELEBRATE.
That’s right, I’m assigning you more homework. You thought
you were finished. Well you’re not. I reserve the right to alter the syllabus
at any time (professor humor, I know you might not be laughing). This
assignment is required, it is not extra credit. Because this is a moment you
will remember. I won’t allow any incompletes, because This. Is. The. Moment.
I know many universities are doing their best to prepare in-person
graduation celebrations for the class of 2020 in the future—we still don’t know
what the future looks like—so these celebrations (like the one at our
university) are slated for a year after your original graduation date. And this
is wonderful, it really is, and I hope all of you get to participate in that
moment. But trust me, that moment, one year later, is not your Seventeen-Years
moment. It will be a great moment indeed, but not like the one you are in right
now. This pandemic-moment that you knocked out of your way to finalize those
requirements for your college degree, is your Seventeen-Years-and-a-Pandemic
moment. No one else has had a moment like this, and trust and believe no one
has had a final semester/quarter of college like this. You are the novel
graduation class of 2020 (sorry perhaps I shouldn’t use a pun so soon… but it is
the truth). You spent seventeen years (and some of you, seventeen and some
change, and you better know it doesn’t matter, the degree does), reaching for
the same moment your friends from the class of 2019 had, your parents from the
class of (they won’t tell you), because they showed you pictures or you joined
in their pictures of their moment, and it was joyous. It was extreme social
over-exaggeration, and they loved it and you yearned for one more year to get
yours. Well, guess what, compared to their years, yours probably still feels
like… To Be Determined…
My assignment to you is to be determined to make your moment positively memorable.
I remember my Seventeen-Years moment. I remember all of it. The good and the bad—but my bad came on suddenly with no warning, my bad couldn’t have been altered into an outlook of “damn, I finished those classes online, in quarantine, with uncertainty, and now I’m getting that paper. King, Kong ain’t got nothing on me,”—moment.
The reality is, I remember all of my graduations, high school, college, and graduate school. And the reality is, my moments were not so great. I did not always feel like some of the members of my family were there to cheer me on. At two of those graduations there were moments they proved my worries were right. I could tell you the torrid details of those moments, because guess what they are memorable, even more so, because they were in my Seventeen-Years-type of moments. But I won’t. I will tell you what I know to be true because of those sad memories.
I remember my joy before the unfortunate moments.
I remember my walk from the Arts quad, behind the Pan African flag with my friends to the field, where they told us to stand and move our tassel from one side to the other and we were thus graduated. I remember who I sat next to. I remember the people I greeted for the very last time ever. I remember trying so hard to find my best friends, but our Seventeen-Years moments were happening at the very same time and their Seventeen-Years moment cheerleaders socially overexaggerated around them. And I got pictures with each of them separately. But the day before we got one good picture before the amazing storms of celebration and joy that descended on our campus on the hill. I remember moments like this for my doctoral graduation as well, different type of level, different type of joy, but good memories. And for me, to still remember the great in those moments, when the bad still makes me wish for a do-over, means you can make your Seventeen-Years moment count too. And guess what, you already know what the worst aspect of it will be—all things covid-19.
I wanted a do-over of my moments, and there will never be
one. I could attempt to put on my cap and gown today and walk across that
stage, but all the energy that led up to when I earned my degrees, are no
longer tingling and itching to get out. I worry that a year from now, my
graduating students will no longer have that tingling and that itching, and
walking across that stage will simply be protocol. And the reality is, the
class of 2020 is beyond protocol. So, despite the reality that we must
quarantine in your Seventeen-Years moment, be creative and celebrate like you
never would have thought before.
We are all virtual now. That teacher from the 5th
grade that told you how great you were at math, and gave you the confidence to
fall in love with numbers and equations, can be at your virtual celebration.
The professor that made you realize that you wanted to study something that you
were excited about, can be there. Your grandparent who can’t travel anymore,
can be there. Your friends from all over can pop in to say congratulations at
any time. People you met on your study abroad to Ghana can be a witness too. So
be creative.
I spoke about that tingling and itching you have right now
to be finished with school, to have your university bequeath that you have met
the requirements for your degree, and I wish to speak about it again. Don’t let
go of it, not quite yet. Don’t let your worries about the world delete this
feeling. Not until you’ve done the things that you always thought you’d be
doing in celebration of this Seventeen-Years moment.
I’d like to share a story about one of you seniors. A senior told me she hadn’t taken any senior pictures. When I asked her for a picture to put up for our department’s virtual graduation celebration to recognize her, she felt she was falling short. She felt like, her picture she sent was not good enough for her graduation recognition moment. And that was an honest feeling. And I reminded her, this is the moment you have been waiting for, for a long time. She, like me is first generation, and she spoke about how her entire family was looking forward to her moment, because as many of us First Gens know, our success is a collective success. She was still living on campus while taking virtual classes, and I told her to go take her senior pictures. That’s right. I told her go get dressed up, and capture some memories. I suggested she ask one of her classmates in my course to help her—I knew just the right person with just the right amount of positivity in this uncertain time to make her senior pictures moment fun. And I told her, “no one is on campus, and no one will be looking at you funny as you pose—however you wish to pose.”
She took those pictures. She told me thank you. She told me
her family was so excited to see her senior photos. She said it felt like she
finally had a sense of closure on campus.
I’m glad I gave her an assignment. I’m glad she embraced it.
Because now I am embracing my role to share with the class of 2020, that this
moment is memorable, and it will be remembered. How do you wish to remember it?
Assignment
Title: Class of Covid-19
Assignment Prompt: You are the class of 2020, and in
a decade or so you will probably be referred to as the Class of Covid-19. I
hope you will embrace it, as it reiterates how amazing you truly are. But it is
not yet a decade from now. For my students, May 17, 2020 was the date you were
to participate in the official commencement ceremony on our campus. As of March
23, 2020, you found out that in-person commencement was postponed, and it will
be held one year from now.
The first part of this assignment is to respond to
the following questions:
What
were you most looking forward to for commencement?
What
things did you plan to do prior to commencement in preparation for it? (ex: buy
a new outfit, get a fresh haircut, figure out how your hair would fit under
that cap, buy a pair of shoes that your family could see from the stands,
decorate your cap, send thank you cards to family, friends, professors, remind
your family to purchase the cake that says “you did it!”, take senior pictures,
grab a meal with your closest friends, send out invitations, look at yourself
in the mirror and say “I made it.”)
What
things did you plan to do after your commencement ceremony? (ex: go out to
dinner with family, have dessert, go to a party with friends, pack up all your
stuff to move out, take pictures with your family, friends, and favorite
professors, bask in the joy, shed a few tears at the bitter sweet, try not to
worry about what’s next, experience the now.)
Secondly, now that you have responded to these
questions, highlight the things you STILL CAN DO. Remember be creative. Enlist
your family and friends for help. Brainstorm. Use all of those critical
thinking skills you gained in your college career, and after seventeen years of
homework, don’t let this one be late.
Congratulations to the unique, novel, resilient, determined,
unapologetically celebratory, college class of 2020.
Sincerely,
Professor Brackett
P.S.
As a professor of African American studies, as a first
generation student, as an African American woman, who never knew she’d be where
she is today, as the graduate who worried about how her family would be able to
afford the trip from Virginia to New York and later Michigan, as the sometimes
three-job-having college student who worried how to afford my cap and gown, my
new dress, my hair style, and the gas to drive myself back to Virginia, as the
granddaughter of a grandparent who was incapable of walking from the stadium to
north campus, as the black girl with a middle name she worried wouldn’t be
pronounced correctly, as the First Gen who knew she would have to translate all
the college speak for her family, as the dream and the hope of the slave, as
the code switcher, as the girl who would tell people she graduated with honors
from Cornell University and would often receive tones of congratulations that
have the sound of surprise… It would be disrespectful of me to close out this
letter without speaking for those often unheard.
I see you. I know that your future narratives from childhood
don’t always look like what our society tells us it should. Your families may
never have spoken about college. You may not have a family. Your seventeen
years of schooling may not have looked like what our society defines as
average, and this often means you are above average, but no one ever told you
that. They told you something was wrong with you, they told you graduating from
college probably wouldn’t happen. They said you would never make it. But you
did. And this is why I get a tingling when I see you all, those often unseen,
walk to commencement through our line of cheers as your proud professors. I get
overly excited to see your joy. Your moment is most precious to me. So precious
that I gladly wear my regalia each year, hat included, and sit as they read
your names, and stay on campus until the tent of refreshments has no one left
to refresh. I’m happy to hold the camera and get many photos of your entire
crew in one image, or I’ll keep pushing the button until you captured the
perfect graduation picture for all of your social media accounts. Because you
won’t get this moment back. Because I know.
You are probably more likely qualified to survive this
pandemic because your lives were required to have patience, perseverance,
unknown health strength and some luck. Many of you ask yourself from time to
time, why me? Why am I the one that got out? Why am I the one that made it?
I worry about whether you will be able to return to campus a
year from now to participate in the commencement ceremony set to replace the
one you are missing this month. I worry that your family can’t or won’t make
it. I worry you will not want to return to a campus, a place, that you spent
four years and maybe some change at, and still felt unheard and unseen.
Please for the often unheard, and often unseen, read between the lines, because I write this especially with us in mind. This is your Seventeen-Years moment, with seventeen years worth of doubts from others and yourself, and you made it. You made it. So celebrate it.
And it is you that made me say, I must write this. You won’t get this moment back. And you will always remember it. So make your Seventeen-Years moment positively memorable.
P.S.S.
Here’s a link to a celebration that showcases: This is how
we do it.
Citations Still Matter: For the credit and links to the Cap Designs, see list below, by number from top left to top right, and bottom left to bottom right.
I want to take this space to publicly acknowledge and thank the African American Studies faculty for their remarkable understanding and compassion during this time. The coronavirus outbreak has been a difficult and even traumatic event for all of us in different ways, but my professors in the African American Studies department have acted as a lifeline for me. As a senior student athlete, the weeks following the cancelation of my last season were extremely confusing and distressing. I logged on to online classes trying to maintain a demeanor of optimism, but my professors in the AFAM department immediately knew that this was a façade. Once I admitted to my professors that I was not ok, I was met with an unprecedented level of personal support, empathy, and kindness. I would specifically like to recognize Dr. Brackett and Dr. Livingston for the mentorship roles they played in my final weeks of college. Though we communicated only online, the sense of connection I felt through these interactions was invaluable for my mental health and my ability to finish undergrad in a way I could be proud of, even under these circumstances.
As Dr. Livingston reminds us, living and learning are inextricably linked. My AFAM classes were among the small number of spaces that succeeded in striking the delicate balance between ignoring the significant sadness of this time and wallowing in it. My AFAM professors encouraged the recognition of this period of mental mourning through its incorporation into the learning process. One example of this is Dr. Brackett’s Public Scholarship class (AFAM 399), which afforded me the opportunity to write a reflective article for The Publicon my experience as a Logger athlete, something that I didn’t know needed to be written until it was done. Completing this assignment was not only therapeutic for me, it reinforced the values of the class: sharing knowledge publicly as a means of impacting the social landscape.
Furthermore, my interactions with my AFAM professors were characterized by a distinct honesty and openness and a refreshing absence of fake, flippant optimism. My professors made no attempts to dismiss reality while simultaneously modeling and exuding real fortitude and hope. By bringing their real, honest selves into the classroom, they let us know it was ok to do the same. Of course, the professional relationship of professor/student was still there, but so too was a distinct recognition of mutual humanity, something that literally everyone on earth needs right now.
There is no guidebook for being a professor during a global pandemic. I believe that the extraordinary level of understanding I received from my professors in the AFAM department can be accounted for both by the characters of the individual professors themselves as well as the field of African American Studies being one in which empathy is not just encouraged but fundamentally crucial. That is one of the many reasons I am continuously grateful and proud to have majored in African American Studies at the University of Puget Sound.
What a beautiful time
to be living and engaging antiracism work. You already know this. That’s why
you majored and minored in African American Studies. That’s why you’ve spent
the last four years reading difficult critical texts, writing papers, doing research.
If your family questioned your decision to study AF AM before March 2020, they
have been forced during the coronavirus crisis to confront injustices that are
foundational to our discipline, its literature and praxis. The pandemic has
revealed disparities in access and privilege across systems of health, housing,
employment, incarceration, farming, politics, and education. For example, as of
April 9, 100% of the Covid-19 deaths in St Louis were of African Americans[1].
This virus has
lifted a veil and this clarity is its gift to graduates like you. Unlike previous
graduating seniors, you won’t hear empty platitudes that your anxiety about the
future is “normal” and “it will all work out in the end.” No one will pretend
that structures undergirding our society always work. No one will argue when
you say black communities are at risk and treated as if they’re expendable. No one
will tell you with a straight face that security or stability are features of adult
life. Instead, you are graduating and walking
out into the world with your eyes wide open. Better yet, you are armed with
critical cultural knowledge that explains the current cruelties and collapse.
And this is true as well: There is still a lot of beauty during this pandemic. Have you noticed how many newborn babies there are? Just look around. And spring arrived this year, showing off as usual with her bright blooms. The wonderful details of being human remain. We still appreciate the scent of flowers, still laugh and dance. We will continue to fall in love, experience joy, suffer through sorrow. We are human. And while we acknowledge the distinction between “humanity” and “blackness” made by Afro-Pessimists, African American Studies also teaches that we have a responsibility to create a society that reflects and supports all humanity. Sometimes we understand this responsibility without directly experiencing or witnessing injustice. But sometimes it helps to have this experience. As our scholarship instructs, there is no imagining future liberation, nor creation of blues or jazz, without remaining in the hold of a slave ship[2].
Having
experienced society before Covid-19, you stand at a critical juncture that provides
important perspective. You will be able to explain how society operated before
the virus and what came afterwards. You will be able to describe the nature of
this pivot and whether it was just.
The easiest way to
explain what I’m trying to say is through metaphor.
Wyatt Hall
The other day I watched a video of a colleague and his family. In the video they are smiling as they roller skate in the Wyatt parking lot. They bask in sunlight. The mother skates and moves the baby’s stroller in loving arcs back and forth over the pavement. To someone unfamiliar with our campus before 2020, the video might seem self-evident. It shows a happy, black family. But if you were here on our campus in 2016 you might remember rumors that someone wrote in chalk in that parking lot, “Make America Great Again.” You might remember fewer faculty of color on campus at that time. If you’ve been teaching or working at Puget Sound since 2000 or before, you might recall a long list of racialized incidents that have caused harm to black and brown students, faculty, and staff. From that eagle-eyed perspective you would watch the video while holding the skating and past events in tension. You might think about the very complicated history ensconced in this place.
That’s the vision
you will possess as 2020 graduates in African American Studies. You’ve seen the
before and during. Soon you will witness the after. And you’ve studied the
scholarship and know our deep tradition. Congratulations on all you’ve learned
and accomplished. We look forward to the revolutionary work you will do.
