Written by: Prof. Renee Simms
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.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/all-coronavirus-deaths-st-louis-missouri-have-been-african-americans-1497199
[2] “Fantasy in the Hold” from The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten (2013).