Are We Allegheny?

At the beginning of this semester, as I entered into my first weeks of classes, it was so crystal clear to me that black and brown lives matter, that women’s lives matter, that transgender lives, queer lives matter, that it seemed, at least in my circles, a given. Common knowledge. Not something that needed special clarification. As I progressed through the semester, however, and encountered so many people who thought otherwise — so many people who were dedicated to defending police brutality, to claiming that “it’s not about race” or it shouldn’t be — that it became increasingly clear to me how little progress we, as a society, have really made. There are still people dedicated to maintaining the existing structures of power. That’s no surprise. But hearing people close to me claim that the problem lie in the hands of the oppressed; that the murder of young black men and women (or really anyone who was a “them” in some way or another) is justified by the “crimes” they may or may not have committed. We have studied the way that Bodies are perceived, coded, and ranked in this society. It’s not hard to find articles, videos, or any type of media example of how disturbingly true this is. There’s a long — and growing — list of examples for me to pick from. 

Whether we’re looking “macro” at society as a whole — at American society, for the sake of this argument — or at the “micro” of Allegheny’s campus, we are far from the “post-racial” society that I’ve heard about. We’re not post- anything, because that assumes that there’s a finish line to cross and that’s it for systemic oppression. The idea that “women earn seventy five cents to a man’s dollar” isn’t even true, because it is the white woman who earns this compared to a white man’s dollar. Actually researching the researching the figures for the median earnings of men and women of many races was not difficult to find, but it was not reflective of the falsely-labeled “equal” and “post-racial” society that America consists of. Just looking at those statistics shows the way that certain bodies are literally worth more in the workforce than others. Overall, men earn several thousand dollars more than their female peers and white people earn more than Black and Hispanic people. It’s even further complicated by motherhood.  This article talks about how “nonmothers [were offered] an average of $11,000 more than mothers for the same high salaried job” even when the qualifications were identical. This kind of oppression shows in literally every aspect of life — at work, in school, at home, in conversations between multiple groups of people. Though the statistics I shared were specific to discrimination in the workplace, it’s not hard to connect them to other statistics and current events. 

(Trigger Warning for Slurs, Rape, Abuse); "All Oppression is Connected" by Staceyann Chin

Following the failure to indict the police officers involved in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, I found:

• …an article about a former police officer who was convicted of a felony for shooting an elk. (I wish I was kidding). This police officer— who, yes, broke the law, but that’s not the point—was given a harsher punishment for ending the life of an animal than was given to the people who caused the deaths of countless people of marginalized communities.
• …that “they broke the law anyway” and “the officer was just doing his job” are seen as justifications for what has been happening for the entire history of this nation. It’s reminiscent of what Kate Bornstein termed “gender defenders” — but on an intersectional level. The “defenders” here do not simply uphold the binary; they simultaneously cling to the existing structures that uphold racial hierarchies, sexed hierarchies, and class hierarchies. 
• …another article, detailing the psychology of prejudice, which described and then linked to an implicit bias test meant to measure prejudice, subconscious or conscious connections we’ve made with certain races and ideals. There’s a reason why police officers are more likely to use deadly or excessive force on black bodies — and it’s not because black bodies are more likely to be violent towards police. 

Broadening my search, I also found:

• …that yet another transgender Black woman was killed while seeking refuge, adding another name to the long list of trans women (specifically trans women of color) who have been killed.
• …that forced sterilization was only recently banned in California prisons. (Women of color and poor women were targeted specifically; especially if they already had children and could be seen as “at risk” of getting pregnant again)
• …that the US has been deporting Latino/a people unlawfully and hastily, because their voices are not valued. 
• …that, overwhelmingly, the horror stories of injustice in America, of the failures of the judicial system are stories of marginalized communities; that, yes, this is about race. It is about sex, about gender identity, about the perceptions that certain groups of people are innately better or worse than other groups.
• …that our college is currently under investigation for Title IX Sexual Violence policy violations by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Because the trauma of human beings, the violence that they are subjected to, has not been enough to enact administrative action to rid the campus of these violent attackers and come up with a realistic and comprehensive plan for the prevention of future instances of sexual violence.
• …that, even in the midst of our celebration of the Bicentennial, even in the midst of our continuing year(s) of Civil Rights, in honor of the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, this school still refuses to recognize that there are large numbers of students who feel unsafe and that this needs to be addressed immediately, rather than having discussions about how we can make ourselves safer. 

About a month ago, Dr. Lani Guinier came to this campus to talk about the importance of having truly diverse and open spaces for dialogue, about the sheer necessity of bringing different perspectives and experiences to the table in the name of progress. On this campus, however, her words failed to reach those most in need. Take, for example, Yik Yak and its nearly constant stream of racist/sexist/homophobic comments, sitting neatly next to jokes about finals or the weather in Meadville. There exists on this campus a huge divide between those dedicated to social justice and “the rest of us”. The college campus as a whole has not been willing to come forward to actually and willingly discuss the problems that are daily occurrences for certain students; that these things are physically or emotionally preventing students from performing academically.

Last night, I sat in on the second Community at Allegheny meeting. A mix of students, faculty, and administrators (though, I’ll be blatantly honest, it was student-heavy and missing nearly half of the administrators from the president’s cabinet), we were given a list of previously recorded demands and asked to sort through them, look for themes, discuss the major themes, and come up with possible solutions for some of those demands. Overwhelmingly, we asked the administration to be held accountable - through things as creative as administrative “RSE”-esque reviews, office hours for higher ranking college employees, and the simple request for transparency in their decisions about our academic (and personal!) lives. While we were expected, in the time of the community meeting, to come up with major action suggestions for the administration to implement, we were continually told that “progress has been made” on certain fronts and that we could be “assured” that the administration cares. But overall, the feeling has been that, as students, we have been given the weight of fixing the system that has prevented us from feeling 100% safe; that it’s our responsibility to fix our own oppression.