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Alright. So, so people are filing in and getting settled. We'll give people a little time to find their seats. You have to do that when you, when you have an event, people walk in, they gotta find a comfortable place to sit down.

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And our, our guests today are excited to be here, I hope. They see a familiar face, but they also see a face that is unfamiliar to them in this place, right. They may be familiar to them in a different context.

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So I wanna start by welcoming everyone to doc talks. I am Alex Byrd, I am an associate professor in the history department here at Rice University, and co-chair of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice. And I'm joined today by a guest cohost, Chavonté Wright, who is a

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graduate of Rice University, the Class of 2016. Oh, did I, did you, did I get that wrong? I hope I... No, that's right!

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Okay, good. Class of...you were thinking, yeah, it's been some time. So the Class of 2016, and is, is filling in for Dr. McDaniel today. Doc talks is gonna go a little theoretical today, I want to, to let you all know.

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Professor Wright is a student of sociology, has done work at Indiana University. I always wish that she, I always saw her as a historian, but she went the next best route, sociology.

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So we're gonna do two things today, right, we're gonna start normally, right, historically, as I would, I've got a document that I'm gonna talk through. Some of Ms. Wright's work is on theories of black life on predominantly white college campuses. She's done some really important work about how to, how to think about what it

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means to be a black student in the first decades of the 20th century on historically white college campuses. So we're gonna lean into some of her work in the second half of today's program. And I'll be quiet for a second, Ms.

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Wright, and give you a chance to say hello to everyone. Hello, thank you for that warm introduction, and I'm super excited and honored to be here on doc talks today. Thank you. And I can, your mic is making you a little soft.

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Uh oh. So I don't know if there's anything you can do to up the volume for later, later on, but I had a little trouble hearing you. Okay. So you might have to, you might have to lean in and just shout like you're, Ms.

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Wright used to teach, I think either middle schoolers or high schoolers. Was it middle schoolers or high schoolers? Middle school. Yeah. So you may have to do, you may have to bring your middle school voice when it's,

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when it's time. Alright. Thanks, Ms. Wright, thanks for being here, thanks all of you for coming. Let's, let's get started, and thank you, Dr.

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McDaniel, wherever you are, out there in the, in the world. Alright, let's go. Alright, so I'm starting today with a picture taken of the academic quadrangle, I think in 2016,

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and it is of the, what are now kind of, if some of our 21st-century photos at Rice can be iconic, this is from a series published in the Thresher called Chalk Lines, which publicizes one of the many Black Lives Matter protests that were held in the academic quadrangle from 2014 to 2016.

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This picture is in black and white. It is a shot taken from behind a group of Rice students who are all dressed in black clothing. You can't see any of their faces. They are holding protest signs.

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We can't read what the signs say because the shot is from the back. One of the reasons that the shot is from the back is that the photographer is trying to call attention to at least one student who is lying on the ground in a chalk outline as a form of protest that has come to be known as the, the die-in.

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The student has assumed the posture of someone who has expired and whose body has been outlined in chalk to identify a crime scene, if you will. And protests like these were not uncommon in the period 2014 to 2016 on campus.

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The picture I'm showing now is also from that Chalk Line series published in the Thresher. This one shows that same group of protesters, but is showing them from the front. They are assembled in front of the Founder's Memorial. On the Founder's Memorial in the lap of the statue of William Marsh Rice, as Rice

00:07:04.360 - 00:07:36.220

students have been wont to do over the decades, they have accessorized the statue of the founder in, at this protest. In the lap of the statue is a white sign which has spelled out on it in block letters, "Black Lives Matter." And congregated around the base of

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the statue are thirty or so students, and the number moves off into the outside of the frame. The suggestion is that more students are there whom we cannot see. The signs replicated, that, that folks are holding, repeat the slogan, Black Lives

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Matter. Other signs are even more expressive. Someone is carrying a sign, for example, that lists black people who have died at the hands of law enforcement, and it lists the means of their death. Ronald Singleton; one student is holding a sign that lists the names of various people,

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Ronald Singleton, Alan [sic] Gurley, Tamir Rice, etc. And next to those names are the ways that they were killed. Singleton, choked to death. Gurley, one shot.

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Rice, two shots. Michael Brown, six shots, etc., etc. Another student holds a sign, "We are not expendable." If you, if you go to the Thresher and search Chalk Lines, you'll get all of these photographs, and I encourage you

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to do so. The reason that I'm showing these photographs today, I'm going to get to my document, which is one of the latter documents, one of the later documents that we've ever done on doc talk, I'm gonna do a document from 2016.

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But the reason I want to start here is because I want to frame for myself, or begin to frame and reframe for myself, what life on the college campus was like in the period before the summer of 2020. It's possible for me, right, to let that moment of the summer of 2020, in my mind, it

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has come to dominate some of my readings of the, of the more recent path, and what, what going back to these protests in the, in the quad from 2016 and before has done for me over the past week has just highlighted the relentlessness of black protests on the campus during that time, and also the relentlessness of, of kind of

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public display of black death at the hands of law enforcement, and underlining the precursors to what, what comes to be known as, as the, 2020, right, is a defining moment of the, of...and so what I, what I wanna do before I get to the document that I want to talk about is I just want to

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underline for myself and for others just how important protests on campus were during this period against law-enforcement violence against African Americans. And so first, I just wanna show you this story from December of 2014,

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which outlines for us that the, the same people who had helped organize the, the protest around the Ferguson rally and Michael Brown's murder were hosting a vigil concerning the choking death of Eric Garner in, in New York. And for me, if you listen to the organizers of this

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vigil, you get a sense of just a kind of constancy of loss and mourning that I imagine if we, if we investigate it a little further, we would see, one of the things that we would see is the place of social media and the Internet and its ability to connect people in really unprecedented ways to the kinds of violence

00:13:11.780 - 00:13:41.990

happening across the country, violence that I don't, violence that is longstanding, right, but in, in 2014, 2015, 2016, etc., was able to be communicated to wider audiences almost as it was happening. And we see in this, in this story from 2014, the organizer speaking to the purpose of the,

00:13:42.020 - 00:13:59.930

of the vigil. Mr. Bilaye-Benibo says the vigil is "in response to the decision regarding the murder of Eric Garner. However, the vigil is also a place to mourn, a place to mourn the loss of black life in

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general. The injustice of the Garner decision is but one that shows the continued degradation of black life." And as you continue to move through the Thresher during this time, you find ample evidence of an array of, of black protests, of black students taking up the responsibility to respond on campus to the

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continuing instances of black injustice and violence, state violence, against African Americans during the period. And so right here we have a photograph from a demonstration following a viral video from the period that I remember where a young black woman, a student in a, in a high school

00:15:00.790 - 00:15:26.110

in South Carolina, was quite violently ripped from her seat and dragged across the floor and carried outside her classroom for, for, for refusing to follow the instruction of her teacher. And here we have a number of black women especially featured speaking to and

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witnessing to this, this violence. Blaque Robinson, who was a classmate of Ms. Wright, writes an editorial in November of 2015 that I think speaks to, speaks to this sense of mourning that, that overlays the period that Mr.

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Benibo was speaking about in the, in the previous Thresher article. And I just wanna highlight two pieces from this editorial that she writes. The editorial is called, "To Be Woke and a Woman and Black: I woke up this morning thinking about last night.

00:16:16.510 - 00:16:35.090

I woke up this morning thinking about what was going on, what was going to happen at Mizzou today, what we needed to say about Mizzou, what was happening at Yale, what needed to be said at Yale, what was going to happen at Rice today, what needed, what we needed to say at Rice.

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'Woke' refers, in my definition to those persons of color who are constantly plugged in. We know about the latest injustices. Some talk about the ails of a capitalistic society. Some talk about the power structures meant to keep people of color down.

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Some talk about the effects of racism on their day-to-day life. Some speak out. Some have one-to-one conversations with the perennially ignorant on their college campuses. Some work to educate other people of color around them about how the injustices

00:17:08.110 - 00:17:34.690

our brothers and sisters face in California affect us here in Houston. Some just cry in their room." The, the opinion piece ends with a sentence following up on a well-known quotation from James Baldwin about black consciousness and rage.

00:17:34.960 - 00:18:09.280

Blaque Robinson ends this opinion piece with, "We are in a constant state of rage. Some cannot bear the weight of constantly being woke. What happens then?" We can push on and through, from, from protests in the quad during this period to organized conferences and panel discussions that also

00:18:09.640 - 00:18:38.860

dot the, dot the period. And I want to maybe pause for a moment to share with you about three minutes that encapsulates the career of two Rice students or that attempts to encapsulate the, the, the life on campus for two Rice students who are caught up and

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are prime movers in black protests and work during this period. Ms. Wright is, is one of the students featured here, and also Ms. Robinson. And I promise, this has been happening lately, I'm gonna get to my document right after, right after this, right after we listen to this.

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Chavonté Wright and Blaque Robinson are both seniors at Rice University. They met in sociology class and roomed together one summer. Then their friendship took a political turn. I remember you making the comments that I would think about, but not say, just because

00:19:21.160 - 00:19:32.090

those kind of comments in class would make people nervous and be a little uncomfortable. Then we'd be like, what about this, what about this in black people, and like, let me complicate your way of thinking about what's a crime and who's a criminal and things like that.

00:19:32.110 - 00:19:42.790

Junior year's when everything hit the fan... Yeah, so true. ...for us, because it was around that time that we started getting verdict after verdict concerning non-indictment.

00:19:42.810 - 00:19:56.980

We were bombarded with images of black bodies laying in the streets. Children's bodies, adults' bodies, women's bodies. We were all fed up. You were sending out an email like, hey, I'm gonna organize, I want us to all protest.

00:19:57.000 - 00:20:09.900

I remember we had class that day. You know, I was, I was at the point like, I was beyond class. And we can say that we care about this issue and why we care about it, and like, I don't care about class, like, right, like what I'm learning and research, this is like, fine,

00:20:09.900 - 00:20:23.850

but like, what does that have to do when, like, my brother--remember us talking about the fact that like, how can we continue on in school, and with our research too, like, when our brothers and sisters are like dying in the streets, like we're sitting up here getting this elite education and like, you know, like what, what are we supposed to do,

00:20:23.880 - 00:20:35.010

like...? For me, it became like a real point of clarity because I was like, well, I gotta go to class, I can't miss class, I never missed class in my life, I don't ever skip class, and so, and the protest was scheduled during that class.

00:20:35.010 - 00:20:46.200

And so I remember being like, okay, I wanna come to this protest, I'm gonna have to go after class. But then I was walking towards class and I was like, well, this is more important than class today. And so I remember turning around and, because I think you guys were walking, I

00:20:46.200 - 00:21:03.400

don't know where you were walking, and you were like, hey, I was like, oh, you saw me trying to go to class. She's always, you're always pulling me out of my comfort zone, so. I remember, like, looking around, and I saw you there, and I was like, yeah, that's the real homie right there. That was just like, and I think after that point I was like, I

00:21:03.400 - 00:21:17.830

didn't organize with her before, but like, I just knew like, we were gonna, organize together, 'cause it's like, there's no way, like, we have all these great conversations about all this political stuff, like, we're really great friends, and now we're both out here, like, doing this together, like, we were gonna end up like, doing something, and

00:21:17.830 - 00:21:28.900

now look at us, official activists, like, and doing it together. And at that point, I think we found strength in each other, like, always having to be the one in class, because it's not easy. It's not easy. And we talk about this all the time.

00:21:28.900 - 00:21:41.500

It's not easy being the one in class to have to say, well, you know what, that was a little racist. Yeah, it's like, because people think of you as the angry black woman. Angry black woman. So, so we're, we're just in these spaces and we're just trying to make people understand

00:21:41.500 - 00:21:55.120

that the bubble that they lived in is not the life that everyone has lived. But beyond that, I remember that like, us both discovering, like, our black womanhood around the same time, like, putting, putting those two pieces together. I think that it like, empowered me and empowered us in like a really big way to,

00:21:55.120 - 00:22:07.990

like, really be bold about, like, who we were and what we were saying is, like, you call me an angry black woman, like, fine then, I am your angry black woman, but not because you say so, because I say so. Because like, my anger is valid and like, you know, we talk all the time about like...

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I am a human, I have emotion. Right, emotional politics. And I express them without feeling guilty about it. Right, right.

00:22:12.310 - 00:22:26.270

For me, this process, it's been so helpful to me to have you, even when I have to pull you, to have you alongside of me, because you always keep me grounded. I love and admire you. I love you too! And I admire you so much.

00:22:26.640 - 00:22:41.580

Yeah. Black girl magic on fleek all the time. That was Chavonté Wright and Blaque Robinson. They're leaders with a group called BLMHTX that works to improve the lives of black people in Houston.

00:22:41.610 - 00:23:05.440

They plan to graduate from Rice in May. From the News 88.7 Education Desk, I'm Laura Isensee. And all of that brings me to the document that I wanna talk about today. I didn't wanna set the, it sets the context for the document that I, that I wanna address

00:23:05.440 - 00:23:29.170

today, and speak to some of the questions that it raises for, for me, for trying to get a handle on, on this period, and black life on campus during this period. And my document is a, is a grant application from 2016, and it's from a, an endowed fund at Wiess College called the Dr.

00:23:29.170 - 00:23:51.580

Bill Wilson Student Initiative. Bill Wilson was a longtime RA at Wiess College. In his estate, as part of his estate, he endowed a student initiative fund meant to support student creativity across campus.

00:23:51.580 - 00:24:15.820

Dr. Wilson was a longtime supporter of theater, for example. But, but, but he had the foresight to support work across the campus and creativity beyond theater and the performing arts. And so this is the application that I have before you, or that I'm showing you on the

00:24:15.820 - 00:24:38.830

screen. It's a, it's a white 8 1/2 by 11 paper. It has a, quite uncreatively, if I may say so myself, has a, has a lightbulb on the, on the right, I guess meant to inspire, have a, have a good idea. I was magister at Wiess College at that time, maybe we should have done a little

00:24:38.830 - 00:24:58.660

better there. But the applicant here is Blaque Robinson, and the co-applicant is Chavonté Wright. And the student organization is the Activism Initiative. And what they're applying for is, they want support for a conference that's going to be

00:24:58.660 - 00:25:21.880

held in the spring of 2016. It's gonna be at Duncan Hall and the Pub. And the proposal is to, is to fund a conference that will bring together student leaders on campus and faculty and staff on campus, and also to connect them with

00:25:21.880 - 00:25:52.300

activists out in the wider community in order to create conversations that will, at least on behalf of, of Rice students, will better inform them about what's going on beyond the campus, but, but also to outfit them with tools that will help them know how best to respond to some of the pressing needs, not just at Rice, but, but beyond

00:25:52.300 - 00:26:11.170

Rice. And so this document is divided into several sections. There's a student committee that has a long list of names of people who are involved in, in this affair. There are two sets of objectives in the application.

00:26:12.010 - 00:26:40.630

The conference coordinators have a set of objectives that, that they're interested in, but then there are also some objectives for the conference itself that are, that are listed below, below the coordinators of objectives. And one of the things that I find interesting is, in the mission statement

00:26:40.630 - 00:27:01.960

that's given between these two objectives, it gives you a sense of how students on campus at that time are thinking about and contextualizing their, their, their work. And I wanna point to two sentences in particular, or two passages in particular, that I think deserve special attention.

00:27:01.960 - 00:27:23.650

So first, when they're talking about how they think about community on campus, the application says, "This community includes Rice students who are currently involved in activist efforts around social justice issues, students at the University of Houston and Texas Southern University, professors, administrators, and staff from Houston

00:27:23.650 - 00:27:45.130

universities, and community organizations in the Houston area." And it continues on to say, to, to speak to a kind of spirit or a sense that will inform this conference. It says, "Furthermore, we commit to not asking marginalized people to educate or explain themselves.

00:27:45.130 - 00:28:11.170

[We want] to encourage critical thinking, to check privilege whenever necessary, to be committed to self-care, and to, and to retain humor." So this first part of the mission statement for folks who have been with us at, at doc talks for a while, you won't be surprised about the, the expansiveness of, of, of community, that, the

00:28:11.170 - 00:28:38.230

place of Rice's sister schools in informing black life on campus. One difference though here from work that is going on in the '50s and '60s is that this appears to be more collaborative. For those of you who've been with us earlier in the period before desegregation, we have

00:28:38.230 - 00:29:08.440

lots of examples of individuals from Texas Southern University, for example, coming over and speaking with student groups on campus. This, this is slightly different in its, in its aim, and somewhat more expansive. Their idea for the project is to, is for, one, for the, for the, the, the conference to

00:29:08.440 - 00:29:39.370

be ongoing, for it to happen annually, and for each year, for the conference to focus on a single community group on campus, er, off campus that will come to campus and kind of explain their work and allow students to immerse themselves in, in that work. Black Lives Matter, Houston, Texas, is the, is the group that was focused on for, for

00:29:39.370 - 00:30:05.710

this particular year. And in terms of organization, the, the outcome of the entire work was first to educate students on, on this, a certain group in their work, and, but, but then also to give students and community leaders the opportunity to, toward the end of the

00:30:05.710 - 00:30:36.580

conference, to articulate and outline how they might work on, on concrete projects, how they might cooperate on concrete projects, at the, at the end of the, of the conference. And this is what these, these, these final highlighted sections speak to: "Finally, Channeling Passion into Action, our third imperative requires action.

00:30:36.580 - 00:30:59.230

We ask the Rice community to take the previous elements they have learned to connect with a community, to take action steps to repeat these processes with others. Furthermore, the impetus behind the conference as the culminating event is to provide a space where the Rice community can become more aware of how to effectively

00:30:59.230 - 00:31:25.570

engage in the, in the work of activism." So, I'll, there's more we could, we could dig in on here, but in closing on this document, I wanna just drill down, if we go back to the objectives, I wanna drill down on, on part of it that, that, that raises important questions for me.

00:31:26.320 - 00:31:46.720

And there are a couple of places where this is highlighted, but I just wanna go back to the student committee. There are these interesting parts where the, the students who are coordinating the activity are listed, but then, under certain sections, there are advisors listed who are

00:31:46.720 - 00:32:10.870

faculty and staff at the, at the university. And when we go to the objectives of the, of the conference coordinators, we see that there's a real interest in a kind of intergenerational cooperation on campus. If you, if you look at the third and fourth objectives of the coordinators, the third one

00:32:10.870 - 00:32:30.850

is "to be intentional about leadership development and activism," and the fourth one, related to that, is "to manage relationships between the student committee" and their advisors. And this language about mentors and students, and advisors and students, and the,

00:32:30.940 - 00:33:00.460

and the cross-generational interaction between them, really pervades the document throughout, and, and raises questions for me about how those relationships developed in this period and whether and how they were different from intergenerational relationships between black students and faculty and staff in the '60s and '70s, when

00:33:00.460 - 00:33:24.670

there's, when there are less black faculty and staff on campus, but also where, pervading the culture at the time, there's an idea of a generation gap that I think defines or helps define a lot of student activism in the '60s and '70s that seems to be absent here.

00:33:24.670 - 00:33:45.610

And I'm curious if it's absent here because it's really absent in the, in the lives of students and faculty and staff on campus, or whether this is just a different kind of aspiration from the, from the period. So that's, that's my document, and the, and the question that it, that it raises for me,

00:33:47.080 - 00:34:21.280

and we're gonna move now to, to, to hear from Ms. Wright, who is going to tell us a little bit more about her work, and particularly her, her master's thesis, which is focused on sort of theories of belonging and retention of of black students at predominantly white campuses in the first

00:34:21.280 - 00:34:51.310

decades of the, of the 21st century, and really focuses on the importance of two concepts that she'll explain to us in a little more detail, but the importance of black students being able to, to develop a kind of mutuality on campus, but also the importance of, of spaces for black creativity on campus, for helping to

00:34:51.310 - 00:35:05.470

support and create that, and inform that mutuality. So welcome, Ms. Wright, I thought maybe we'd take a few minutes and you could explain some of your work to us.

00:35:06.570 - 00:35:27.510

Thank you. Also, just commenting on the documents that you provided, that took me all the way back. I was waiting there for a little bit, Honestly, like, wow, it was a visceral experience, to be back in that time, 'cause it was such a formative period in my life, I can say, so thank you for going over those.

00:35:28.410 - 00:35:48.450

And honestly, that I think is, my work now is a continuation of that work on campus. In that conversation between Blaque and I, she talked about some of the grounding work that we do to sustain each other while we're out here yelling at folks and organizing die-ins and telling her, our classmates, lay on the ground and pretend you're dead, you

00:35:48.450 - 00:36:07.800

know, approximate what it looks like to, to lose your life. And so it's, it's not easy work. It wasn't easy for me to listen to again, 'cause it kind of took me back to that time, and so I think my time in graduate school was me still continuing that work in the way

00:36:07.800 - 00:36:26.820

that was sustainable for me, but still having all those same sentiments of being on this elite campus or in this elite sociology program and wondering like, I feel a certain way while I'm sitting in lecture, I feel a certain way while I'm walking around and I'm not seeing people who look like me or, and I'm still getting these news stories of

00:36:26.820 - 00:36:41.100

people perishing or passing along at the hands of the state unchecked, without accountability or consequences, so. The question I ask myself each day is like, why am I getting up? Like, how am I still pressing through?

00:36:41.820 - 00:36:51.780

And it was cold. So that was my first time living up north. So the snow on top of that. But that kind of shaped my thinking around my master's.

00:36:51.780 - 00:37:18.590

And what I ended up doing is, hoping to, asking myself that question, what it takes to persist in a context such as this, and asking my friends and my peers and people who look like me, what does it take to persist, thrive even, in a place like this, that isn't necessarily designed with me in mind, or people who look, people who look like me.

00:37:19.580 - 00:37:40.790

And so to do that as students, what it meant and how they persisted, what it meant to be on, and how they persisted at this predominantly white university in the Midwest, I did interviews, and I did an archival dig, or a history harvest, depending on who you ask, which is something that Rebecca Wingo did.

00:37:40.790 - 00:38:00.020

I think she's, she's in the Midwest, but I'm not sure which state she's in. But essentially what we did was we, I invited graduate students to come in and bring an object that looked like them, or that looked like, an object that had some type of significance to them, so that we could document it and they could tell us why

00:38:00.020 - 00:38:20.140

it was significant, because I think that our identity and our wellness sometimes is wrapped up in objects in a particular way. So I did that to be able to document or archive what it looked like, so we can put it up online or somewhere, 'cause we didn't have a website.

00:38:20.150 - 00:38:38.550

The Black Graduate Student Association, which is who I was asking to bring things for, they didn't have a website. And I'm gonna get to the creativity piece I feel like I'm kind of wandering around with. We'll get to it. So I asked them to bring that, and I did interviews just asking them

00:38:38.550 - 00:38:58.170

what the, what the piece was significant for, or why they brought it. And it turned out that people create meaning in their daily lives, and that's how we persist. And I did it too, that's what I was doing. I'm telling myself, why am I doing this?

00:39:00.140 - 00:39:11.690

I'm asking myself, why am I doing this? And I'm creating meaning. I'm trying to tell myself I'm doing this for this reason, and this is how I remind myself of who I am, where I am, and why I'm here.

00:39:12.140 - 00:39:39.290

And so in that way, I think creativity, with your identity, or even with things that you make, is important to persisting at white campuses as students. So, I can get into more detail, but the big picture is that it's not an easy endeavor to persist on white campuses, and that it's a community endeavor.

00:39:41.940 - 00:39:55.490

So I think I might stop there, 'cause I believe that Dr. Byrd has some more questions for me. Yeah, something more specific about the work, so I'll, I'll let you ask those. Sorry, I'm muted.

00:39:55.510 - 00:40:21.040

I do, and thank you for, for getting us started, and sorry, I had to, just having some trouble in the room, had to turn my video off for, for just a second. As you said, you focus a lot on what, what are the things that empower and inform black wellbeing, black survival, black persistence, on, on these campuses.

00:40:21.040 - 00:40:48.220

And you've talked some about the history harvest that you did. And I wonder if you can, one, say a little bit about the kind of work on black persistence and retention on college campuses that your work was designed to speak to, right, what are some of, what were some of the prevailing theories of black

00:40:48.220 - 00:41:06.910

retention on, on college campuses that the literature, that your work was speaking into and addressing? Thank you for that. So I think some of the older theories were that black students on white campuses should "integrate," essentially, is the key word there, should

00:41:07.120 - 00:41:25.420

adopt the culture or the ways of being that the white students are doing, if they want to persist, if they want to succeed, if they want to make good grades, or if they want to climb the economic or social ladder, they should just take on some of the white culture or white ways of being on campus, which is kind of just antithetical to who you are if

00:41:25.420 - 00:41:42.100

you're not white. So I think my research is trying to speak to that as like, that's obviously not something that we wanna encourage black students to do, because not only is that against the grain of who you are as a person and the history that you bring from your lineage,

00:41:42.490 - 00:42:02.710

right, like, I'm not a white person, I'm black. But it's also not something that serves white students either. So we see issues with wellness, and that's a broad term for me that encapsulates mental health and just your overall state of mind, while you're in school, you hear about

00:42:02.860 - 00:42:19.820

different rates of suicide in communities, and a lot of the research shows that it's higher for students who are not of color. It's higher for white students and things like that. And so if we take into account, and there's this big paradox in the research, right, like

00:42:20.100 - 00:42:40.020

why is it that black students, or students of color, have lower rates of suicide and lower rates of mental unwellness on campus than white students, when it's black students who are disadvantaged as the black students who are the minority is the black students who are struggling and dropping out more often, or who are arrested more often, what

00:42:40.020 - 00:42:52.860

have you. And so they're like, well, why are they, why are they, why is their mental health not suffering? Why are the numbers are not reflecting this? And I think my research sought to kind of answer that question and illustrate some of

00:42:52.860 - 00:43:12.080

the ways that we've been surviving, not only contemporarily, but historically. Right, so you talked about how 2020 is kind of this watershed event where everyone was like, oh, my gosh, like, we need to address racism in a way that it hadn't been before or just in a long time.

00:43:13.360 - 00:43:26.320

But the thing is, like, this is something that we had been talking about since 2012 to 2016, and that's something that shaped my college experience, something that people were doing in the 1960s. It's a cyclical thing.

00:43:27.130 - 00:43:42.070

And so when I think about it being surprising to people that black people, or black students, are doing okay, that they're struggling but that their minds are sound, it's, or that they're working to make sure that their minds are, sound, to me it's like, well, we've been doing this for centuries.

00:43:42.820 - 00:43:58.960

And so I just wanted to capture some of that. And so we did a history harvest where it's like, bring a piece of you or something that reflects some meaning to you and talk about it with us, and, or talk about how you get through this day to day. How do you wake up in the snow?

00:43:59.170 - 00:44:14.260

This is one I really got to know for myself, because I'm struggling, how do you wake up when it's just snow outside and get to class and sit through someone not acknowledging any of the black work, the black scholarly work that has been done for centuries, and this is a top-tier program, like how do you get through that?

00:44:14.260 - 00:44:29.950

Because I'm not getting through it. I, I'm mad. So what came to light in my, in my work was that students are being creative. They are coming together with this shared sense of faith, this shared sense of being

00:44:29.950 - 00:44:41.470

surrounded by white people who aren't understanding them, and people in power who are disadvantaging them, or getting in the way of their persistence, or program, meeting program requirements. How are they getting past that?

00:44:41.470 - 00:45:02.690

They're doing it by being creative, ingenuity. They're conducting their research in ways that's subversive, they are literally making art, or being creative in that way. They are singing songs, are creating events that go against the grain of the university

00:45:02.690 - 00:45:11.210

rather than going against the grain of their communities or their lived histories and things like that. So that's what I found. So I can talk about some specific examples.

00:45:12.200 - 00:45:38.630

Yeah, what can you, what can you, can you concretize that through part of your history harvest? Like, what did, what were some of the, one of the things that a student brought? And, and how did you analyze that in order to analyze the item, but also in your interview with the student, be able to draw them out to, to address your research

00:45:38.630 - 00:45:55.160

questions? So I broke the creativity that I was seeing down into two forms. There was visual creativity and then linguistic creativity. So I'll start there and then I'll talk about sort of the sense of community or mutuality

00:45:55.160 - 00:46:19.640

that I think ties it up in a real pretty bow. But visual creativity to me is, for example, when a student brought a, she brought a family reunion document, and it had a photo of her ancestors on it, and on the family reunion document was a passage that pretty much described the significance of coming

00:46:19.640 - 00:46:35.780

together. Why was it important to, as a family, come together and tell each other their histories? And that was the first time that she had really, that document, the information in it, in that event, was the first time that she had really learned about her family's lineages and where they come from and things like that.

00:46:35.780 - 00:46:49.130

And it also had a picture of two of her ancestors on it. And so I think that, her bringing that and talking about why it was meaningful to her to me showed that she was creating her own identity, she was maintaining her own identity on her campus.

00:46:49.130 - 00:47:08.990

So instead of just "a black student" or "a black history student" or someone who was, I don't know, taking longer to graduate, or someone who was asking too many questions about slavery in a presentation, for example, because it's the kind of stuff that we struggled to do, that Blaque and I struggled to do in class.

00:47:08.990 - 00:47:25.820

It's like, "well, no, that actually sounds a little racist when you say that." So instead of being that "angry black woman" on campus or that errant black student who is doing too much, asking too many questions, she is a descendant of Alberta and Cleveland, her ancestors. She is a member of a family.

00:47:25.820 - 00:47:40.270

She's a granddaughter. She's somebody's daughter. She's someone with the lineage, and I think, by creating that identity and holding it with you, you're able to persist in places that don't reflect all of who you are. And that can be hostile.

00:47:41.950 - 00:48:02.980

One of the, one of the concepts that you, that you call attention to, and I think is, well, now, now, I don't want to be out here being practicing sociology without a license, but I'm about to try, right. So one of the, one of the concepts that you, that you talk about, is a, is a concept, a

00:48:02.980 - 00:48:33.340

concept that's pretty well known in subaltern studies, or the concept of, of an undercommons, and, and you, you, you also use some language about the ability of black students on campuses to make and remake space. And I feel like we saw some of that in the quad with, with, with, with taking up space,

00:48:33.340 - 00:48:58.690

with occupying space in the, in the quad, but also subtly changing the landscape in important ways, reinterpreting the, the, the quad in some of those, those photos. Can, can you talk some more about other examples about what it means to make and remake space on a, on a, on a campus, how black students do that?

00:48:59.850 - 00:49:17.020

Yeah, absolutely. I think another thing that they did, the students did was organized a Black Joy Unconference, and that was the title. And the flyer was a yellow document that was very cheerful on the front.

00:49:17.020 - 00:49:34.200

It had this guy, I think he was a father or a guardian figure. He had his daughter or a little girl hoisted up on his shoulders and he was holding her up and they were smiling, and it was just this very joyful image that you don't necessarily see on the documents that promote a conference on campus.

00:49:34.210 - 00:49:54.500

So in that respect, just the coloring of the document was creative, and they're kind of unmaking or remaking or taking hold of university paraphernalia. University nomenclature, or just the things that make up the institution, and they're just remixing it, they're making it something that brings about joy.

00:49:54.500 - 00:50:12.640

And another piece of that work, I think, is calling it an unconference. So instead of hosting a conference on campus, which connotes a certain amount of order and an organization, they're calling it an unconference. And it was, I mean, we had coloring books, there was poetry, you know, things like that,

00:50:12.640 - 00:50:37.360

things that you don't necessarily see supported on a university campus for undergraduates or for graduate students, especially in the Midwest at a PWI. And so, so in that way I think that the organizers of the unconference were trying to unmake a space or remake a space that was not designed for them, to make it something,

00:50:37.390 - 00:50:53.650

to make it someplace safe. And it was an, it was an awesome event, and that kind of event, just calling something Black Joy, and then making it kind of subversive, I think it's creative. I think it's visually creative, I think they're creative with language.

00:50:53.670 - 00:51:12.310

I think that it requires a bit of community and mutuality to execute, because what they're saying is, they're putting a race to an emotion. Why would you need to add race to an emotion? And I think that question, the fact that you would have to, says a lot.

00:51:14.340 - 00:51:42.720

You, your, your work with the interpreting the unconference, right, is one of the things I value about it as a historian, right, who, who just in, in laying out some of my work in trying to come to terms with 2014, 2015, 2016 on campus, when I look at the parts of the record that I selected, right, that Mr.

00:51:42.720 - 00:52:04.800

Benibo and Ms. Robinson, in those two documents that I, that I highlighted, really talking about the pressure under, under which they're living on campus, and the, and the, some of the difficulties related to the struggle of the moment.

00:52:06.540 - 00:52:30.120

But one of the things that I appreciate about your work and that I, that I have to, right, keep in mind when, when interpreting moments like this is always keeping in mind that there's, there's a flip side, or that there may be a flip side, right. And so I was particularly taken by one of the remarks from your thesis from one of the

00:52:30.120 - 00:52:57.660

organizers of the unconference, who said the following: "I think a big part of the unconference was this sort of, I feel like there's so many narratives about black people's trauma and black people's pain," right, this is, this is the direction I started on in my part this, this morning, about, this afternoon, about the

00:52:57.660 - 00:53:17.790

relentlessness of black students being faced by black death, and this black death being magnified by the Internet, right, being present. And one of the organizers of the, the unconference says, "These are important narratives that," you bet they are, 'cause they are true, tight.

00:53:17.790 - 00:53:39.480

It's always to go ahead and acknowledge that things that are true are important. But, but then, the organizer goes on to say that "these are important narratives that we need to utilize as we think about social justice and also as a way to think about inequality, but I, but I feel like those narratives are often sort of dominant

00:53:39.480 - 00:54:00.240

narratives," and I get the feeling that what they're saying here is they're, they're not necessarily dominant-factual, they're made dominant, right. They're dominant narratives, "and they foreclose a lot of opportunity for us to discuss other parts of what it means to be black within this," right, with, with, within

00:54:00.240 - 00:54:33.300

this struggle. So I really appreciate this, that, that part, that, that, that part of your, of your work, which, which comes out more, right, for me, in the in the Laura, I always mispronounce her last name, but the [Isensee] interview where, right, that, that ends with a whole lot of love and admiration,

00:54:34.230 - 00:55:01.590

and so your, your, your admonishment to, to us to make sure we're capturing a full picture. Sorry, I said "picture," and I was thinking of my daughter saying, "That's not how you say the word," but a full "pitcher," like what you drink out of, I'm sorry I'm saying it wrong, of, of, of what's, of what's going on.

00:55:03.540 - 00:55:26.610

I wanna bring us toward the end with, so you use creativity in your, in your master's work quite expansively. There are a lot of ways to talk about it and do it. But I wonder if we could narrow in for a bit, because you, you're an artist, right?

00:55:27.000 - 00:55:56.460

You might not call yourself that, right, but you draw, right, you're an artist, and I wonder if you could talk some about, about actual disciplines, right, or the, the impact of actual disciplines like music and art and, and providing opportunities for exploring creativity, visual creativity, artistic creativity, and providing those

00:55:56.460 - 00:56:16.890

opportunities even for folks who don't think of themselves as creative in that way. Is there, is there work that, that speaks to the importance of those type of activities on, on campus? Is there work that speaks to that kind of activity on campus?

00:56:16.900 - 00:56:37.300

I think, I can think, I can reflect on my own trajectory at Rice a bit. So I, one of the first classes I took was an art class, because I had drawn a bit in high school and I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed the art class. It was great. But what I ended up focusing on, because what had been so, had shaped, I

00:56:37.300 - 00:57:01.880

don't wanna say "limited," right, but had shaped so much of my life or had been like this little, just this thread in my life had been just injustice and inequality and things of that sort. So I ended up having to focus on that and, or feeling like I needed to focus on it, like that was the more pressing work, was to be in conversation with those

00:57:01.880 - 00:57:23.780

who had power about inequality, was to push towards equality and things like that, and to the point to where I was doing more of that work than I was, I think, and I think that's a creative endeavor, I do, but I also think that there's a way in which we today, now, the way that I take part of my day every day to sit and just work my pencil across the

00:57:23.780 - 00:57:41.150

page, that is, that is the work. That's, the amount of discipline it takes to tune out the latest injustice 'cause now it's a former classmate of mine, Charion Lockett, was killed by police here in Houston recently, and I have some people who are organizing around that.

00:57:41.170 - 00:57:52.750

We're trying to get answers, 'cause he had all of the things that you would think would make one safe, that, not, not that you or I would think... No, I get you. ...but that maybe something that, yeah, would make one safe, like a master's in criminal

00:57:52.750 - 00:58:10.570

justice, and a desire to work within the system, and that did not save him from being gunned down by police in unmarked cars outside of his mother's home. So it's like, that is on my mind, at the same time that I'm preparing for this and that I have this piece of art that I've been working on for two years in front of me, and

00:58:10.570 - 00:58:35.890

so I think part of the work and part of being disciplined is like, putting time, setting time apart to engage in something that illustrates the work and that it doesn't always just like, require words, for example, you know, or some people's artwork is kind of, is interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in that it incorporates

00:58:36.940 - 00:59:01.250

word, sound, smell, taste, what have you. And I think that's important, but it's just whatever gifts you may have or whatever talents you may have or whatever you want to explore, I think, outside of the discourse or outside of engaging with people who are, are in power and who are, who may be doing things

00:59:01.250 - 00:59:20.990

that are unjust, it's just being creative with something for yourself or making something for yourself that can speak to those things in ways that don't compromise your blood pressure. That's what I, I'll speak for myself, I have had to do things that don't compromise my blood pressure as much, you know, like I can sit here and I can

00:59:20.990 - 00:59:37.220

draw and it's a discipline. And so when I think about that in terms of the institution, I think that the institution and organizations and foundations can do a lot to support black students who are doing that work on campus.

00:59:37.220 - 00:59:58.010

Or we can do more, just create a more just force so we don't feel so pressed to be doing the work of yelling at folks to act right or to not shoot, you know, like just stuff like that. So I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I'm hoping. I was trying to say, "Amen," and unmute, and thank you so much, Chavonté Wright, for

00:59:58.010 - 01:00:07.400

joining us today. And thank all of you for joining. It's 1:00, we'll be back next week, and thank you, Ms. Wright, thank you so, so much.

01:00:07.670 - 01:00:10.220

Thank you. We'll see y'all next week, same place.