Saving Public Higher Education: Voices from the Wasteland 3031056450, 9783031056451

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Saving Public Higher Education Voices from the Wasteland

Jennifer Ring · Trisden Shaw · Reece Gibb

Saving Public Higher Education

Jennifer Ring  • Trisden Shaw Reece Gibb

Saving Public Higher Education Voices from the Wasteland

Jennifer Ring University of Nevada Reno Reno, NV, USA

Trisden Shaw Santa Monica College Santa Monica, CA, USA

Reece Gibb Pleasanton, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-05645-1    ISBN 978-3-031-05646-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Photograph courtesy of MacKenzie Coffman/Daily Bruin This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

JR For my grandchildren Cherish public education. TS For those who have been silenced and their experiences rendered invisible. Your voice matters. For my mom and my sister RG For my family: Karl, Sarah, and Spencer “It’s the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing hard to do.”

Preface

Who are these “Voices from the Wasteland”? They are 11 students enrolled at a state university during the Trump era. They are working-class students of all races: students of color and children of immigrants, who waded into a big and intimidating public university with few family role models or financial resources to ease their way. Sometimes called “New Gen” students, these are first-generation college students, all of whom have skated close to the edge of becoming dropout statistics. Living a very old-fashioned American dream that is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, they are within reach of the college degree they hope will clear their paths to productive, meaningful lives. But wealth isn’t their goal; rather, all of them express the desire to contribute to the world. They are an endangered species: public university students of modest backgrounds in an era of extreme economic inequality and unapologetic elitism. The University of Nevada at Reno (UNR), where the 11 Voices have studied, lies far away, geographically and metaphorically, from the elite colleges that each year send America’s future ruling class out into the world. Most students here live complicated, challenging lives—certainly this is true of the 11 students who share their experiences in this book. In each case, their path has been made more difficult by racism, poverty, anti-­ immigrant prejudice, or homophobia. But these students have triumphed. They refused to quit and have beaten the odds. Unlike the many similarly positioned students who drop out and give up on the dream of a college degree, these exemplary young vii

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people found the inner strength to keep going. Their oral histories, presented here, reveal their struggles, their doubts, and the factors that enabled them to persevere. As you will see, they tell their stories without drama, without self-glorification. In their own eyes, they were all “just doing what they had to do,” to become the people they wanted to be. All but two have since gone on to graduate or professional school. Their stories represent those of students at public universities across the United States: an important and overlooked segment of the nation’s college population. What are their unmet needs? What could have helped them and their less-successful peers navigate the world of the university more smoothly and less stressfully? The Voices are a diverse group, but they have at least one thing in common: people in high places never ask what they think about their college, about our society, about race, class, and gender. They are uniquely positioned to identify and solve problems in the American college experience—but no one consults them. So we did. And what, exactly, do we mean by “the Wasteland”? In this book, the word refers to two things. First, Nevada itself is regarded by the rest of the country as a “wasteland,” something even lower than a “flyover state”; and second, public universities in the United States have become increasingly disrespected, devalued, and under-­ resourced in relation to the very few elite private universities in the country. They are the “outback” of higher education, as the nation’s ambitious and wealthiest students and parents regard the elite universities as the requisite path to “success” in life. Nevada, the state, has a long history of being overlooked and disrespected. If you ask most Americans what they think of when they think of Nevada, the second answer (after Las Vegas) will most likely be “empty desert.” The Nevada portion of U.S. Route 50, traversing 400 miles of nearly unpopulated Nevada desert, was named “The Loneliest Road in America” by Life magazine in 1986. Nevada has little water of its own. The Black Rock Desert hosts the annual Burning Man Festival but is quiet and empty at other times. Bumper stickers declaring “Nevada Is Not a Wasteland” were so ubiquitous when coauthor Jennifer Ring arrived from California—in 1996, to teach political science—that she thought this was the state’s motto. She soon learned that the stickers were a response to a federal plan to dump nuclear waste in the southern desert. Almost a quarter of a century later, when the devastating Camp Fire in the Sierra Nevada

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left Paradise, California in ashes and authorities needed a place to dispose of toxic waste, they once again looked to Nevada as an available dumpsite. Disrespect seems to cling to Nevada. But the 11 students interviewed for this book chose to defy that disrespect by claiming it as part of their identity: marginalized citizens all, they chose to put the Wasteland front and center, in the book’s title. With regard to public universities throughout the land: Nevada has its unique brand of geographical isolation and a reputation difficult to detach from its wild west past. But America’s state universities in general—along with many of its non-elite private colleges—have become a metaphorical “wasteland” of higher education, and that regrettable state of affairs must change. We are aware that there is much more to higher education than America’s most prestigious universities on the one hand, and the uniquely American institution of state universities on the other. But those few most exclusive private universities in the United States receive an exaggerated amount of unquestioned attention as “the best”: best students, best faculty, best research facilities, best “experts,” most celebrity scholars. The authors’ personal experiences have been entirely with public higher education and, indeed, entirely in far west states: California, Nevada, Idaho. We leave it to other scholars to study the multitude of private colleges and universities, secular and religious, liberal arts and technological, which are often, but not always, committed to teaching a broad spectrum of students from different backgrounds. We are concerned here with public universities in the United States as the institutions that were designed to produce an educated citizenry regardless of wealth and background. When that institution is threatened with neglect, or overlooked by an arrogant aristocratic mindset, the American democracy itself is threatened. In that sense, the goal of this book is political. This is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of higher education in the United States. It is a focused study of individual experiences of students of modest means and students of color at one state university whose mission is to educate the students of the state and region as affordably as is feasible in the twenty-first century. In that sense, public higher education is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the wealthiest and most selective American universities. How does the wealth gap in higher education reflect the wealth gap in American society, and what are the consequences for the future of democracy, if accessible and well-­ funded public higher education is in danger?

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We explore possible remedies in the book’s concluding chapters. * * * We conducted the interviews for this book in 2017 and 2018 and wrote and edited it in 2019 and 2020. We envisioned the book as a group portrait of some inspiring, resilient young people. Their stories, we believed, would illustrate the struggles of many students at state universities and their impressive potential—potential that is under-appreciated in America. We wanted to give voice to people who deserve to be heard: people who have lived under the persistent blows of racism, poverty, homophobia, and anti-immigrant prejudice. We wanted readers to learn what these lives look like, to better understand how these problems affect people in our country, and to let the students themselves define the problems and propose solutions. The stories are intrinsically interesting. They may shock some readers, but they will also inspire and uplift. Some of the stories may seem extreme, but to students like our 11 Voices, the challenges are routine. These are not “minority” students: they are the silenced majority. The heartbeat of this book lies in the stories told here. The students themselves are as diverse a group—racially, economically, culturally, sexually—as can be gathered in any study. Our method was simple: students from diverse backgrounds would be interviewed by their peers at Nevada, with a familiar professor listening in. Rather than have an older, white authority figure interview the “subjects,” we assigned the task of interviewing to a student their age, who identifies as an economically challenged student of color at Nevada. Trust and intimacy developed quickly in each of these interviews. The students identify as Black, Latinx, mixed race, Punjabi, Filipino, European-American, immigrants, children of immigrants, queer, straight, and poor; a couple of them consider themselves “pretty well off.” Not all are Native Nevadans. They hail from all over the west (Nevada, California, Washington, Texas), as might be expected of students attending a state university in this region. Like their counterparts in other states, our 11 Voices came from modest backgrounds and were determined to earn undergraduate degrees with very little in the way of support or advantages. Yet there is no single, universal story that fits all public university students: there are only individual narratives that can help us recognize common patterns. In this way, with this project, Nevada can serve as a microcosm of the rest of the nation.

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The book contains the stories of 11 exceptionally resilient young people, who should not have needed to be as exceptional as they are. The American educational system left many obstacles in their way, but they forged ahead and earned their college degrees in spite of everything. Although they struggled, their stories will inspire young students who have hopes for the future that are circumscribed by the sense that higher education is out of reach for them. Our 11 Voices will show them that the dream is not only for the privileged. * * * When we began our project, we hoped that the interviews would enable us to identify a core of resiliency: a common thread among the storytellers that would show us what enables some people to succeed against the odds. What does it take to go the distance, when so many others succumb to the burdens of poverty, racism, and lack of access to resources? What gives some young people confidence in themselves and the ability to maintain good cheer and generous spirits as they overcome obstacle after obstacle? Why do some people keep treading water while others give up hope and sink below the surface? We wish we could say that we managed to identify that “secret sauce.” Unfortunately, we didn’t. But we did identify some more subtly flavored themes, unavailable at a fast-food franchise. As we were editing the interviews for this book, the pandemic swept over the nation and the world. We worried that the global crisis might render our project moot. But far from it. The problems these 11 students faced were common before 2020, but the coronavirus brought their struggles into even sharper relief. When the university closed and asked students to shelter at home, the poorest students—predominantly students of color—were the ones least likely to have a home to retreat to. Instead of relying on their parents for support, many of these students became responsible for supporting their entire families, as parents lost work, health insurance, and homes. Yet, under pressure that could easily have crushed them, these remarkable students managed to continue their academic work, even as they took on heavy new responsibilities. We can’t say precisely where their grit comes from, but we can certainly admire their powerful commitment to themselves, to their families, and to their communities.

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As we worked on the project, additional goals emerged: • To provide a constructive model for other universities and institutions grappling with the issues of race, class, and gender. • To inspire bright but less-privileged high school students with the example of the 11 students who tell their stories here. • To provide an eye-opening dose of reality for administration and faculty, who need to learn that their students face hardships that are invisible to most educated, middle-class Americans. Many of the bright young faces taking notes, listening attentively, stuffing their backpacks after class, and filing out of the lecture hall are not heading off to safe lives in dorm rooms paid for by parents, or sorority or fraternity houses, or comfortable off-campus apartments. Unless professors step out from behind their lecterns and ask about their students’ lives, the difference between more affluent students and those like our Voices will remain invisible to them. • Finally, to make a case for changing the way resources are allocated to higher education in this country, so that the powerful potential of public universities can be developed to the fullest. We hope that colleges and universities will use this book as a text for courses on race and class in America. The experiences and perspective of these 11 Voices will resonate with those who resemble them and will enlighten those who don’t. We hope it will inspire readers, wherever they are positioned, to recognize the brilliance of many public university students—and that they will actively work to infuse public higher education with the resources it needs to assume once again its place at the center of democratic values in the United States. Berkeley, CA Los Angeles, CA  Pleasanton, CA 

Jennifer Ring Trisden Shaw Reece Gibb

Acknowledgments

There was so much doubt expressed about this project from the very start. Some asked “Are there any Black Students at the University of Nevada?” and then doubted that anybody would publish a book about them. And then added their skepticism that anybody would be interested in such a book even if it were published. Trisden Shaw and Gabreela Friday wouldn’t have it, retorting, “Yes! There needs to be a book where these voices are heard! Yes, it’s important!! Nobody ever asks Nevada students anything! We’ll help you come up with the questions to ask.” And they wrote the interview template. Gabbee was leaving for a PhD program in New York, but Trisden was still a junior at UNR, and the book was really born when he took a course to become certified in Human Subjects Research, and accepted Jennifer’s invitation to coauthor the book and be the lead interviewer. Then we began asking students if they were willing to be interviewed about their experiences with race as children and undergraduates. Nobody refused. The students gathered, and we were honored to receive start-up funds and teaching release time from University of Nevada Political Science Chair Erik Herzik, and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Debra Moddelmog. A College of Liberal Arts Scholarly and Creative Activities Grant allowed us to record and transcribe the interviews. We are grateful for the early support when this project was little more than a long shot. The book would be nothing without the Voices. To Henry, Kristen, Aiko, Elsa, Yesenia, Paterno, Tara, Jose, Thom, and Lucy: words cannot express our gratitude for sharing your stories with us, for not flinching during the painful and intimate moments, and also sharing the joy, hilarity, xiii

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and love in your lives. Thank you for your trust, patience, and for believing that we would indeed write the book and find a publisher. We talked to many more students than we were able to include in this volume. To Eilish, Kelsey, Drew, Anjelica, Ami, Diana: our gratitude and appreciation for the time you generously offered and the insights you shared with us. Jennifer Ring: The wisdom and encouragement of my friends and family keep me on course. I am grateful to Shannon Dubach for suggesting (several times) that I needed to write a book about my students at Nevada; to my daughter Lillian Jacobson, who read many early versions, and whose love, honesty, and commitment to justice light my world; to Mary Dietz and Joan Burton, my beloved friends and trusted academic companions throughout our long careers, who read early chapters and responded in uncanny unison, “You HAVE to publish this book!” And to my daughter Johanna Jacobson, who graduated from the University of Nevada in 2006 and was inspired by her experience at Nevada to join the family business: her career in higher education is dedicated to educational equity for STEM students from public schools. To Trisden Shaw and Reece Gibb, my dream team of student-­colleague-­ coauthors: your brilliance, commitment, and perseverance kept us in balance and working on this project for five years … overcoming all discouragement. I depended on your strength and optimism when my faith wobbled and relied on your spirited reminders that “We’re in this for the long haul.” It was a long haul. Our gratitude and admiration to Jennifer Prost and Mike Laser for their unerring literary acumen and editorial talent. You were our first responders, cheerfully and quickly answering our many calls for editorial perspective and assistance, and never letting us doubt that this book would be published. Thank you, Bill Lee, for your timely and reassuring advice about publishing. Finally, our gratitude and appreciation to Milana Vernikova at Palgrave Macmillan for recognizing the importance of this book and putting the manuscript in the hands of a reader who concurred with us that “the power of the book is the students’ stories.” Thank you both for allowing their voices to be heard. Trisden Shaw:

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To my coauthors, this experience has meant the world to me. We did something unique, we stayed true to our mission and for that I am grateful. Reece, your ability to put our thoughts and feelings into words is unmatched. Dr. Ring, you were the catalyst of it all. We fed off your leadership and resolve throughout this challenging process. To the participants, thank you for your vulnerability. It was no easy task to trust us and the world with the intimate details of your story. To the McNair Scholars Program at UNR, thank you for the opportunity of a lifetime. McNair Scholars afforded me the time and money to pursue this research project with Dr. Ring. That stipend gave me the financial freedom to take a summer off to focus on my future. Thank you Perry Fittrer for the constant affirmation that I belonged and that this research was valid. To the Center, you are a breath of fresh air for black and brown students on the University of Nevada’s campus. This bubble, if even for 15 mins, provided me refuge from a world that did not seek to understand or value me. Jody, you are a lifeline for so many, and you will always be the heart of the Center. To the Home Team, you kept me going. To America, thank you for making me violently aware of what it means to be black. It has been the source of both deep sorrow and lasting joy. Reece Gibb: I want to express my deepest gratitude to my coauthors, whose strength, dedication, and insight bolstered me as we brought this project to fruition. Voices could not have come about without the collective engagement of author and participant alike, and the myriad experiences that inform our belief that higher education can and should be better. I could not have made it as far as I did without the ample encouragement of teachers, instructors, and mentors, pushing me to believe in myself. Public higher education was where I found my passion, my voice, my direction, made possible by the steady nudges from professors and peers. To that end, I’d like to thank Mrs. Lenhares and Dr. Stottlemyer, who were formative as I defined my aspirations and potential early on. I would also like to thank Dr. Maureen McBride and Annette Cooper, who helped me find my voice, both as a writer and as a person. And to Dr. Ring, I’m immensely grateful to you for giving me this opportunity to contribute to such a meaningful project.

Contents

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Introduction: The Context  1 Public Versus Private Education in the United States   1 The University of Nevada, Reno   6 Colin Kaepernick   9 Peter Cvjetanovic  10 The Book of the Oath: A Ghost of Nevada Past  11 The Authors  18

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Black Wastelanders 27 The Myth of Identity  27 Black Wastelanders: Not Really a Group  29 Trisden  31 Canyon Springs Law and Leadership Preparatory Academy  38 Boise State  41 University of Nevada, Reno  49 “Switching it Up: Student Dialogues and Faculty of Color”  51 Henry  54 Childhood Poverty  56 Political Awakening in High School  64 Scholar-Activist Returns Home to Nevada: “Trying Not to be a Shitty Human”  68 Kristen  75 Childhood and School  77 Getting Into College  83 xvii

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University of Nevada  89 Paying the Bills  93 Aiko  97 Family History; Nevada Legacy  98 Childhood: Menfolk in Jail; Strong Women Keeping it Together 101 An Outsider in School 105 The Reader 109 The Next Step: College? The Navy? Basketball? 111 Race and Hair 113 The University of Nevada 117 Racism Right Out of the Gate at UNR 118 Leaving Reno 121 3

Where Are You From From?125 Definitely Not a Real Group 125 Elsa 127 Family Background 128 Family and Childhood 132 Race Consciousness: Crossing Boundaries 135 Navigating Boundaries: The Switch-Up 139 Attending University 141 The University of Nevada 145 Yesenia 155 Childhood: Family, Community and ICE 158 High Schools: College Bound, Making Things Work, and Losing Her Brother 161 No Spanish Spoken Here 174 Paterno 179 Childhood on the Road 180 Family and Language 182 Race and Religion 183 Christian School and Sex 186 Understanding Race 190 Moving to Nevada 193 Whiteness 199 Tara 201 Childhood: Beloved Family 202 High School: Class Privilege and the Price of Assimilation 206

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Microaggressions, Stereotypes, and Islamophobia 213 University of Nevada, Reno 219 White Privilege and Colorism 222 Jose 225 Family Background and Childhood 226 Music and Marxism 227 Escape to Nevada, Episode 1 230 Economic Class 234 University of Cincinnati 236 Escape to Nevada, Episode 2: Racial Hinterlands 237 La Frontera 242 4

White Wastelanders247 Also Not a Group 247 Thom 248 Childhood, Carson City, Nevada 249 College: University of Nevada 257 Lucy 271 Childhood 271 Family Strife 274 High School 277 Racial Awareness 280 Choosing a College 280 The Crucible: Hitting Rock Bottom and Questioning Academic Elitism 285 Lessons About Racism 288

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 The Group Meetings: The Room Where it Happens293 Finding Our Voices Together 294 Group Meeting, Session 1: October 14, 2017 295 Introducing the Voices 295 How to Be an Ally: Working Together, Building Alliances, Activism 303 Freedom of Speech: First Amendment Rights and White Supremacy in the Classroom 307 Possible Solutions: Teach-in on Race; Diversity Courses; Cooperation Between Students and Administration 316 Group Meeting, Session 2: November 11, 2017 322

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The Identity Spectrum: The Racist Devil on Everybody’s Shoulder 323 The Room Where It Happens: Open Admission 326 Thinking Without a Banister 330 6

 Grassroots Pedagogy: Rules of Engagement331 Suggestions for Teaching Anti-racism on Campus 337

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 Conclusion: Saving Public Higher Education341 The Playing Field 343 Leveling the Playing Field 350 Funding Public Higher Education 350 Diversifying Research Models 352 Micro-Level Reforms 353 Macro-Level Reforms 353 Engaged Pedagogy 354

Correction to: Saving Public Higher EducationC1  Appendix: Saving Public Higher Education: Voices from the Wasteland361 Index365

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Context

Public Versus Private Education in the United States The University of Nevada is not alone, even if it seems to be a lonely outpost. Problems Nevada has experienced recently have plagued higher education and American life for decades. We have focused on Nevada’s story because it’s the one we know and have lived. The challenges faced by students of color and economically challenged students at Nevada are similar to those faced everywhere … especially in the years since Donald Trump was elected president. Wealth inequity and social elitism, coupled with visible and violent racism, have descended upon American life like an anvil. Classism and racism threaten both public education and democracy itself. But many Americans, especially those who do not experience the harshest aspects of being poor and non-white, shrug off inequality as inevitable, even “natural.” Wealthy white Americans have long embraced the view that a diploma from one of a handful of prestigious private institutions of higher learning is required to maintain and increase their wealth, social stature, and power, and that of their families’ future generations. They are convinced that private education on all levels—from preschool to university—is superior to public education. Meanwhile, economically challenged students who attend public universities wonder whether the rising tuition at their colleges is worth the debt it will burden them with.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_1

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The original intent of public higher education was to provide an upward path for those not born to privilege and to create an educated American citizenry in every state. The Morrill Act, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, granted federal land to states for the purpose of establishing institutions of higher learning to teach agriculture and mechanics to their citizens. Many of today’s private universities were founded as land grant colleges, Cornell, MIT, and Yale among them. The University of Nevada, founded in 1874, is also a land grant university, as is the University of California. But the divide between public and private has grown in the past half-­ century. A handful of elite schools have become America’s gatekeepers. The value of an undergraduate degree from most public universities has been diminished by a few pernicious factors: underfunding by state governments; American hyper-individualism and resistance to supporting public goods such as health, education, and social welfare; and a social and political climate that tolerates the existence of both an American aristocracy and a difficult-to-escape underclass. The recent Varsity Blues scandal dramatically exposed the disparity between public and private education in the U.S.1 Wealthy Americans have always helped their children gain admission to the elite colleges that open doors for the rest of their lives. But the revelation of bribery and corruption involving parents, admissions officers, athletic coaches, and university administrators shone a spotlight on the extent to which elite higher education caters to and depends on wealthy alumni and their children. This phenomenon has been well-documented. Some of the more prominent recent studies are The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Daniel Golden (Broadway Books, New  York, 2006, 2019); The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite, by Daniel Markovits (Penguin Press: New York, 2019); Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit and the Making of the College Admissions Scandal, by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levits (Penguin Portfolio: New York, 2020); and Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, by Jeffrey Selingo (Scribner: New York, 2020). Another recent book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students, by Anthony Abraham Jack (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019), discusses the pipeline from elite private high schools to elite private colleges. Students admitted to elite universities

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from public high schools are at a severe cultural disadvantage in their bid to gain the social and economic benefits they hope for. Jack’s research is anonymized, conducted at an elite private university in the Northeast, given a pseudonym in the book, where he was embedded for a semester interviewing students and administrators. The goal of Jack’s book is to ensure that students who attended public high schools are included in community life at their private colleges. Jack assumes that a major benefit of an elite private education is access to wealth, power, and privilege. Students who have not come through the private school pipeline are unaccustomed to interacting comfortably with faculty, administrators, and alumni, and these relationships are crucial to accessing what their university has to offer. He suggests ways in which elite universities can facilitate the inclusion of economically disadvantaged students in the culture of privilege. However, this focus overlooks the possibility that students of modest or poor incomes may desire higher education in order to create positive change for others who lack wealth and privilege. Rather than focus on individual wealth and power, a university education may be pursued for the skills and knowledge needed to become a leader and give back to one’s community. But more than ever in the contemporary United States, wealth and power are regarded as important life goals, best secured with a degree from one of a few elite universities. If degrees from expensive colleges are required in order to “succeed” in those terms, most American students will be left outside the gates. Admission to an elite college in the United States is not usually earned so much as inherited—or bought. Donations of millions of dollars can buy admission for a wealthy but mediocre student; the child of an alumnus (a “legacy” admission) has a leg up more certain than any affirmative action admission; nationally recognized high school athletes whose achievements are often in country club sports and whose parents have paid for a lifetime of private coaching can be admitted at the discretion of a coach making a recommendation to a dean; the children of faculty are admitted without necessarily having the academic record of other applicants; the children of celebrities and high-profile politicians are tagged on a “dean’s special interest list.” Some star athletes have parents who played for the college team when they attended. Recently, there has been critical public acknowledgment of the fact that this system leaves only a few admission slots available for unconnected applicants. But awareness of the system has not been enough to dispel the “meritocracy” myth: that any student with good enough grades and

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impressive enough accomplishments can gain admission to elite schools, and that the “top ten” private universities in the nation are therefore filled with the smartest people. The economic hardships undermining the vitality of public higher education and public secondary school education have also been studied. Research on public higher education often focuses on racial inequality. The College Dropout Scandal by David Kirp (Oxford University Press, 2019) calls for public institutions to create support systems for students from economically challenged backgrounds to facilitate their success in graduating from a four-year public university. Kirp is critical of the preoccupation with the college ranking system that rewards schools for low admissions rates rather than high graduation rates. Public universities, he says, should stop thinking that they have achieved their diversity goals when they admit poor and minority students. Their focus should be on opening the doors (even with open admission) to economically disadvantaged students and then providing them with the support they need to graduate. Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities, by Laura T.  Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), analyzes the challenges faced by the University of California system, the world’s premier public university system, in dealing with inequities in funding and admissions that favor the research campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, and Davis), over the smaller campuses that focus more on undergraduate education and have a higher percentage of minority students (Merced, Riverside, Irvine, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz). Both Kirp’s and Hamilton and Nielsen’s studies shine a light on the neglect of students who are the least prepared for university education, but who have the intelligence and ambition to gain admission to a state university. Acknowledging the inadequacies of public primary and secondary schools in preparing students for higher education is necessary before all students can succeed. Students of color are overrepresented in the group of students who most need that attention. The growing wealth gap in the United States and its impact on access to private higher education has been accompanied by a visible rise in racist incidents throughout the nation and on university campuses—most dramatically since 2016, when Donald Trump and his followers ascended to power in American government and society. There have been incidents of white nationalist student violence and destruction on both public and private campuses. Some of these incidents came in response to efforts by antiracist students to remove monuments to slavery and to rename

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buildings that were named after enslavers and supporters of Jim Crow. Confronting the foundational racism of institutions of higher education, progressives have met with enraged resistance from defenders of “history,” “tradition,” and “the lost cause.” In August 2017, white supremacists staged a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville to protest the removal of the University of Virginia’s statue of Robert E. Lee. Torch-bearing white men chanted “Jews will not replace us” as they gave the “Heil Hitler” Nazi salute. The rally, with its aggressive racism and menacing, torch-bearing display, carried the threat of violence from the first, and turned deadly when one of the white nationalist demonstrators drove his car into a crowd of non-violent counter-protesters, killing a woman named Heather Heyer. The event was widely reported and provoked global outrage. Less publicly noted were the spray-painted swastikas, nooses dangled where black students were meant to find them, and racist graffiti defacing university buildings across the country. That sort of visible racism continues to be a fact of campus life at least since the election of Donald Trump. On November 23, 2019, for example, Faith Karimi of CNN reported “at least five hate incidents reported on college campuses this week.” The campuses named in the article were the University of Georgia (swastikas at residence halls); Iowa State (swastikas and racist stickers); Syracuse (racist graffiti); University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire (racist social posts); and Auburn University (a noose in a residence hall).2 On February 1, 2021, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a study revealing the disturbing persistence of racist fliers being distributed on university campuses throughout the nation: “Flyering Remains a Recruitment Tool for Hate Groups.”3 America’s dormant racism might not have surfaced so dramatically if not for our long-overdue reckoning with our own history. While university buildings are defaced by white supremacists, other students and administrators acknowledge that racist university symbols must be changed. The University of Texas is embattled over its fight song, “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You,” because of its association with the Confederacy and its origins in minstrel shows. The University of Mississippi is facing resistance to its moniker, “Ole Miss,” which echoes the way enslaved people referred to the mistress of the plantation. Yale changed the name of Calhoun Hall, a residence Hall named after John C. Calhoun, the prominent secessionist and Confederate leader from South Carolina. Amherst students demanded that their school drop their mascot “General

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Jeff” (General Jeffrey Amherst, after whom the college is named) because he was responsible for the genocide committed against Native Americans with smallpox-infected blankets. Black students at the University of Missouri were responsible for the resignation of the university president for his inaction on campus racism at both the student and administration levels. These examples are the tip of the iceberg. There has finally been public acknowledgment that much of the work involved in the physical building of our nation’s most esteemed private universities was done by enslaved laborers. That foundational history needs to be faced. The increase in racist displays on university campuses has presented challenges for university administrators, who have been quick to deplore each incident on their campuses, but often in terms that have failed to discourage further racist incidents. Scholarly articles analyzing administrative responses to racism conclude that the messages sent out to the public and the campus community are rarely specific enough, and seldom acknowledge the fact that the incidents are not merely the product of isolated individuals acting out racist impulses, but part of a culture that refuses to acknowledge or attempt to deal with racist foundations in higher education and American life itself.4

The University of Nevada, Reno The University of Nevada exemplifies the economic and racial crises in higher education in recent years. Like universities throughout the nation, it has had its share of racial problems. We have chosen to write about the University of Nevada because it is the university we know, and because it serves as an example of the economic and racial challenges that face public universities throughout the nation. Our focus on one emblematic university enabled us to work on the micro level, seeking in-depth input from Nevada students who attended during the Trump years. We wanted to know how race and poverty have shaped their lives and influenced their determination and ability to attend college; and how racism and classism (both implicit and explicit) impacted their experience as college students. We all shared a sense that the University of Nevada was like many other public universities: not exceptionally racist but struggling with “the usual” racism and economic challenges. Our goal, obviously, is to offer ways of thinking and acting that

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will render racism and economically depleted public education “unusual” in the future. Nevada is a microcosm of the United States in recent years. What happens in Las Vegas may stay in Las Vegas, but what is happening in Nevada is also happening everywhere in the United States. Our belief about the need to face historical injustice is sharply at odds with the attitude of those who want to suppress teaching about the uglier aspects of our past: we believe that evidence of historic racism has a powerful role to play in efforts to enlighten the nation and to change the course of American history. If evidence of past racism remains buried, toxic attitudes are free to fester and spread. Shedding light on the truth has the power to change hearts and minds. This is exactly what has been happening on campuses throughout the United States as, one by one, universities remove monuments to defenders of slavery on their campuses. We hope that Nevadans, too, will find the courage to follow through and bring the troubling aspect of our university’s history to light. The past holds the key to redeeming the future. This includes addressing a campus environment marred by racist aggression. Trisden Shaw—who earned his BA in Political Science in 2018 and went on to earn a Master’s in African American Studies at UCLA— had this to say about his undergraduate experience: “The everyday fighting to get this degree felt like war, and while some of us survived, we’re still left with an understanding of the trauma that came with it.” The “war” Trisden felt he was surviving refers to the constant pressure of dividing his time between earning a living and excelling in his academic work and the awareness experienced by students of color that they are in a “white space.” Knowing that you are defined by your race every time you step out of your house is a pressure that white students do not experience. How might Nevada have better responded to the marginalization experienced by students of color? How can Nevada serve as a model for other public universities? If we can answer these questions, we are on the road to making success the rule instead of the exception for students like these. Here we want to note two important aspects of our study: we were determined to let the students define their own racial and class identities, and we relied on them to name the problems that (according to both research and our experience) many university administrators are reluctant to name. This was an exercise in Freirean education, in which the teachers—the “authorities”—forced themselves to listen to and learn from the students, whose perspective on their own lives is rarely respected.5 The

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students’ insights open a door to dialogues on race and class—something that the carefully crafted, ambiguous language of college administrators fails to do. * * * UNR has served for most of its existence as the only place in Nevada for residents to acquire a university education—historically in mining and ranching, and more recently in the sciences and liberal arts. Founded in 1874, UNR is the original campus of the University of Nevada and was the only four-year university in the state until its Las Vegas counterpart opened in 1957. The Reno campus is nestled beneath the Sierra Nevada to the west, with the Great Basin to the east. Here, California’s breathtaking mountains meet Nevada’s vast desert “wasteland,” and this geographic division is reflected in Nevada’s clashing political cultures. The western part of the state is more like the progressive west coast; the vast, open, eastern part of Nevada is more like the conservative middle of the United States. Increasingly in recent years, Nevadans have had to confront the issues of race and class that face both the nation and higher education. A recent and dramatic expansion in the university’s infrastructure and student population is part of an effort to raise its profile and attract students from out of state and from other countries. An influx of investment and funding has helped UNR achieve the coveted status of Research I University. But class bias—a national reality, even in this land that long prided itself on its class mobility—mutes respect for working-class students attending a state university or community college. The students of color we interviewed expressed a sense of living on the margins of the university’s exuberant growth and optimism.6 The election of Donald Trump had real-life consequences for students of color at public universities. American racism emerged from its hiding places, degrading the campus environment. As at other universities, violence, hostility, and obscenities were directed at students of color, contaminating the climate at Nevada. Students of all races were appalled at the behavior of some of their right-wing classmates and the desecration of their campus with racist graffiti. Escalating incidents of racist vandalism, and the university’s failure to halt them, heightened the unease of the eleven students interviewed here.

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The clash between marginalized students and newly emboldened white racists was intense on UNR’s campus, as dramatically illustrated by the stories of two highly visible alumni.

Colin Kaepernick From 2007 to 2010, Colin Kaepernick was the University of Nevada’s star quarterback. Drafted by the San Francisco Forty-Niners, he started for San Francisco in 2011 and led the team to the Super Bowl in 2012. In 2016, Kaepernick became a controversial figure when, to protest the disproportionate number of black Americans killed by police, he declined to stand for the national anthem before a preseason NFL game. Until that moment, Kaepernick had been a source of pride for Nevada: the university’s “celebrity alum.” Reno-Tahoe International Airport devoted a prominent display to his football accomplishments. No one who arrived in Reno by air could claim their baggage without being aware of Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick’s solitary political protest inspired other athletes to join him, and the “take a knee” movement ignited a national controversy. Some regarded Kaepernick as an activist hero in the mold of Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, and Harry Edwards. Others, including the forty-fifth president, called him a “traitor,” whose refusal to stand during the national anthem disrespected American troops. The University of Nevada was as divided as the rest of the nation, with students of color choosing to “sit with Kap” at the start of football and basketball games, and some conservative white students tweeting racial obscenities in response. Kaepernick’s shrine at Reno-Tahoe airport was replaced by a more modest tribute to all of the school’s athletic teams. The university’s public distancing from its star quarterback has been abetted by the national news media’s burial of Kaepernick’s Nevada affiliation. Kaepernick is referred to as a former NFL quarterback who started a movement and was blackballed for his political protest. Few remember that his success at Nevada earned him his spot on the Forty-­ Niners’ roster.

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Peter Cvjetanovic Within a few months of Trump’s inauguration, the University of Nevada was drawn into prominent racist incident that made international headlines. On August 11, 2017, Peter Cvjetanovic, an undergraduate Political Science and History major at Nevada, was photographed shouting and carrying a torch at the “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally at Charlottesville, Virginia. Cvjetanovic became the poster boy for white nationalism when a photo of him screaming, with a tiki torch in hand, went viral. Vox deemed this one of the most striking images from the event. His visibility prompted an outcry from Nevada students, demanding that he not be allowed to return to campus. Some alumni regarded Cvjetanovic as an embarrassment to the university, reflecting badly on the education he received in political science and history. The UNR administration, under the guidance of the university’s legal counsel, determined that Peter was exercising his First Amendment rights in marching for white nationalism. He had broken no laws and committed no crime. It was also determined to be the university’s responsibility to protect him when he returned to campus, in view of the threats he had received from around the nation, though no threats came directly from UNR students. For several weeks, until the worst part of the fury passed, Peter Cvjetanovic was escorted by armed UNR police officers to his classes, to the student store to buy his textbooks, and everywhere he went as a student. At a public meeting, black students at Nevada demanded to know why a white supremacist was being protected by the university, while students of color felt increasingly unsafe on campus.7 Following the Charlottesville event, students and faculty became frustrated and alarmed by increasingly frequent racist displays on campus. Anti-black and anti-Semitic graffiti became more commonplace; black students endured racial epithets directed at them; Latinx students were insulted for speaking Spanish and told to “go back home.” The president, provost, and deans sent a stream of emails to the campus community deploring the racist incidents, yet the administration seemed baffled as to what further action it could take.8 Peter had First Amendment rights—but the rest of the students had a right to an education and a learning environment that was not disrupted by public expression of the wish to rid the United States of everyone but white Christians. Nevada Journalism professor Paul Mitchell noted that many black students “expressed an opinion

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of not feeling safe” on campus. Mitchell noted, “When the perception is that just because you say a name but you’re not physically harming someone, that that person is not going to be impacted, that’s completely false.”9 Hate speech and free speech are not the same. The uproar over Colin Kaepernick’s Black Lives protest, quickly followed by Peter Cvjetanovic’s visibility as a white supremacist, created a sense of whiplash on campus for some. Kaepernick has gained both notoriety and respect as the embodiment of the renewed Black Power movement of the mid-twentieth century, carrying forward the legacy of the great black athletes of the Sixties. Cvjetanovic is part of a revival of America’s white supremacy movement, with its threats and its murderous acts of terrorism. The university did not condone Cvjetanovic, but it chose to protect him. Meanwhile, Kaepernick’s airport football display quietly disappeared. The students interviewed in this volume have spent their college years amid this conflict, buffeted by the forces of progress and reaction. We reached out to them to learn how they had experienced the racial tensions that have defined so much of America’s recent history. The three authors—a Jewish woman, a black man, and a white cisgender man who feels uncomfortable with white male privilege—have also experienced a sense of vulnerability at Nevada. Mistrusting our own perceptions, we went looking for the source of our discomfort. The university has publicly adhered to its commitment to racial inclusivity, as do all public universities in the twenty-first century. So why were we all feeling something else, something disturbing? Trisden expressed what all three of us had been thinking when he wondered out loud, “Are we just seeing ghosts? Or are we being gaslighted?” This is the context that inspired us to begin work on this project. With battle lines drawn so deeply, how could we find a way forward?

The Book of the Oath: A Ghost of Nevada Past Just as other universities have been uncovering troubled histories connected to slavery, Nevada has an ugly secret that needs to be confronted. In October 2017, the authors attended a forum organized by the Nevada History Department to discuss the Charlottesville “Ignite the Right” rally and strategies for dealing with white supremacism on campus. During the discussion that followed the presentations, a faculty member in the audience informed those present that in the early days of the twentieth

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century, all Nevada students were required to sign an oath upon graduation, acknowledging their “great debt to the race and [their] racial inheritance.” The Oath and signatures were collected in a custom-crafted leather volume in “Nevada blue” with silver leaf pages and silver hinges. The professor who brought the Oath to the attention of those present at the History Department Forum suggested that the university had some ugly and unacknowledged racism in its history, and that the current racism on campus hadn’t come out of nowhere. The current crisis needed to be understood in the context of the university’s past. The existence of an oath of loyalty to the white race in the university’s history was so startling that there was barely a response to it at the meeting—just a collective gasp, and then silence. A month after this History Department public meeting, Ring, Shaw, and Gibb called a meeting of the students involved in this project, whom they had interviewed individually but who had not previously met or talked to each other. They gathered to discuss the racial environment on campus since the election of the 45th president, and what might be done to address the tide of racist incidents that the university administration was attempting to stem. One of the students reminded the rest of us about that moment when the professor at the History Department forum mentioned “The Oath.” Again, the response was stunned silence: no one knew what to do with the information. Later, while listening to the audio recording of the meeting, the authors turned to each other incredulously and said, “Wait a minute … What???” Like a long-repressed childhood trauma, the Oath felt painful to think of but too important to deny or overlook any longer. Perhaps facing the past was exactly what the university needed to move beyond it. Did that buried oath have a persistent impact Nevada’s campus culture? Was it being “channeled” by the racists on our campus? Here is the Nevada oath of 1920: “I, about to be graduated from the University of Nevada, Acknowledging my great debt to the Giver of all life, who has given me life in Nevada, the State whose people are most blest with the pioneering strengths and whose land of all America, is freshest from His hand, and most truly His Cathedral, with mountain columns, star vaults and sage incensed aisles hourly urging me to reverent thinking and living,

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Acknowledging my great debt to the race, which has made me heir to civilization, wrought out by its centuries of toil and of thought and preserved by the bravery of its heroes, the wisdom of its sages and the faith of its saints, Acknowledging my great debt to this Nation and to this Commonwealth, which through guardian organization and through open school doors have jointly made it possible for me to come into the full riches of my natural and my racial inheritances, Here and Now Pledge lifelong loyalty to the shaping ideals of American civilization: Life-long loyalty to the shaping ideas of American civilization: Liberty, bounded by law drawn for the common weal, Equality of opportunity for all, and Justice, administered in accord with the dictates of the common will, lawfully expressed. I here and now further pledge that in all the years to be granted to me and to the fullness of my allotted strength I Shall Serve, Both alone and with others, to the high ends that un-cleanness, greed, selfishness and pride shall lessen, that clean-ness, charity, comradeship and reverence shall widen and that this, my generation, shall bequeath an even better and nobler civilization than came to it.”10

The Oath links the concepts of “racial inheritance,” “education,” and “open school doors” to “American Civilization.” It pledges itself to liberty, equality of opportunity for all, and justice administered in accord with the dictates of the common will. But the “racial inheritance” obviously did not include any race other than white, rendering those egalitarian ideals inapplicable to graduates who did not share in the racial inheritance. There was only one black student at the University of Nevada in 1920, and he withdrew without graduating in 1922. The first black woman to graduate UNR was a member of the class of 1954, but her name does not appear among the signatures for that year pledging to use her education to uphold “the race.” President Walter E.  Clark, fifth president of UNR (after whom the Clark Administration Building is named), created the Oath. That the current administration building of the university is named after the president responsible for these words is evidence that the troubling legacy of racism lies unexamined. President Clark’s vision of filling the book with 100 years of graduates’ signatures ended prematurely. The year 2020 would have been the Oath’s

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centennial year, had the tradition not been discontinued in 1965 by President Charles J. Armstrong. The Civil Rights Bill had passed in 1964 and the struggle for civil rights was at a high point in the United States. But President Armstrong did not publicly embrace the opportunity to move beyond the university’s written record of racism. His argument for discontinuing the signing of the Book of Oath was simply that the university had grown so much since its early years, there were now too many students to sign the oath in a public ceremony at graduation. As recorded in the minutes of the meeting of the Board of Regents of January 23, 1965, President Armstrong “pointed out that because of the increases in the number of graduates and the two separate commencement ceremonies now being held, it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain the signatures. He also stated that the Oath itself is considered by many of the students and faculty to be archaic.”11 The Book of the Oath has been archived but not disavowed. It was suppressed, in the psychological sense: buried in the university’s unconscious … or at any event in the library’s archives. Acknowledging the Oath as history might help the university emerge from its current outbreak of racism. The era in which the Oath was first implemented was one of high racial tension in the United States—not unlike our current era. Reconstruction was long over, and violent racism and lynching were facts of life in the southern United States. Intent on codifying white supremacy, state and local governments in the South passed laws that made life desperately inhospitable for black citizens. Beginning with Black Codes and escalating into legally sanctioned Jim Crow segregation, white power was reinforced by cultural, economic, educational, and legal means, as well as by violent extra-legal white terrorism, including lynching.12 Nevada is a long way from the south, but for most of the twentieth century, it bore the nickname “The Mississippi of the West.” In 1975, Nevada Professor of Anthropology Warren L. d’Azevedo compiled a detailed report on the experiences of students of color at UNR during its first century. He reports, “In the decades preceding the 1960’s, open and flagrant discrimination was practiced throughout Nevada against all ethnic minorities, but with particular viciousness against Black Americans. Service was generally refused such persons in restaurants, bars, casinos and hotels. In Reno, even famous entertainers like Pearl Baily were subjected to public indignities by this policy. … Nevada was known to Black people throughout the country as ‘the Mississippi of the West’ and the ordeal of

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traveling through the state was characteristically referred to as ‘the Underground Railroad,’ for if one could not obtain accommodations with friends, or find rooms in the few open ‘stations,’ one had best keep moving on.”13 D’Azevedo’s report, more than 150 pages long, describes degrading acts of racism taking place regularly on campus in the early twentieth century. In 1923 the student newspaper, The Sagebrush, “reported an item under the heading ‘Campus Startled when Ku Klux Klan Appears.’ The annual initiation of the Coffin and Keys honor society neophytes had taken place with white-robed members on horseback dragging a ‘negro’ behind them. A cross was burned on campus, and robed figures burst into a classroom announcing a meeting at Mackay Field which the entire student body subsequently attended.”14 This was the racial climate one century ago in the State of Nevada, and at its university. Buried racism is not unique to UNR.  Nevada is not the only public university with racist documents, traditions, and monuments that have long gone unnoticed. The Oath is but one more symbol and symptom of the poison that has run through our nation’s veins since the beginning. (Remember, slavery was protected, albeit quietly, in our Constitution: slave-owners enjoyed increased representation in Congress via the infamous 3/5 clause; the power of Congress to limit the slave trade was curtailed; and the right to recapture an escaped slave was protected.) In recent years, private and public universities have been dealing with the lingering toxicity of having buildings named after enslavers and racists, of having confederate monuments on campus, as well as racially offensive mascots. The Charlottesville rally began as a protest against the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee on the University of Virginia campus. While no students have recently shown up on the Nevada campus in KKK robes, the epidemic of swastikas defacing campus buildings indicates that the racists have not disappeared. The attitudes represented by the Book of the Oath have not vanished from the Earth, unfortunately. They may have been forced underground for a few decades, but they are back, without the robes. Current scholarship on race in the United States emphasizes the need to acknowledge the central role racism has played in our nation’s history as a prerequisite to moving past it.15 The explosion of racial incidents at the University of Nevada in 2017, 2018, and 2019 are manifestations of a national problem; they will only be understood and transcended when the

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hidden history of the university is brought to light and faced by the entire university community.16 The urgent need for such a reckoning is apparent in the students’ narratives in this volume. Nevada has a new oath, appropriate to the twenty-­ first century, pledging respect for community, diversity, freedom of thought and expression, and scholarship—but the stories of these 11 students reveal that work remains to be done if the campus is to become as inclusive and welcoming as its new oath. Here is the current Nevada Oath, which all students sign when they enter the university. I commit myself to the pursuit of knowledge and academic integrity. I will respect the tradition of academic inquiry at the University of Nevada, Reno, its mission and its rules of conduct. I will honor the dignity of all persons, listening to, striving to learn from and respecting the rights of those who differ from myself. I will contribute to the development of a caring community where compassion for others and freedom of thought and expression are valued. I will honor, challenge and contribute to the scholarly heritage left by those who preceded me and work to leave this university a better place for those to follow...academically, humanely, and globally. I will account for myself responsibly by keeping a flexible and open mind, utilizing critical skills and fairness for problem-solving and leadership. Allegiance to these ideals requires each member of the campus to refrain from and discourage behavior which threatens the freedom and respect every individual deserves. My endorsement of these common principles is my commitment to the University of Nevada, Reno and its community of scholars.”17

Integrating the new oath into university culture while ignoring the toxic 1920 oath creates its own conflicts. Can the university celebrate its growth and triumphs while selectively suppressing its own history, and repressing traumas and mistakes? Trying to move forward without acknowledging the past is dangerous, and spiritually exhausting. To use a psychological metaphor: repression breeds depression and depression leads to an inability to act. Nevada’s current failure to rid itself of racist outbreaks may stem from never having faced those decades when the Oath was a part of university life. Buried racism is dry kindling, waiting for the spark that will ignite a full-blown wildfire. Here are five incidents that have roiled the campus in recent years:

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• On October 13, 2017, several swastikas were spray-painted in the Church Fine Arts Building on the UNR campus, in a stairwell dedicated to artistic expression by anyone who wanted to use the wall. Because the wall was designated as a space for free artistic expression, the university administration determined that the swastikas did not constitute desecration of university property. The President of the University and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts issued public statements and emails to the university community deploring the hateful graffiti. The Black Student Organization, among other student organizations, volunteered to help clean up the wall and erase the swastikas. The Diversity Center in the Student Union displayed the Israeli flag alongside the Pan-African flag in a show of solidarity against racism and anti-Semitism. • During Black History Month, 2018, a group of black students posted fliers on university bulletin boards, intended to teach passersby about various issues related to black history. “White Silence is White Violence,” claimed one of the fliers, and then explained what the statement meant. Another flier had a photo of Colin Kaepernick and text describing his philanthropic efforts to educate young people of color about their civil rights. The provost ordered the posters removed because proper permission had not been sought to post them on university bulletin boards. An email memo was sent to the campus community explaining why posting fliers to educate about black history during Black History Month still required seeking permission through the proper administrative channels. The unfortunate impression, however, was that the swastikas spray-painted on the fine arts building were protected speech, while the educational fliers stapled to bulletin boards were not. • On July 3, 2019, one of the university’s dorms suffered a boiler explosion. No one was seriously injured in the explosion, but the dorm was uninhabitable. The university administration swiftly arranged with a downtown hotel to rent an entire wing for students, remodeled for their academic needs. The hotel dorm opened in time for the fall semester, and to the relief of all it seemed that the newly arrived residents would enjoy a more or less normal start to their college careers. Then, during the first week of the semester, a spray-­ painted swastika appeared in the stairwell.18 • The Nevada Sagebrush, a student-run newspaper, reported on September 17, 2019, that anti-Semitic fliers had been posted on

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many buildings on campus. It was difficult to know how many of the fliers had been posted because students and faculty removed them as soon as they saw them. The article bore the headline: “White Supremacy Persists at UNR Two Years After Charlottesville.” It went on to report on the Alt Right organizations that claimed to have white nationalist members on campus. • On October 13, 2019, the second anniversary of its previous defacement, the Church Fine Arts Building was again defaced with swastikas in its new wing. The students whose stories appear in this volume experienced feelings of isolation and loneliness as they strove for academic success. When we brought them together as a group to talk about remedies the university might consider, it dawned on everyone present, in most cases for the first time, that they were not alone. Individual struggles merged into a collective experience. The recognition that their unique stories were part of a larger institutional problem was empowering. Voices from the Wasteland is an example of a listening exercise that we hope will “trickle up” and lead to institutional change, one public university at a time, until even the academic aristocracy begins to listen to those who represent more than 99% of university students.

The Authors The three authors of this book were all at the University of Nevada as these events shook the campus. They experienced 2017—the year of the most intense racial and political turmoil—from different perspectives, but the events brought them together, each seeking shelter from what felt like a series of earthquakes of increasing magnitude. Trisden Shaw was an undergraduate political science major, Reece Gibb was a graduate student in the Master’s Program in Political Science, and Jennifer Ring has been a Professor of Political Science at Nevada since 1996. Trisden identifies as black and male, and Jennifer as white, Jewish, and female. They met when he was a student in her class. The current political turmoil felt to Jennifer like an echo of the late 1960s, when she had been a UCLA undergraduate during the years of student protests against racism, against the Viet Nam War, and against President Lyndon Johnson. Compatibility of spirit drew Jennifer and Trisden together, as each sought to learn from the other and from the racial and political crisis engulfing the

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campus and the nation. This book chronicles their conversations with each other and the project they designed in order to understand what was happening around them. Trisden graduated from the University of Nevada in June 2018, with a degree in Political Science and was admitted to the Master’s program in African American Studies at UCLA.  He received his master’s degree in 2020, after also serving as president of the UCLA Black Graduate Student Association—representing the entire black graduate student body, fittingly, at the institution where Jennifer began her college career in the turbulent 1960s. He currently works in the Los Angeles Unified School district in a program committed to helping young black men with difficult experiences get on track for a college education at a California public university. Jennifer and Trisden are joined in this project by Reece Gibb, a longtime student of Jennifer’s. Reece graduated from the University of Nevada in 2016 with Honors in History, and received his master’s degree in political science from Nevada in December 2018. He joined Jennifer and Trisden to help transform the oral interviews into written chapters, but his insights about the history and theory of race, class, and identity in the context of national and statewide politics quickly made him an indispensable collaborator. Reece now works as a technical writer for a software development firm in the Silicon Valley. He identifies as white, male, and cisgender. This unusual collaboration between faculty and students marks a baton passing to a new generation of scholar-activists. We hope it will serve as a model for addressing difficult issues of national concern while including the voices of those most often overlooked. Now it’s time to get to know the 11 Voices from the Wasteland. Their stories reflect a rising above the racial injustice and economic inequality in the world of their childhoods. Their successes show that it is possible to defy the expectation that higher education is socially and financially out of reach, and to overcome the prevailing attitude that American public higher education is not good enough. These students are not the chosen ones, recruited for a full ride to a “top ten” school. Nor are they the ones who fell victim to substance abuse, violence, and mass incarceration. In 11 distinct ways their stories demonstrate what is achievable for young people who know who they are and what they want, and have the courage to ask questions. They all found adults—a parent, teacher, coach, or mentor— who recognized their talent and supported them. None of the students in

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this book mention wealth and power as goals. They succeeded with grit and determination, but remained aware of their friends and family who continue to struggle. They retained the compassion and humility required to use their education to repair their communities and the world. After reading their individual stories, we will join them for two group discussions in which they meet each other and consider possible ways to fix what’s broken in higher education, on both the institutional and national levels.

Notes 1. In 2019, a scandal arose over a criminal scheme to influence undergraduate admissions decisions at several top American universities. The investigation into the conspiracy was code named Operation Varsity Blues. The investigation and related charges were made public on March 12, 2019, by United States federal prosecutors. Thirty-three parents of college applicants are accused of paying more than $25 million between 2011 and 2018 to William Rick Singer, college admissions counselor who promised to get high school applicants into the most prestigious colleges in the nation. Singer took money from wealthy parents, used part of the money to inflate entrance exam test scores, and bribed college officials, including athletic coaches who would fraudulently represent the students as desired athletes even though they were not competitively qualified in any sport. The highest profile colleges involved in admitting unqualified applicants were Yale, Harvard, USC, Stanford, UCLA, and Northwestern. Singer has been portrayed as the criminal mastermind. The parents who are alleged to have used bribery and fraud to secure admission for their children to 11 universities are prominent businesspeople and wellknown actors. See Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz, Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit and the Making of the College Admissions Scandal. New  York: Portfolio Penguin. 2020. 2. https://www.cnn.com/2019-­11-­22/us/college-­campuses-­racist incidents/index.html. 3. https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/02/01/flyering-­r emains-­ recruitment-­tool-­hate-­groups 4. Eddie R.  Cole (College of William and Mary) and Shaun R.  Harper (University of Pennsylvania), in their analysis, “College Presidents’ responses to Campus Racial Incidents,” study racist incidents and administrative responses at Arizona State University, the University of Massachusetts-­Amherst, the University of Oklahoma, the University of

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North Alabama, San Jose State, Bowdoin College, and 11 other universities and colleges, both private and public. They conclude that the presidents of the majority of universities and colleges they studied respond with timidity and overgeneralizations, do not name the organizations responsible for the incidents, and do not take action to prevent future incidents. Presidents’ carefully crafted language in response to these incidents is “consistently safe, ambiguous, and avoids directly mentioning the racial incident….There is a need for academic leaders to say the word racism, and the frequency of these incidents suggests students, and others on campuses, need to know what racism is. Every academic year, incidents prove that race and racism is not a rare, one-time occurrence on campuses, and college presidents’ … statements set the tone for how racist behavior will be tolerated and addressed” (Eddie R. Cole and Shaun R. Harper, “Race and Rhetoric: An Analysis of College presidents’ Statements on Campus Racial Incidents” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2017, vol 10, No. 4, 318-333). Shametrice Davis and Jessica C.  Harris in their September 15 article, “But We Didn’t Mean it Like That: A Critical Race Analysis of Campus Responses to Racial Incidents” (Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, Volume 2 Issue 1, Article 6 https://ecommons.luc.edu/jcshesa/vol2/iss1/6 ) also address the inadequacy of reactive rather than proactive response of administrative responses to racist incidents on campuses: “We unveiled three main aspects of the written responses to the racial incidents: (a) lack of action-oriented language, (b) overreliance upon remorse and regret, and (c) failure to claim responsibility” (72). They challenge administrators to say the words “systemic and institutional racism,” to lead the way to change. 5. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos, Introduction by Donaldo Macedo. 2000, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 (twice). New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic. 6. A “Campus Climate Survey,” conducted in 2018 and released in 2019, revealed that there is still a significant gap in the level of comfort on campus reported by Students of Color, LGBTQ students, and white students. https://www.unr.edu/nevada-­today/news/2019/climate-­survey-­results 7. In an article titled, “Education for All … Even a ‘Nazi’?” author Greg Toppo describes the response of the UNR administration to the photo of Cvjetanovic at the rally: “As thousands of social media posts, email and phone calls began pouring in, urging the university to expel the young white supremacist, Johnson had one clear, immediate thought: ‘Cvjetanovic must graduate. Initially I didn’t have any notion what it would take to allow him to finish’ [UNR President Marc] Johnson said, but he and others spent weeks considering ways ‘to be more protective than he needed’

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into the spring.” Mary Dugan, the university’s general counsel noted: “What we had was a photograph of a person looking angry, and you can’t discipline someone for looking angry. It looked like he was yelling, but we didn’t know what he was saying.” Toppo credits the episode at UNR with offering “a powerful counterfactual to the perceived intolerance of most college campuses, especially in their treatment of students with political views outside their (mostly liberal) mainstreams.” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/09/ 27/univ e rsi t y -­t est s-­f r e e-­sp ee c h -­m e t t le -­e nsuri ng-­g ra dua ti on­charlottesville-­marcher 8. The following is a letter from President Marc Johnson to the university community on September 16, 2019, following two incidents the previous week: a swastika spray-painted on a newly refurbished freshman dormitory, and white supremacist leaflets stapled to bulletin boards on several campus buildings. “Dear Colleague: There have been a number of abhorrent messages of hate, bigotry, anti-­ Semitism and anti-democratic ideologies discovered at and around the University of Nevada, Reno in recent weeks. While the University of Nevada, Reno is unfortunately not immune from the environment in which we have seen the same hate and bias incidents happen around the country, we understand how frustrating and disheartening events like this are for our Wolf Pack community. Let us be clear: This University unequivocally condemns/denounces all efforts that seek to marginalize any member of our community. We are proud of Taylor Johnson, our student who wrote today’s Nevada Sagebrush article, “White Supremacy Persists at UNR, Two Years After Charlottesville,” and commend her for the courage it took to publish her story. Her act of bravery is just one example of how to civically engage in a way that will continue to bring about change. The American Identity Movement does not exist as a registered student group at the University. By exposing groups like this, the campus now knows its agenda and can see the group for what it really is. We have the tools to combat this narrative and to educate our students on the contrary. It is through civic engagement that we call upon our University community to help change this narrative. Let us follow Taylor’s lead and call out these acts when we see them. Let us confront acts of ignorance and blatant hate with civility, respectful, active discourse and peaceful protest. Now is the time to stand together. Faculty, staff and students must stand guard against the hateful rhetoric and propaganda that would lead us to believe that our community is fractured. Our power is in standing together.

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It is our duty to use the most influential tool at our disposal – education – to challenge hate and address incidents of bias. It is also immensely important to report incidents of hate and bias so that they can not only be addressed and communicated University wide, but also so the University can ensure those targeted are receiving the services they need. Sincerely, Marc A. Johnson” On October 17, 2019, President Johnson released another letter to the campus community in response to yet another swastika incident on campus. In his second letter in a month, he noted, “While this is not the first time I have shared this statement with our University community, I feel it imperative to reiterate that we remain committed to an environment that encourages dialogue that is respectful” (President Marc A. Johnson email, October 17, 2019). 9. Quoted in Toppo, op. cit. 10. The Book of the Oath, Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno Libraries. 11. Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno Libraries. It may not be too far-fetched to give President Armstrong the benefit of the doubt about his motives for eliminating the Oath. Perhaps he was yielding to political necessity in getting rid of the Oath-signing ceremony by convincing the Board of Regents that it was simply too cumbersome. Given the response of Regents Magee and Jacobsen urging continuation of the Oath in 1965, it seems unlikely that a civil rights proclamation by President Armstrong would have been received with open arms. 12. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. New York: Penguin Press. 2019. p. 37. See also Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste. 13. D’Azevedo, p. 3 14. D’Azavedo, p. 14 15. Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2015: Spiegel and Grau. New York), initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, honoring the names of over 4000 African Americans lynched in the 11 states of the South from 1877 to 1950. For examples, see also Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, June 2014; “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2019, Nikole Hannah-Jones; Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America. Documentary Film, 2006, Directed and Produced by Marco Williams; Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America, Patrick Phillips. (2017: Norton and Company. New York.); Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of

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America’s Great Migration, (2011: Vintage Books. New  York); Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020: Random House. New York). 16. This concept is compatible with recent events at universities throughout the nation to acknowledge, address, and repair damage done by racist incidents, mascots, and monuments. Universities that have faced a racist past head-on include the University of Virginia, whose removal of a statue of Robert E.  Lee triggered the deadly “Unite the Right” rally of August 2017; the University of Texas at Austin, which removed a bronze largerthan-life statue of Jefferson Davis that had stood on campus since 1933; Amherst College, named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the colonial era governor who infamously distributed smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans, which has removed “Lord Jeff” as their official mascot; Yale Law School, whose students petitioned to rename Calhoun College (named after antebellum segregationist John C. Calhoun), one of Yale’s 11 residential colleges; the University of North Carolina, which removed the name of William L. Saunders, North Carolina secretary of state and KKK leader, from a building that had been named after him in 1922; and Stanford University, which removed the mascot “Indians” (adopted by a unanimous vote of the students in 1930) in the early 1970s. The University of Mississippi is grappling with the origins in slavery of its nickname “Ole Miss.” (“When Your Name is a Legacy of Slavery,” Marc Parry, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15, 2019, p. A12.) Like these esteemed universities, acknowledging and dealing with “the Oath” could set Nevada on a path toward enlightenment that might alleviate continuing racist incidents on campus. 17. https://www.unr.edu/student-­s ervices/resources-­a nd-­d ownloads/ nevada-­oath 18. As reported in the Nevada Sagebrush on September 3, 2019, Wolf Pack Tower was subject to an act of vandalism within a week of its opening: a swastika was found painted in the stairwell near the seventeenth floor of the tower: “According to Toby Toland, resident director for University of Nevada, Reno’s Residential Life, a swastika was found in Wolf Pack Tower, on Saturday, Aug. 24 within a week of the tower’s opening. In response to the vandalism, Wolf Pack Tower called for a mandatory meeting on Sunday, Aug. 25 to address the incident. Residents and staff were in attendance. Once evidence and photographs were collected, the vandalism was repaired by facilities staff.

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This is not the first incident of swastika vandalism that has occurred around the university. Acts of anti-semitism on campus have happened since 2011. On Oct. 13, 2017, the same day of a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh that left 11 dead and six others injured, an unknown student carved a swastika into a wall with a pencil in Peavine Hall. A swastika was also found drawn on Juniper Hall earlier this year on March 8. Additionally, an unknown student tagged the Church Fine Art’s graffiti stairwell—a place where students decorate walls with murals— with swastikas and a message that said “is this political enough?” in October 2017. In response, the College of Liberal Arts invited artists in the community to paint over the swastikas. Once evidence and photographs were collected, the vandalism was repaired by facilities staff.”

CHAPTER 2

Black Wastelanders

The Myth of Identity Racial stereotypes do not describe the lives of the 11 students who shared their stories with us. Yes, superficial similarities emerged when we interviewed people who appeared to be of the “same” race. But even more striking was the extent to which the storytellers did not identify completely with any racial identities that American society ascribes to them. The students interviewed experience themselves as outsiders not only to American academic culture but also to the racial, ethnic, and class groups they were born into. They defy all expectations. The discord between ascribed identity and lived experience presented itself clearly as we struggled with ways to organize the oral histories. Attempting to categorize by race or ethnic identity is so artificial that our process itself became a learning experience for us. First, we considered grouping the interviews according to ascribed race, which might have revealed similarities and differences between students who identified with a particular race. But surely eleven students are too small a sample to allow any meaningful conclusions, and there was little obvious consistency within each racial “group.” For example, Trisden and Henry—two black men—had entirely different childhood and family experiences, and while both came from the working class, Henry is as poor as it is possible to be in the United States, and Trisden’s family has been climbing into the middle class. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_2

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Pairing Yesenia and Jose as “Latinx students” yielded the same problem. Yesenia’s parents are immigrants from Mexico, as are her older siblings except one. She was born in Reno, is a native-born American citizen, and grew up in poverty, surrounded by a large family working multiple jobs to survive. Yesenia “looks Mexican” and has been the target of explicit Northern Nevada racism. Jose was born in Mexico of a Mexican father and an American mother, has dual Mexican-American citizenship, and grew up in a small upper middle-class family that immigrated to Reno when he was six. He experienced a feeling of exclusion from the Reno Mexican-­ American community because he “looks white” yet he was targeted by white racism because of his name, not his looks. The main thing Yesenia and Jose have in common is the experience of being harassed by white people for speaking Spanish in public. The difficulty of organizing the chapters left no doubt about the superficiality of racial categories. Yet most people box others into racial, ethnic, religious, and gender categories without thinking, even when this is obviously an oversimplification. So we decided to do explicitly what people tend to do implicitly. We would group the student chapters according to stereotypes and hope to shine a light on the inadequacies and distortions of that approach. We created categories that seem commonsensical given current social biases, but which turn out to be artificial when we read the details of the narrator’s life. We grouped all of the students who described themselves as Black in one group and called them “Black Wastelanders.” We put the students of European ancestry, who described themselves as white, in another group and called them “White Wastelanders.” Then we collected a group composed of children of immigrants of color and called them the “Where are you from from?” group. These were people who, because of their brown skin, were always asked “where are you from?” even if they were third-­ generation Americans. These groupings form our chapters. It will become evident that the boundaries between the groupings do not hold up. They are completely inadequate. In each interview, we built the narrator’s story, asking about their background and where their family is from. We then asked them to think about how they moved from there to the University of Nevada. Finally, we asked about their experiences with race, not only on campus, but in the United States. Each interview began with the question, “How do you Identify?”

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Black Wastelanders: Not Really a Group As a group, the “Black Wastelanders” are more economically challenged than the members of any other group. None of the Black Wastelanders grew up with a father in the house. One father had been deported to Jamaica, and two students’ fathers were or had been in prison. By contrast, every one of the White Wastelanders grew up with both a father and a mother present. All of the Black Wastelanders had a mother or other female relative (Aunt, Godmother, and Grandmother) who supported their desire to get a college education and helped in any way they could … short of financial support which they did not have. No one in this group had adequate financial resources to pay for college. All of them attended Nevada because it was their state university and it would leave them with the smallest amount of debt. Although their stories seem to clearly illustrate the linkage between poverty and race in the United States—and how that affects one’s choice of college—none of the “Black Wastelanders” felt that they fit any stereotype of “Blackness.” All felt that they were living on the borderlands of racial identity. The young women, Kristen and Aiko, had been bullied at school for “being different” to such an extent that Kristen would eat her lunch in the teachers’ break room, where she learned about politics in both the world and the public education system by listening to her teachers’ conversations. Aiko attended a magnet arts school and enjoyed the fact that it attracted many eccentric people, both students and teachers, who were on the margins of societal expectations. But she always felt she was “not right” with the other black girls. She didn’t fit in with the wealthy white girls, and the black girls were so busy straightening their hair—trying to fit a model of beauty that was not their own—that Aiko also withdrew from them, believing that they didn’t like her and that she didn’t like black girls, although she loved being black on her own terms. Throughout their school years, both Kristen and Aiko were taunted for wearing their hair “wrong,” for wearing the wrong clothes, and for being smart and ambitious. “Wrong hair” meant that they refused to use harsh, painful, and damaging techniques to straighten their hair. Wrong clothes meant not caring about teenage fashion. Aiko’s ultimate statement of defiance of the European standards of beauty adopted by many of her black schoolmates was to grow dreadlocks … an unmistakable statement about her black identity.

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The bizarre paradox that both Kristen and Aiko were living with is evident when we remember that both girls were expected not only to straighten their hair and style it to make it look as straight and European as possible, but were also taunted for being “too white” because they were smart, serious students. This is a no-win situation. Trisden and Henry faced their own impossible social demands at school, and managed to find their way through, also feeling that they weren’t “right” in some way that their peers expected them to be. Though not tormented about their appearance as the girls were, they were made to feel “different” because they cared about learning. As Henry succinctly put it, “What? A motherfucker reads, so he’s not Black?? Give me a break.” Henry also had to learn to defend himself physically against other boys, who occasionally deployed guns, knives, and even cars as weapons of aggression. Trisden was forced to navigate racial loyalties in the lunchroom at high school: his Black football teammates expected him to eat with them and be boisterous, which he did not enjoy as a regular lunchtime ritual; meanwhile, his real friends were a diverse group of “smart kids” at another table, who had intelligent conversations and did some homework at lunch. He moved between the two cultures and the two tables as gracefully as he could but was aware of murmured accusations that if he ate with studious Asians and Pacific Islanders, he probably wasn’t really “Black.” Trisden’s struggles with being “Black enough” were also grounded in a sense that the neighborhood culture was wary of people who seemed destined to “make it out,” who were making the most of their intelligence and ambition. Although his friends lived in his neighborhood, he sensed that they secretly hoped he wouldn’t follow through on his plans to get a college education. They hoped he wouldn’t leave them behind. Trisden emphasizes that this sentiment was not personally directed against him, but that the culture of poverty included a sort of abstract resentment. If someone “made it out,” that seemed to lower the chances of someone else succeeding. His subliminal awareness of this attitude created a tension for Trisden: being true to himself meant that his friends would feel betrayed. Little of this was conscious at the time. But somehow, success in the white world (as represented by a college education), signified becoming white, and turning against Blackness. The most powerful trait the four “Black Wastelanders” shared was the sense that they didn’t fit the racial stereotypes assigned to them. They all embraced their race yet felt excluded and diminished by their peers for not

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acting, dressing, and talking a certain way. Each of their unique experiences expands and explodes any one-dimensional definition of “Blackness.”

Trisden As a black male not many people want to listen to me. So I think that Ph.D is going to be my amplifier … my megaphone. Like, you can’t disregard me now.

Interview by Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring “It HAD to happen as I was walking here to talk about this project! Maybe it was because I was wearing a beanie and a hoodie, and then my black jacket over it…? Maybe I was just wearing too much black…?” Trisden Shaw had an appointment with me to give the first interview for this book. He was walking from his home to the Social Sciences Building on campus. It was January 25, 2017, four days after the forty-­ fifth president of the United States had been inaugurated. The temperature was in the mid-twenties during the snowiest month on record in the Sierra and Northern Nevada. Spring Semester at the University of Nevada had begun a week earlier. As he walked on the icy sidewalk of a campus drive near the athletic fields, Trisden saw an SUV with three white students in it driving toward him. As the vehicle approached, somebody rolled down the passenger window, yelled “Hey Nigger!” Minutes before he became the victim of the drive-by racial epithet, Trisden had passed an older white man walking toward him. Trisden nodded his head and made eye-contact with the gentleman, in the usual civil greeting of two strangers passing on a sidewalk. But the man averted his gaze, not returning Trisden’s ordinary gesture of politeness. Trisden thought little about it, figuring the man was simply unfriendly, until the students drove past him bellowing hate. Only then did it occur to him that the unfriendliness of the older man might also have been about race. In the few minutes it took him to walk to campus, he had endured two very unpleasant encounters, one overtly racist, and the other beginning to feel racially tinged in the context of the hate speech from the passing car. Trisden was trying to make some sense of a senseless situation, trying to take control of the uncontrollable by figuring out what he might have done to cause it, and what he could have done to prevent it. But there was nothing he could have done to improve the behavior of the students or the man on the street. He was dressed appropriately for the weather: a

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black knit ski hat, a dark blue Nevada Wolfpack hooded sweatshirt, slim-­ fitting enough to be covered with his black winter jacket, which was also not oversized. His pants were traditionally cut—not baggy or dragging. His boots were appropriate footwear for winter in Reno … Timberlands. He wears stylish black-rimmed glasses. He looks like a smart student, someone that belonged, and I kept telling him that. He described his style as, “This is a comfortable fit—this is almost like an East Coast fit—hoodie, Timb’s…” When I couldn’t get him to stop over-analyzing his wardrobe, I told him he resembled a woman blaming herself for having been sexually assaulted, trying to figure out what she did to “provoke” her assailant. Was her skirt too short? Her sweater too tight? None of that matters when hate and violence are involved. A victim cannot “provoke” a criminal into committing a crime. If a person lays hands or abusive words on an unwilling person, the abuser is an assailant. One may feel the need to act violently in self-defense, but nobody provokes a criminal to assault his victim. Our interview was supposed to begin with questions about Trisden’s childhood, but it seemed more urgent to try to unpack the toxicity of what he had just endured. I asked, “Do you want to talk about this first, before we begin the interview? What happened? Has it happened before?” So Trisden began his oral history interview by recounting his walk to campus. “It might have happened before honestly … I usually walk to campus listening to music, but today I just was walking, and I heard it.” In other words, if it had happened other times, he might never have noticed it since he usually walks to campus wearing earbuds and listening to music. This time, he heard the N-word even before he looked up and saw the car. And then he remembered what had happened a moment earlier. I remarked on the irony: what an auspicious start for this book about student experiences of race at the University of Nevada. Shaking his head sadly, Trisden agreed: “Yeah. It’s exactly what we’re talking about” The racist incident reinforced our sense of urgency about this project. Before Trisden and I could proceed as planned, chronicling his awareness of race from his earliest memories to the present, we had to think about the current environment: what, as a young black man, he is likely to encounter anywhere, at any time, and how it differs from my experience as an older white woman. How do race and gender impact our daily encounters? How can a 20-something black man and a 60-something white

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woman understand each other’s worlds? We were at the very beginning of our journey, acutely aware of the differences of our life experiences, determined both to stay aware of race and gender differences, but also to find a way to make our dialogue natural … to lose any hypersensitivity about race and gender, and just learn to listen to each other. I remarked, “That is something I don’t have to deal with. Certainly when I was younger I had to deal with men saying nasty and controlling things: the male gaze. I’m sure most young women encounter it. It has nothing to do with what a woman looks like, how she is dressed, or anything. Men assert their control by saying things and telling you what they think of you. Like, ‘Smile beautiful!’ as you’re walking down the street, perhaps engrossed in thought about something important. When you don’t smile on command their response is, ‘Bitch.’ Have you had to endure racial assaults like this before?” “Actually, the first time I heard it was freshman year in high school after wrestling practice.” He attended high school in Henderson, Nevada, a predominantly white suburb south of Las Vegas. Trisden and his friend Rickey were on the wrestling team. There was an intra-squad contest with teammates wrestling each other until they lost. Rickey beat everybody, which seemed at first to be accepted with good grace and sportsmanship. Rickey and Trisden are black; the other kids were white. “We would do this thing called King of the Mat. You would keep wrestling until you lost or you beat everyone. Rickey just swept the mat. He beat three or four kids. Then the kids he beat came into the locker room. Their lockers were right next to ours. They looked at us, and said something, and then I heard, ‘Nigger.’ Rickey just erupted. One swung at him. He pushed one over and pinned one up against the lockers. He was like, ‘Never say that again.’ Then one of our wrestling coaches came around, and I told him what happened. He said, ‘Ok, I’m going to talk to them.’” “We played football with them, too, the season right before. So we were teammates, but we didn’t speak at all after that.” After his freshman year, Trisden moved with his mother and sister from Henderson, in the south, to North Las Vegas, where he spent the remainder of his high school years. His new home in North Las Vegas was in a predominantly black neighborhood. In spite of the incident with the wrestling team his freshman year in Henderson, Trisden explains that being in Henderson for several years shaped his attitudes about race, increased his

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comfort level with people of many different races, and has allowed him to navigate racial differences with relative ease. “Throughout middle school up until freshman year I lived in a very white place: Henderson, Nevada. I got there in sixth grade. We were always outnumbered, but my community was primarily my black friends. The issue of race never really dawned on me. I was always comfortable in the white world I was living in, because I had my [black] community within that. And I guess that’s kind of how I see UNR as well. I’m accustomed to that.” Trisden Shaw was born to Erica and Dennis on February 10, 1996, in Athens, Ohio. Both of his parents were students at Ohio University, where his father was also a football player. Erica and Dennis were not married, and Erica had a daughter, Taylor, 15 months older than Trisden. After he was born, Trisden’s mom and the two children returned to Cleveland, Erica’s hometown, to live with her mother, Patricia. Ms. Pat was a “lunch lady” in the cafeteria where Trisden and his sister would attend elementary school. His grandmother helped raise the two young children. This may seem like an unpromising narrative for the young mother—a bright young woman has two children out of wedlock with two different men. But that would be a misleading interpretation. Trisden recalled that as a young boy, he didn’t get away with much mischief in school, because his grandmother was always close at hand managing the school cafeteria. She was the first to hear if Trisden acted out. But Trisden was a good kid, an excellent student, and he grew into a stellar athlete. After some years working as a teacher, Erica decided to leave Cleveland, where she had grown up in the projects. She wanted a fresh start and moved with her two children to Las Vegas, because she had learned there was a need for schoolteachers. Trisden was nine years old at the time. The family unit has always been his mom, his sister, and himself. Erica succeeded in building a career in education in the Las Vegas Area as a teacher, and an administrator. She is currently working on her Doctorate in Education. His father stayed in Ohio when Erica and the kids moved to Nevada. If Trisden inherited his mother’s intellect and work ethic, he also inherited his father’s athletic talent. Sports and education both dominated his life: he was a multi-sport athlete in high school and hoped to play football at an elite university … maybe in the Ivy League. His academic excellence

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earned him scholarships, and a choice of colleges to attend. He chose Nevada for reasons that will become apparent as his story unfolds. “Looking at my Cleveland school pictures, my classes were very diverse. There were always a few white kids, but I saw black faces, for sure. There weren’t many Hispanic kids. We had a lot of Puerto Ricans in Cleveland when I lived there, but I only met one Mexican girl before I moved to Las Vegas. Moving to Las Vegas was a culture shift. I left black faces in Cleveland and came to brown faces in Las Vegas, but also way more white faces. So I had a lot of adjusting, especially at my new school.” “I still call Cleveland home. When we initially moved to Las Vegas, we moved into … not an impoverished area, but it was definitely low income. It was in Henderson, but my mom didn’t know too much about Las Vegas. She had just gotten a job. Las Vegas was expanding, and they were hiring teachers. She wanted to get out of Cleveland. She never really wanted to be in Cleveland. She was born there, in the projects. So she’s like rags to … I wouldn’t say riches, but she’s come up. She just saw so much of what she didn’t like, and she wanted to get out of there. She wanted things better for us. So that’s always why she’s worked harder.” “My mom broke up with my sister’s dad earlier, and then she was with my dad for about four years. He was playing football at the University of Ohio, and then he went to NFL Europe. When he came back I guess everything seemed strange. NFL Europe didn’t really work out. It kind of collapsed on itself, and then he was out of a job. All he really wanted to do was play football. My mom wanted more.” As Trisden approached his senior year at high school, he made an effort to reach out to his father. His dad’s brother, Chris, had also moved to Las Vegas, and helped his nephew contact his father. Trisden had not communicated with his dad from the time he left Cleveland, a decade earlier. Now, as a high school senior, he was considering his options as an excellent student who was also hoping for a football scholarship. He hoped his father might share what he knew about the college game, how to navigate the recruitment process, and what to expect. His dad had played Division I ball, and maybe he could help direct Trisden’s college football aspirations. But it was difficult for the father and son to know how to approach each other after such a long separation. Trisden had flourished without his father throughout his most formative years, and now was unsure exactly how his father would fit into his life. Dennis had no experience being Trisden’s father. When Trisden reached out, Dennis responded with so much eagerness, trying to “make up for lost time,” that Trisden shied

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away. Sixteen-year-old Trisden and his dad reached out to each other and backed off, not sure how to begin. It didn’t work out the way they hoped, but they’re keeping the door open. “I don’t really have a relationship with him now. Don’t really talk to him too much. I tried when I was in high school, because he played football and I play football. We played the same position: Corner. I played corner, and I played safety a lot my senior year.” With my embarrassingly incomplete understanding of football, I asked: “That means you’re fast?” He chuckled, “Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. I’m guarding the receiver, the people that are trying to score on passes. I just always loved defense, and he played the same position, so I figured, it was my senior year, and if I wanted to go further in playing, like Division I ball, or anything else, I might as well reach out. Because, why not? That’s expertise that I’m not tapping into. So I just decided to try to build a relationship. But it seemed forced. He kind of bombarded me. As a senior in high school, you’re like, ‘I just have too much to deal with.’” I pushed for elaboration: “Bombarded you in what way?” “Just would call me all the time, text me super-long messages. We could be having a conversation, and I understand, he wants to get to know me. It’s been plenty of years we haven’t talked. The last time I saw him before that, I was eight. I just didn’t see him after we moved to Las Vegas. When I reached out to him I was in school, playing football, applying for colleges, and trying to respond to him all the time was just extra pressure. So I tried to take it slow. He kept trying to speed it up. But I still invited him to graduation.” “Did he come?” “Yeah, he came. He came. It’s also because I had a relationship with my uncle, his brother. My cousin from that side of the family also went to my high school. She moved from Cleveland to Las Vegas too, so we had a connection. My uncle kind of got us linked up with my dad in the first place, and then he brought him [Trisden’s father] out for graduation. We had a decent time at first. He came to graduation. He wanted to do something after graduation. I told him I had plans, just because after high school graduation I was hanging out with my friends. But I told him we could get dinner but we’d have to go early, because I’m doing something at 8:00. He was like, ‘Oh, well, what time will we hang out and talk?’ I

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said, ‘We can hang out the next day. You’re out here for a few days. But I have to do something at 8:00.’” They agreed to have an early dinner before Trisden went out with his friends for graduation night. Since Trisden didn’t have a car, his dad was going to pick him up and take them to a restaurant Trisden chose. “He was like, ‘Oh, you choose. It’s your city. You make the decision.’” “And then he just never showed, just never showed. … So I’m sitting there dressed and everything just waiting around, waiting around, and he never contacted me. After like an hour, hour and a half, I just thought, ‘Whatever.’” “My feelings were kind of hurt, but I never expected too much. At eight o’clock, when I was doing something else, it was just kind of completely gone. But when I contacted him the next day I was like, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘Oh, it sounded like you didn’t want to go, and you were busy.’ I thought, ‘That’s so childish.’ But I said, ‘Well, just, whatever, miscommunication. Do you want to do something today?’ He was like, ‘Oh, I’m on my way to San Diego.’ I just hung up.” “I haven’t talked to him since. My uncle has reached out a few times since I was in college until he went to prison. And then, it’s funny, because my father actually requested to see my Instagram, my account. He followed me. But I didn’t follow him back.” This is a painful story, but probably not unique. Trisden’s mother was present, devoted, and smart, and her son found men to fill the gap left by his father: “I played about every sport growing up: track, baseball, football. I found father figures through that, through my coaches. By the time I got to high school and college, I’m already growing on my own, so I don’t.” He didn’t finish that sentence, but concluded, “Yeah. It was tough. … I thought about it a few days ago, and I would be open to reaching out to him again. It’s just something I’m not willing to actively try right now. But one day I hope that I’m like, ‘OK, let’s do this.’” “I know it was hard for [my mom], especially moving out to Las Vegas on her own. She told us later on that she cried about it the first month, because she didn’t know anyone, and we didn’t know anyone. It was just us. She had a job, and that’s all she had, that and hope, hope to grow, because she just felt like she was remaining stagnant in Ohio. I get a lot of my characteristics from her, just because I see how she’s just so brave, just so courageous. And I’m, like, ‘I can be that, and I can expand upon that.’”

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Canyon Springs Law and Leadership Preparatory Academy When their mother moved to North Las Vegas, Trisden and Taylor left the primarily white environment of their Henderson school. The schools in North Las Vegas were at-risk and racially segregated, although one of them had a magnet program that enabled Trisden to thrive. Trisden asked me to pull up a map of Las Vegas on my office computer to better demonstrate the location of the school districts. He and his sister attended different high schools. Erica managed to get variances for them to attend better schools than the one for which they were zoned when they moved to North Las Vegas. Trisden zoomed in on the Las Vegas school districts on the computer screen. “This is in North Las Vegas, so these are the segregated public schools. These are the very at-risk schools. They’re all doing terrible. Taylor’s school is Legacy. It was doing the best out of the bunch. They have more white kids.” Trisden noted the apparent arbitrariness of Las Vegas school zones, and how different the predominantly white south of the city is from the predominantly black north. We peered at the map of Las Vegas schools on my computer, moving the cursor from the sprawling suburban south, to the densely populated north, until Trisden located his school: Canyon Springs High. “This is my high school over here, Canyon Springs. We live right here.” Scrolling back down the map to the less densely populated South Las Vegas, Trisden observed, “That’s pretty much where the white people live. All the minorities live in the north. This is the high school I went to. Locally it’s not the best at all, but it has a magnet program, and that’s its attraction. Its full name is Canyon Springs Law and Leadership Preparatory Academy. The zoned kids go to the regular part of the school, but the people attending the magnet are bused in. I was a part of the political program, but they also have a law program, and a whole mock courtroom in their school.” Trisden received an exceptional college preparatory education from the Law and Leadership Academy at Canyon Springs, but he also took classes in the regular program. By attending Canyon Springs, he was able to experience both the limitations of a racially segregated, economically deprived environment, and still be a part of an academic program that enabled him to escape the trap of poverty. He believes that the non-magnet portion of the school was more focused on discipline than education.

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“I had my getaway, with the magnet program, but I also spent time in regular classes. I never was the greatest at math, so I would be in the regular math class, or they had us take Spanish, so I was in Spanish, and everyone takes Spanish. When I was in those classes, I felt like they policed us more than they actually taught us. They were more focused on discipline than actually getting people to learn. We had tardy lockouts all the time, and I know a lot of high schools do, but it was almost militant. I know they were also looking out for fights, but they would have all the hall monitors out, most of the assistant principals and deans out. There was no loitering. It was just like, go, go, go, go, go, go. You couldn’t be standing in one spot at all.” “Was the faculty and administration black?” “Some of them, but definitely not all of them. And I would say that a lot of them weren’t equipped to handle that school. We had an assistant principal, and he was a by-the-book type of guy. I guess he thought it would alleviate him of drama. I got suspended my senior year because I was “combative” with my teacher, when I asked her why I got a grade. We had done a group project together. There were three of us in the group. And we all three got different grades, but we all had the same answers. So I asked, ‘Miss Brooks, can you tell me why I got this grade so I can get a better grade next time?’ That’s all I wanted. She just kept telling me to sit down. I’m like, ‘Miss Brooks, you’re not giving me an answer. This is all I want to know.’ This was an honors class, and she taught mostly regular classes, so … I don’t know what she was thinking.” “So she calls the assistant principal. I’m sitting with two of my friends. One of had given up at that point actually. He had already gotten accepted to UNLV. He’s like, ‘I’m going to UNLV, I’m not graduating with honors anyway, and Miss Brooks doesn’t even like me. He wasn’t doing the busy work that she gave us. I wasn’t doing it either, because she wouldn’t tell me my grade. So she said we were insubordinate and that I was being combative.” Trisden and his mother were called in for a Required Parental Conference. If the parent doesn’t show up, the student receives an automatic two-day suspension. Trisden advised his mom not to show up, because he doubted anything would be accomplished. “I just told my mom, ‘There’s no point, for you to go the teacher conference. We’re both going to go off at her, because it doesn’t make any sense. So I’m going to just take the suspension.’ Thinking about it now, I know a lot of parents

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couldn’t make it to an RPC, and they handed them out like water. So kids were always getting suspended.” I thought of the injustice of all the kids with working parents being suspended when their parents couldn’t make it to school for a conference, especially when their child’s “offense” was no more than asking for clarification about a grade. I was appalled at the thought of Trisden’s mother, an educator in the same school system, being called away from work to discuss her son’s “misbehavior” a month before he graduated with honors. Trisden’s mother works in a wealthier, mostly white school in Las Vegas. Trisden noted that she hopes soon to be a principal at an at-risk school, where she thinks she can be more helpful to the students. “She tells me how her principal treats the black kids. One time her principal wanted to put somebody in a restraint. It was a little black boy. He has temper tantrums, but my mom always sits down and talks to him. I think he grew up in foster care, and now he lives with his grandma. So he has built up anger. That’s what it is. So she just tries to get down to the root of it, and really just tries to talk to him like a person, because not many people do. But she wasn’t there that day. They’re taught little moves to keep kids in submission so they’re not kicking and punching, or doing anything. I guess the principal had provoked the kid, and then he lashed out, and the principal just put him in the hold. At that point my mom said, ‘I can’t work at this school anymore. I need my own school, because this school is not what it needs to be.’” “So what did she do? Did she transfer or get another job?” “No, she’s still at that school. She’s been to so many different schools recently, because she keeps running into these problems and trying to find a school that works for poor kids. She tells me, ‘I could be at a school that’s doing very well, like a four or five-star school. But that’s not where I’m going to be effective. I need to be hands on. I need teachers that need to be developed. I need students that need to be worked with, because other people aren’t going to do it, and that’s my life’s purpose.’ So she’s waiting for that school. She’s in line to be a principal, but she wants it to be at a school where she can make a difference.” Trisden’s admiration for his mother is fully evident in his ambition to continue his education: “I think that’s why I want to get into education. I’ve just been thinking about what I want to do after I go to grad school, because I do want to get a Ph.D. just because I think that gives me not only credibility, but it gives me the knowledge. With a doctorate people are going to look at that like, oh okay, he knows what he’s talking about.

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Because as a black man I don’t feel like—I guess as a male I have a voice— but as a black male not many people want to listen to me. So I think that ‘Dr.’ is going to be my amplifier. That’s going to be my megaphone, like, you can’t disregard me now.” As we concluded our discussion of Trisden’s childhood, family life, and high school education, we realized that in our trial interview run we were following the format roughly but had omitted the opening questions: “How do you identify?” and “Are you a first generation college student?” So I asked him and he responded: “Black, of course. And I heard this in my black history course. Might be quoting it wrong. But personally I don’t like American as a term, because this is America, but also not. It’s the United States. This is North America. There’s also South America and Central America, so how can we say we’re American? So I say I’m North American African. I think that came from W. E. Du Bois, but I’m not sure. But I like it. I like it. It has a ring to it. But definitely I identify as Black.” “And, you’re not a first-generation college student…” “I’m not. My mom was, yeah. My dad was a football player. He didn’t graduate, but he spent three years in college.” “And this was an expectation for you.” “Oh, absolutely. I guess I wouldn’t say I had a choice, but, I did, of course. But this is what I knew I wanted to do. I wanted to play football in college. I wanted to play football well enough to go to the Ivy League. That was my goal. But it didn’t pan out.” Boise State “I graduated high school, and I wanted to get out of the state. I had been accepted to Howard, and a few other schools. I wanted to go to Howard, but I ended up at Boise State. That’s a polar opposite. But it was the most affordable option. Boise State gave me a WUE scholarship [Western Undergraduate Exchange—scholarships to students from a cluster of western states to encourage students to try something further from home, but not be penalized financially for going out of state]. I lived on that scholarship. I just wanted to get out of Vegas. I thought about coming to UNR initially. After my last season of high school football I knew I wasn’t going anywhere good to play football, and I didn’t want to go to a junior college. I studied under my athletic trainer in high school and spent a lot of time with him, and was thinking, ‘I could definitely be an athletic

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trainer, I love this. This is amazing.’ So I thought that’s what I wanted to do, but UNR didn’t have a program in kinesiology yet. They only had biology. I never liked science too much too much, but I thought I could be a kinesiology major. But when I got into the classes [at Boise State, as a freshman] I just hated it.” “You hated Boise State itself or the major?” “I hated the major.” To recap his college decision-making as he approached his high school graduation: Trisden chose Boise State because the Western Undergraduate Exchange gives tuition breaks to student from Western states. He had been admitted to Howard University with a big scholarship, and that was his first choice. But in spite of that honor, and in spite of the fact that Howard was his first choice, the scholarship wasn’t big enough to enable him to go there. Being from the far west, not having the means to travel home on vacations, and having a scholarship that would still have left him with student debt after graduation, Trisden decided upon Boise State as the more practical choice. But when he got to Boise State, he faced culture shock that he hadn’t anticipated. “When I first got to Boise I knew it was going to be a culture shock. I was ready for that. I had lived in Henderson. That was a culture shock after Cleveland. I thought, ‘I’m fully prepared for this.’ But in Idaho I didn’t have the [black] community to lean on, and that had never dawned on me. I thought there would be a few black people.” “And Boise is just that white?” “It’s just that white. The only black people at that school are athletes, and, of course, they hang out with each other. Then there are a few black people around here and there. If you don’t really know them, you, of course, had to reach out, but they’re already into their own things, and they have their own friends, because they had to integrate themselves. There was one other black kid in my dorm. And we hung out together, and people would always call me Anthony and call him Trisden. They said it was because we were always hanging out together, but it was really because we just looked alike to the white kids. That’s when race, I guess, started really…” Trisden was beginning to address the next question in the interview: “When did you become aware of race?” “I was always aware that I was black. I knew that black was different or treated different, treated less than, because my mom was very educated, so she taught me all of this. I knew about the Civil Rights Movement. I was

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in AP history, so I got it to a certain extent. But it didn’t really dawn on me, I didn’t really have that black consciousness until I was at Boise in an all-white space. I felt like I was always the other, always the different one. Anything I did, people would be like, ‘Oh, that’s what black people do.’ There were people who had never met a black person before. Some people were from the middle of Montana. Some people were from the middle of Oregon, where they have one streetlight. I’m like, ‘You live there?? What you do for fun?’ They would say, ‘I don’t know … Shoot guns…’ Out in the country, you know? So I’m thinking, ‘Man, this a this is a real culture shock.’” “Henderson was a predominantly white culture, and I thought I was used to that. But Boise was country white culture! This was conservative, redneck culture, and I was thinking, ‘I don’t know if I can do this!’ The first week was cool, because you’re just meeting everybody, and they’re like, ‘Oh, a black person!!’ I’m just like, ‘Well, if I’m going to be the first black person you meet, I’m going to make a great impression!’ People are watching their toes around you the first week, too. The second week they said, ‘We’re going to a bonfire.’ I’ve never been to a bonfire before, but I’m thinking of California bonfires, on the beach where everyone’s chilling, listening to good music. But then we’re driving way out in the country and I’m thinking, ‘I hope they don’t kill me out here, or if something happened where somebody’s shooting a gun.’ It started dawning on me, I hope they don’t hate me. Because I remember a kid, the first week he was just like, ‘Look, be careful. Boise is much better than northern Idaho, but they have KKK rallies not too far from here.’ I’m just like, ‘Bro.’ He was like, ‘It’s cool.’” “A white kid told you that?” “A white kid, and he had never really met a black person before. There were a few black kids at his high school, but he had never had a black friend. But he was cool. My roommate was really cool, too, but I don’t think either of them were on that bonfire trip. One of my neighbors in the dorm was Asian. He was going to the bonfire, too, so that was the only kid I really trusted. We were driving for 40 minutes. I’m thinking, ‘Man, what is going on?’ So we finally get there, and it’s just a bunch of people wearing cowboy hats, cowboy boots. They were dancing, and just throwing wood on the fire.” “They were driving around, just doing reckless stuff. Everybody was drinking beer, listening to country music, everybody just had their cowboy hats on. I don’t like beer, I don’t like country music. What did I get

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myself into? It just flooded me at that point. Then I found a group of kids from California. Some of them listened to country too, but we just kind of started talking about different things, and it was OK, like this is my home base.’” “How many students do you think were out there?” “I would say there was about 40 or 50. It wasn’t massive, but I didn’t know any of them. They were nice, don’t get me wrong, they were definitely nice…” Trisden was describing the profound dissonance of being a black city kid in a completely white country environment. On one level he knew that these were just college students doing what college students do during the first week of fall semester. It was a bonfire with beer and music and a little rowdiness. They weren’t burning a cross, or running around with hoods. They weren’t bad people. Yet Trisden did not feel safe. He sought the company of the only other student of color and some students from California, rather than the rural kids from Oregon, Montana, and Idaho. But the event made him aware of his race more intensely than he had ever felt before. As he describes it, he was prepared for overt racism. To him, overtly racist white people were more familiar than white people from a rural culture being nice to him, and then almost unconsciously, letting the n-word slip out in everyday usage. “See, that was the scary thing about racism. People look so normal until it happens. With overt racism—I’m not happy about it—but it’s not a surprise to me. But when somebody I’ve been hanging out with just starts saying nigger a few times when they’re drunk, that hurts. If somebody I don’t know is screaming nigger out of a car, then it’s clear what’s going on. But if I’m building a relationship with someone and they say something. … By the end of my freshman year, I heard it way too often, and people were like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. It slipped.’ No, that doesn’t slip. That doesn’t slip.” “So slowly throughout the year, I talked to fewer and fewer people, because too many racial things came out in everyday conversations. Like, I have a problem with conservatism. I disagree with it, I’m completely left-wing, but it’s fine. But when that conservative ideology was leading to racial things … I just started spending time in my room.” “There were a few people I talked to, like my neighbor Nick, who is Asian, and his roommate, Shawn, a white kid from Santa Clarita, California. I guess it’s a really rich part of California. At first I thought Shawn was cool, and then I started realizing how many racial jokes and stereotypes he

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made, every day. Nick would tell me things that Shawn said, and I’m like, ‘And you didn’t say nothing to him??’ One time we were in a floor meeting in the dorm, and we were voting, and I walked in late. I said, ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot we were voting.’ I was either at the library or at the gym or something. And they said, ‘Glad you came! You’re the swing vote.’ Shawn said, ‘Trisden’s vote doesn’t count. It’s only worth two-thirds.’ I was like, ‘Shawn, whoa!!!’” “After that moment everything he said just hit home more and more. I just slowly started to resent him. But for most people that went over their head. They didn’t know what he was talking about. I knew Nick kind of understood it, and Andrew was my white friend who told me about the KKK rallies. He was a history major, so he knew exactly what was going on. So he stood up and said, ‘Whoa, Shawn, really? That is not cool. If you had any feelings like that, we could really fight, because that is racist.’” “Shawn thought he was making a joke. He was laughing. He was like, ‘that was witty!’ He would say things like, if we were playing a game, say we’re playing Xbox, and I beat him, he’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s only because you’re black, and you know how to play football a little bit better.’ Or if Nick beat him he would be like, ‘Oh, that’s because we’re playing on PlayStation, and the Asians made it.’ Nick wasn’t good at math, and we both kind of struggled together. He’d be like, ‘I mean, I understand why Trisden sucks at math, but Nick, come on, you have to do better for your people.’” I remarked, “So he’s just thinking in racial terms all the time.” “All the time. All the time.” “Did he think he was a racist?” “No, not at all.” “He would talk about gay people too. He made more racial remarks, because he knew there were a lot of out [gay] people at Boise State, so making gay jokes was very taboo, but there were never enough people of color around to really press him on race. I just started to shove him anytime he said something racist, because I was just like, ‘Physically you’re going to know this is not okay around me.’ So, I mean, of course he stopped hanging out with me. But he stopped saying things about black people around me at least, and then he started making Asian jokes with Nick. I’m like, ‘Nick, you have to check him. I can’t keep checking him.’” “He also hated Hispanics. He would always talk about how they’re taking the jobs, and he would always quote terrible facts. Terrible facts. He and I would just be arguing back and forth, because he’s like, ‘My

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statistics say so and you’re just saying what you think!’ I’m like, ‘No. This is correct.’ But I didn’t have the words and the terminology to actually back it up. But I would say, ‘No, your quote is completely wrong.’ I knew that he was taking statistics out of context. He would always take things out of context to drive home his point, and I always would let him know that. So now anytime I’m writing … say I’m writing something for your class … I’m always thinking I’m talking to Shawn, just because I try to take the anger out of it.” Shawn’s racism wormed its way into Trisden’s head. Now Shawn is the voice of racism that Trisden is always trying to respond to … the “racist devil on his shoulder.” Trisden stayed at Boise for another year and then transferred to Nevada after his sophomore year. “I didn’t want to go back to Boise [after freshman year]. I wanted to go to UNLV. But I couldn’t really make out why. I knew I didn’t have a home in Boise. I knew the problem was racial, but I didn’t want that to run me out of Boise, because I had some great friends there. Also, the reason I went there was I wanted to walk on [for the football team], but then I found out that the coaching staff was leaving. So I was just weighing my options with the new coaching staff.” “You were sticking around because you were thinking you might walk on with football and the new coaching staff the second year?” “Maybe. I figured if I stayed a second year I might as well give it another shot. But really the reason I went back to Boise is that I didn’t have a plan. I told my mom I wanted to go to UNLV, and she told me No. She told me I didn’t have a good enough reason, and she didn’t want me at home, because she saw that I was growing on my own. She was like, ‘This is how I grew. I’m not going to let you do that to yourself unless you can think of a good enough reason.’ So I told her, ‘I’m going to save money’ [by living at home] … all of that. She said, ‘That’s not a priority right now.’ I didn’t convince her.” “Did you have a job at Boise?” “I didn’t during my first semester, and then I was looking for a job my second semester. I had actually gotten a MIC.  A MIC is a ‘Minor in Consumption.’ So I actually have a record [for walking while intoxicated]. In Boise I got two MICs, one was definitely racial profiling.” “They have a party patrol. They don’t have real crime out there. I found out, after they made me go to a drug and alcohol class. Ada County funds their police department and their county, off MICs and DUIs. So they’re really strict on underage drinking. I understand DUIs, but MICs,

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if you’re walking somewhere … why is that a crime? They pulled us over while we were walking.” “My roommate Nick and I were walking down a street freshman year. A car pulled up to us, but it was an undercover cop car, and we didn’t know that. He asked, ‘Where you going, blah, blah, blah? We thought they were just stopping to ask us directions. I said, ‘Oh, Euclid is just down the street, around the corner, right there.’ Then he just pulled off and left. But he was actually an undercover cop, and he told the patrol car, “Yeah, go get them,” and the police just pulled up, out of nowhere. My heart was pounding. I really wanted to run, because I was thinking, ‘I can’t get a record. That just can’t happen to me.’ But I was also thinking, ‘I can’t get shot neither, right?’ Because if it comes down to it, I know I can outrun them.” “We’re just walking. I’m looking at the GPS, like, ‘OK, I think it’s three houses down,’ and that’s when that car pulled up, and then out of nowhere the police came. I thought ‘Oh, they’re probably pulling somebody over,’ but then they drove up on us. I’m thinking, ‘What did we do?’ So they made us I blow on the blood alcohol monitor. My blood alcohol level was fairly high, but I didn’t do anything. I was just walking, and now I have a MIC.” Perhaps they were not racially profiled if the county was keeping its coffers full and also trying to stop underage college students from drinking. Maybe any two students would have had the same experience. But Trisden felt more threatened because he is a young black man who might have been shot while running away. Would a drunk white freshman have experienced the same fear? If he had run, would he have faced the same risk of being shot? I asked Trisden, “If you and Nick were two white guys, do you think it would have happened?” “Maybe, because of how strong of the party patrol presence there is. But I also got pulled over walking home from McDonald’s after work one day. They asked me, ‘What are you doing out?’ I was in my McDonald’s uniform.” Trisden explained that he had to get a job working at McDonalds to pay his fine for the MIC he received walking to the party with Nick. Then he got stopped again walking home from working at McDonalds. “I had a MIC, so I had to pay for it, and McDonald’s was the only place hiring in walking distance. So I was wearing this jacket and my McDonald’s uniform and not even a beanie. I was wearing my McDonald’s visor, and

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I had my headphones in. I think that’s why I don’t wear my Beats anymore, just because there’s been too many times people pulled up on me. The police just pulled up on me again.” He paused and said, “I’m trying to make sense of myself in the world. I took an implicit bias test in my class on racial profiling. It said I have a moderate preference for black over white, and I was honestly surprised. I don’t want it to be like that. I shouldn’t really have a preference, but in my heart I know it’s kind of true, just because I guess I’m skeptical of white people at this point” Trisden and I were reaching the end of our two-hour interview. He needed to get to work. In this trial run, we had only gotten through about half of the questions we had planned to cover. We agreed to meet again to continue the interview. A month later, we resumed our discussion. When we met again I began by reading the questions that remained for us from the previous session: “Do you feel comfortable at Nevada? How does the racial environment differ from the place you call home? Does racial tension exist on this campus? Have you experienced overt blatant racism on the UNR campus, and please describe? How have your experiences in the classroom been, with the faculty, staff, or students? Have you had black professors at the University of Nevada?” Trisden responded, “I would say I’m fairly comfortable here, after spending two years in Boise, being the one black person in a lecture class of two hundred students. I felt like their enemy. Random things went in my head, just like if they heard any news and just got mad at black people, they really could get me. I couldn’t go anywhere. I had no protection. So coming here, just seeing a black face once in a blue moon, is better. In Boise I could walk a day or two without seeing another black face. So here I know I’m going to see a person of color, and it doesn’t even have to be black. In Boise it was just all white. But here there’s a community.” “Even though there isn’t too much diversity here, it is more diverse than Boise, which was a very white space. Being in a white space in a predominantly conservative, very Christian, country environment, was unwelcoming. I heard a lot of stereotypes, because there is no diversity. There are just so many white people and there’s no one challenging the preconceived notions they have of other people, because they aren’t meeting new people.” “There were positive experiences. I was a lot of people’s first black friend, and I, of course, left a great impression! A lot of them told me they wouldn’t be afraid of talking to another black man, but before they met

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me they had been afraid. They had never met a black man before, or never really sat down and had a conversation with one.” University of Nevada, Reno “So when I got back here to Nevada it was more comfortable. I felt like I could be myself, because in Boise I couldn’t really talk to people about things. When Michael Brown was shot, or Eric Garner, there was no one I could talk to about these things. Or if I brought it up, they would be like, ‘Oh, wasn’t he a criminal?’” “I will never forget a conversation with one of my good friends in Boise, Austin. He was Hispanic. We were watching the coverage of the Eric Garner thing happening in New York, and we just couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘This clearly is against the rules. They choked him out. So there shouldn’t be too big of a deal about it.’ Then we were going home, and his mother called him, and he was still kind of angry about the Garner thing. So he was talking on the phone, and I will never forget, when he got off the phone he was just so upset with his mother, because he was like, ‘She just doesn’t get it. She kept saying, ‘Well, he’s a criminal. He broke the rules. That’s what happens when you break the rules.’ That just kind of was the sentiment that was carried throughout that campus, so there was nothing—I couldn’t find any solace in anything. I couldn’t really talk to anybody.” “I found my comfort in reading like Malcolm X.  I picked up the Malcolm X autobiography; they had one in the Boise library. So that was my go-to, my outlet. I also started writing poetry, and poetry helped me. My poetry teacher was pretty race conscious. She grew up in Massachusetts. I guess wherever she grew up was quite liberal, so she brought that ideology to Boise. But there wasn’t much of that.” “So even among the faculty at Boise, which wasn’t as parochial as the students … you didn’t feel comfortable?” “I wasn’t comfortable talking to them about these things, because they had that same conservative ideology. It was pretty consistent throughout the campus. Liberalism or any leftist-like ideology was frowned upon, not really understood, even in the classroom. My favorite teacher was a communications teacher. I use Rate My Professor to choose my classes, and when I went to her Rate My Professor, it said, ‘Don’t take her, she’s a liberal. She’s not a great teacher, because she pushes her ideology on you, blah, blah, blah.’ I’m like, ‘What? That’s my ideology, so I do want to hear

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what she has to say!’ When I got in the class, I thought, ‘This is amazing.’ She told me to question and challenge everything.” “When I got to Nevada there was a BSO, [Black Student Organization] which there wasn’t at Boise. There were black faces at Nevada. Also more Latino faces, and Asian. There was just diversity, and I embraced that. So yes, I’m more comfortable here, but I am not completely comfortable. Of course the last time we met for my interview, I got called a nigger just walking down the street. But that happened to me multiple times at Boise. Before I got to Boise, nigger was just a word. It was a taboo word, for sure, and if someone calls me, it’s utter disrespect. But it didn’t have that weight behind it until I started hearing the hate behind it at Boise. The more I heard it, the more I understood this is what you think of me, and this is the image that you’re putting with me. Or I hear ‘thug,’ or ‘You’re dressed like a thug right now,’ and things like that. That’s just another word for nigger.” I asked Trisden about the “N word”: “So do you use the word nigger with your friends, within a safe black community? Is that part of your vocabulary?” “It is. It is. And a lot of my mentors wouldn’t necessarily agree, but I do believe there’s power in reclaiming a word. I really think that’s a thing, and it shows in my HipHop music. There is a clear difference [between the hard R and ‘nigga’]. It’s from slavery times. I was listening to a HipHop song and [the recording artist] is painting a picture of how when people said [the hard R], they’re hanging with a body that was lynched, or taking pictures, posing. But within the black community, ‘nigga’ is a term of endearment. If you hear that it’s just—to me it’s endearing, especially if it’s someone you really know. It’s just comfortable, I guess. It’s just close. It is a part of my vocabulary, although a lot of people would like to get rid of it. I personally agree that it’s a word that carries weight, and if you don’t know what’s behind it, then it can be very detrimental, very problematic. So I think people within the black community should learn the history and decide if they should use it between themselves. I think that’s within the black community. If they believe that you can truly reclaim a word, then you should use it. If not, if you think it’s a word that’s just going to carry hate, then drop it. But I don’t think anyone else should be in on that conversation.” “I’ve had a lot of conversations with my friends about it that aren’t black, and a lot of them understand. They’re like, ‘I completely agree,

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especially when you frame it like that.’ But I’ve lost [white and Latino] friends because they tell me, ‘I don’t care what you say. I’m going to keep saying it.’ I would respond, ‘Well, you don’t care about how it makes me feel as your friend. Why would you want to use it?’ But he’s like, ‘Well, you use it, and we’ve been friends since seventh grade, and you know I mean it the same way.’ You might, but you have to understand that if you aren’t treated like a nigger, then you shouldn’t be able to say nigga.” “We had that problem earlier this year at UNR. YG came. He’s a popular rapper. He’s from Compton. He calls it Bompton, because he’s a part of the Blood gang, and he’s kind of commercialized that. That’s his thing. He also makes it known that this is not the lifestyle that you should want to live, but like ‘This is where I’m from,’ and it’s being commercialized that way. So when we had the concert at Nevada, not only were [white] people saying nigga, they were also wearing red bandanas, like they were posing as Bloods.” “I’m like, you don’t understand the context of this. If you were anywhere else, you would be in serious trouble, and you need to understand that. This is not a game. It’s not a fashion statement. It’s a culture. At that concert there were plenty of white girls wearing red bandanas wrapped around their arm, or in their back pocket, or around their head. That’s a problem for me. I’m like, ‘You are so quick to demonize a black male that is doing the same thing, but for you it’s a fashion statement.’” “If a gang member, a Blood, was shot and killed by the police, so many people would write it off. They’d be like, ‘Oh, he was a gang member. He probably was going to do something bad anyway,’ no matter what the circumstances or facts of the case would be. But if that same white woman that was wearing the bandana at the concert got pulled over and was in that same situation, and if she got shot, everybody would be up in arms.” “Switching it Up: Student Dialogues and Faculty of Color” I asked Trisden for his concluding thoughts about how to affect change at UNR: “What do you think the university needs to change or to make things better?” “Actually, my roommate and I were thinking about creating something called ‘Let’s Talk About It,’ because we know that a lot of people have questions, but they don’t want to step on someone’s toes and say the wrong thing. If we can make a space in an educational environment for people to ask each other things they may have thought about, it might

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really work. Some of these questions just need to be asked. If we can create some type of safe academic environment where people can just talk about it, that that will start something.” He offered as example a persistent question about “switching it up”: black people talking differently around white people than around each other. Trisden described visiting a friend—a Nevada student—who is black and shares an apartment with a white roommate. Usually when Trisden and his black friends visit, the white roommate stays in his room and doesn’t join in. But one time the roommate joined the conversation and was surprised to find his black roommate “talking black” with his black friends. He asked his roommate why he was talking “differently” with his black friends than he does with him (the white roommate): “Why do you switch up when black people are around? Why do you talk different? Why do you act different?” Trisden understood what the white student was asking and explained to me, “You feel like you have to ‘switch up’ in white space. Usually black people conform to ‘standard English,’ which is white, when they’re around white people. So you’re going to talk different, your mannerisms are going to be different. It’s like a performance, to make [the white person] comfortable.” The white student insisted that the way white people talk is correct, and that it’s appropriate and desirable for black people to talk “standard English.” He remarked to the black students at the apartment, “Well, isn’t because white people have historically been superior?” [In other words, white English is educated; black English is ignorant and ungrammatical.] Trisden was taken aback. “That’s what he truly believed. He wasn’t trying to be malicious or anything, he was just like, ‘Well, isn’t that just because we’re historically superior?’” Trisden’s roommate, who is black, was present at the gathering, and responded, “Uh, no. Read some history.” “So that’s why we think a dialogue is important, because a lot of people have real questions, but are just too lazy to trouble themselves thinking about these difficult issues if they don’t have to.” Trisden was describing a white student who is obviously not a classic racist—he lives with a black student and hangs out with his friends—but he doesn’t know how to think critically about his unconscious assumptions of white superiority, and he’s looking to his black friends as “experts” on race. It’s precisely this sort of student that Trisden believes could begin to move out of his frozen ideas with a “Let’s talk about it” opportunity.

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Racially privileged people can, if they wish, remain comfortable in their ignorance, while the victims of oppression have no choice but to confront, experience, think about race every day, moving through a white world. A white person has the luxury of believing, “I don’t think about race; I just think about human beings.” Those who say “identity politics” is not a factor in politics “anymore” are by definition privileged individuals who aren’t forced by society to think about their “identity” every day. The presence of faculty of color is also important in enabling a discussion of race in classrooms on campus. Trisden has had only one black professor, and she is not full time at UNR, but rather a professor at the local community college (Truckee Meadows Community College) who is hired by UNR to teach courses on race. Trisden’s experience in her classroom was one of the most important during his time at the university. “It’s not that I can’t learn from a white professor. … But with my black professor there’s a different level of comfort. It’s just how she talks. I understand, and I don’t feel like I have to change how I speak for her to understand me. I can be as comfortable as possible, as real as possible, and tell her what I think, and she’ll be like, ‘Tell me what you don’t get.’ Then she’ll break it down and say it in a way that I’ll understand it. I don’t have that too often. I don’t have that too often. And students who may not have even have been privileged enough to grow up in white space like I did need it even more.” Before we concluded our interview, Trisden wanted to talk about policing. “We’ve kind of touched on policing already. I haven’t had a positive experience with the police. Never really called them for any reason. I can’t think of a situation where I’ve needed the police and they’ve shown up, and I felt protected. But I’ve had a few negative experiences. Internally I know that all police aren’t bad, but I think it’s the system of policing because I’ve had so many bad interactions. It’s not the individual police officer’s fault necessarily, but I’ve been followed in stores, whether at a gas station or a Walmart. I’ve been asked to empty my pockets when I leave somewhere. There was one time at Walmart. I was looking for something really small, and I couldn’t find anyplace that had it, and I went to Walmart, couldn’t find it there either. I was pretty much in and out of the store, as soon as I saw they didn’t have it. But they stopped me on my way out. The security guy said, ‘Oh, can you empty your pockets?’

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So I’m like, ‘Why? Can you please just give me a good reason?’ and they wouldn’t give me a reason. They’re like, ‘Well, we can call somebody.’ That’s the thing, always: ‘Oh, we can call the police.’ If I go, ‘Yeah, get the police,’ because I know I didn’t do anything wrong, then something worse is going to happen from the police entering the situation. That’s just how I’ve always seen it. Of course, the videos have gotten to me. It’s taken a toll on me psychologically, just seeing.” “The videos?” “Of black men being murdered. And they show it on TV, uncensored and being played everywhere. I saw something the other day. It was a cow, some big animal. Something had happened to it. It was mutilated. But they put one of those filters over it on the TV. They censored it … or protected people from having to look at it. It was blurry. But they showed Michael Brown lying in the street in Ferguson for four hours on TV. And they put Austin Sterling’s dead body on the front of a magazine.” Television displays of black men lying dead in the streets every time there is a new police shooting resembled, to Trisden, those horrifying early twentieth-century photos of lynchings in the South with a mob of white men gawking, pointing, and smiling. Our current media is not loath to show the dead black bodies on television and magazine covers, but it has the “decency” to blur a dead cow in order to protect the sensibilities of the viewing audience. Trisden concluded his thoughts about the police with this memory: “One time during freshman year, I didn’t have a ride home after a football game, and I was with a white friend. And he’s like, ‘Oh, well, the police gave me a ride last week. They’ll probably do the same for you.’ I was like, ‘No. I’m not about to sit in the back of this cop car. I don’t know what’s going to happen back there.’ And I understand, that not all police are bad. But there’s no way I could ever see myself calling the police. Unless my life is on the line already, calling the police is not an option to me. If you’re not treating people with decent respect, nothing’s going to work. It makes me speechless.”

Henry I’m not just going to be telling my story if it’s not to take power as well.

Interview by Paterno and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring

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A student in my Identity Politics class told me I really should get Henry to enroll. When I asked how to reach Henry, I was told to go through the Women’s Studies Department, because that was his major. My interest was piqued. A male feminist in my Identity Politics course— and Henry, as it turns out, is a Black male feminist. It didn’t take long to see why the other student had made the suggestion. A few years older than most undergraduates, experienced in political organizing and immersed in critical theory, Henry quickly earned a place of honor and respect among his classmates with his contributions to class discussions. Whenever he spoke, people listened intently; many took notes. During an introductory exercise—How do you identify yourself?—Henry said, “Poor.” Although he does not minimize the centrality of racism in American life, he did not reduce America’s inequality and oppressiveness to race. His views on racism, sexism, and economic oppression are global and nuanced, grounded in a critical understanding of contemporary capitalism. His classmates often awaited his “verdicts” on the issues under discussion. A small but outspoken cluster of students did not share the majority’s enthusiasm for Henry’s ideas. These were the same students who didn’t bother to read the required texts or pay attention to lectures, who insisted that racism no longer exists in the United States. Many students came to me and privately expressed their dismay that our class discussions were being “hijacked” by this small group of uninformed disrupters. Henry stopped coming to class about midway through the semester. He appeared at my office after several missed classes and explained that he was simply too tired—after working most of the night in a warehouse—to come to a morning class and listen to “racist shit” from three students who wouldn’t do the work and wouldn’t listen. I suggested that he visit me weekly at my office, and we would discuss the materials I was teaching. I didn’t want him to fail the class because of those three idiots. And I wanted to keep hearing what he had to say. The following semester he asked to do an independent study with me. He would study Marxism, race, and class. I had a similar request for an independent reading course from Paterno, who was enrolled in another political theory class I was teaching. Paterno wanted to read Marx and asked if I would supervise his study. Both Paterno and Henry are voracious readers, independent thinkers with a passion for ideas. But while Henry grew up in harsh poverty, sometimes homeless

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with his mother and brother throughout his childhood, and on his own from age 16, Paterno grew up in a relatively affluent environment. I invited Henry and Paterno to work together, reading Marx and other radical theorists and meeting with me on a weekly basis. The two young men hit it off, and together we studied Marx, economics, race, and gender. Henry and Paterno became friends, and I invited both to participate in this study. Trisden and I interviewed Paterno, and then made an appointment to interview Henry. We were worried when Henry failed to appear at the scheduled time. Finally, Henry texted Trisden to say that he’d been hit by a car while riding his moped to the interview. He was fine, but his moped was totaled, and he would have to reschedule. Three of our first four interviewees had encountered problems en route to our meetings: Trisden was assaulted with a racial epithet; Yesenia’s car was stopped by ICE; and now this. It was beginning to seem dangerous to participate in this study! More realistically, the mishaps revealed the everyday challenges of trying to get through college for poor students of color. Trisden’s work schedule prevented him from meeting for the rescheduled interview, but Paterno stepped in, quite capably. Childhood Poverty The interview began hesitantly. Henry was cautious, responding to Paterno’s questions with one-word answers. He gave his age (27) and previous places of residence (Georgia, Oregon, California), and when asked how he identified said simply, “Oh … Black. Queer. Other things, as well.” Asked to elaborate, he added, “I’d say I’m a leftist.” He was born in Southern California, then moved with his family to Georgia when he was six, where he stayed until he was ten. The family then moved to Reno (actually Sparks, Nevada, a small town bordering Reno) for a year and a half, and finally back to California for high school, where he stayed, living on his own during his junior and most of his senior year when his family returned to Sparks. His younger brother moved back Nevada with his mother, and Henry joined them there for his last six months of high school, graduating from a high school in Sparks. He also has two sisters but didn’t grow up with them. “I didn’t know I had two sisters until I was 15, 16. My dad, you know … [laughing] got around.” Paterno asked, “Do you have a relationship with your sisters?”

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“Not like I would like.” “But you have one with your brother, though?” “Yeah, I mean, we grew up together.” With the guidance of one of his high school mentors, he chose to attend a small liberal arts college in Oregon then “I dropped out of there to work in Seattle, and then began organizing with a collective there. I organized with them for a few years, and then moved back down here to Reno.” He said he had been back in Reno for the past four or five years, after leaving Oregon. When Paterno asked about the financial status of Henry’s family during his childhood, Henry exhaled sharply and then softly laughed. For the most part, he said, they lived in poverty. “There were moments when things were better. Like my mom … we were okay, we were doing pretty well before we left California. When we moved to Georgia, we were in shelters sometimes. We were in a real rock and a hard place situation. And then when we did have a place, we didn’t have funds to stay there, so…” Henry’s mother was going to school and working. She eventually got her associates degree, and things went well for a while. “But my mom had a drug addiction, so that made it difficult. So that job didn’t last too long, because she tested dirty. And then from there on out, it kind of went downhill.” “What brought you to Georgia?” I asked. “Family. And a lot of fluctuation. … My aunt has been one of the more stable people in our family. Some of the better periods in my life have been because of her. I’m not saying … my mom did what she could, I think. It’s just a lot. … Yeah, I wouldn’t say I was even lower-middle class at any point. My class is somewhere like keeping my head above water.” As he answered our questions, Henry’s voice was matter of fact. He was just telling it straight. He chuckled frequently, mostly to himself, remembering how rough things had been. His experience was so utterly different from Paterno’s and mine—so shocking, really—that all we could do was laugh softly, awkwardly, along with him. Henry moved so many times during childhood that we had a hard time keeping the years and places straight. “Okay, so California was the high school?” “Yeah. Like, the ending of middle school and all of high school, except for that last six months or so here at Sparks.”

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He told us about his California high school: “It was called the Arts Academy. This is when [George W.] Bush was in office, and they were shutting down a lot of schools. They took the high school and made it into five different academies on the same campus. I was in the performing arts academy.” Paterno asked Henry to describe his classmates. “I mean, it was mostly students of color, you know what I mean? So Chicano—well, when I came there it was Latino folks across the board … people from different parts of Asia … and black folks…” He lived not far from the school. “At this point, we had moved from my grandmother’s old place, because it was jacked up.” In other words, a wreck. When asked to describe the area where he lived, Henry exhaled sharply again. That in itself was a small revelation: having never lived in that kind of poverty, I wondered what sort of childhood makes you exhale each time you think of another detail. Henry kept his voice flat and controlled as he spoke of these difficult times; those exhalations were the only indication of the effort it took to control the underlying emotions. About the neighborhood, he said, “Southern California is a mixed bag, right? You can be in one area; it’s real nice. You walk down the street, and it’s … well, good luck! … Where I was at in high school, across from a college, it was a really nice place. It was cool. … We were near neighborhoods that were relatively nice. It still had its issues, but the high school was surrounded by some pretty decent neighborhoods. But when I say that, that’s like code: there’s a lot of unpacking there. The high school was near a major boulevard, notorious for sex work and pimping and selling drugs. So, you had all this stuff where … at any moment, shit could pop off. And then you had also the backdrop where it wasn’t that bad. … I’m not going to say it wasn’t bad—it was bad, but it wasn’t like…” Paterno offered: “So … you weren’t in any imminent danger, but you could also walk into trouble at some point?” “Right … Shit can happen, but it didn’t necessarily mean it would.” It seemed to me that every time there was news of violence in the area Henry was describing—drive-by shootings, young children caught in the crossfire while playing in their front yards—it involved the specific boulevard Henry was referring to. But he was trying to make us understand the more complex reality: “I mean, there are certain areas that were more notorious for things happening. But it could happen anywhere … I think most of the people are just trying to survive. A lot of good folks. There’s

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a lot of art and culture. There were really nice neighborhoods right down the block—a few blocks away from all the shit happening. So there weren’t these clear lines, unless you went to certain specific areas, you know? But you still watch your back, whatever neighborhood you’re in.” Paterno sought clarification: “So it wasn’t the worst place that you’ve been, right?” Henry laughed, making it clear that Paterno hadn’t really understood. “I mean, it depends on the day.” Another piece of reality: neither Paterno nor I would venture into a neighborhood like that one by choice. If we found ourselves there, we would not feel safe. But the people who live there because they can’t afford a safer neighborhood, or because their families have always lived there, don’t perceive their area as one of constant lethal danger—even though they know that could change at any time. “One day I was coming home from school—middle school—some kid was talking shit. I said something back because I’m not going to let somebody do that.” Here he laughed, remembering his tough younger self. “And it was two of them on the bike. They get off the bike and they have this Dirty Harry gun pointed at me. And I run like hell. I mean … you see somebody break out in a fight, across the street people get jumped, or you see somebody carrying a blade … you see wild shit, but at the time, you don’t think much about it. For me, that’s just the way it was. But now, thinking about it, it’s like, Wow!” He really wanted to make us understand the complicated reality: “I don’t want to make this. … I still have a lot of love for California. … People try to use the bad shit to frame it. I’m trying to be true to the complexity of the city and the experience that I went through. Because it could have been me in all that wild shit. I was just a step away.” I asked why he went to the Arts Academy. Was he interested in the arts? It turned out that he originally attended a different school, which primarily served wealthy white kids, as well as some of the poor kids from the inner city nearby. “That first year, it was rough transitioning. Some kid was trying to bully me, and it was clear I was going to get in a fight. I told my mom. She got worried and took me out of school for six months. I got into Arts Academy because she was able to finagle me getting in there, and then catching me up with tutors.” He worked with teachers over the summer to catch up with the work he’d missed. “So, I got in there by virtue of … well, really because of my

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mom going in there and finagling to get me in. And then I ended up getting interested in the arts. So, it was a win-win.” It is important to note that Henry’s mother, who had struggles of her own during these years, was determined to keep her son focused on academics and school and fought to keep him in a safe learning environment. Henry was dealing with more than any young person should have to, but his mother and aunt were paying attention. Paterno asked what kind of arts Henry was most interested in. The answer was music: in particular, the piano. “I did blues, jazz. I liked a lot of Bossa Nova, Brazilian music. Yeah.” Paterno asked whether the other students at this school came from similar backgrounds as Henry’s, in terms of financial status. “Yeah. I mean, you had people who may have been in a little better position. A lot of people were going through a lot themselves though.” His fellow students were predominantly people of color, he said. But that hadn’t always been the case: because he had moved around so much, he had experienced various degrees of integration and racial tension. “Georgia was interesting because it was just black-white. You had a few students here and there who were not in that binary, but I had a good experience. I think that was very foundational for me. When I moved to Reno, that’s when I first experienced racism. That’s when it was clear I was one of the few black students here. That’s where I heard the n-word. Me and my brother had to fight. You know, that’s when we started feeling that, right? Whereas people would think it would have been Georgia. But it was Reno. Maybe I was too young in Georgia. … In hindsight, I see some of the issues in Georgia—the more structural parts of it. But the interpersonal stuff was okay when I was there. It was when I got up here [in Reno] that I first saw racism.” Paterno asked about the school Henry had attended in Georgia. “We had to wear uniforms. It wasn’t a private school. It was a really nice school. It was far away from where I actually lived, though. I lived outside of Atlanta. Predominantly black—IT WAS ROUGHHH!!” Here Henry laughed: this was the roughest of the many rough places he has been. “IT WAS WILD! I had to go from there to Hills [where the school was—JR]. It was mostly black and white students.” To sum up Henry’s travels: he moved from California to Georgia when he was six, lived there until he was ten, and then moved to Reno, where he finished elementary school. Then he moved back to California for middle and high school—including a period when he lived on his own—and

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then moved back to Reno again (actually, Sparks) staying with his aunt. But it was at the elementary school in Reno that he first experienced racism. Paterno asked, “So was that the first time that you kind of acknowledged yourself as being black?” Henry responded with a laugh, “I mean, it was always there, right? But … we grew up in California, with the Black Power movement in proximity—you have that history. My family wasn’t necessarily super, super political, but I learned in hindsight my aunt was there in ’79 protesting. That history is there in our family, and it reflects being aware of who we are. But it’s different when someone comes at you an in such a negative way. Like, ‘You’re that,’ and so you come to be aware of your identity in a different sense. I think your racial awareness starts to form when people are telling you who they think you are. [Emphasis added.] It meant something different than when my family was talking about it. But when somebody is calling you names, you’re in opposition. Now you’re in danger. Now you have to navigate these assumptions about who you are.” In other words, for the first time, Henry felt on the defensive. “I would say [it was] the first time racism got interpersonal, right? Actually experiencing it interpersonally and having people acting weird around you and saying the N-word first happened in Reno.” He recalled a fight with a local white kid in Reno. “I mean I’m just a kid … and his mom was talking about calling the police. We were twelve. And they’re treating us like we’re fucking grown-ass men. They didn’t see us like we were kids, you know what I mean? And my mom flipped on the lady: ‘You’re going to call the police on kids having a fucking fight?’ So finding ourselves trying to navigate how to deal with that. And trying to fit in, too. Trying to fit in to this culture. And then also fighting against the situation.” After spending time in Reno, he experienced yet another startling dislocation: when he went back to California, people told him he sounded white. “I was doing well in class and shit like that. But people didn’t think I was black enough. I know that’s bullshit. Because … what are you saying? Because a motherfucker reads, he’s not black? Come on!! But I had to navigate these different perceptions of identity and what it means to be Black.” Henry recognizes that he was lucky in one way: he had life-changing teachers. “I had some pretty cool mentors while I was going to the Arts Academy. … I was 14, 15. There was a teacher of mine, Mr. H. He’s an English teacher. I worked with him over the summer. I think he’s one of

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the people that changed my life. He told me, ‘All right, you’re going to write about W.E.B. DuBois’s’ … what’s the name of the book … The Souls of Black Folk. He had me read that, and then write about it. We’d meet up; we’d talk about The Souls of Black Folk. That shit transformed my life. He introduced me to Franz Fanon. He told me, ‘Read Franz Fanon, watch The Battle of Algiers.’ So, I’m reading and learning about this history and it’s contextualizing my experience and what I’m seeing in California. I remember one of the things I took from the Fanon book [The Wretched of the Earth] was that the oppressed start lashing out at themselves in this situation. And I’m seeing all this violence around me … and it started making sense.” “You can think, ‘Oh, fuck these people, I have to go for it solo.’ But seeing like, ‘Oh, there’s these broader systems. People are doing this, and of course there’s personal responsibility, but it’s the conditions people are reacting to.’ That just transformed me. And seeing in The Battle of Algiers that you could resist—‘We can fight the motherfuckers??’” He laughed. “‘We can fight back??’ ‘There’s a way to do this??’ Of course, it’s different from Algerians fighting the French. I’m not going to be fucking shooting up a café and kidnapping diplomats. … But, okay, we can do something about this, right? There’s something going on.” From there it was just a short jump to the history of the Black Panthers and their perspective on the situation of black Americans. “There’s this internationalism, this decolonization, and that really influenced people who are coming out of the ghettos like myself, right? Influenced a nation within a nation. People saying black people are a colonized people. The police are an occupying force. It started to click for me then, in that summer trying to get my grades up for high school. I started seeing things in these broader terms and applying that to my experience. So, Mr. H. really introduced a lot of that to me. Of course, my family influenced me. Like my mom would force us to read … basically take us to a library and say ‘Read!’” The memory drew another laugh from Henry: one of recognition, as he saw the determination of his mother who was struggling with her own addiction. “And then I started reading Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, and I started reading A People’s History by Howard Zinn. … My dad had been in jail since ’96, ’95, before we moved from Georgia. And then reading this history of colonialism and the Algerian War. And the shits of just being in poverty. My mom finally got off drugs. It was just a confusing

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time. All these things just hit. And this was when Katrina had happened. I had family from Louisiana—family I didn’t know too well. But that [i.e., the woefully inadequate federal response to the storm and its mostly black victims] hurt me. … The thought that they might be dead, or the history I have out there is gone, and I never really got to experience it … that really fucking pissed me off.” That anger gave way to a more positive memory of the mentor who, more than any other, put him on the path to college. “I always had my aunt and my mom saying, ‘You’re going to go to college … but L.O. really helped me think that it was possible—that it was an option, and I needed to go.” L.O. had been a guest teacher at the Arts Academy. “He did drama therapy and he introduced me to some of these books. He took me one day to Downtown LA, and there were people who were in Katrina telling us what happened—that the police were treating them like fucking animals. They wouldn’t help people. They were shooting at people. People were dying. And I’m reading this stuff—what Mr. H. had me read—and reading all this other history. This is happening. The war [in Iraq] is happening. The immigrants’ rights movement is about to kick off. … And I’m just pissed.” In a life full of dramatic pendulum swings, here comes the next one: Henry joined the Junior Reserve Army Corps at school. Why? “Because I didn’t want to go to the gym and I heard it was easier.” He laughed when he told us that, and so did I. Talk about deconstructing stereotypes about black male athleticism! (I should note that although Henry looks like he could be an athlete, organized sports were not central to his young life. His passions were reading, music, and ultimately political activism. Having to fight during his youth may have led him to develop his physical strength. He’s a muscular-looking man, but not beefy like a football player.) Paterno, Henry, and I all laughed at the thought of Henry joining the JROTC because he thought it might be easier than P.E. I prodded him teasingly, “The army?? Really?? Easier than gym class?” He laughed, “Yeah. Right. This is not to even mention the day-to-day struggle and shit in my own personal experience, and navigating the violence of having to fight motherfuckers everywhere. … At the time, ‘It is what it is,’ but that shouldn’t be how anybody lives. And I didn’t even get the worst of it. There were people who had it much worse than me, and I

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still caught hell. So putting all this stuff in perspective I was beginning to understand, ‘Oh, there’s a system. People are causing this to happen.’” “So over the summer [before his sophomore year in high school], I’m hanging out with L.O., who’s taking me places—he took me under his wing—I’m getting into music, all these different, amazing things. My life was transformed. I’m figuring stuff out, you know? And I decide that I’m not going to go back to the fucking JROTC like I was in my freshman year. I said, ‘I’m not going back to that shit. I’m going to organize against that!’” Political Awakening in High School Henry had one of those transformative summers that many adolescents experience, when they return to school in the fall as an almost unrecognizable person. “I grew my hair out over the summer … and I started organizing against the military presence on campus. Part of that was because I had been to another, wealthier California high school for summer school. Those motherfuckers have resources!! In my performing arts schools, we didn’t really have a lot of those resources, you know? Our library was shit. It was just fucked up. There were no college recruiters that I saw. I didn’t think they gave us options, you know what I mean? That’s why the JROTC was there. It kind of was like, ‘You guys are always fighting and violent, why don’t you go and fight for your country?’ I’m like, ‘Fuck that. Why should we go and fight for this country when you have us living like this?’ I had classmates who … you see them one day, and they’re dead the next. That pissed me off. And seeing some of these students—of course there were knuckleheads too—but there was also so much potential. Some people never got to see it because no one gave them a chance. And I decided after that first year, and after meeting Mr. H. and some other folks, and there were marches going on, I said, ‘I’m going to organize.’” Paterno asked Henry to talk about his experience as a political organizer. His first time organizing, Henry said, was in high school in California, a few years after returning from Reno. He set up a debate at his school. At the same time, he met yet another mentor, S., an experienced anti-war organizer. “I met them by going to an anti-war protest against the Iraq War. This is a time where—what, ’05, ’06—people were in the streets … I met S. and they also took me under their wing and introduced me to folks in the anti-war movement.”

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He met conscientious objectors—a term he had never heard before. A fourth mentor, K., emerged from this group. “The man’s amazing, right? He was in the Marines. He said, ‘I’m not going to war.’ … He didn’t believe in that shit. And people had religious reasons why they didn’t go to war. They had political reasons. So I met them and … I started organizing with them. And they emboldened me to go around campus … I talked to a bunch of teachers. I put together this big forum so that we could have this debate. And the debate was between K. and a military recruiter on campus. I was one of the speakers as well. And it was huge for me.” The forum gave Henry a taste of the power that can come from passionately advocating for justice—and seeing your ideas embraced by others. “There was a student at the forum, I always thought he was a knucklehead before this. I was kind of an asshole at the time, I had a certain air. I didn’t think much of him … but this student, he was there. He got up and asked a question. He’s Mexican. … And he got up and said, ‘Look, why do you want me to go fight for this country when you don’t even want me here?’ And I’m like, ‘Wow!’ … Now we’re starting to get into the question of citizenship. That gave me a taste. Like, okay, I’m going to keep organizing against this.” His organizing focused on education: trying to make sure that schools like his got the resources they needed. “Because they were closing schools down left and right. The whole No Child Left Behind … this whole neoliberal push to put the pressure on teachers to get people to pass tests and all this and that. I saw people who couldn’t fucking read, that they were just pushing them along. Sixteen, seventeen, and really couldn’t fucking read. In the same class as myself. I’m not mad at that individual teacher, but what the fuck is wrong—pardon me, what the hell is wrong with the— no, no, what the fuck is wrong with the school system that you’re not teaching, not helping this person out? … I’m reading college level and this other person can’t read at all and we’re in the same class! What the fuck are you doing? I’m only reading at this level by virtue of my family forcing my ass to read and then me enjoying it. And having a good foundation. What are you doing to help? How is this possible? You don’t give a damn about us.” How did Henry feel about his first forays into political organizing? Did he believe they were effective? When we posed the question, Henry answered by distinguishing between activists and organizers. “I was listening to Patrisse Cullors. She’s one of the founders of Black Lives Matter. She’s an amazing organizer in her own right, but she said

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something like, ‘Well, I was an activist, and I moved from that to becoming an organizer.’ She meant that an organizer sets up the space for people to be there and creates the conditions. And builds with people. I think at that time I was more of an activist. I think my mindset was, like, ‘Be on the bullhorn…’” He judges that work effective … in part. “In hindsight, I have some critiques, because I did get pulled into the nonprofit industrial complex. I think there are some problems there. I work at a nonprofit now, but I wound up moving away from nonprofits for awhile, because I thought they were ineffective. I was like, ‘We need fucking revolution!’ You have these moments, and then you realize that shit is complicated.” Nevertheless, Henry recognizes that the experience played an important role in his development. “I wouldn’t be here without this stuff. There’s a lot of other kids who came through these programs too. That stuff transformed a lot of people. And that’s being effective. Even if we don’t get policy changes, if you have people thinking and having the tools, I think that’s effective, yeah.” Paterno asked if Henry was the first in his family to go to college. “Basically. My aunt has a PhD degree now, but she had taken years off. … My mom went to community college. A lot of my uncles didn’t go to school at all past high school.” At this point, Paterno turned the conversation to a more sensitive topic. “Can I ask about your dad? Your dad, you say, was in jail?” “Yeah. He’s in jail.” “Can you talk about that a little bit?” “I mean, yeah. He got his ‘third strike’ right before we moved to Georgia [when Henry was five or six]. He’s in jail for life. And apparently, what he did was, he was the getaway driver for a robbery, but nobody got killed or pistol whipped or anything. They just took $300. Even if he did do it, life is pretty fucking intense for just driving a car. So he’s been in jail for most of my life. … He might be getting out soon, because there’s some stuff happening … some referendums and stuff. He’s tried to keep in touch with us.” [In California, there are some efforts to repeal the Three Strikes You’re Out law as excessively harsh. The offenses that count toward life imprisonment are often minor or youthful offenses, but if you get three of them you are automatically sentenced for life.—JR]. “Do you have a relationship with him?” “Yeah. I still keep in contact with him. But you think about three strikes, life—that loomed large in terms of politicizing me. And … him

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being deprived of his life, and then me being deprived of having my dad. I don’t know if I would be who I am otherwise…” Henry was accepted at a small liberal arts college in Oregon. “L.O., who I mentioned before, lived in Western Oregon and went to school there and he mentioned it to me. He actually took me on a trip with him up there once to check it out. So I was like, ‘Oh, I’m about this.’ So he was foundational for me going there and getting into college and helping me through that process.” Henry began college as an art major. He found himself a bit disoriented by the white liberal culture of the place, though, and didn’t do much organizing. “I think it was like a culture shock, right? Like, you come to a place where it’s predominantly white, even though liberal, and you have to deal with a whole other type of racism. A whole Get Out type of racism, you know? And then you’re also dealing with different politics. I could talk about race and class all day, but I wasn’t really that good with gender at that point. And feminism. This was before I identified as queer. I wasn’t— I didn’t know what was going on with all these different identities. Those groups were in SoCal too, but I was oblivious to some of that. So it was a different thing in Western Oregon. I had to figure out where I fit in, which is why I moved to Portland.” Paterno asked for clarification: why, exactly, had he moved from the small town with the liberal arts college to Portland? He explained that he had been introduced to a group of radical activists. He was interested in what they could teach him, he was completely broke, and they offered to put him up in Portland. Henry withdrew from the small college. “I tried to do some long-distance thing. It didn’t work out. I was a terrible student. Still am sometimes…” Paterno laughed at that. “You’re not a terrible student!” I agreed: Henry is one of the most serious students I have ever known. Paterno ask whether the small liberal arts college was where he’d first learned about feminist theory, the place where he began to identify as queer? “I mean, the queer—that didn’t happen—I didn’t start identifying as queer until a few years ago. I realized that I like who the fuck I like. And that’s going to be everybody. It’s like a political identification, as well. But, yeah. And then it was also through, like, being in college and … just learning about certain assumptions and learning about consent and learning about all these things through trial and error, you know what I mean? Learning about feminism is like getting … I can’t say I have a feminist

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practice … I’m not a perfect. … But, I mean, really getting introduced to that and being pushed and learning about those blind spots. I think moving to Portland and being in that group helped change my perspective.” Another factor that defined his experience in Portland was poverty. “I went up there broke like a dumbass. I was broke for a year, and these folks in the collective basically helped me until I could find a job. We did study groups. We organized different projects. The group I was in ended up dissolving. I had moved to Portland to join this particular branch, and it dissolved because of internal issues. I knew some of the people in the broader network. But I ended up sticking with the folks in Portland, and we started another organization. They were way more advanced than me. So I ended up learning a lot by being in these study groups and working with them.” “We organized against police terrorism. We would have study groups, learn theory and try to apply that, go out and distribute flyers, hear what was happening in the community. We were a part of a broad swath of folks. There was a west coast port shutdown that happened during Occupy … we were out there doing Occupy. I played a minor role. I helped, but I was working. I had a job at that point. They ended up shutting down the port of Seattle, they shut down the port in Oakland, shut down Portland. So we did some pretty cool stuff. We were influenced by the Black Power tradition and Third World Feminism, among other things. The collective I was in were Marxists, but we drew from a lot of different things.” Scholar-Activist Returns Home to Nevada: “Trying Not to be a Shitty Human” But if he was finally beginning to find his community as a political activist, why move back to Reno? “I was in a bad place, mental health-wise. And I just needed to get back to school. I was sick of my jobs. Things were just up in the air. I was a shitty boyfriend. I think I was. I just wasn’t there. I just needed to regroup. I thought, ‘I need to go back.’ I hadn’t seen my family in a while.” “My mom’s mental health started to get bad. And she was just not the person I knew before. She’s better now, but … I ended up moving back because I wanted to be around family. That was difficult, because I hadn’t been with my family in years. I was just out in the world. So I think it was

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proper for me to move back, and I just needed that support and grounding. I moved back to Reno.” Paterno asked if it felt different, coming back to Reno from Portland. “Of course!” A big laugh. “I was in Sparks, so I didn’t really have a personal life. I was just trying to work this shitty job being a security guard. I swear to God I’ll never go back! Fuck that!!! Pardon me! I used to work for that same outfit in high school too, but like I’m not going to fucking call the cops on somebody because somebody’s house is dark!” “I worked there for a minute as a guard at this housing complex. I mean, there are some good folks there. It was actually—it was an alright gig, you know? As long as you didn’t have to deal with the fuckery.” (More laughter.) Paterno asked what made Henry decide to go back to school after that. “I was working at a health club in Portland. It just felt like a dead end. Working with rich people. I was an attendant cleaning up the place. I wanted more money. Some cool folks, but it was too much fuckery. I felt like it was too much shucking and jiving for me. I just wanted to get the hell out and get my degree.” Paterno asked why Henry chose not to study art when he went back to college. “I didn’t want to be broke anymore. I mean, that’s one of those tensions, right? You’re doing all this organizing, this, that, and the third, but I was nervous that I wouldn’t have anything marketable.” For a brief time, he studied International Business. But once he enrolled in an Economics class, “They started talking about the free market and the invisible hand and … that’s PROPA-fucking-GANDA!!! I can’t do this!!! So I talked to my aunt and I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, Auntie. You’re going to be mad, but I can’t, Auntie, I just can’t do it.’” That required some clarification. What did his aunt have to do with this? “She wants the best for us. … She’s always kind of grounding me, because I can be ‘head in the clouds,’ and not thinking ten years out, which kind of has led me to where I’m at now.” Having abandoned International Business, he directed himself toward Political Science. But even that failed to engage him adequately. “There was—of course Professor Ring was cool—but I just was not feeling it.” “One day I walked past the GRI [Department of Gender, Race and Identity Studies]. And I was like, ‘Huh, this looks interesting.’… And I’m always still trying to get more into understanding feminist theory, queer theory, all this stuff, because I felt like it was something I was really

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lacking. I think it’s so important. I think I wanted to understand it, for me, just as personal growth. Trying not to be a shitty human … trying to figure out, okay, how can I be better at having a feminist practice? And that’s something I struggle with—it still is. I still do fuckery, right? But understanding that is complicated … Not trying to make excuses, but understanding why that is, and what ways to apply it to my life, you know? That didn’t always go well. Not at all.” He went into the GRI department office and talked with a professor. “We just had a lot of good conversations about politics. I ended up taking a queer theory course with her. And I think that was another awakening for me, right? In terms of questions of sexuality—how do you think about identity? All of these different things. So it was a personal and intellectual awakening and I decided that I’m going into Gender, Race, Women’s Studies. It seemed more interesting than Political Science.” The difference, for Henry, came down to theory vs. lived experience. “You’d be in some of these political science classes, and the way they talk about politics is divorced from all of these identities. And to me it was amazing that some of these classes did not talk about the complexity of identity that these Women’s Studies classes did, right? And that these students were coming out of political science classes still thinking about politics and the world in shittacular ways, to me. And I just couldn’t feel it. And I think that’s probably because, you know…” (laughing again) “fucking Marxist thinking ruined me for life! And then also, I think the Women’s Studies department started feeding me things that I had never thought of and helping me really grapple with some of the questions now. Important questions around identity that I think were missing from my perspective.” We were curious about whether (and how) going to school at UNR differed from his earlier experiences when it came to his identity: discovering who he really is. “Reno is not like Portland or California. Sometimes, in left spaces, trying to organize is difficult. The political back-and-forth in Portland is much more complicated than here. I feel like I have more space to explore certain things here that I didn’t there.” There are also important differences between Reno and Portland in terms of racism. “Sometimes it’s more overt here, but sometimes it’s also more subtle. Navigating those nuances of race—I think people are still looking for the dude with the Confederate flag and the big-ass belt buckle,

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but I think it shows up differently here. Although you still do have that!”— that is, dudes with Confederate flags and big-ass belt buckles. I asked him to elaborate on that: what makes it subtle here? “One of the things I see, particularly with the administration, is that they use diversity and inclusion, all this language, but they use it in a way that doesn’t really talk about power and redistribution of wealth. And we see that with neoliberals more broadly. They’re going to incorporate this movement language to hide the corporatization of the university. So trying to navigate that is difficult, because you can’t just come out and [identify racism] like people want to do. I think we’re missing something. It’s something that’s much more complicated. I think racism and white supremacy are not static. They’re changing. And we’re in the midst of something changing very drastically here. It’s hard for me to pinpoint or develop a campaign or fight against this, because it’s not black and white anymore, in terms of how complicated this is.” “On the ground, the university is expanding, growing, trying to become a university town. It looks nice, but I think there’s some dynamics we have to ask about. For example, Lake Street over there, they’re going to force all those people out and have these developers come in. That’s gentrification. Are we thinking about who we’re impacting? And it’s different here because you don’t have that many black folks, right? The Latino population is much larger here. How are these communities going to be impacted? I don’t know … at a certain point, this expansion is going to transform the city in a way that might make it less conducive for certain people to live here, right? At the same time, I love to see the expansion and growth. It’s nice.” “For me, the language and the way to talk about these shifts, and how racism is operating now, is embryonic. Now you have a situation where there’s white identity politics forming, too. So it’s interesting to see, just in conversations on the ground with people, how there are white students who feel like they’re being oppressed. And quite certainly, you are. But not by my ass! And not by undocumented people!” Here Henry made an observation that might blunt the lethal edge of the alt-right movement, if its members could only see it: “They ARE being oppressed. But NOT by those communities of color. Rather, they are being oppressed by the forces of wealth that are displacing poor people of all races. I’ve stopped some of the organizing I was doing, because I think the language that we use—and I’d say the language used by student organizing in general, across the country—the frameworks we use—are not

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able to spell out the complexities of changing identities right now. It’s complicated for me to talk about. I’m kind of processing this stuff, still, myself.” “Sometimes you have to step back and think about what’s happening. And for me, talking about identity, race, and organizing up here [in Northern Nevada] is difficult, because, you know, we’re in Trump America. I think Hillary got smacked, not because, as the liberals are saying, ‘Oh, these people are racist, sexist.’ The people who voted for Trump are the same motherfuckers that voted for Obama twice … in the areas Hillary lost in. So there’s something else going on. And I think right now, the predominant politics is liberal, right?” Paterno was surprised by that. With Trump in the White House, how could Henry say that? “Liberal you mean, like…?” “I think Hillary’s use of the rhetoric of intersectionality was an example of defanging the concept. She brought out every fucking feminist that she could think of. She brought out Beyoncé and Jay Z, for the love of Christ. She brought out everybody, and she had her ass handed to her. A lot of that is because a lot of people didn’t vote. And a lot of that, too, is because she was devoid of understanding what’s happening on the ground. The Democrats didn’t lose just because people are racist and sexist. They lost because the left had no fucking narrative strong enough to speak to the reality people were facing—both black and white—across the board. What was Trump able to do? He was able to take these themes—of course, white supremacy and xenophobia—those are long-standing themes in American politics, but they are never utilized the same way. They’re utilized in different contexts, and reconstructed in different ways, right? “Hillary lost because what she represents is devoid of awareness of what’s happening on the ground. In the heart of America, people are dying from drugs and alcohol abuse … people are dying younger. I think, too, we have to be careful, because people have more sympathy for white folks when they’re catching hell. And they are, and we should speak to them: ‘You’re goddamn right you should be mad. Not at me, though!’” Henry recognizes that the pain of the white working class in America is real, and that throughout American history, white working class anger has been deliberately manipulated to focus on blacks and immigrants, instead of at the politicians and captains of industry who shape our economy. He also recognizes certain novel ironies: “Academics are doing all these studies, asking, ‘Oh my God, what’s the matter with the white working class? Oh gosh, they’re suffering and

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angry!!’ That sympathy should be extended to the fucking ghetto, where you all treated us like a property. It don’t feel too good, right? That oppression don’t taste too fucking good, does it? Of course it doesn’t!! So let’s work together, motherfuckers! There’s something happening in America, right? People … white folks … are losing hope. They’re in despair. Their jobs are being automated. It’s, like, terrible shit. This is not just white folks in middle America, but people in general, right? America is not great right now. And so what was the Trump campaign and that messaging able to do? They acknowledged that.” By contrast, the Clinton campaign, by setting itself up simply as the Anti-Trump campaign, missed an important reality among the voting public. “Hillary was saying, ‘It’s all good. America’s already great!’” Henry’s mind was shooting fireworks at this point, illuminating complexities in many directions at once. He noted that Black Americans are not a monolith. Obama appealed to black voters in 2008 and 2012 because he is black, but politically he is a mainstream liberal, and a better spokesman for the black middle class than black poverty. “Folks voted for Obama because they wanted something. And Obama was a fucking neoliberal too. There’s a class distinction, a wealth gap within the black community. We saw that change in Obama’s administration. So there are different interests even within these different identities.” He returned to the core of his argument. “Racism is not operating like people think it is. It’s transformed. … So what am I getting at? And how does that apply to what’s happening here on campus? I think a lot of student groups—and I’ve been involved in this as well—we are not speaking to these complicated realities. Race and identity and class are shifting right before our eyes. Marx talked about it in the Communist Manifesto—things that are constantly transforming our identity. He said what is sacred becomes profane, like, all this stuff disappears into thin air. We are in this moment where, if we don’t study and understand how people’s identities are shifting and how that is creating conflict, and we’re not able to piece together a narrative, we’re going to keep losing. The Right has done that better. Of course, they have more resources. They were cooking with fire already with the history of white supremacy: you can use those tropes. They’re already available.” Henry expressed his frustration with one of the dominant themes of campus culture in America. The Right is operating like a mighty military machine, strategically pursuing its goals. Meanwhile, “We’re still talking about ‘safe space.’ I don’t give a fuck about a safe space. I understand

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where it’s coming from. But I’m talking about freedom and liberation, right? They didn’t have no fucking safe space in the Civil Rights Movement! Are you crazy? Going back to Fanon, like, you have to fight, man! We’ve been asking the university to do it for us … making demands, do this, do that … Fuck that! Let’s do it ourselves!” “These institutions are the same ones that are limiting our movements, right? They’re the buffer zone. … We’re not able to move outside of these institutions and think of things outside of electoral work. And we look like nutcases right now, because they’ve usurped that language, right? So you’re talking about diversity and inclusion, but they already have these programs. They have diversity even though it’s limited. And so we talk about … more faculty of color, da-da-da-da. I don’t know if that’s going to be the answer for what we’re trying to. I would love that, but I don’t know if that’s the answer.” “I can tell you about the interpersonal stuff. Of course, there are bigots here. You have to attend class, and there’s always somebody saying something stupid, you know what I mean? There’s stuff happening on this campus—there was a woman with a hijab who got spit on, got put down. Someone found a swastika spray-painted on a building. Stuff was happening, right? And I think we can think about the university as a microcosm. We’re all products of broader stuff, right? But I don’t think we’re thinking in a new way about the moment we’re in and addressing it.” “But I feel bad for just saying, ‘Oh, fuck those idiot rednecks…’ It may not be me that needs to organize them. But I’m not of the school of people who [tell others], ‘Oh, you just need to go teach yourself, because I’m not going to do it.’ But it’s draining … it’s like hitting the fucking whack-a-mole: they keep coming back up. I get annoyed, because I think people don’t get it. And it’s not like, oh, I’m much smarter than…” Henry struggled to make himself clear. We’re living in a very complicated political time, and he refuses to oversimplify by saying it’s any particular group’s fault, or that the solution is to demand that any particular group or institution “fix it.” He believes it is everybody’s responsibility. Even as he gets frustrated with white racists, he understands that they too are suffering from the inequalities created by global capitalism. The university administration may want to help, but they overlook the impact of the corporatization of the university, though they mirror and appropriate the language of diversity and tolerance. Poor people are being displaced by the university’s physical expansion, and the very inequalities that the university may want to address in theory are in practice being exacerbated by

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this expansion—both in Reno and at other colleges across the country. Because Henry sees the problem in its full, complex multidimensionality, he finds himself frustrated and uncertain about what must be done. “For me, the question is, how do we get power and how do we transform the narratives like the ones in this project? Who are we telling the story for? Who are we expecting to change something? Are we expecting the same state and institutions that created this shit to change when we don’t have any power in them?” The activist’s passion resurfaced: “I’m not just going to be telling my story if it’s not to take power as well … I’m not just going to be putting myself out there for these motherfuckers to use my story to justify their shitty political campaign and to keep people incarcerated and put my dad in jail, you know what I mean? So to me, it has to be about thinking about how to fight back.” This comment bore, subtly, on this entire oral history project. It’s important to note what he was getting at. He worried that these interviews would simply be seen as evidence of white-against-black racism— but he sees the problems facing our country as more complex than that. His goal is to change the structures of inequality embedded in the United States, and at institutions like the University of Nevada; in order to accomplish that, people will have to read these interviews insightfully, and not simply congratulate themselves that now they “get it.” He would like to see these stories used in the context of a demand for change. That passionate wish inspired all of us to make this book more than just an anthology of interview transcripts. Henry’s challenge—that, if this book does nothing but make people think they now understand race and class in America, then he wants no part of it—hit me in a deep place. I don’t have a simple answer for him, and I can’t control how readers respond to the book. But I think his doubts are valid and important and should inform the way this book is read. If this book does nothing to inspire readers to take action, then it has fallen short of its potential. I hope that won’t be the case. Kristen If you deny my humanity then we can’t be friends, and that’s the bottom line.

Interview by Trisden Shaw and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring

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Kristen was a freshman when she enrolled in my junior level class on “Race and Gender in American Politics,” joining Trisden and several other students whose stories appear in this volume. That semester a controversy erupted on campus when Intercollegiate Athletics hired a new assistant basketball coach who had left his previous position in the wake of accusations of sexual harassment. Some students and faculty believed that the hire was ill-advised, and a campus-wide discussion of the controversy was scheduled right after my race and gender class. We had been studying the issue of sexual harassment that week, and when I described the controversy, students in the class were visibly disturbed. Many had not heard about the new hire for the basketball team, and there were gasps, and surprised faces in my classroom. I remember Kristen’s response: her mouth was open in shock as she uttered “Whaaatttt????” I told the class I planned to walk over to the library to join the “Campus Conversation” to be held right after class. When I arrived at the library, I turned around to see ten or more students from my class following me. It must have looked like an invasion to the President and Provost when I walked into the meeting room followed by a large group of students. The faculty members at the meeting listened to the remarks of the President, Provost, and Athletic Director, and then raised questions about their decision to hire the assistant coach. Kristen, who was sitting across the aisle from me, raised her hand and spoke up, directing her remarks to the President of the University. “I’m a freshman, and a work study student. I have a job on campus to support myself. I’ve been to many sexual harassment workshops required for my job and for freshman orientation. They last for hours, and sexual harassment is a big theme in our freshman orientation. And now you’re telling me that you’ve hired a basketball coach who was released over allegations of sexual harassment? How can you justify that? How does that relate to the sexual harassment training you require of everybody on campus? Is it important, or isn’t it? What kind of message are you giving us?” I don’t remember the president’s response, although I’m sure he tried to reassure her that sexual harassment was indeed taken seriously on campus. I was thinking, “Oh gosh, please don’t let her get thrown out of school now! I want her in my classes! This young woman is fearlessly confronting the University President, and she’s only a freshman! The kid has guts … and I can’t even imagine what we might expect of her as she becomes more accustomed to university life!

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Kristen was on my radar. * * * Kristen did not get tossed out of school for giving the university president a piece of her mind. However, she did begin missing many classes. I knew her well enough to know that she was not the sort of student to miss much school. I knew that she had been involved in registering voters during the presidential campaign in the fall of 2016 but now it was spring, 2017 and her prolonged absences concerned me. Then one afternoon she phoned me, apologizing for missing so much class. She was calling from the hospital, where she was being treated for mononucleosis. She had been feeling exhausted for weeks, but the Student Health Service had failed to diagnose her condition and kept sending her away with antibiotics that didn’t help. Finally, she collapsed and got herself to the Washoe County Hospital. She hoped I would allow her to turn in her assignments late … she was feeling much better now. Except that she had no health insurance and wasn’t sure how she was going to pay her medical bills. After telling me about her health and financial situation, she proceeded to discuss the assigned readings with me from her hospital bed! She had been reading and keeping up even though she was sick enough to be hospitalized. If I ever had any doubt, that phone call convinced me that Kristen was a force to be reckoned with. Yet when Trisden and I interviewed this firebrand, it took us awhile to awaken her usual energy and good cheer. As she talked about her childhood, she sounded subdued, almost depressed. Perhaps the slow start to her interview was evidence of painful memories triggered, revealing how much she had had to overcome to get where she was, and how much perseverance it took to maintain her fiery energy. Perhaps she was simply reticent about opening up to us about her life. Childhood and School Trisden began the interview asking Kristen how she identifies. “For my race, I identify as black. For my nationality, I am Jamaican and Liberian. My parents are from there. For my gender, I identify as a female, and sometimes I’m just like, ‘Whatever.’ I don’t care.” “My dad is from Jamaica, and my mom is from Liberia. My mom immigrated here in the ’80s during the Liberian Civil War, and my dad came

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over just because—pretty much just because he was able to get a visa and came here.” I asked “And they met here?” “They met in Las Vegas. I think through mutual friends.” “And were you born in Vegas?” “Yes, I was born in Las Vegas.” “Do you have any other siblings?” “I have a half sister who lives in Maryland, but other than that, I’m an only child.” “How would you describe your home life … the work your parents do, your neighborhood growing up, schools you went to?” “My mom worked as a CNA—a Certified Nursing Assistant—for about fifteen years. They’re a step below the nurses. They just help out. They just pretty much do whatever the nurses need them to do. She loved working with patients. She didn’t like being bossed around by the nurses.” “My dad basically—okay, so my dad got deported back to Jamaica. That’s where he lives now. He does construction work.” “I grew up on the east side of Las Vegas, and then I lived on the north side. I never lived in the richer parts of both areas. My family is working class. Most of my relatives are working class.” Trisden asked, “So, when did your dad get deported?” “My dad got deported when I was fairly young. Probably three, four, or five. I don’t remember really when.” “Do you know why he got deported if you don’t mind me asking?” “Overstaying the visa.” “So, do you have a strong relationship with your dad?” “Not really. I talk to him now and then, but I’m an adult now so it’s a lot different. It’s like, ‘I’ll talk to you when I talk to you, Dad.’ I don’t necessarily have a lot of time to rebuild the relationship from when I was five years old.” I asked, “Did you see him after he left? Did you go to Jamaica?” “I saw him from time to time when we would go to Jamaica, and visit all of our family and friends there. But we would stay in one part of the country, and he lives in another part of the country. So distance even when we were in Jamaica was still an issue.” I asked, “Do you have any memories of him being deported? Do you want to share any of that?”

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Kristen responded, “I don’t at all. I don’t even think that my mom and I were around him when it happened. She just told me that he got deported.” Trisden returned to the subject of Kristen’s childhood in Las Vegas: “So was there a strong police presence in your neighborhood when you were growing up?” “Yeah. There was a point where East Las Vegas kind of took a turn for the worse. It got really bad, and really dangerous. I did see a lot of police officers were coming around. Not necessarily an increase in crime, but an increase in surveillance.” “So, you lived in East Las Vegas until you were about middle school, and that’s when you moved to North Las Vegas?” “Mm-hmm.” “What schools did you go to? “I went to West Prep. My mom was very adamant about me going to West Prep even though I hated it in middle school.” I asked, “What is West Prep?” Kristen responded, “West Prep is a school on the west side of Las Vegas. It’s one of the first schools built on the west side, and it has a really bad reputation. It has a bad name because that’s where a lot of students were being arrested. There was also a lot of corruption. Teachers were doing illegal things. Administration was doing illegal things. Students were fighting every day and stuff like that.” “It’s a public school?” “Yeah, it’s a public school, and then it kind of got turned around by my principal. So, my mom liked that aspect, and she drove me all the way from East Las Vegas to West Las Vegas to go there when the middle school by our house was literally a block away. I would have to get up early in the morning every day to go to school in West Las Vegas.” I asked Kristen why her mom would want to go to the trouble of driving all the way across town every morning to get her into a school that had a reputation as troubled. Kristen explained, “She wanted me to be around more Black students. And she liked the fact that it was getting turned around by the principal and how hard the administration was working to make sure that students are going somewhere. I went there for high school too. It was a K-12 school.” Trisden explained, “East Las Vegas is predominantly Hispanic. It’s more Latino than Black. North Las Vegas is more Black than Latino,

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where East Las Vegas is more Latino than Black. West Las Vegas is near the strip. Before it got developed, it was probably the most impoverished part of Las Vegas, and that’s where the higher crime rate will be. You would see drug users, but there’s also a lot of community centers down there, but they just don’t get a lot of funding.” Kristen’s mom preferred that she attend a primarily Black middle and high school, rather than a school with mostly Latinx kids. Her mom assumed Kristen would fit more easily in a majority Black environment. It didn’t go as planned. “I got bullied a lot at West Prep because I was different, and everybody gets bullied for being different or not fitting. I was always called the black girl that acted white or the Oreo or things like that. I thought that was ridiculous. My mom always taught me to be proud of being African and being Jamaican. She even got me to write a scholarship essay when I was in the fourth grade about Marcus Garvey!” “Like here I am: I know that I’m just as black as anybody else in this room, and if we’re going by how much historical knowledge we have, I’m even more black than most kids. (laughing) But the bullying and calling me white made me really uncomfortable, and it made me question my identity. My hair was always in twists or braids, and I got bullied for that. I got bullied for my hair a lot.” I asked, “How did they want you to wear your hair?” Kristen laughed and responded, “I don’t know! Most girls had relaxed or straightened hair. They would get perms or relaxers to straighten their hair or they would just straighten it.” “You’re having trouble because they think you’re not black enough. But they’re using relaxers on their hair, and you’re not. … You have an African mom and a Jamaican dad, and your hair is natural. … And they’re saying you’re not ‘black enough’?” Trisden chimed in with, “I was thinking the same thing! Your mom’s African and you wear your hair natural. That’s black culture right there!” We all laughed uneasily, aware of the pain experienced by adolescent Kristen. Kristen sighed, “I still don’t know to this day. Don’t know.” I asked her about hair. I needed to understand how it could be used to hurt her. “Your hair right now is natural, right?” “Yeah.” “I mean this is a style that doesn’t require straighteners?” “Yeah.”

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“Have you ever used them? That may be too personal a question … sorry!” But she answered me: “I’ve used straighteners. I’ve used flat irons and stuff, but as far as relaxing the hair or perming, never ever. At West Prep I was always having to answer those questions and feeling like I had to explain myself.” “I didn’t make a lot of friends, so I hung around my English teacher, Ms. Pettit. I was always in her portable before school started or after school. We would talk about issues, and she would teach me about what things meant in the political world, watching news network shows together in the morning. She had me write a letter to Governor Gibbons. I wrote a letter to him explaining why it was bad to cut school funding. We were one of the underfunded schools. How much are we going to get cut again? It kind of jumpstarted my interest in politics.” “I had another teacher that same year who started a debate team for sixth and seventh grade. We would go to competitions and practice all the time, and it was really awesome. We would talk about current issues that are important for young black students in the ‘hood to be learning about … issues that we think don’t affect us … that’s really important.” “Those were the same years that Obama was elected and universal healthcare was being talked about so we were competing on that. I wrote an essay and memorized it. I was so happy, we were winning competitions, and it was awesome. Then the teacher left. She wasn’t fired, but there were just a lot of things in the school that were happening her and she left.” Trisden: “This is the debate teacher?” Kristen: “Yeah, she was also the reading teacher. So, when she left, there was no debate team anymore. That really sucked.” “Did they get a debate team while you were…” “No.” “Not even your high school years?” “No. The thing about West Prep is that there is nobody you could bring in. There was nobody who could do double duty. Nobody who would be a teacher and a club advisor or start up a club. You needed the funding to pay them. They needed the time, the students had to be interested. Who’s going to join the debate team? Only a small handful of students. There was no other teacher who wanted to do it or could do it. I think those were some of the experiences that shaped me and made me want to pursue what I’m doing right now.” Trisden asked, “Did West have a big free or reduced lunch program?” “Oh, yeah. Everyone got free or reduced lunch.”

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“Were there AP classes available?” “Actually, West Prep had one of the highest percentages of students enrolled in AP classes. But that’s not necessarily a good thing, if there aren’t courses to prepare students for AP, or teachers strong enough to prepare those students for AP courses. Some of the teachers that West Prep were just there to say that they worked at West Prep to get a good job somewhere else and be able to say, ‘Oh, look what I did. Look at these impoverished children. I can definitely go be a dean somewhere else.’” Trisden: “So did it have a high turnover rate with teachers? Did teachers leave pretty often?” “Yeah. We also had some teachers who were doing Teach for America, which is a great program, but it’s almost like they’re volunteering. I think they get paid a little. I believe they get paid. Hopefully they get paid, but basically they just get assigned to work at an inner city school. They are trying to go to grad school and things like that, so they also just want to put the teaching experience on their resumes or applications. And they leave after a year or two. It’s not really helpful to students always having to get used to new teachers. I’m pretty sure some of those same teachers would disagree with me and say, “No, no, no. That’s not right.” But that’s how it seemed to me.” I asked, “Were you were aware of that at the time?” “Yeah. I felt it.” I asked her to elaborate on her perception that the AP classes were there for show … that neither the teachers nor the students were adequately prepared for them: “Can you explain to me the AP problem again? They had AP classes on the books, but you think neither the teachers nor the students were…?” Kristen finished my sentence: “prepared.” Trisden asked, “They just threw kids in there??” “Yeah. So, you had students taking four to five AP classes—like entire schedules in AP courses. I had AP bio, AP government, AP calculus, and AP English my senior year. And I don’t think it’s helpful to the students to take that many AP courses at one time. I think the school likes to be able say that it has all these students in AP courses, but if they’re actually not passing the tests they don’t get the college credit for taking them. It’s absolutely useless to put all this pressure on them if they’re only passing one test. Because then the student has to take Biology 100 again in college, and they just took AP bio in high school. To put that pressure on

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students who can definitely do the work but aren’t prepared, is kind of like throwing them into the lions’ den.” I asked, “And how did you do? Did you pass all six?” “I could have definitely done better my senior year. We had one of the worst AP gov teachers. There was nothing being taught ever in class. Totally unfocused. It would have been better to just take a few AP classes, with teachers who could really prepare us to succeed on the AP tests and actually get the college credit we needed.” Kristen knew that she and the other bright students at her underfunded school were “being played.” She understood that the teachers would be there for a short time, and then leverage their experience working in “at risk” schools to get a better job. She saw that the truly dedicated teachers were given no incentives to stay. When the teacher who volunteered her time to organize and coach a debate team got frustrated with the school and left, there was no debate team. Period. Kristen saw through the sham of having students officially enrolled in Advanced Placement classes, but neither advised nor taught adequately, so they ended up failing the AP tests and getting neither the benefit of the more rigorous subject matter nor the credit toward college classes. Those who needed that credit most, to shorten the expensive time in college, were deprived of the benefits of the AP program out of sheer neglect. Getting Into College I said, “So, you got here. Were you admitted to other colleges besides Nevada?” “Yeah, I was admitted to a lot of HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] and I was actually originally going to go to Hampton University, but that is over forty grand a year and all the way across the country. So I decided on Nevada because it’s eight hours away. It’s good enough for me, and it’s going to be a lot cheaper, and I’ll be a lot more used to it than going somewhere else.” “Every year at graduation our high school announced the schools you were accepted to and the amount of scholarships that you got. I was grateful for some teachers who were really hard on us about filling out scholarship applications.” Trisden asked, “So, it sounds like there was an expectation for you to go to college at least from your teachers? Did you have that support from

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your parents as well, other people around you? And were there resources from them to help you to get to college?” “Money-wise, no, but support-wise, yes. Of course, I don’t think a lot of parents have financial support for their kids to go to college, but I do feel like there was always mental and emotional support. But not everybody really knew the ins and outs of FAFSA or how to write a college essay. My family members who didn’t go to college didn’t understand how difficult and stressful the process can be. They were like, ‘Well, I see other kids doing it on TV…’ Like, ‘Get it done. Get it taken care of.’” “Was your mom helpful? Did she help you do the FAFSA?” “I had to do it myself. I had to do all my applications myself. I had to do all the finding out about stuff by myself. A lot of people would say, ‘Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do.’ But it’s a lot harder than you think. Especially when you’re a club president, and you go to school eight hours a day, and you have a job, and you have to finish up all your senior projects, and all the homework that you have on top of that. And you have to study for four or five AP classes a night … and then ‘Oh wait, May is approaching. You have to study for AP tests! Applying for college on top of that is just another stress.’ A lot of people underestimate how much your workload really is.” Trisden asked, “Are you a first-generation college student?” “Yes. My mom has her Associates [degree] to be a certified nursing assistant, but she doesn’t have a Bachelors.” I asked, “Did you have a computer at home?” “No. When I was young I had to go to the library. When I was in high school we got a computer.” I was hearing in her voice the weight of what she dealt with and wondered out loud, “How did you get it in your head? How did little Kristen decide she was going to go to college?” Trisden added, “Especially go off for college too. I mean I’m hearing your tone of voice about the school and the teachers and the tests, and it’s kind of like wow … it’s heavy. It’s a little bit depressing to have to deal with that. It’s like you’re trudging along by yourself.” Trisden’s observation was so astute. Listening to Kristen tell her story was heavy indeed. As she recalled the details of her young life, she seemed to be weighed down all over again, and Trisden and I made were aware of her lonely journey, and her determination. The obstacles she had to overcome felt palpable to us as she spoke.

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Kristen acknowledged the difficulty: “Yeah. Keep in mind I would always hang out with the teachers so I would always hear about how much … basically how much the system is really just against them. And they understood the climate of the neighborhood and what the students were dealing with. Just getting to school every day is a struggle. So, there definitely were those teachers.” I observed, “When you’re telling this saga of survival in a system where everything has gone wrong, the one thing that makes your eyes sparkle is when you talk about the English teacher who started you talking about politics.” “Yeah.” “So, it’s clear that the teachers kindled a fire in you. What was the name of the English teacher who inspired you?” “Ms. Pettit. She was a crazy vegan hippie lady with red hair, and she was from Oregon. She was a tree hugger!” Trisden was astonished by this and asked, “At West Prep???” Kristen confirmed: “She was a tree hugger. She worked on the Rez before she came to Las Vegas.” I asked, “Worked on the Rez?” [Indian Reservation] “On the Rez in Arizona.” I was as astonished as Trisden at the vision of a White hippie environmentalist from Oregon who worked on an Indian reservation in Arizona and was now teaching in a poor school in West Las Vegas: “Wow, I wonder where this woman is now!” Kristen knew how to find her: “She is a speech pathologist now. I think she might still work with CCSD [Clark County School District], but I’m not sure. But she was awesome.” Trisden asked, “Did you have Black teachers at West Prep?” “Yes. My speech and debate teacher was black. One time after a speech and debate team celebration we went to her house and she let us swim in her pool. We had a barbecue and everything and having someone take you out of your environment for a small amount of time is very important. Even going to speech and debate competitions and going to other places … being outside of your element is real important. I think the school system underestimates teachers like that.” “My mom was also very adamant about having black teachers too. She was always asking me, ‘Are your teachers black? How many of your teachers are black?’ I was like, ‘It doesn’t matter, Mom. That doesn’t matter at all.’

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As I went to middle school I had a lot more white teachers than before…” “So, the teachers got whiter as you got older?” “Yeah. The only black teacher in my high school was one of the math teachers, and that was it.” I looked at Kristen, studying her face, thinking about the subdued voice with which she shared her recollections, which had to be covering the energy needed to launch herself out of poverty. I asked, “I’m trying to find out where your fire comes from—that fire burning inside you that says, ‘I’m going to college. I’m going to leave. I don’t want to stay here. I’ve got things to do with my life.’” Trisden added, “When was the moment that you knew you were going to leave?” “I think it was … when my Godmother paid for me to go on an HBCU [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] college tour. I was able to go outside of Nevada and go to the South for a week and visit different universities. So, we were in Texas, Mississippi … and other states. We went to Louisiana and we were able to see every school there possible, and some of us were just admitted on the spot to schools. I got admitted to one school in Texas or Mississippi right on the spot. That feeling gives you so much power. I know that there’s an HBCU fair every year in Vegas at the Westside Library.” Trisden knew about it: “It’s in a few different places.” Kristen: “Yeah. Every year they have the little fair, and students get admitted and given scholarships…” “On the spot.” “Yeah. I remember this girl from my school got a full ride. She didn’t go but she also had never been on a college tour.” I asked, “So, it was like this scary, unreal thing to her?” Trisden answered, “Yeah, because there’s just a bunch of schools there, and some of them you’ve never heard of before, and you go talk to them and it sounds great, but you’re like, ‘That’s in South Carolina. I’ve never even imagined being there.’ I got accepted to Benedict, and that was in South Carolina.” Kristen said, “Yeah, I got accepted to Benedict too.” Trisden: “There were a few of us that got accepted right on the spot, and they gave us a bunch of money. They told one kid they could get him on their track team. It sounded amazing, but a lot of people were just so apprehensive. Some of these people have never even been on a plane

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before. So, going to South Carolina sounds almost impossible even though they’re saying, ‘We want you. There’s money here. You might have to pay a little bit, but we got you.’ It’s still hard.” Kristen added, “There were people at my school who definitely had higher GPAs than I did. There were a lot of people who had 4.0’s and didn’t go to college, even though they always told themselves that they wanted to. It’s perfectly fine if they decided not to go to school. I mean I’m in debt right now so I can’t say anything to them” (she laughed). “But I think actually seeing other colleges and going on those trips was the thing that made me think I could actually go to college. It made me realize that the world is big. I really didn’t want to stay in Las Vegas because I didn’t feel like there were a lot of opportunities for me there. I just felt like I’d be able to be able to grow more in college. My Godmother wanted me to go to an HBCU very bad. I’m really close to my Godmother.” “Did she go to college?” “No, she got her GED, and she was a part of that era that was able to work a 40K, 50K a year job without having to get a degree or anything like that. But she wanted me to go to an HBCU and so did my mom, but my perspective was ‘Okay, who’s going to pay for all of this because HBCUs are also pretty expensive!’ I told them, ‘I can’t pay for that. That’s the one thing that also trips up a lot of students about HBCUs, because while they do give you a lot of scholarships they are still very expensive.” Kristen was reiterating what Trisden had said about the scholarships offered by HBCU’s: they still left a few thousand dollars a year unpaid for, which is a lot of money if you have none, and they are all in the Southeast. For a young Nevadan, the expense of even a plane ticket to get home for Christmas is daunting. I asked, “So, how did you end up at Nevada?” “Money. I got a scholarship from the Public Education Foundation, which is an online place for Nevadans. Also, I got Clark County School District scholarships. And most of them were only for students who were going to attend either UNLV or UNR because they want students to stay in Nevada so bad.” Before turning the conversation to Kristen’s experience at Nevada, Trisden asked one more question that had been on his mind: “So your mom seems to have this Black consciousness. She’s proud of her heritage for sure, but when did you realize that you were black and that black was different?”

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“I think my mom’s experience as an immigrant taught her that black was different. When I was growing up she would always tell me, ‘Don’t ever get caught doing something wrong with your white friends because you’re going to jail and they’re not.’ I would say, ‘That’s not going to happen. They’re my friends.’ But I just remember her always telling me to be aware of how you’re being treated and know your worth and know that no one can take it away, and you need to stand up for yourself. And that I should just be vigilant if something racially motivated did happen to me.” Trisden followed up, “Did you ever have experiences that solidified what your mom said”? “When I was in the fourth grade at school, we would line up in the mornings, and say the pledge of allegiance before we would go in. One day, I had forgotten my water bottle, so I had a Sprite bottle filled up with water.” Chuckling, she noted, “I’m pretty sure I’m not the first kid to do that when we forget our water bottle at home.” The teacher took it from me because we’re not allowed to have soda or anything, and she poured all the water out right in front of me onto the ground to make sure that it wasn’t soda, and then…” Trisden offered helpfully, “She could have just shook it up!” Kristen agreed and described the additional humiliation that followed: “Yeah. Well she poured it all out, and then I kind of gave attitude back, and I remember her calling me something along the lines … this is really bad … something along the lines of a roach and that I’m acting like a rat or comparing me to some type of pest. She was a white teacher. An older white teacher.” Trisden: “At a predominantly black school?” Kristen: “Yeah, and she compared me to a pest. I told another teacher or the administration … I don’t remember exactly who I told. And the next day when we were lined up, she said to me, ‘You thought you were going to get me in trouble, huh?’ I didn’t tell my mom.” I asked, “How did you feel, if you can remember?” “It made me feel crappy about myself. It just made me feel like I’m being criminalized for having water! It made me so mad. It made me so frustrated. It still makes me mad right now. She did it in front of other students, and I think that moment taught me about how ghetto kids feel every day, just being put in this box that … and they haven’t even been able to grow into themselves, and they’re already being told that they’re pests and that everything that they do is just…”

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Trisden finished her sentence, “…subpar and like wrong and bad. They’re criminalized before they even start.” “Yeah, and I knew, even at the time, “You shouldn’t be doing this to students. I’m eight years old. Yeah. It just makes me mad every time I think about it. It makes no sense why any human being would want to call another person’s child a pest.” University of Nevada Trisden: “So, your environment growing up is radically different than the University of Nevada for sure. When you first got here, were you comfortable, and are you comfortable now?” “When I first got here, I wasn’t comfortable at all. My Godmother and Godfather drove me up here. The dorms ran out of space so I had to live off campus. I had to live in an apartment with three girls I didn’t know. Two were white and one was Hispanic, but she was white passing. She told me that to white people she looks Mexican and to Mexicans she looks white. And I didn’t have a car. My God mom and dad and I went to Target to get all of the stuff for my apartment. We were filling up two or three carts, and all the employees were staring. I don’t know if it was because we’re black and there’s no other black people in the store, or because we have three carts of stuff.” “So, we were just packing in all this stuff, and there are all these employees looking at us, and more of them are coming around. I’m just thinking, ‘It’s college season, people. You know what’s happening.’ I don’t know if they thought we were going to steal or they were just fascinated, but they shouldn’t be fascinated.” “My God mom already didn’t like Reno. She was like, ‘Okay, you chose Reno. [instead of the HBCU that she wanted Kristen to attend]. All right. Don’t tell me nothing. Go ahead and go on up with them rednecks,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, all right.’” Kristen added, “I didn’t know Reno was even like that, but I wasn’t comfortable when I first got here.” Trisden, “What made you uncomfortable?” “I think how small it is made me a little uncomfortable at first. Moving from Vegas that is definitely expected. But it was hard getting used to it because I didn’t know my roommates when I moved in, and they already knew each other.”

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I asked, “You had been assigned a dorm room but they ran out of space and so then what? Did they help you to…?” “Nope.” “They just said, ‘Oh, sorry, go find something…?’” “Yep.” Trisden added, “I think her freshman class was one of the biggest freshman classes, and they just didn’t plan for it.” Trisden asked, “So, coming to UNR was it uncomfortable because it was predominantly white?” “What made me comfortable here was when I found new people to talk to. I’m a pretty social person. I made as many white friends as I did black friends my freshman year, but I didn’t keep all the white friends. “Are you comfortable here now?” “I’m comfortable on different levels. I’m definitely not afraid about speaking my mind or having my views challenged. But the field that I want to go into [state politics] and the type of people on campus and in student government, make me afraid that if I do say what I believe in or the ideology that I believe in, that could have repercussions for work that I might want to do later. And the fact that I’m black is just a cherry on top because people will remember my face. Like if I went to a Town Hall meeting and talked back to Dean Heller [Republican Senator from Nevada at the time], that would definitely provoke a repercussion because they’ll remember your face here in Reno if you’re black. “And then I also didn’t realize who a lot of these kids’ parents are. A lot of kids here have parents who are legislators and politicians and people who work with the state. It doesn’t intimidate me, but I see some of the jobs that get handed to them, and it’s like ‘You pretty much got the upper hand, buddy.’” Trisden: “So, do you think racial tensions exist on campus?” Kristen: “One hundred percent, yes! People aren’t up in your face about it. People never go to your face and call you the N word to your face. Maybe there’s somebody who would on this campus, but I haven’t experienced that. My cousin who just moved up here actually was called ‘colored’ like it was normal. There is definitely a lot of racial tension when it comes to the sports teams here. Like all of the black football players left my freshman year. I remember hearing about how their team is very racially divided. And then also the way student government here interacts with clubs that have a high rate of students of color or clubs that deal with

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the issues of gender and sexuality or women’s rights. And then just every day interactions in class…” Trisden asked, “So, have you had any overt racist experiences?” “When I first got here, I went with my roommates to their friends’ house to visit, and they had a mammy statue in their house. I froze up. It was kind of traumatizing.” Trisden: “And they were white?” “One girl was white. One guy was Asian, and the other guy I don’t know his race, but he was a person of color. Here’s that underlying racism that it stings so bad. I kept staring at it the whole time I was there. I wanted to leave so bad.” Trisden: “I might have broke it [the mammy statue].” Kristen: “You start to kind of visualize ‘I’m not going to let anyone push me around based on the color of my skin.’ And then when it’s actually in your face, when it’s actually there, when it’s present, it’s like what am I supposed to do right now? So, I was just kind of stuck. I was frozen. I was really, really offended.” I asked, “What would you have liked to have been able to do? Let’s say you’re 35  years old and you go into a house with some coworkers or something, and there’s a mammy statue. In other words if you weren’t still a very young woman at a white dominated university, what reaction would have made you feel better? Is there anything you could have done that would have taken the sting away?” “I don’t feel like I would have been obligated to explain why that offends me. I think once you have that type of material in your home you know what it means, and you know what it means to black people. It’s a painful part of our history. It is a painful part of history, and you know what it means, and I wouldn’t have explained myself. Honestly, I would have smashed it and said, ‘This doesn’t belong here.’ There’s nothing to explain. There’s nothing to explain anymore. I’m not explaining myself.” “I don’t hang out with any racist people. I let that go a long time ago. I stopped trying to … I don’t deal with people who are racist, because if you deny my humanity then we can’t be friends, and that’s the bottom line. It’s not like, ‘You like McCafe, and I like Starbucks.’ It’s that you don’t want me to live in the same neighborhood as you. That’s not something that we can come to terms on. A lot of people on this campus are like that: not overtly racist but just say the most unnecessary things. I consider myself to be a funny person, but I don’t make race jokes. I don’t ever feel the need to make jokes about race in order to be funny. When I’m

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with people who talk like that it makes me very uncomfortable. So I don’t laugh, and they look at me and ask me why I don’t laugh. I say, ‘It’s not funny.’ Plain and simple.” Trisden agreed, “You don’t joke like that.” He asked Kristen, “So, how have your experiences in the classroom been as a political science major? I know these topics are very relevant especially the topic of race.” “Yeah. White people complain about the US being a race-obsessed society but for some reason things in my political science classes it’s the white people who turn every discussion to race. Even in classes that aren’t about race people will just randomly inject, ‘Well, certain people don’t deserve … ‘or buzz-phrases like that. You know where the conversation is going.” I asked, “You mean students create an excuse to bring up race when it’s not there?” “Yeah. I feel like some students just use Political Science classes to vent their frustration about how they feel about race. It’s also a reflection of how much race has been a part of politics in America forever. Right now everything people of color do is politicized to such an extent that we’re not talking about some of the real issues that affect people of color. A lot of people in my political science classes aren’t informed about the laws and the policies that have been put in place and the politicians who have taken things away from people of color and people who are poor. Since they don’t identify with that category personally it’s not important to them. So they’re more interested in geopolitical affairs rather than resources for working people. All they care about is war. I’m hope I’m making sense. Well, you guys are both in political science so I think … I hope … you guys know.” Trisden: “Yeah, I completely understand. You’re an International Affairs major so I understand why that’s coming up in your classes. So many people aren’t concerned about social issues or domestic issues. They’re more concerned about how America functions as a war unit rather than what is going to happen to people.” “Yeah, most people just want to maintain America’s hegemonic status in the world, and I’m thinking, ‘When will you realize how tired that fight is?’” I realized that we had been talking for almost two hours and asked Kristen if she wanted to stop. She responded, “I’m good. I didn’t realize like how many experiences I’ve had and how many…”

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I said, “Good! We’re hoping these interviews will elicit ideas you don’t think about it until someone asks you to talk about it!” Trisden suggested a follow-up meeting: “We can probably do another session with Krissie, I’m thinking. There’s a few questions I want to ask. This could go for at least another hour I’m sure. Would you be into it? Rescheduling a follow-up?” Kristen: “Yeah, I totally could.” Paying the Bills We found a convenient time to meet again a little over a month later. I wanted Trisden to pick up where he and Kristen left off the last time, but I also wanted to encourage her to talk about the medical crisis she had experienced since our earlier interview, that had seriously undermined her academic performance along with her health. I began: “You were struggling this semester with a lot of pressure, which ended up in a physical collapse … not unexpected with high performing students who are working to put themselves through college. But I wonder if you might think about whether there are any links between the emotional stress of racism on campus and in the classroom, and the physical exhaustion that ultimately put you in the hospital. You described how you try to rise above the microaggressions and the overt racism, because you don’t want to engage with every racist student who is your classmate. But it made me wonder if part of the “normal” student pressure is exacerbated by having to internalize the hostile racial climate in which you have to operate on a daily basis, in addition to the financial strains you are under?” Kristen responded, “Well, last fall I didn’t do too hot academically, because I was working through the election. [The 2016 Presidential election. Kristen was working nearly full time on the Clinton campaign.] And so I thought, “OK, spring semester is going to be my comeback. I’m fine. I have a pretty easy load.” Trisden: “Do you pay for all of your own expenses?” “Tuition is covered by loans and grants. But everything else, I pay for myself. I don’t like to ask my family to help me out. If they do, I appreciate them tons and tons for it. And I’m really glad that there are parents out there who are able to just put money in their kids’ accounts, because that’s a blessing, and I don’t knock them for it.”

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“But the first thing that I was already stressed out about was, ‘Am I going to graduate on time?’ Which is everybody’s fear. So it was a motivation to work hard this semester and I was doing great. I had better study habits, and I was really trying to push myself to stay on track. And then, I started getting really, really, really tired. That’s how mono starts out. Also, I don’t have health insurance.” I asked, “How many hours a week do you work?” “I can work up to 20, but usually it’s around 17, 18. They cut my hours.” “And where do you work?” “I work on campus in Admissions and Records. It’s a little stressful. It’s not a stressful job, but it’s a little stressful that I only get paid $8.50/hour, and I have to work the max they’ll let me to be able to pay my bills, even though they’re not a lot. So that’s very stressful. That’s why my financial aid is very important to me. And not being able to do well in school can hurt the amount of financial aid I can get. So I just wanted to really make sure that I was able to just keep the boat floating, and just try to do better than the previous semester when I was working on Hillary’s campaign. But this semester I started getting really tired, losing energy, and wanting to sleep all the time. I would go to work and I would just want to fall asleep. I started skipping a class to do homework for another class. I went to the Health Center and they just gave me amoxicillin and antibiotics and sent me on my way. I don’t know if the doctor at the Health Center even knew what was wrong with me. I felt that she just wanted to say she had prescribed medicine.” “She gave me a mono test and a strep test, and it came back negative. Maybe it just didn’t show up. I went to the hospital a week and a half after that because I was getting really bad. And I found out that I did have mono. But I’m better now, so I’m thankful for that. It made me think about how many things people take for granted. It should be simple to get good medical attention—especially at a university with a medical school— but it’s not accessible if you don’t have money for health insurance or healthcare.” I asked, “Do they give you health insurance here as a student?” “You pay $90 a semester for the Health Center. But I am in the process of trying to get Medicaid. I just never had time to go.” Trisden: “Yeah, of course, because you’re working!” “Yeah, it’s insane. It gets tiring hearing some of the conservative students saying, ‘Well, just pay for your own health insurance!’ It’s

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frustrating. I’ll ask them, ‘Well, do you have insurance under your parents?’ They say, ‘Yeah.’ And I’ll say, ‘Obamacare did that.’ ACA isn’t perfect. It was going to cost me over $110 a month for me and I wasn’t going to get a subsidy. ACA didn’t help a lot of poor people and I’m all the way on the end of the economic spectrum.” I asked, “Okay, so, describe the spectrum.” “Well, people who are truly, truly broke. In college, I understand everyone has money struggles. I have the opportunity to have a job. I have the opportunity to be able to pay all of my bills on time, and things like that. So I would say I’m close to the end of the spectrum. I’m right there: people who can’t call their parents for money, or people who can’t call their mom and say, ‘Can you help me out with rent?’ or, ‘Can you do this?’” In spite of Kristen’s efforts to say she was luckier than some, I said, “Some people would say you’re pretty close to the edge of the spectrum though.” And Trisden added, “Yeah, really scraping it, for sure.” Kristen agreed, “Scraping, yeah.” I asked, “How much rent do you pay?” “Right now, I moved in with a family member so I don’t have to pay rent anymore. But my rent was $300 a month, which isn’t bad at all. But still, that is one of my two paychecks.” Trisden added, “Mm-hmm, yeah, you only get two paychecks being paid by the school. So one is going directly to rent. And then you have other expenses, of course.” I was thinking, that Kristen’s precarious financial situation must have added to the stress that caused her physical breakdown. She was barely scraping by each month. Luckily she had a relative in Reno who took her in. I was oblivious to how many of my students are doing this difficult balancing act while also sitting in my classes taking notes, engaging in class discussion, and handing assignments in on time. I always assumed everything was “fine”—meaning perhaps that their lives were frugal, but not that they were living in real poverty, unable to pay for basic living expenses and healthcare. I remarked, “This is so important. People who are reading this book might not know what poverty is. And you’re describing it. I think this is pretty close to that edge that you’re talking about…” Trisden finished my thought for me: “You don’t have a safety net. Most people have a safety net. I have the privilege to have some type of safety net. People have more than me, of course, but there is a safety net. You

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don’t really have that, so you are experiencing these health problems and all that…” Kristen offered, “Yeah, I wasn’t able to work when I was in the hospital. And so, I just missed out. Thank God I didn’t have to pay rent. But I did miss out on a whole paycheck. And I’ll probably only be getting maybe like two hundred and ten bucks for this month.” I asked, “That’s supposed to get you through the month? What do you do for food?” “Oh, I am able to buy groceries. But towards the end of the semester it gets a little rough. The summer, I get to work as many hours as I want. But I’m a firm believer that college students should be paid $15 an hour, because it would help us be able to pay rent and buy groceries.” She laughed, musing, “I don’t know what else they think we’re going to do with the money. Buy stocks? I don’t know what people think. We’re going to buy avocado toast every day? [She laughed again.] I’m not sure.” “When you don’t have health insurance, you know that you don’t have health insurance. You have to plan around it, and you have to make sure that you’re not doing anything that’s going to put you at risk to be in the hospital, or put you at risk for having to make an emergency trip to the dentist, or having to…” I asked, “How about your glasses? They cost money, don’t they? Do you get eye care?” “No, I don’t have eye care. I do have my prescription. So I buy my glasses online with websites that just take your prescription and they make the glasses for you and kind of customize things to your budget—I think those types of businesses are helpful to people like me who can’t go to a doctor, can’t go to a LensCrafters, or go to an eye place and spend $300 or whatever.” It was time to wrap things up: Kristen had to get to her job. I said, “I don’t want to make you late for work, but I have one last question. I have never been through anything like you’re describing. So my question to you is ‘How do you do this? How did you get here?’” “I think it’s about having someone. Teachers in my life, and people who have inspired me to do what I love. My mom always told me that I was going to go to college. But tons of kids get told that, and they don’t always go that route. I think that if you don’t have that pushing force and someone watching out for you. I hope I’m making sense.” Trisden encouraged her, “Yeah, it’s essentially like building your village. You know how they say it takes…”

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“Yeah, it does take a village to raise a child. And a lot of kids, they just have their parents. And sometimes that’s not necessarily the best thing. Especially if you’re a low-income student, your parents are always working. If you don’t have other people to pay attention and show interest in you, then you’re just kind of lost. Also whoever takes interest in you could be someone who’s not the best person—someone who is abusive; someone who is not a positive force in your life. If you don’t have people to be a positive influence and say, ‘Hey, you can do this. You’re great at that. You should try looking at this. Read this. Do that,’ then you become an idle mind.” “I think that a lot of my attention was just put on school. I was able to have my mind on that instead of wanting to be a part of other crowds. It really started with Speech and Debate. And then I got really interested in Leadership, and here I am now. I think a clear path is kind of what keeps me going. And I think people who want to support students like me are also the reason why I’m here. People who truly want to support every low-income student, not just the ones who have 4.6’s and all that stuff. People who truly want to support black and brown kids to do better, to have a chance at going to school. People like that in the community were essential to my upbringing.” We concluded our talk by urging Kristen to get going so she wouldn’t be late for work.

Aiko She would cook and we would sit at the table. Instead of talking we would read. And I would watch her.

Interview by Trisden Shaw and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring I did not know Aiko well when Trisden suggested her for VOICES. I had seen her at the Black Student Organization forum “We Need Answers,” the campus discussion between Black students and local law enforcement officials. She was enrolled in my class on Race and Gender, and usually sat with Trisden and Kristen. Aiko didn’t speak much in class discussions, and I was hoping for an opportunity to get to know her better. I was sad to learn that she would be withdrawing from UNR and transferring to UNLV at the end of the semester. Her decision to leave was

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particularly painful because her great aunt had been the very first black woman to graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, … in 1954. As I prepared to write this chapter, the most vivid image I held from Aiko’s interview was the closeness she described with her mother. She described reading incessantly as a girl, even when her mother took her out to dinner. All the men in her family are or were in prison, and the women were holding the extended family together, with virtually no institutional support for childcare or access to food or medical care. Her mother was working to support herself and her two children, trying to complete her education and earn a Master’s degree, while serving as pastor in her church. Family History; Nevada Legacy Trisden began the interview as usual, by asking, “So we usually like to start off with the first question: how do you identify? What makes you Aiko?” “I guess I would say I identify as a strong, intelligent, black, God-­ fearing woman. Growing up with a mom as a pastor, and being in church all of my life, and definitely being taught by a single mother to be strong and independent, to not be reliant on anybody. She taught me not so much verbally, but through her actions. That’s how I would say I identify.” “Will you talk a little bit more about your mom being a preacher?” “As early as I can remember, I’ve always been in the church and so has my mom. There was a heavy Christian influence in our household. By the time I was six, I remember the transition from her being a minister into being a pastor. Nothing really changed because I was already immersed in that culture, and I had grown up around those people. Actually one of the pastors in our church is my aunt, my mom’s sister, who attended this university. And her mother, my great aunt, was the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Nevada Reno.” Trisden: “Oh, wow.” Me: “When was that?” Aiko: “1954, I believe.” I had heard about the first black woman to graduate from the University of Nevada but hadn’t realized it was Aiko’s great aunt. Her name was Stella Parson, and I have long thought that the university should erect a statue in her honor on campus. Well-deserved in its own right, the tribute would diversify the campus monuments that celebrate other illustrious alumni. All the current statues on campus memorialize white men. Me: “So your family’s been in Nevada for a long time!”

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Aiko: “Yes. Yes. Yes. Definitely a lot of history, especially in Vegas. If you’ve ever heard of Parson Elementary School, that’s one of her namesakes.” Trisden was impressed: “Oh, wow. Okay!” I asked, “How old are you?” “I’m 20. I’ll be 21 in August. August 2nd.” Trisden: “And you were born in raised in Vegas?” “I was born in Vegas but lived in Chicago until my Mom and my brother got tired of living up there. And so we moved back to Vegas. I graduated from Las Vegas Academy, studied Japanese and was a choir major there, as well.” LVA is a specialized magnet school that drew a certain type of student, mostly white. Trisden asked Aiko, “Las Vegas Academy is a very different school compared to all the other Las Vegas public schools. Would you like to talk about your experience as a black woman at LVA? Because it wasn’t too diverse, was it?” But Aiko was thinking of diversity in terms other than racial, and responded, “Actually, it was pretty diverse. I will say that. LVA had characters of all sorts, people of all sorts. It was actually one of the most diverse experiences in my life. There were theatre majors. There were mariachi majors, band majors, all these different type of majors, of different races, ethnicities, backgrounds, stories, queer, LGBT, wherever. And it was all accepted. We even had a few LGBT members as our teachers. My homeroom teacher was a transgender woman. She was really nice. It was my first interaction with a transgender person. It was amazing to be introduced to that at such a young age. There was a dance major and he was also transgender. His name was Ben. He had a YouTube channel and did makeup. And he actually got over a million followers.” Trisden: “Oh, wow.” “Yeah. He was pretty popular on campus. So I remember great diversity. There were a lot of African-American women, who I’m still in contact with actually. The majority of them are already married and have children, which is crazy, because we’re same age, and I’m thinking, ‘Dang! I’m still in college!’” I asked Aiko about the entrance requirements for LVA. “It was a magnet program. It’s a performing arts school. You apply to get in, and then after you applied, you would have an audition. You would get judged, and if they accepted your audition, then you would accepted into the program.”

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Trisden asked, “As a Japanese major, did you have to perform?” “Many times, and I hated it. (she laughed) Performing for us was speaking. That was our performance, and how well and accurate we were able to not only speak, but also write Japanese because that’s also a major part of any language. Being able to read, write, and speak it. There were Spanish majors and French majors as well as Japanese. There also used to be a Russian language program, but that got eliminated. Sometimes I would have to do Kanji calligraphy competitions for grades.” I was really impressed with what she was describing. “Yeah. It was pretty intense. Some people made it to the fifth level of Japanese where really, it was just independent study at that level. They would just read, and some of them weren’t even native speakers. They just studied and got great at Japanese.” Trisden asked, “What made you choose Japanese?” “Japanese. Okay. I have a long history with Japanese. Number one, my name is Japanese.” Trisden: “What does it mean?” Aiko: “It means love child or beloved. My mom and my grandmother were looking for a name for me. Mom was going to name me Anastasia. And nobody liked that. She was the only one who liked it. She said, ‘I’m going to nickname her Stacy.’ But everybody was like, ‘No, don’t do that.’ And so my Grandma goes actively looking for this name. She was at the bank and the bank teller’s name was Aiko. She asked, ‘How do you pronounce your name? I’m looking for a name for my grandchild, and I think your name is really nice. What does it mean? What’s the background of it?’ And lo and behold, it became my name! I ended up meeting the bank teller and the crazy part about it is that my Mom and the bank teller, Aiko, later worked together at the Clark County Justice Courts.” Aiko continued to describe how she developed her interest in Japanese: “I always had a love for languages. I always wanted to travel. I guess people tell me I speak well, and I command the audience. And then my Mom was great friends with this teacher who, back in college, also studied Japan, became fluent, went to Japan, lived there, came back to the States, and started teaching. My Mom told her about my interest in Japan and how my name was Japanese. She was the one who actually told me what my name meant, and she started teaching me Japanese at the age of eight.”

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Childhood: Menfolk in Jail; Strong Women Keeping it Together Trisden asked Aiko about the rest of her family: “Do you have siblings?” “Yes. On my Mom’s side, it’s me and my brother. That’s the one I’ m closest to. On my father’s side, there’s eight of us. I’ve only met six out of the eight. I haven’t met two of my sisters. This is a complicated family. We were all born around the same time … because Papa was a rolling stone.” (she laughed) I asked, “How many different Moms are involved?” Aiko sighed, “Oh, dang. With my Dad, I’m going to say five. And with my Mom … my brother has a different Dad. So it’s just me and my brother by a different father. My brother is six years older than me. He’s 26 and my other two sisters, one is 24, the other one’s 25. My brother kind of grew up together with them, because my Mom and their Mom were pretty cool.” I noted, “It really is an extended family. Is your Dad still in contact with all of you?” “Actually, no. It’s been a while since I talked to my dad. He’s actually incarcerated. He’s been there for about two or three years, something like that.” I asked, “In Nevada?” “In Texas. In Texas. Midland-Odessa. Yeah. I have family out there. My father’s side of the family are all in Texas.” Trisden asked, “So is it a state penitentiary?” “Yeah.” I said, “You’re not the only person in this study with a father in prison. Do you want to mention why he’s there? You don’t have to…” Aiko responded, “Actually, my Mom knows better than I because I haven’t paid it any mind, because you know, it is what it is. But I want to say either robbery charges, gun charges, something of the sort. And I know he drinks a lot and I think it may have been also a DUI and then he may have had a warrant, extra stuff. So yeah. And I think when he got caught he was already on probation. So kind of made it worse.” Trisden added, “Combination of things, for sure.” Aiko: “Yeah. Definitely. And then, actually we had a scare with him this past year. He was facing kidney failure, incarcerated, and they couldn’t…” Trisden: “Oh, wow.” Aiko: “He was last on the list to even get a transplant. So it was pretty rough.”

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I asked if he had received the kidney and how he was faring. Aiko responded, “Last I heard, he is out of the intensive care and in the system. But I haven’t heard anything since. My mother and my grandmother—my father’s Mom—speak often. So anytime my Mom gets some news, she hands it my way. And I choose whether to take it or discard it.” (she laughed) Trisden asked about her various moves as a child, from Las Vegas to Chicago and back to Vegas. Aiko: “My Mom actually moved to Chicago because she believed that God was telling her to go. She moved out there with—I think it was only $200—with two kids. She lived with … I call her my aunt … but she’s my mom’s best friend. She has a daughter, China, who is twenty-one now.” I asked, “Do you know China?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s family. That’s family. So we moved to Chicago, lived with them until my Mom got on her feet, stayed there. My Mom didn’t have anyone to watch us when we lived in Las Vegas. Nine times out of ten it was my brother, who is six years older than me. My mom knew more people who could help her with me and my brother in Chicago. I was three, and he was nine.” “So in Las Vegas, before you moved to Chicago, you were three years old and being looked after by a nine-year-old?” I asked. Aiko: “And being looked after by a nine-year-old. Who hated me.” I laughed, but Aiko said she was serious: “No, no. That’s true. He hated me, because to him, I was seen as this golden child because I was a girl and he was a boy. And he was much more, I guess you could say difficult to deal with, caused much more trouble. He’s been the trouble of the family. He’s actually incarcerated now. (She laughed a little.) But that’s my brother. I love him to death!” I asked, “Is he going to get out soon?” “Yes. He’s actually looking to—he actually just got moved to this boot camp, because he’s been on good behavior for the past two years.” Trisden: “So he’s in camp. Okay. Good.” Me: Is that in Nevada? “Yes. It’s in Nevada. I don’t know where exactly. Somewhere in Ely I think. But if he keeps this up, he should be home by late December, early January. I can’t wait to see him. I don’t understand why he hated me!” (laughing) “So he was watching over me in Chicago. We had many Child Services incidents at the church, because, of course, a nine-year-old watching over

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a three-year-old, it’s not really okay. And my brother used to do some crazy stuff when we were in Chicago. I guess that’s where I got my aggression from, because he would play football with me. This big old buff dude brother playing with his three-year-old, not even 20-pound, little sister. And he would tackle me. I remember this one time…” I asked, “Is this like out in the streets or…? “No. In the house. We weren’t allowed to go outside, so we would be in the house. And these apartments that we were in were definitely … you could tell … the neighborhood wasn’t too safe. But my Mom did the best that she could and we survived it. But he would tackle me on to the dining room table. And one time he tackled me, and it fractured my arm. It was the most…. [She didn’t finish her sentence, but I think she was about to say ‘painful’—JR]. I was sitting on the table. He was trying to get me to stop crying. So he put me on the couch, put on my favorite thing to watch, which at that time was Madeline and Blue’s Clues. I loved Madeline growing up. I had tapes of Madeline. And he put them in the VCR and just kept rewinding and playing them all day. And I had to sit there and wait with a fractured arm until my Mom came home. And I wasn’t until like 9:00 at night, because at the time, my Mom didn’t have a car. And the only place she could work was at Walgreens, and that was like 10 miles away. And there were no buses that ran and so she would have to bike it, ten miles back and forth every day.” Trisden: “Wow. Must have been awful in the winter!” “She would tell me stories of how coming home it’d be pitch black because there weren’t any street lights. There’d been so many times where people would stop … you know, people who didn’t look safe. It was a lot. She would tell me all these stories.” “Was it South side? “Yeah. South side.” I don’t know Chicago, but a single woman taking a long bike ride in the dark every evening to get home to two young children who were unsupervised sounds like a very stressful way to survive. It occurred to me that Aiko and her brother were obeying their mom by not leaving the apartment all day, but it was not surprising that a nine-year-old boy’s housebound energy might lead to somebody getting injured. I prompted her to continue: “So she gets home at nine o’clock and you’ve got a fractured arm, and your brother’s got Madeline running…?” “Yeah. And it was chaotic from there on. My Mom almost threw a conniption fit because she didn’t really have the money to pay for my arm to

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get cared for. And so that took a toll. And after that happened, she sent my brother to go live with his father and grandmother in St. Louis. And my father has a brother there as well, that I had never met, which was crazy. In fact, at one point my uncle, my mother’s brother and my brother’s father were in the same jail at the time.” Trisden sighed, “Ohhh.” I was aghast: “Oh, Aiko!” Aiko: “Yeah. It was intense. Yeah.” “So did she get you to an emergency room with your broken arm?” “Yeah. She did.” “And did you get it set? Your arm looks okay!” By now we were all giddily laughing, punch-drunk at the horrendousness of the story. I wisecracked about her arm looking normal now, 17 years later. Aiko laughed and reassured me that her arm was okay. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all right. It’s all right now. It’s all right. It’s actually fairly strong, fairly strong! (laughing). But after that, yeah, I do recall him getting sent off. And I think it happened within a week’s time. My mom packed up his stuff and was like, “You got to go because I don’t know what to do with you. Maybe you need your father’s attention. Because at this point, you know, I don’t know what to do.” I asked, “So who looked after you then?” “There was this guy, Curtis. He attended church. I called him Uncle Curtis, but he attended church up there in Chicago where we went. And he would watch me sometimes. And sometimes my Mom’s best friend, Dorie, also had kids. And so I would go over there and go with China. And at the time, Geo was a baby and so was Jordan, China’s two siblings.” Trisden asked, “So when did your brother rejoin you? Or did he?” “That happened. So we moved back to Vegas when I was six, six-and-­ a-half going on seven. And my Dad had just gotten out of prison, and he was going to come and see me, because he hadn’t seen me since I had left Vegas, when I was like two-and-a-half.” I needed clarification. Aiko’s dad is currently in prison. So had he been released from a previous sentence? I asked, “So he was in jail before? Is this the same man who is in jail now?” “Yeah. He was in jail before, too.” She heaved a deep sigh. “He wasn’t new to it at all. Yeah. So, he came and visited me and my mother at these apartments on Lake Mead and Rainbow. And after that—dang. I lost my train of thought.”

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I was thinking, if this was a story I had to tell, I would undoubtedly lose my train of thought as well. Indeed, Aiko wove a complicated story of her childhood and family history, but always returned to the core, as Trisden kept the interview on track. Aiko’s narrative followed tributaries of painful memories and associations that occurred to her as we talked, and then circled back to the question posed. It is sometimes challenging to follow for those of us who have been privileged to lead more orderly lives. Questions about her school years triggered memories of her childhood, as she sought to explain events that must have been traumatic … although she maintained a calm and matter-of-fact tone, sometimes chuckling to herself, and sometimes seeming to simply reflect, “Yeah.Yeah.Yeah,” uttered as much to herself as to Trisden and me. Remembering Trisden’s question, Aiko said, “Oh yeah … When did I reconnect with my brother? After my mom sent my brother away, he set up with his father for, I want to say a cool three years or something of the sort. And then he came back down to Vegas. And then we moved again to another apartment when my brother came back to join us. And I went to this school named Ronzone Elementary School.” “That’s when my brother rejoined us. I was eight, and he was fourteen.” I asked, “But your Dad was out of jail then?” “Yeah. He was out of jail. When he got out he moved back to Texas. But my grandmother, his mother, stayed here [in Las Vegas], and went back and forth in between Vegas and Texas. Then, before I came up here to Reno, she moved to Texas, to be with my father and the rest of her family there. She has nine or ten siblings. A good portion of them have passed, but about five of them are still alive. I’ve only met two of them. I met them when I went to Texas with her when I was 14. That whole experience was a culture shock in and of itself because you know … that’s the most recent time I had actually seen my father. I stayed with him for two weeks in Texas.” An Outsider in School She shifted to her time in high school in Las Vegas, where she first experienced immersion in different cultures than her own and her mother’s. She set the context by describing the racial makeup of her high school experience in Las Vegas. She had attended very poor almost entirely Black elementary and middle schools, and then was admitted to a magnet high school that was majority white, although a small cadre of black kids made

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up her friendship circle. She told us about how she was bullied in her all-­ black elementary school because she was smart and motivated and didn’t fit with most of the other kids there. Yet when she transferred to the mostly white arts magnet high school, she was equally alienated from both the more privileged white kids, and the more highly motivated black kids. Most of the kids in that school, both Black and white, had attended wealthier middle schools. Aiko had been to a middle school that she described as “horrible.” “I was really smart in middle school. I was bullied like crazy. I remembered in the locker rooms in middle school getting pantsed multiple times because I wasn’t really interactive with a lot of the black girls. And I wasn’t like a lot of the black girls. I didn’t dress like them. I didn’t speak like them, didn’t act like them. And so they would just pick on me all the time. So I got bullied. There were so many fights. I remember being in science class, in this one science class, and this black boy would always pick on me. I never knew why, but he would always pick on me, and my name was just a topic of discussion. Every time they would aim at me, it was my name. I got called Geiko. I got called Psycho. Even the teachers, the substitute teacher, and my regular teachers, would butcher my name every time. Anytime somebody, especially in middle school, decided to pick on me, they started with my name because my name was the most different thing.” I asked, “Were you singled out for being bullied, or was it just a tough school where everybody got bullied?” “No. I was singled out. It was because I wasn’t like the other black girls. I was the one black girl who was actually trying.” This was beginning to sound like a familiar theme throughout the interviews. The smart but poor high school students of color were tormented in middle and high school. They were “different” in a way that made them a target for the kids who were clearly going nowhere fast. Christen was bullied as “not black enough” at the all-black school in Las Vegas that her mom hand-picked for her because she thought she would fit better there than at the predominantly Latinx school she was zoned for. But no. It didn’t work. Henry was headed for potentially deadly physical confrontations at his zoned high school in California, until his mother pulled him out of school entirely, while she helped him gain admittance to an arts magnet program. Trisden’s mom is an educator who made sure that her son received the best public education he could in Las Vegas magnet schools. But he still

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faced pressure from his football teammates when he befriended smart kids who weren’t black. Trisden noted: “Aiko’s story is very much like Kristen’s story.” Aiko: “Yeah, yeah. Because in elementary school, I had gotten straight A’s. In middle school, I was on seventh-grade A-B honor roll. But when I got to Hyde Park [the arts magnet school], it was a completely different situation. They were definitely much more advanced, and I was far behind. I felt like I was dumb.” Trisden: “Because you had been thriving like a big fish in a small pond.” Aiko: “Right. Small pond. Exactly. But at the same time, I didn’t fit in with the black people at the small pond. I found myself being the “Oreo”. You know, I was fitting in with the whites, with the Asians, with the Hispanics. Those were the kids I hung out with at Findlay. [the predominantly black middle school]. There would be times where my uncle would have to literally walk me into school because people would be waiting for me.” “When I got to the arts magnet school, being around people who were white, I felt more at ease because I’d never fit in with the black people apparently. They don’t like me. Because I was always smart. My Mom would always make fun of me because I was a kid who walked around with a pocket encyclopedia … that, mind you, I have till this day. I wore it out because I would read it so much. It had this split in the middle, at my favorite spot in the book. It was about clouds. It taught me about stratus clouds, and the level of clouds, and from then on I remembered the names of different types of clouds, which ones hold rain…” Trisden and I were charmed at the thought of a middle-schooler walking around with a tattered pocket encyclopedia, with her favorite page being the one about clouds. Aiko struck me as a kid whose head was definitely not “in the clouds.” It was almost as though the little book was her shield against the cruelty and disdain for educational achievement that she experienced from her middle-school peers. Aiko continued, “Yeah. I still have that little encyclopedia. When I go back to Vegas, I’m going to take a picture of it and post it on Instagram and Facebook! I was really nerdy and I loved it. So when I got to the arts school in the eighth grade, it felt much more familiar, much more okay because I was around people who were more like me. But, at the same time, I also felt kind of left out.” Again, Aiko expressed that familiar theme voiced by so many of the participants in this book: she was not at home with people of her own race

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who were not academically motivated, and also not quite at home around the more privileged students at the school she transferred to, precisely because they were more well-off and used to a more demanding academic environment. Fitting in was just plain tough. Aiko also explained that she had been to quite a few elementary schools because her mom had to keep moving to keep a good enough job to support herself and Aiko. “It was hard for her to find a consistent job. She was a teachers’ aide for a while as well. And that wasn’t paying the bills. Although it was her passion, it wasn’t supporting much. It wasn’t until she got the job as a court compliant supervisor at the Justice Courts downtown, that she was able to be more financially stable. And that’s pretty much when we had stopped moving around, but not really. Even in high school for about two years, we lived with my aunt before my mom and I were able to live by ourselves. So I did a lot of moving around. I don’t have like a family home. If any, it would be my aunt’s house, because she’s lived there for almost a decade now. So going through all those moves and being exposed to different types of cultures and ethnicities in middle school set me apart from black people. I didn’t really like black people. It wasn’t self-hatred, because I loved being black. But I didn’t like black people.” I was reminded of Elsa (who you’ll meet soon), who also had difficulty getting close to the black girls in her school and believed that they didn’t like her. I was struck once again by how marginalized each of these University of Nevada students had been in their school years … as though the price of being committed from a young age to succeeding and getting a higher education required being alienated from the kids in their community. In high school, Trisden also felt he had more in common with friends who were in his academic classes than he did with his football teammates. His preference for having substantive conversations and doing a little homework with his friends at lunchtime needed to be explained to his football teammates, sitting at their own table and enjoying their rowdiness, which Trisden found tiresome. So Trisden instantly related to Aiko’s alienation: “I understand that because I had a period when I felt that way. I experienced the same thing. The reason you were bullied was pretty much the reason I didn’t like Canyon Springs High School. I couldn’t be around too many black people because it was this self-hate almost. Not in me, but in the community. It was just like people were trying to pull each other down.”

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Aiko: “Always. Always. And having this fake acceptance of me at this predominantly white institution at Hyde Park, it was just like an identity complex. Because I didn’t relate to black people, and I didn’t relate to white people, but I guess I better try to fit in with you because they don’t want me.” (laughs) “I experienced that [same feeling of being ‘different’] when I went to Texas to visit my dad’s family when he got out of prison. Those black people, even though they were related to me, were so different. They even spoke differently. I couldn’t get used to them saying “wuduh” instead of “water”! It was especially strange to me because my Mom is very educated. She’s working on her second Masters. Her first Masters is in workforce education. And she’s actually going back to get her teaching license so she can continue to teach, because that’s her passion. I’m trying to push her to become a professor because I know my Mom is the smartest person I know. I just want her to go for it.” The Reader The story line was that her mother’s intelligence, ambition, and competence were major shaping factors in Aiko’s development, and made her father’s family seem even more foreign to her. In spite of the fact that Aiko and her mother were extremely poor, her mother was educated, and expected Aiko to be equally educated. In fact generations of women in Aiko’s family were college-educated, whereas most of the men were in prison. I was once again impressed by the image of the mother, working to earn her living, while also working on her Masters’ degree, eating dinner with her eight-year-old daughter who was sitting across the table from her reading about clouds in her pocket encyclopedia. But the story Aiko and her mother’s education was even more powerful than that image. Unable to afford childcare, Aiko’s mother simply took her young daughter with her to college! I asked, “And she did her undergraduate work at UNLV?” Aiko: “Yeah. She started at CSN [College of Southern Nevada, a Community College that is part of the Nevada State Higher Education system] because she didn’t have the financial assets to start at UNLV. And so she started at CSN where I actually attended classes with her because no one else could watch me. And so that was my first experience of college!” (laughs) “How old were you then?”

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“I started attending classes with my mom at eight or nine. And I didn’t stop until I was about 15.” Trisden: “Oh, wow!” “Yeah. So I’ve been through pretty much all of my Mom’s degrees. I’ve watched her receive every single last one of them. She is my inspiration to say the least.” I now was able to see Aiko’s decision to transfer to UNLV in a different light. Although Aiko’s great aunt and aunt had been UNR graduates, Aiko had attended UNLV for most of her life! She attended school while her mother was working, and accompanied her mother to her classes at UNLV after her mother’s workday was through. No wonder UNLV felt safer and more like home than UNR! Aiko: “And so my Mom raised me the best way she knew how. Although she experienced some horrific experiences in her lifetime, especially dealing with her family, she did the best that she could with me. And so that came with a lot of, ‘I’m not just going to allow you to be taught at school. You’re going to be taught at home.’ And so there were times where you know, other people have family traditions where they all sit at dinner at 6:00 o’clock? Well, no. We were always—it was always crazy, the timing, because if my Mom wasn’t at home, she was at work. If she wasn’t at work, she was at church. If she wasn’t at church, she was at school. And so when she did come home and cook, it was like what? Eight or nine o’clock, maybe ten. Sometimes midnight. And so she would cook and we would sit at the table. Instead of talking we would read. And I would watch her.” Trisden: “Just you two?” “Yeah. Because she was a Nancy Drew fan. So I read all of the Nancy Drew collections. I remember one time getting in trouble for reading while cleaning the kitchen. My Mom almost had a conniption fit!” I kidded, “She has only herself to blame for that!” Aiko: “Exactly! I was like, ‘How are you going to get mad at me when you created this monster??’” Me: “It also explains you walking around reading an encyclopedia at a tender age!” “Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. There would be times where I would sit at restaurants with her and be reading, and people would say, ‘Well, why is your child reading at the table? Isn’t that rude?’ And my mom would just say, ‘Go away! Let her read!’ What is the issue, you know? I would read everywhere. There were times where I had 400-page books in my hand at 12 years old, and I’m reading.”

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I asked, “Do you still do that?” “I still do it. (laughs) There’s actually not a book in my bag right now because I’m packing. So I have all my books packed up. I had to pack those away first, you know.” Trisden: “You can’t leave none.” “Yeah. I can’t leave none of those.” The Next Step: College? The Navy? Basketball? I asked Aiko if she always knew she was headed for college. “Definitely. There was no doubt about it. But I didn’t even want to come here. This was my last choice. Originally my plan was to join the Navy. I wanted to be in the Navy and particularly become a Navy Seal until I found out they don’t accept women in the Navy Seals.” I said, “Now they do.” Aiko was aware of this recent development. “Now they do. Now they do. Way after the fact of me trying to join them. But they ended up denying me entrance to the Navy because they said I had scoliosis and said it was too severe. Never had an issue with my back, was always athletic…” “What are your sports?” “Basketball. Basketball and track.” “So you wanted to be in the Navy and they wouldn’t let you in.” “Yeah. Yeah. I ran track in middle school, but in high school, I really fell in love with basketball, but my Mom never let me play. And her reasoning was fear of me becoming gay.” “Becoming gay??” I was pondering the reasoning behind a smart, educated mother worrying that playing basketball would make her bookworm daughter gay. “Yeah. I’m straight, by the way. But you know, still love my basketball! (she laughed) And my mom and I had multiple conversations about it, too. I’ve adjusted some. … Even before I healed from that, because I was actually really upset, because I knew if my Mom had let me play in high school, I would have gone to college on scholarship. I know I would have gone on scholarship. My love for the game was just absolutely irrepressible. I was 5′6″ in sixth grade, and so everybody thought I was going to be like super hella tall, you know. Nah. Stayed the same. (laughter) Same height. Grew like a quarter of a centimeter, and it was done!” I suggested, “Point guard, right?”

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“Point guard. That’s all I was. But I played the two-three spot. So I never had the handles for point guard. But I always had the fundamentals. It was never that.” Trisden: “Like basketball IQ.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my Mom never let me play. So every time I got a chance, I would play. My godparents … their daughter, who is my god sister, just came back from playing basketball at Oklahoma State.” “Oh, wow!” “Yeah, right? She’s amazing. But that’s where I got interested in basketball, because I was always over at their house. We grew up together. We were nine months apart.” I asked, “Did you argue with your Mom when she said you can’t play ball?” “Mm-hmm. I told my family about it and everybody was telling her to let me play. But at the same time, because I was also very tomboyish, they were skeptical, too. (laughter) So it was just like, ‘Yeah. Let her play. Oh, but I don’t know…’” So in school, Aiko is dealing with feeling alienated from the black kids who weren’t smart and ambitious, and at the same time, when she finds a way that certainly would have allowed her to connect with other black girls, her family is policing her gender: no basketball because it might make you gay. These are a lot of constraints for any smart, athletic girl to deal with. “It broke me. It broke me because I loved basketball. That was literally the only thing that I wanted to do. And it sucked that my high school didn’t have sports. We were just performing arts. But I really wanted to play basketball.” If Aiko had been attending a regular high school, she could have played basketball as part of the school curriculum. But if she wanted to attend the Las Vegas Arts Academy, which she did, her mom would have had to be willing to find her coaches and tournament teams in order to play basketball, and her mom wouldn’t go there. It was also very expensive to go that route. “I remember a time when my Mom told me, ‘Well, I’ll let you play any other sport other than basketball. You could pick tennis. You can pick track. You can pick volleyball, gymnastics.’ She was throwing out all these words. ‘I will willingly pay for everything, but not basketball.’ And it pissed me off. But at the same time, it confused me because I was just like, ‘So you won’t let me play basketball, but you will let me go to a school that is nicknamed LV Gay?’ [referring to LVA, the Las Vegas Academy’s

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reputation for attracting a lot of gay students and faculty.] ‘So where’s your logic?’” I suggested, “Maybe she didn’t mind if other people were gay?” “Right. Just not me. And at the end of the day, it’s stupid, regardless. But I always challenged my mother. I never took what she said at face value. I always questioned authority. There was never a time where I didn’t question her. And she’ll tell you that to this day.” “People would be so offended by the way I would talk to my mother. But that was just the relationship that we had. Because the relationship that my mother had with her mother was abusive. And so when my Mom was pregnant she decided that she didn’t want that type of relationship with her children. With me specifically, because I was her daughter, she was like, “I want you to be able to express yourself. Know the boundaries. Know what you can and cannot say to me, but at the end of the day, I don’t want to ever make you feel like you cannot tell me how you feel, whether you’re mad at me.” I noted, “That’s the first thing you said to us, isn’t it? How you identify as a strong, black woman.” “Yeah. That really molded me. So not being able to play basketball was just painful. Devastating. Love and Basketball is my favorite movie. I love basketball. I just wanted to play.” Race and Hair Trisden stepped in and brought us back to the interview template: “I am really interested in knowing when did this realization of being black occur to you? I guess you already knew you were Black, of course, and that black was different. You hit on that when you discussed being in middle school and being that different Black girl. How did that translate when you got to LVA which looked so different demographically?” “Right. Honestly, I didn’t really realize that Black was different until the latter part of high school, junior, senior year. And that was roughly around the time I had started growing my first set of locs.” Me: “Growing your first set of…?” Trisden: “Dreads.” Aiko: “Dreads. Yeah, yeah, yeah My bad.” (laughs) Me (the white professor…): “Locs? You call them locs, not dreads?” Aiko: “I call them locs. Yeah. I don’t call them dreads because I say there’s nothing dreadful about them.”

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Trisden: “The two are used interchangeably. Most people call it dreads, but dreads typically have this negative connotation behind it. May not even be overt, but it’s kind of a subtle thing. A lot of people think dreads are dirty.” Aiko: “Dirty. Yeah. Like you can’t wash your hair and there’s a homeless type of association…” Trisden: “But from my perspective, it’s because white people dreads grow different than black people. Yeah. Like my hair naturally dreads up. If I’m just putting my oils and things in it, it’ll naturally kind of twist into itself and just kind of lock up together. But white peoples’ hair doesn’t grow that way naturally. And also I think white dreads were associated with the hippie movement … the negative stigma of…” Aiko: “…drugs, and all of that. So people think you’re just unclean when you have locs. And so they’ve been banned in a lot of work places. In the military. This is also the reason why I got rid of my first set. When I was trying to join the Navy, they told me I couldn’t have my locs. It wasn’t until I got back from the medical and physical examination that they told me you have to get rid of them. And so I had to comb my locs out because they’re not accepted in the military. Even though it is a cultural thing.” Me: “You can comb them out? You don’t have to cut them?” Aiko: “Yeah. You can comb them out. It took me three months. And at the time, I had a lot more.” “Does it hurt?” “Nuh-uh. It’s just very tedious. Very tedious. Very tedious.” Trisden: “Yeah. Like most people would just cut them off.” Aiko: “Yeah. Most people would, but I didn’t want to do that. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for that style yet.” Me: “So once you grow them it’s a commitment?” Trisden: “Definitely. But you will face discrimination because of it.” Aiko: “Because of it. And it’s a predominantly black hair style.” Trisden: “So it’s like one of those things … it’s like dog whistle politics for me.” Aiko: “Yes! Yes.” Trisden: “So if you’re saying you don’t accept dreads, that’s like saying…” Aiko, completing Trisden’s thought: “…it’s like saying you don’t accept my culture because this is not just a hair style just to be a hair style. This is what my hair naturally does. This is a part of who I am. And

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especially, Rastafarians really take it—it’s part of their religion as well. And so trying to tell someone they can’t have that, it’s like telling them you know, you can’t be black. Like how can you not be black?” Aiko continued, “My hair has a definite curl pattern. It’s like we all have different curl patterns. Some of us have looser curl patterns, some of us tighter curl patterns. And that also creates a stigma within our own community because it’s like, ‘Oh, well, you have good hair. Well, what’s good hair?” I asked, “What is good hair?” Trisden added to the seminar on black hair that was being held for my benefit: “Yeah. So ‘good hair’ is following European beauty standards. ‘Good hair’ would be as close to straight as possible.” Aiko: “Straight. Yeah. Without any curl.” Trisden: “And then you’re taught this your whole life. I mean if your parents are telling, ‘Man, you’ve got bad hair…’” Aiko: “…it becomes your identity because the people you come from are telling you who you are.” Trisden: “But that’s how they learned. They’re trying to help you out. Like, ‘I got teased for having bad hair, so I don’t want you to go through that. So we’re going to put a perm in yours. Which is actually chemically damaging your hair. But it’s closer to the European beauty standard, so you’re going to be accepted. You’re going to be more assimilated”. Aiko: “Definitely. That’s exactly what that is. And my Mom, you know, told me I had good hair and made me feel good about myself, but I didn’t really understand the negative stereotype that had been inflicted on me. And even then my Mom put a perm in my hair because my edges wouldn’t lay. And she told me, ‘Even though your hair was perfectly fine I had to do it because I didn’t want you to be made fun of.’ When I got to high school, I didn’t want to have to put that in my hair anymore. I liked my hair the way it was.” Trisden returned us to the question of how Aiko’s awareness of her black identity first emerged: “So are the locs what made you feel black, feel that difference of being black?” Aiko responded, “The locs made me realize that I’m not my hair. Because I did it at a time in high school when I wasn’t accepted. Although the school was very diverse—don’t get me wrong—but it was also very pretentious. The people who went there were very privileged. They had

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the money. They could afford whatever they wanted to. They would drive freaking Bentleys to school.” I asked, “This is the art school, the Las Vegas Academy?” “This is the art school. And because there weren’t a lot of us black girls, the black girls that were there were more striving for the European type of beauty. And I wasn’t. Because I was always a tomboy, I wouldn’t even try. Like I would come to school in gym shorts and be fine, because I wasn’t try to impress anybody. You accept me if you will. If not, I know who I am. So it doesn’t faze me none. Now, definitely I would say it was hard to get to that point, because I wanted to look like them. But at the same time, it was just like, ‘I’m trying, but it’s not working. So why keep trying?’” Trisden continued to press Aiko about when she first became conscious of her black identity: “So what was it in your junior and senior years that, if it wasn’t the locks, that made you feel like black was different?” Aiko responded, “One experience I would say that definitely caused me to have a different outlook on my blackness was that I went to this camp in Florida for my fifteenth birthday. It was my first time ever going to camp and it was literally camping in the middle of nowhere. We slept in cabins. And it was people from everywhere. And there’s this guy that I really liked. He was black. And I knew I wasn’t ugly. So I go and I introduce myself to this guy. I was with friends I made at the camp and they were telling me to go say hi to him. And … he rejected me! And at that time, it really rocked me because I was just like, ‘Okay. Well, I know I’m good.’ My friends are telling me, they’re hyping me up and making me feel like I’m somebody. And he ends up rejecting me.” “And at that time it made me feel like it wasn’t good enough to be a black girl because he ended up choosing this white chick. And so I was like, ‘Okay. Well, what does that make me? What does that do for me?’ And it really caused some introspection because I was wondering, ‘Well, are all black guys like this?’ Because that was really the first time where I was really trying to be romantic. And so it kind of set me on that road to really figure out what is it to be black? Because if white people can take my spot so easily, then what am I doing? And so that’s really what set me on my journey to discover who I was. And I had my hair in braids, because I was growing my hair out to start my locks. And so right then and there that happened, and then it was like, ‘Okay. Well, come on. It’s time to really go look and figure this out.’”

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Aiko’s budding awareness of her black identity emerged for the first time when she had a crush on a boy at camp, and he rejected her in favor of a white girl. The rejection made her wonder whether the white girl would always be seen as more attractive than the black girl. Were all black boys like that? In her arts magnet high school with a lot of well-off white kids, the black girls seemed to be using a white beauty standard as their guide: be as light-skinned and European looking as possible. Aiko’s decision to choose a distinctly black hair style was part of the process of exploring and learning to accept her identity as a black girl. The University of Nevada Trisden brought the conversation around to Aiko’s original decision to attend UNR … and her decision to leave at the end of the current academic year, after two and a half years in Reno: “Moving along to being at Nevada: I know you’re leaving, but did you feel comfortable here doing your time here as a black woman?” “Originally, no. Absolutely not.” Then she began to explain, “When I first got here, I went to one of the girls’ basketball games because I was trying to get on the team…” I laughed and said, “In spite of your mom?” Aiko said, “Well, lo and behold, I ended up dorming in Argenta. And the first two roommates I had were both on the basketball team. AJ and Taje. I’m still in contact with them. They were my first friends on campus, especially because they were in basketball. And I was like, ‘Tell me when your games are. I will go every day. Because I really want to try to see if I can get on the team.’ And so I ended up becoming the basketball manager for the women’s basketball team. And then I didn’t like the atmosphere, and I was like, ‘Okay. Maybe this is not for me.’” I said, “You’re going to have to explain that. But let’s hear how you got here first.” Aiko: “Well I wanted to join the Navy. But they said I wasn’t physically fit to join. So then I was going to go do the college thing. But I didn’t want to have any debt, which is why I was going to try the military in the first place. I love water and I wanted to travel. And so I thought the Navy is the best way to do it. But since I didn’t get accepted into the Navy, I went to this HBCU Fair [Historically Black Colleges and Universities]. I didn’t want to go to UNLV. I didn’t want to stay home. I didn’t want to be anywhere on the west coast. I wanted to literally be away and leave and

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never look back. I wanted to leave Vegas. I actually don’t like California. Me and Cali don’t get along that well. I’m not a west coast chick. I love the east coast. If I could go to New York…” “So I went to the HBCU college fair, I got accepted to five schools. And they had all given me scholarships, but the one that had given me the most scholarship was Benedict College in South Carolina. They offered me a Presidential Scholarship, which was $35,000 dollars. But still my financial aid couldn’t cover the rest of the fees. And so I needed six thousand dollars more to go. And my family couldn’t raise it. And so it was just like, ‘Well, you can’t go.’” Trisden said, “$35,000 sounds like a lot. But their out of state tuition was a lot, because it was a HBCU and they didn’t have too much money. You think, ‘Wow. I got that much!’ I got those scholarship offers too, but you still don’t have the money to cover the other stuff. And that’s $6,000 extra you need just for out of state tuition and fees, but you still have dorms and travel to and from them.” I asked, “So their tuition is like $41,000?” Trisden: “For out of state. Yeah. And that’s the debt you’re trying to avoid.” So even with $35,000 a year in scholarships, Trisden and Aiko needed another $6000 a year to cover out-of-state tuition, and then additional funds for travel, room, and board. I realized that three of the students in this study had been awarded what sound like huge scholarships to attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the South, but none were able to afford the rest of the expense without incurring debt that they were unwilling to take on. Middle-class students might think that arrangement is feasible. Students who have grown up poor experience that amount of debt as insurmountable. Aiko: “Yeah. It was a lot. It was pretty up there. And so I was like, ‘Well let me see if I can get into UNR So how I ended up here.” Trisden noted, “So you get to UNR and you don’t like it. You have great roommates. You’re thinking about the basketball team. But it doesn’t really pan out.” Racism Right Out of the Gate at UNR Then Aiko told us a story that made it very clear why she began UNR with a bad feeling, which perhaps set the tone for enough dissatisfaction to finally leave.

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“I went to the first basketball game that my roommates played, and I was waiting for them when the game was over. We were waiting for a campus escort to come and pick us up and take us back to our dorm, and this guy comes zooming past in this white car and yells, ‘Go home, you niggers.’ That was in my first week of being up here.” There was a long silence as Trisden and I absorbed this story of Aiko’s first week at Nevada. She continued, “And so I didn’t really know what to do from there, because that was like literally my first time ever experiencing blatant racism.” I asked, “You were waiting with your roommates?” “Yeah. Actually—We were waiting for Taje, who was still in Lawlor [the basketball arena]. It was me and AJ, who’s also black, and Mariah, who’s also black. They were the other two black girls that were on the team. We were just waiting for the campus escort when that guy drove by and yelled that. And when the campus escort finally arrived, he pulls up, slows down for a little bit so we got a glimpse of his face, and then he drove off!” Not an auspicious way to begin your college career in Reno. After a drive-by racial epiteth like the one Trisden experienced, the student whose work-study job it was to be on call to drive students home after dark drove off after taking a look at five black basketball players waiting in front of the basketball arena. Aiko told us that shortly after that incident she ran into Jody, Assistant Director of the Diversity Center on campus. “I told Jody about it and he was like, ‘Oh, you should say something.’ I was just like, ‘Well, this is Reno. What is there to really do about that?’” Trisden commiserated, “Yeah. Who is there to tell?” Aiko: “Yeah. He said, ‘Well, you should at least like protest or make people aware.” But I just said, ‘Jody, like … forget it.’ Yeah. So that was my first experience up here.” Trisden asked, “Have you experienced or witnessed any other over racism here?” Aiko responded, “Not that I can recall. But it was just enough, you know? And then also, not really being connected with the black kids on campus, it was just like…” Trisden: “Uncomfortable.” Aiko: “Very.” Trisden: “Did it help that you were friends with your roommates?” “Yeah, yeah. Because at that time, that was where I was spending the majority of my time. I was surrounded by basketball by then. Any time we

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went out, I was with them. Any time I went to a party I was with them. And they were majority black basketball and football parties. So I was around them, but they really didn’t know me, because I wasn’t an athlete.” Trisden: “It was like you were an outsider from that community too.” “Yeah.” Trisden asked, “How’s your experience in the classroom, being a political science major?” “Ooh!! There’s not a lot of us!” she laughed. “There’s not a lot of us.” Turning to me, Aiko added: “I think the first time I experienced another black person in my class was your class, Women and Politics. It was the first class I took with you. And that wasn’t until my second year! Prior to me declaring my political science major, I was a chemistry major, and taking a lot of pre-recs. I was also the only black person in those classes.” Trisden: “Can you talk about that a little bit more, being a black woman in the STEM field?” Aiko: “I guess you could say they really didn’t take me seriously. (she laughed) But to be fair, my ACT scores weren’t that great. And so I had to take tests to get into a higher level class. It was just hell trying to even get recognized for being okay and being a chem major.” I asked, “So then what brought you to political science?” “At one point I wanted to be a lawyer, but there’s too many lawyers in the world. I don’t want to be a politician, even though I have the voice and I have the stature for it. … I don’t want to play that game. But I do want change. I’ve always been someone who’s been a rebel, especially in regards to blackness and understanding who I am. I’ve always rebelled against the social norms.” “I have this vision for us as black people. And in order for us to get there we have to understand who we are. Until we begin to acknowledge who we are, until we become more unified and understand that community is where it is, and maybe to develop another black Wall Street., it’s going to be hard for us to progress. I will say that. I will say that.” There was a cadence to the way Aiko spoke that really did remind me of the black preacher that was so deeply embedded in her through her mother and aunt. But she wasn’t talking about going into the ministry at this point.

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Leaving Reno “My decision to leave here wasn’t because of any racism I experienced personally. It’s because of the lack of the black presence on campus. Although it’s growing and has grown immensely, it’s not to my liking. And the way that we interact with each other is not to my liking. I’ve tried to become involved with many organizations that are predominantly for the betterment of the black community, but it’s really not what they are all cracked to be, and what they claim to be. And so it’s just like, ‘If you guys are not really serious about change now, when will you be?’” Trisden: “And you served on the executive board of the BSO [Black Student Organization]…?” “Yeah, I did. And I had behind-the-scenes knowledge of all that was going on. And you know, I kept trying to present ideas that would bring about greater turnout, greater community, and so forth. But it was never taken seriously.” Aiko is unhappy with the size of the Black student population at UNR, and with what she believes to be black students’ lack of interest in real political change. Her complaint about the BSO was not entirely new to me: Trisden and other students have expressed concerns that the Nevada BSO considers itself to be more a social organization than a political one. It has been more involved in organizing social events for black students on campus, than in championing social and political changes for black people both on campus and in the larger community. That is a choice that is entirely up to the students in the BSO to make … but Aiko believed that she would be happier at UNLV, the Southern Nevada campus with more racial diversity. She decided to transfer to UNLV to finish her college career and was days away from moving there when she gave us this interview. I asked if there was anything specific that had motivated her decision to withdraw. She said there was no one thing that led her to withdraw from UNR … although she cited being the only black student in nearly every class she had taken, and also having only had one black professor in her two and a half years at Nevada. The experience with that professor had not gone well either. Aiko didn’t like the professor or the class and managed to truly alienate the professor by never coming to class … which also resulted in her failing the only class she took with a black faculty member. The fact that she didn’t get along with “the only black professor” highlights a problem with the absence of sufficient faculty of color on a

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predominantly white campus: there is no reason why Aiko should have liked the professor “just” because she was black. Students are free to dislike any professor for any reason, but the absence of faculty of color at Nevada increases the pressure to connect to the “only black professor” a student of color has had in their entire college career. Aiko was clearly unhappy for many reasons at UNR. But her family’s a deep legacy on the campus made it hard to leave. She tried to make it work for two and a half years before transferring to UNLV. I asked Aiko, “Was there a moment when you just thought, ‘I’m out of here’?” She laughed, “Several times. But because my family has such a legacy up here, I wanted to make it happen. In the end it was just like, ‘Why try to fight something that you know for a fact you’re not happy with? Just leave. You have the autonomy to do so. This is your life. Just leave.’” Aiko described the Las Vegas campus as “more real” than the Reno campus of the University of Nevada. There are more students of color at UNR than there used to be, but not enough to allow Aiko to feel comfortable. She felt like there were “just enough,” students of color to show that the university was trying to diversify racially, but not enough to make the campus feel like the real world, and to allow for choice of friends and faculty for the students of color. It was assumed that all the black students would relate to each other and like the few black professors they were exposed to. But if the minority is largely symbolic, it loses its reality. It becomes contrived. Aiko noted, “When diversity is ‘just enough,’ that’s not diversity. It’s conditional.” I pushed her on this: “But at the same time, you anticipate that you’ll meet more reactionary racists in Las Vegas…?” “Yeah.” “But it won’t be so bad because…?” “Because the support system is there.” “Does that make it more real down there than here?” “Yeah. I feel like Reno is very separated from the rest of the world. Does that make sense?” Trisden: “I understand that.” Aiko: “It feels like it’s in its own little globe and nothing really affects it. No one ever knows about Reno. It just … it exists. I don’t know. Vegas it seems more real. Reno just never changes. I want to say to Reno, ‘You’ve succeeded in that aspect. You’ve definitely made it a white city. You wanted it. You got it.’”

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Trisden arrived at a point in the interview that we had rarely reached in time with most of the students we talked to. He was able to ask the final two questions on the interview template: “What do you think we can do to overcome racism?” and “If they were listening to you, what would you ask White America?” Aiko had some thoughts about the first: “I think we have to both understand and be more open and willing to understand each other, because I think that’s what it stems from. If you look at the colonization of America, it was because the whites refused to understand the Native Americans. Or anybody else for that matter. At the end of the day, that’s what it stems from, a lack of understanding. And so with that, before we can even move on to making this right, and flipping this upside-down—or rather right-side-up—we have to really be able to unmask ourselves, and get to this place of humility, to be able to understand each other. We have to be able to come to a place of intimacy within the black and white community together, and understand, ‘Well, this is how you hurt me. And this is why I did what I did. And this is where I come from. And this is how I see it. And this is my perception.’ And to be able to do that in a non-­ judgmental area, a free space where I don’t have to feel contentious. Really, it’s just building that understanding and being able to be okay with someone being different from you.” Trisden knew we had to wrap up, but he wanted to ask Aiko the final question on the interview template: “Imagine white America were listening. What would you ask them? What would you say or what do they need to know?” “That’s a hefty question! I would ask them Why? You know? Just why? Why do you feel entitled? Why do you feel like it’s your need to be privileged? Why do you feel like this is your birth right? Why do you feel like this is white America? And why does it only belong to you? Why?”

CHAPTER 3

Where Are You From From?

Definitely Not a Real Group “Where are you from from?” was the label we assigned to five students who defied grouping based on a black/white binary, even more dramatically than the first group of Wastelanders. Some are the children of immigrants, some are themselves immigrants, some are from families who have been in the United States for generations, but because they appear “brown” they are constantly challenged to “prove” they are Americans. The section opens with the story of Elsa, daughter of Ethiopian immigrants. Her father is light skinned and had a secret: he is Jewish, something he only shared with his eldest daughter when she turned 16. After revealing that to Elsa on her 16th birthday, he added that if she were a boy, she could have shared something with him in that heritage, but as a girl, she was excluded. As a patriarchal, light-skinned Jewish Ethiopian refugee, he excluded Elsa at the very moment that he included her in his heritage. Elsa’s mother looks more “African” than her husband, but she made it clear to Elsa early on that they were not “African Americans” and had nothing in common with “American Blacks.” Elsa rejected her mother’s prejudices and declared that she was indeed a black American. She is earning her Master’s degree in the African American Studies Program at UCLA, clearly claiming her African heritage. We placed her in the “from from” section because she was born in the United States, the black daughter of immigrant parents, even though her parents dissociate themselves from African Americans. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_3

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Yesenia is also a first-generation American, daughter of Mexican immigrant parents. The youngest of five children whose parents work three jobs between them, Yesenia is the only child in her family to finish high school, much less graduate from college and proceed to a graduate program in social work. Similar to Trisden’s neighborhood friends’ suspicious response to his academic seriousness, Yesenia faced resistance from members of her community and some members of her family. Neighborhood friends taunted her for not being “Mexican enough,” and even her older sisters accused her of being “white washed” because she took her academics so seriously. Perhaps they feared she would leave them behind. Or they may have projected onto her their own assumption that she must consider herself “better than” them—or ashamed of being Mexican. Nothing could be further from the truth: Yesenia is very proud of her Mexican heritage. But the more she succeeds in white America, the more she is accused of betraying her roots and her community. She is placed on the borderland of her Mexican identity by the very people she grew up with, while at the same time being told to “go back to Mexico” by racist white classmates at University of Nevada at Reno (UNR). Jose has the opposite problem. He actually is a Mexican immigrant, having come to the United States with his parents when he was six. His mother was born in California, and he has always had dual citizenship. Jose is middle class and looks white. He is bilingual and feels most at home with Latinx culture, but many Latinx people mistrust him because he doesn’t look like them. If he can pass as white, they assume he feels superior to them: colorism at work again. Different groups of people in his life have called him “Joe” and “Jose,” living his entire life at the social and psychological boundaries of race and nationality. When he was still a boy, encouraged by his mother, he immersed himself in Marxist revolutionary politics, and still identifies with the Latin American doctor and revolutionary, Che Guevara. Jose is currently a successful broadcast journalist, living in New York and specializing in issues at the southern border. Tara defines herself as Punjabi American. She comes from a close-knit family of religious Sikhs—but she is a second-generation American who has never visited India. Nor have her California-born father or her mother, who was born in Fiji and immigrated to Canada with her family when she was two. Tara and her family have been the victims of Islamophobic violence since 9/11—a painful irony, since they are neither Muslims nor Arabs—and as a family they have been in the United States for more generations than many “Americans,” including Jennifer’s Russian-Jewish

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family. Tara has finished law school and will soon start work as an immigration and social justice lawyer in Berkeley. Paterno, born in the United States and raised in Texas, the son of immigrants from the Philippines and Bolivia, has been identified as Mexican for most of his life by people who don’t know him. This has a lot to do with growing up in Houston, where brown-skinned people who speak Spanish are assumed to be Mexican, no questions asked. Paterno had a materially privileged childhood, travelling the globe, living in many countries and cultures as his father built an international career and moved his family with him. Paterno began life as a conservative Catholic, dabbled in evangelical Christianity for a few years, and now defines himself as a radical. Sometimes he checks the Pacific Islander box on forms, other times the Hispanic box. He owns the ambiguity of his identity, stating firmly: “I don’t know what I am. I’m going to be entirely clear. I have no fucking clue what I am.” Try to put Paterno in any box: you can’t. Like the other voices in the book, he can’t be defined by any simplistic stereotype. We can generalize that the “from from” voices are more middle and upper middle class than the Black Wastelanders. Beyond that, though, their stories are so diverse that the “from from” category doesn’t tell us much about who they are. The fact that we even created a group for them reveals nothing more than our misguided instinct to categorize people.

Elsa I think Blackness was like a home I never knew I needed, a community that I never knew I was a part of. That I never knew I was allowed to be a part of.

Interview by Trisden Shaw and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring Trisden suggested his friend Elsa as a participant in this study. She was his roommate at the time, he had spoken highly of her, and I was eager to meet her. Elsa arrived at my office for her interview before Trisden did. I was immediately charmed by her warm smile, sparkling eyes, and her shy but forthright demeanor. She had not taken a class with me, so this was our first meeting. She soon got me laughing with a wry sense of humor about herself and the world. She was a public health major at Nevada, taking mostly science classes, which is why we had missed each other for most of her college career. When she enrolled in my class in Identity Politics the

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following semester, I became even more impressed with her nuanced awareness of race and identity in the United States. We struck up a working relationship that continues to this day, with frequent searching conversations about matters of political, social and academic importance. She was looking for a path that would enable her to both act in the world and deepen her understanding of what ails our society racially. I was delighted when she decided to pursue a graduate degree in African American Studies, a little worried when she applied to only one school and thrilled when she was admitted to UCLA’s prestigious program. It was a wonderful example of what self-confidence and the willingness to take risks can get you: exactly what you want! Trisden arrived at my office for Elsa’s interview a few minutes later, apologizing for being late and asking if we had introduced ourselves to each other. We joked with him that we had been just fine saying hello to each other without him, as he prepared the recorder for her interview. He turned the machine on and began, as usual, a king Elsa how she identified. Trisden: “Just to give you a brief overview, we’re going to build your story, looking at your background, where your family is from, all of that; and then ask you to think about how you moved from there to UNR. And then we’d like to know about your experiences here, as well as your experiences as a student of color not just on campus, but in the United States. So. Our first question will be: How do you identify?” Mentioning that she had read the interview questions we had given her ahead of time, she responded, laughing, “It’s funny because I read this one, and wasn’t sure what to say. I was like: ‘Uhh…’ I identify, I guess, as a black Ethiopian American. And I identify as a heterosexual woman. A cisgender woman. An able-bodied woman. That’s about it.” Trisden: “Is Ethiopia where your family is from? Is that where you’re from?” Family Background Elsa: “That’s where my family is from. My entire family is from Ethiopia. Both my parents were born and raised there; they immigrated here in their mid-twenties, in the early 1990’s. But I’m from here. I was born in Nevada, in Las Vegas.” Trisden asked what prompted her parents to immigrate, and as Elsa began to describe the fraught story, her parents had lived through. The children of many immigrants comprehend their parents’ stories only

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vaguely. The stories may become clearer as the children grow and demand more specifics from their parents. But many immigrants are reluctant to share too many details, especially if the story has been painful. They either don’t want to relive suffering or want to spare their children the specifics of their struggle and danger, perhaps out of fear of making their children bitter or spoiling their children’s optimism about the country that is now theirs. Elsa noted, “I used to think that they just chose to come here and it was like an American dream story thing. But I’ve recently learned, through fragmented histories, that they are refugees of war. They were fleeing a communist regime, especially the men in my family. The communists were really after the men in my family because a lot of them were politically active. My father was politically active in Ethiopia; he’s an author, and not a good one from their point of view! (she laughed) They all faced persecution. They fled, I think because of war, specifically. And to get a new life and all that other gushy American dream stuff. But I think the thing that caused them to leave was war.” Trisden asked, “Your father’s occupation in Ethiopia was a writer. Is that what he’s doing now, in the United States?” “No. He does it on the side. It’s like a hobby of his, at this point. I assume that his writings in Ethiopia involved some sort of pushback against the government. That’s why he was hunted. But he never told me. I don’t think I’ve ever asked, actually. Now he works in the casino business, along with my mother.” “What does your mother do?” “When she was in Ethiopia, she was just a young girl! Maybe a student. And now she works as a dealer in a casino. My father works as a floor supervisor. They work in two different casinos. My father works at the Gold Coast, and my mother works at the Mirage.” As we probed Elsa to give us more details about her parents’ journeys to the United States, it was clear that her parents held their stories pretty close to the vest, to use a poker metaphor. They hadn’t told their children many details. I asked, “Would they consider themselves refugees? Or immigrants?” Elsa: “Immigrants, I think.” Then Trisden asked, “But you perceive it almost as a refugee status?” Elsa: “In a way, I do. I think my mom immigrated here willingly in comparison to how my father came. He really had to leave Ethiopia or face prison or maybe death. My father also encountered a lot of trouble trying

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to acquire the right papers and gain access into this country. I didn’t meet my dad until I was four years old. So. I’m not sure exactly what had happened or the exact circumstances leading to each of their immigrations. But I do know that the reason for both of their departures was the political climate. My mother wasn’t in direct danger, but my father definitely was. They were out hunting men. And, if there was a man in the house, they would come to the door and be like, ‘You have to come with us.’ So my dad would have to hide on the roof. And he was the only man in his family. To me, it seems very serious.” I asked, “Serious, like, they wanted to draft him into the army? Kidnap the men and make them soldiers?” “Yeah, I think so. I think so. Or just throw you into prison. I think they wanted to throw him in prison. That’s what happened to my uncle, who is also a father figure of mine. He was just thrown in prison. And I don’t know how he got out. But he did, thank God.” Trisden asked, “Was he a political writer, as well? “No. He was a university student, who was in direct protest of the regime. A lot of university students were. And a lot of them were killed for it. No one told me much about it.” I asked, “So you kind of had to piece this together?” “Yeah. A lot of this is fragmented for me. Because they really haven’t told me. It’s like me trying to combine moments in Ethiopian history with these very non-specific dates my parents have given me. I do know that I was born very shortly after my mom immigrated here. So I was conceived in Africa. But I don’t really understand …” “So you were born in this country, but she immigrated …” “Yeah. She got here—and then I got here right in time!” (She laughed.) “When were you born?” “1996. So I’m trying to piece it together with Ethiopian history— which I have a really limited knowledge of. And then my parents aren’t very much the talkers; especially my mother. So, I’m just trying to piece it all together.” Trisden asked, “So, you said your mother immigrated here first. And then your father came over a few years after. Was she the first one in your family to come over?” Elsa again was stumped about her family’s saga: “I’m not exactly sure. I think she immigrated here with other members of my family. I think some sort of familial tie gets you priority … ? But I’m not sure.

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“When they were thinking about leaving Ethiopia they were told that the best way to gain immigration status is to move to Kenya, to Nairobi, rather than trying to immigrate from Ethiopia. So, my aunt, moved to Nairobi and met my father’s sister at an Ethiopian church. Because they were two Ethiopian women in Kenya, it was natural that they were drawn to each other. My dad’s sister invited my aunt to stay with her. Then my mother moved to Kenya as well, to try to immigrate to the U.S. with her sister. She met my dad’s sister because they were all living in the same house. And then she met my dad. So my mom and dad got married in Kenya, and then my mom and my aunt immigrated to the U.S. together. My father immigrated a few years later. He was able to gain access to the U.S. because he was married to my mom. But they had to lie about their ages and lie about all this stuff. I just found out my mom is ten years older than I thought she was! I thought the age she listed on my birth certificate was her age, but it’s not. It’s ten years younger than her real age. It’s very stressful! So!” Trisden: “Wow!” Elsa: “And I haven’t even gotten any of this information from my mother. I’ve gotten it from my aunts and uncles. My mom won’t say anything to me about it. But it’s almost like it’s blocked off from herself, too. I can imagine it’s not something she wants to remember in detail.” Then Elsa mentioned a newly discovered family secret: her dad had very recently confided in her that he was Jewish! Elsa continued, “My dad is a fair-skinned man. Not like an Ethiopian. He has straight hair. My entire life I’ve been asking him, ‘Dude, what are you?’ (laughing) We don’t look like the rest of the family, right? Like, my cousins called me white when I was growing up! (Elsa has light brown skin, and curly dark hair.) My entire life, I’ve just been trying to guess. Is he Italian? Or Greek, or what? And Italian is my strongest hunch, because a lot of Ethiopians claim an Italian ancestry, because of World War II. My dad always used to say, ‘I’ll tell you when you turn sixteen.’ The day I turned sixteen, I asked him: ‘Okay! What is it?!’” (laughter) “So my dad pulls me into a bathroom, and he goes: ‘I’m a Jew!’ And I say, ‘Okay. But: that’s not even a race, right?! So, what does that even mean? Are you Israeli? Is that what you’re trying to get at?’ And then he just leaves. That’s it. That’s all I got. And then he showed me a Star of David necklace in his closet and told me I couldn’t have it because I’m not a boy. And that was it. Omission and sexism! It’s great! So, there are a lot

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of parts of my identity I feel like I’m still very, just, unknowing about. I just have no idea.” “I’ve seen pictures of my grandparents. I recently just saw a picture of my dad’s father, who I’ve never met. And, he’s a black man. An African man. My grandmother is an African woman. And I’m just like, ‘How did they produce you??’ My dad just has all of these recessive genes or something, because all of his sisters look very Ethiopian. He’s the only one with the fair skin. So I think he’s adopted! (laughing) At this point, that’s all I got! That he’s adopted! And I’m definitely his daughter. I look just like him. And so, we’re adopted. I think.” (laughter) After that intense, complicated story, Trisden pushed us to the next topic in the interview. Family and Childhood “Do you have siblings?” Elsa: “Yes. I have one biological sister. And two cousin-siblings that I call siblings. One is Phillip—he’s twenty-three. Old guy now! And Pinko— that’s not her name: Leah, for the record! Leah is twenty. And then Lena, my actual biological baby sister is twelve, turning thirteen. She’s a tyrant!” Trisden continued: “So let’s talk about your neighborhood, growing up. You’re from Las Vegas. Will you describe your neighborhood in Las Vegas? Did you move often …?” Elsa: “Okay, so, when I was very young I bounced between two houses: my parents’ house—my real mother and father; and my ‘other parents’ house—my aunt and uncle, and my two cousin- siblings. I’ve always lived in the same square mile. I was nine when my sister Lena was born and we moved into a two-story house. My dream. That’s where my family still resides. I had a pretty good childhood, I’d like to think. I had one of those play-outside types of childhoods. Knew a lot of kids in the neighborhood; there were all types of kids. There were younger kids we’d hang out with, like babies; and then the older high school kids that we got to shadow. I grew up in that environment. And then, as we all aged out—as the older kids aged out—I still grew up with my two best friends, who live across the street from me now. And yeah! What else about my childhood? I forgot the question.” Trisden: “How about your neighborhood. Demographically, how did it look?”

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Elsa: “I feel like my neighborhood was just full of a bunch of kids. (laughter) That’s all I can really remember, you know? Bunch of kids. There’s even an Ethiopian family on my street, which is super cool. And white kids, black kids. It was middle class. The scenery in my head is just kids playing in the street.” To me it sounded unusual to have such racial diversity in a middle-class neighborhood. I asked, “Were they little houses with lawns?” Elsa: “Yeah! Houses with lawns. And we used to have dodgeball fights in the middle of the street! Have water-ball fights. Summertime was really great. I had a really positive experience in my neighborhood when I was young that I don’t think a lot of kids have now. Which is sad.” Trisden: “You always considered yourself middle class?” Elsa: “Yeah. Middle class. I try to differentiate the two, the working class and middle class, by the paycheck thing. Like, if your family had to live paycheck to paycheck. And my family never did. Right now, if I needed something—if I needed to get my car fixed, or something—I could definitely get that from my parents. And I think they are pretty financially secure, and they always have been. Which is pretty impressive to me.” Trisden: “Definitely.” I added: “Especially if they came from Africa and your dad was running for his life. Was his family in Ethiopia fairly well off? “His mother didn’t work. I don’t think women traditionally worked, at that time. But, his father was a political guy and an educator, I believe. So I think they were fairly well off there. I’m sure none of them were living in poverty. They were middle-class, in Ethiopia as well.” Trisden: “So, will you talk about your schooling experience in Las Vegas? Tell us what you remember of elementary school and carry us through middle school and high school.” Elsa: “Okay, Elementary school. I went to two elementary schools, because we moved. There was a bunch of white people in all my schools. That’s what really characterized it. I’ve always had white teachers. All of my teachers were white. All through elementary and middle school. I was one of the few black kids; but that never really occurred to me, because there were a lot of different types of kids. It wasn’t just white kids. There were white kids and there were Filipino kids. My best friend was a Filipino girl. I had a positive experience when I was in elementary school. I was

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always super-smart. That was my thing. Middle school, I was super cool. I was super popular.” I exclaimed, enviously, “You were one of the cool kids!” Elsa continued, “I wasn’t one of the cool kids that were dumb. There were two types of cool kids. I was one of the cool kids who were into music—the music department was really good at my middle school. So I was super cool in the active role. There were kids that were, like, doing drugs and having sex, that were, like, they were cool too; but not me.” Trisden: “What school did you go to?” Elsa: “Lawrence. I was also the captain of the basketball team, and the lead trumpet player; So that was good: middle school was a really good experience for me. That’s where I solidified my core group of friends that I still have now. I met some of them in elementary, met a lot of them in middle, and really kept them through high school. Are we onto high school now?” Trisden: “Yeah. If that’s where you want to go.” Elsa: “So, high school. I went to LVA. Las Vegas Academy. It’s a performing arts school.” Trisden: “That’s where Aiko went!” Me: “Did you know Aiko?” Elsa: “Yes! That’s where I met her. LVA was a really good place for me; and it was a really good place for a lot of other people, too. A lot of people needed it. They needed a place where they could be themselves, and they could wear, you know, whatever to school. Or be gay. Or say what they wanted to say and paint their hair a thousand colors, and just do what they wanted to do. It was just a really good environment for me to figure myself out in. I didn’t have a lot of pressure to be a certain person or to wear a certain thing or to kind of fit a different mold, because it didn’t exist at LVA: people were just really different.” Trisden: “So—like a safe space?” Elsa: “Yeah, definitely. Definitely. People just … didn’t really care, you know? And they just were who they are, and didn’t really fear anything, because, ‘You’re weird, too!’ (laughter); like, we’re all weird together. The teachers were like that, too. And it made students feel like, ‘I can grow up to be this other, weird person. I don’t have to grow up to be this suit-and-­ tie conformist.’ They really helped to foster a lot of that positive environment. My principal there was the principal flautist for the Las Vegas Phil. He was a really cool guy and he was also a gay man. In the morning announcements, he would say, ‘Hey Y’all! Good morning, LVA!’ Clark

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County is huge, but they kind of left us alone. LVA enforced its own dress code. They enforced a lot of its own policies that were tailored to the students, and the weirdness factor they wanted to bring to the school.” I asked, “How did you decide to go there? Did your parents encourage you to go? Or did you decide?” Elsa: “My parents very much did not want me to go. It was a magnet school; it’s one of the best performing arts schools in the country, too. And boasts one of the best academic programs in the county. But my parents really didn’t want me to go. But I wanted to pursue music. I was a trumpet player, and I wanted to play. And I really didn’t want to go to Spring Valley, which was the zoned high school for me. I had to really, really, really fight to go. Probably harder than I’ve ever had to fight for anything. I remember it was a really big ordeal.” “Did you have apply and be accepted?” “Yes. I had to audition and to be academically accepted, too. A whole bunch of little hoops.” “Why do you think your parents didn’t want you to go?” “What they said at the time was that it was too far—it was like thirty minutes away—and that I just didn’t need to go. And, what was I going to do? Pursue music for my life? That wasn’t an acceptable option for them. That wasn’t a viable option in their minds. So, they didn’t think it was smart. If I were to go to a magnet school, I should pursue Rancho or Southwest—one of the schools that did more technical stuff, more career-­ technical, like, medical. But they were adamantly against LVA: ‘Why do you need to go to LVA? You don’t need to go there.’” Race Consciousness: Crossing Boundaries Trisden moved the conversation to the next topic: “You said something very interesting when we first started. You were talking about how your cousins would pick on you as the white child. So, my question is: when did you start becoming aware of race? Was that the first instance that you considered yourself black?” “I have only very recently considered myself black. In college, probably. There’s a weird line of thinking in my family, and a lot of African families feel this, too: We’re not black: we’re Ethiopian. And we’re not one of ‘them’. We’re one of ‘us.’ And, my parents will say things like that … ‘We’re not those black people. We’re different from them. You’re not black.’ But, when my cousins called me white … I don’t know … I had

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never thought of it that way. Maybe that’s the first time I figured I was different. To my family, or to the kids in my family, when they called me white, it separated me from them as not an Ethiopian person, as not a black person. I think that started my quest for my identity, and trying to figure out who I am, who my father is, what we are; and this was before my sister was born. I think that would have been important for me, if I had had a biological sibling, since Pinko & Philip aren’t my biological siblings.” Trisden: “Are they darker than you?” “Yeah. They’re both darker than me. I’m probably the lightest in my family, next to my father, the whitest man.” (laughter) I asked, “Is your mom dark-skinned?” “My mom is not dark-skinned. She’s probably, about Trisden’s color.” Trisden, who knows Elsa’s mother, concurred: “She’s about my color.” Elsa: “So I think that kind of set me on a trajectory, like, ‘Why am I different? I’m not white … I’m not even white!! What are you talking about??’” Trisden: “So, did you ever feel different, being around white people? Did they ever make you feel different? You said you didn’t really identify as black until college. But, you didn’t identify as white, of course.” “I think I identified as black earlier than I was aware of. I remember identifying as black or of a darker color, and that that differentiated me for treatment and resources and all these other things, that maybe I didn’t know about at the time. But still, that differentiated me. When I was fairly young, probably six or seven, I remember thinking, ‘I’m black, right? And so I’m down here, right? And white people are up here.’ I also remember thinking, ‘And I’m a woman, which is like down here a little more!’ And it’s kind of like a double-whammy thing. And I remember thinking that I’m at the bottom of this social status, or a totem pole. I used to think of it in my head like that. I remember just thinking, I’m black and I’m a woman; there’s two things against me.” Trisden: “You were thinking of this very young!” I was a little confused by Elsa’s account of her emerging racial and gender awareness. How could Elsa have known she was a woman when she was only six or seven? And how did she know that being darker skinned brought social and economic disadvantages, especially when she described her childhood as one where she did not worry about economic deprivation? What she said next clarified why her awareness of the second-class status of being female came so early: she identified with her mother in her family’s traditionally Ethiopian patriarchy. Her father was explicit about

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his belief in the superiority of boys and men and so Elsa, his eldest daughter, learned about gender oppression before she learned about racial oppression. Elsa confirmed Trisden’s observation that she was more aware of sexism than racism at an early age: “Yes. I remember thinking this when I was really young. I think patriarchal standards are much more limiting in Ethiopian culture. So I saw those much more. With other people, it’s maybe not as obvious that your father is the head of the household, and your mother is more submissive. To me, that was very clear. So I learned that very quickly. And my father never had a son, too; and he still laments that. So I always understood that boys are up here and I’m down here. I never found white people as harmful to be me. I grew up with white people. I grew up with people of really different colors my entire life. You know how people notoriously talk about ‘the talk’ and stuff like that? [Elsa is referring to ‘the talk’ that most black parents have with their children at a certain age, about what to do to survive when being stopped by the police. JR] My parents never did this with me. Race was never an issue. My race was almost endearing to my friends. People kind of made it endearing, in a way.” Me: “It’s like you’re the ‘exotic friend.’” “Yeah, exactly. Like, the what-are-you friend. When we used to dress up for spirit day, it doesn’t matter what we’re dressing up as, I’m the black thing. (laughs) I’m the black whatever. And that never struck me as carrying any malicious intent. But it was always there. I was just always the black person.” Trisden: “Did you ever start feeling any malicious intent?” “No. When people see me, most of what I get is ‘What are you?’ I never felt any sort of overt racism or anything, growing up. People were just kind of like, ‘Oooh!’ But, that was it.” “So, why did you start identifying as black?” “Um—I don’t really know. I can’t really remember when or why. I just remember realizing that my parents were wrong. And that what they had been saying was wrong. And that black people aren’t, you know, these terrible, horrible people, and if I were to feel that way, I’m no better. I never really had black friends growing up. I think that’s really important, too. All of my really close friends are white. And some of them are other ethnicities. But none of them are black. I still don’t really have like a very close-close black friend. Other than you, Trisden.”

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“But, I think that kind of kept the disconnect alive for much longer than it should have. Coming to college was the first time I ever really interacted with black people. And now, I interact primarily with black people. But, in my elementary schools it was very diverse, not entirely any group predominantly. In middle school there wasn’t really a group of black kids. In high school, there weren’t many black kids that went to LVA. There was me, Aiko, and a few other kids. But not too many and we didn’t all just hang out together. So I never felt that group connection that people talk about, how like being around black people, they feel at home. I never got that until I went to college, until I joined the Black Student Organization, until I went into the [Diversity] Center and really felt those shared experiences and that shared camaraderie among people. I never felt that growing up. That’s when I started to understand, ‘I’m a part of these people. These people share my qualities. They share my experiences.’” Trisden asked, “Do you ever feel like you were missing anything? Like when you started to join the BSO, or started inserting yourself into that black community at UNR, did you feel like you belonged, initially?” “No. I didn’t feel like I belonged at first. I felt that way when I was younger, too. There was always a disconnect that I felt. I felt rejected by black people. Because, when you’re one of the weird black kids, black kids don’t like you. And, I’m light-skinned, so, black girls didn’t like me. Off the top, they just didn’t like me because they thought I thought I was better. Which is a silly thing, but … to the black kids, I was too white. And to the white kids, I was too black. And I never found a middle. You just have to live in that limbo.” “Coming here made me feel better … made me feel like the disconnect wasn’t there anymore. I could be a weird black kid. I didn’t have to talk like them or do the things they do. A lot of times I don’t feel as connected to black people because I don’t share the same culture. I don’t share all of the same experiences. But I feel more connected, just in general, because we do have a lot of the same experiences, even if we don’t have the same culture.” Trisden, “This is very interesting just because all of the black people I’ve spoken with, through these interviews, have expressed this as a common theme … that feeling of ‘I don’t necessarily fit in on either side.’ I certainly feel that way. Aiko said it, Elsa is saying it. It’s a very common theme.”

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I added, “Most of the Black students we’ve interviewed have been more economically deprived than what you’re describing about yourself. They were all smart and motivated enough to try to get into the best school they could, and wherever they went to they got picked on in school for being ‘too smart’ or ‘too white.’” I reminded Trisden of something he had said to me: “Yesterday we were talking about how being smart and trying to succeed was enough to incite resentment among your peers. Trisden, you offered that image you sometimes have of your childhood friends trying to pull you back down to them as you’re trying to climb over the fence to get to someplace more promising.” Elsa: “It’s very weird. It’s very weird. I remember things that people used to say to me. Like, ‘Oh, you’re an Oreo.’ As a kid, you don’t really know how to take that. People used to say, ‘Oh, you talk white.’ The black kids would say, ‘you talk white.’ And then the white kids would say, ‘Oh, you talk white.’ But sometimes I’m being too black for them.” Trisden: “Yeah. Yeah.” Elsa: “You know?” Navigating Boundaries: The Switch-Up Trisden: “Yeah. That’s the same thing I felt like. Like, I could speak the same way to black and white people. But, to some black people, I’m speaking white. And, to the white people, it’s like, ‘I don’t understand anything you’re saying. You’re talking way too ghetto, or you’re talking way too black.’” Elsa recognized that “‘You’re talking too ghetto,’ yeah. And I think that now I have settled in myself that it’s okay. When I’m with black people I can be like ‘Yeah! What we gonna do?’ And that’s not how I’d talk to my white friends. And, when I’m with my white friends I’m just, you know … it’s like the switch-up. But it doesn’t make me inauthentic. And it doesn’t make those relationships invalid.” I suggested, “Multi-lingual?” “Yeah Exactly! I think it just makes me more versatile.” Trisden: “Do you want to talk about the switch-up? Why do you feel like you need to do it? And, do you feel like it’s effective, efficient? And, I guess, how did you master it?” [“The switch up,” commonly referred to as code-switching, refers to having two vernaculars, or dialects … one

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black and one white … and being able to switch from one to the other when talking to people of different races or class backgrounds. JR] “Mm-hmm. I think it’s natural more than anything. Like, to communicate with people on their level, as you see fit, in that environment, is just natural. I’m not the exact same person with, you know, you and Victoria [Trisden and Elsa’s other roommate, who is black] as I am when I’m at home with Rachel and Zane, as I am with my family, and as I am at work, or in class; obviously, I’m different modes of myself. But before, I used to have a lot of conflict about it: like, why can’t I just be me? But now I think that they all are me. And it’s okay to be that way. “I think a lot of black people are fearful they’ll seem uneducated. If I say things that are Ebonic, and you know, a lot of people don’t classify that as real words … which, it is, for the record. Ebonics is real. But, people might think it sounds uneducated. So I’m not going to place myself in a situation where I sound uneducated to some people. If I talk like that to black people, they’ll understand, it’s like we’re meeting each other on our own level. But then we have to go out and put our white voices on. My sister always makes fun of me because she says when I’m on the phone I put on a white voice. But, I’m like, ‘What you want me to do? Say, like, n***** on the phone?’ (laughter) What you want??” I asked, “This your little sister?” “Yes. She teases me, ‘Put on your white voice!’ [Elsa imitates her little sister with a sing-songy voice] But I think it’s necessary.” I asked Elsa about the voice she was using in this interview: “So, is this your white voice?” “No, I’m not sure. I’m not sure if it is. Maybe it’s just me. But how far are you going to get, either way? If you’re talking street in a setting when you’re supposed to bring it together, you’re not going to get very far. And if you’re talking very white on the street, that’s not going to get you very far, either.” Trisden: “It’s not.” Elsa: “So, it’s kind of like the versatility that black people have to have.” Trisden: “Mm-hmm. I think it goes back to assimilation. When you’re with black people, you can speak a certain way, because, like you said, we’re on this level where we have this dialect and we understand what we’re saying. But I can’t just go to the Wolf Shop [UNR student store, where Trisden works as a manager—JR] and talk like I’m talking to Elsa or I’m talking to any of my friends back home. They just don’t

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understand. So it’s just not efficient to speak that way. It just doesn’t make sense. It puts me in a bad position.” I asked, “Is it conscious? It’s adaptive, right? To where you are and what’s appropriate?” Trisden: “And who you’re speaking to.” Elsa: “Right. I mean, you can even hear me when I answer the phone. Like, if Trisden’s calling me, I’m like ‘Wassup dude?’ (laughter) ‘What’s going on? What’s good?’ And if McKenzie calls me I’m like, [In a high pitched white girly voice]: ‘Hii! Hi! How are you?? (laughter) I love you! Miss you!’ “I’m sure even the pitch, the timbre—everything in my voice probably changes. But, I don’t think it’s entirely conscious. It’s just how you have to get along. But maybe they do the same? You know? I don’t know the other social situations white people live in. But maybe they have to switch up too. Maybe they have their own switch-up, that we don’t know about.” Trisden: “I find myself switching it up at the Wolfshop a lot, and I see it with my friend Julius who works there too. We work in customer service, so we’re dealing with a lot of people. So, if we’re talking to somebody white, we hear a lot of ‘Wassup my brother?’” I laughed incredulously: “From white people?” “Yeah, from white people. And I think they’re coming from, usually, a genuine place; but, it’s just—what they chose to say, and who they’re saying it to.” Elsa: “White people do use very funny words for black people. Like, ‘Hey homie.’ It’s very patronizing. I think people don’t realize it. People are like ‘Hey, my brother.’ And you’re like: ‘That’s weird.’” Attending University Trisden turned the conversation back to the interview questions and asked Elsa about her path to UNR: “So getting back on track: you your father was a university student. Your mother was, too, in Ethiopia?” “I’m not sure my mom was. I’m not sure, actually, at all.” Me: “She doesn’t talk much!” Elsa, laughing: “Yeah! Man, I can’t get her to talk about anything! Anything!” Trisden: “But, was there an expectation for you to go to university here?” “Here, specifically?”

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“Well—not UNR; but just like in the United States?” “Yeah, for me it was not much of a question. Like, I was going to college. It was just like, ‘You’re going.’ And a lot of it was, ‘We didn’t come to this country for you to play the trumpet. We didn’t come to this country for you to do anything else. You came to this country to go to school. You’re going to school.’ And it was kind of never forced upon me because I just thought that was how everyone’s parents were. I thought everyone was going to college. And, that is not true. As we all know. But, it was really never a choice for me.” “And did you feel that expectation from your teachers as well as your mentors?” “Yeah. I think so. Especially from my music directors, who I had for four years. I think everyone expected me to go to college. I was smart, too. Everyone just knew I was going. It was not a question of if; it was where. And not even when. Like, I didn’t even have the choice to take a gap year or any of that ‘silly stuff.’ ‘It was “You got to get to it, and you got to start.” ’ ” I observed, “So this is kind of an immigrant imperative, as much as anything else.” Elsa agreed: “I think so. I think so, very much. I hear it from a lot of other people who also have immigrant parents. The message was, ‘You’re going.’” Trisden asked, “Do you think they influenced your choice of major?” Elsa: “Oh, I think they decided it.” I laughed and asked “What is it?” “Public health. Actually, my dad had my profession already set and laid out for me. I was supposed to be a pediatrician. Because I loved working with kids, which is true. And my dad just loved the thought of me being a pediatrician. My mother wanted me to be a pharmacist. Apparently, she didn’t want me to work in clinical. (She chuckled at this thought.) But, my dad very much wanted me to be a pediatrician. So much so that, my family would ask me … even now, when I go home, my family asks me when I’m going to medical school. And I’m like, ‘Okay, guys. That has really not been in the plan at all. I never said that. My dad said that. You just kind of go around telling people I’m going to do it.’” “So they’ve always had that idea for me to go to medical school. That’s always been the thing. I’ve always been the smart kid in the family, too. Which has been a terrible position that I put myself into! (she said this laughing) Of all of my siblings, that’s how the dynamic goes. I’m the

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smart-as-a-whip one. My brother Philip is the stupid one. Pinko is kind of the unpredictable one and we don’t really know what she’s going to do. But, everyone’s always had very high hopes for me.” I wanted to clarify: “You’re referring actually to your cousins, Philipp and Pinko? They’re kind of your adopted siblings?” “Yeah. My mother’s sister’s kids. My mother immigrated here with her brother and sister. And a lot of my extended family all lived together in one house. So I just lived with them for a while. And when my father immigrated here, then we moved into our own house. So, when I got here, I had no one to call dad. And so I called my uncle a dad, my aunt a mom, and I had another mom. And I thought, for a very long time, when I was young, that everyone had parents like that. That everyone had two sets of parents. I always used to say I had a step-mom and a step-dad before I actually knew what that meant. (laughter) Because I needed people to understand their value. I forget what I was talking about.” I reminded her: “You’re the smart one.” “I’m the smart one. I was like the gate kid. So, I had to pull through for the family. I felt a lot of pressure from my entire family. And I still do. I kind of brush them off. I study public health, not pre-med; and that’s what I want to study. But, I’m not entirely sure. If I had the kind of parents who said ‘Do what you love!’ … what would I actually be studying?” “Would you have gone with music, do you think, if they had not pushed you away from it?” “Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I was very gifted in music, too. I would have definitely done that.” Elsa: “I’ve just always been really good at it. And that was it. I had a private teacher. I had a private teacher and the school paid for it—because my parents wouldn’t. And, I had a horn. I played on a really beginner horn, my freshman and sophomore year. And I had outgrown it. And my band director bought me a horn. Like, a $2,000 horn. And I played on that because my parents wouldn’t buy me one. So. It’s just been, kind of, me pushing against the grain. And I really never got to pursue it as much as I probably would have if my parents were more supportive of it.” Elsa had overcome her parents’ objections and attended the arts magnet high school that she wanted to attend. She was able to pursue classical trumpet only because her teachers saw her gift and nurtured it. She had not entirely succeeded in overcoming her father’s insistence that she study medicine. A public health major at UNR was not her first choice, but rather a fallback position to avoid the pre-med major that her father was

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insisting on. And after she received her undergraduate degree from UNR, she applied and was accepted to the Master’s Program in African American Studies at UCLA. So she has followed a circuitous path to recognizing her own needs and interests, but music definitely was a casualty. I asked her, “Do you play now?” “No, I don’t. Well—I gave my horn to a little kid (laughing) so I don’t really have anything to play on anymore. And I kind of gave it up when I moved here (to Reno) and started school here, just because I knew wasn’t really going to be pursuing it. So, it just kind of got lost.” Trisden: “You have no urge to play at all, here?” “I do. I definitely do. I mean, it was a big part of who I was. And when I first moved here I definitely wanted to play … and then it kind of subsided. But it’s grown back on me recently. Music’s kind of always been there for me. I’ve always been good at it. My dad is musical too. But he really hated trumpet. He really hated it. Especially the trumpet, specifically. I don’t know what that was about.” (laughter) I asked, “But you chose it?” “I did choose it. My dad really wanted me to play piano. There was a moment in life when we were standing in the rec center. I was eight years old. And he asked, ‘Piano lessons?’—which he really wanted me to do— ‘Or basketball?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, basketball!’ (laughter) And I played basketball! I played basketball for my entire life, too. It’s never what he really wanted.” Again, I found myself thinking that the battles Elsa had with her father seemed so counterproductive. She had an abundance of musical and athletic talent and seemed to succeed at everything she enjoyed doing. But her father was always disappointed because it wasn’t what he wanted for her, what he thought she should pursue. Yet Elsa was never in outright rebellion against her parents: she simply found a way to persist (most of the time) in what she wanted for herself. I was also thinking that while many of the black students Trisden and I had interviewed had absent fathers, Elsa had a very present, controlling father. I shared my observation with her: “Trisden and I have been noticing, among the black students that we’ve been interviewing, the fathers are pretty absent, right? Their mothers are present, and their siblings are often from different marriages, and the fathers … so many dads are in jail or deported. Your story is so different from that. If anything, you’re dealing with a Jewish patriarch. You don’t get his Star of David because your dad thinks he needs a son. Yet, he wants

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you to have a career … in fact he’s choosing an ambitious career for you and you’re having to resist his attempt to decide for you. But there’s a really present father in your life, right? Two parents, actually, and they both sound very strong.” Trisden interjected, “Four, really!” Elsa, laughing: “I know, right?” I agreed: “Right. So, I’m just kind of noting that your first awareness of inequality was not about race, but was about being a girl, and knowing that in your father’s mind being a girl is not as good as being a boy. And I’m thinking, ‘That was her dad giving her that message.’ Anyway, I’m just kind of free associating here … thinking out loud. Almost as though he made you strong enough to resist him …” Elsa responded, “Yeah. I hadn’t really thought of it that way. But, yeah. My dad is a pretty powerful force. I think he’s kind of made me who I am; and I’m very much like him. But I really hadn’t thought of it that way. My mom is pretty passive. My mom will like, push a little; but she’ll give fairly easily. She’s a very calm, very quiet, very reserved type of person. My father’s not that way, at all.” (laughing) I continued with my musing about Jewish and Ethiopian patriarchy: “And then, if you couple it with the way it is in Ethiopia … the patriarch is in charge … it’s a very male-dominated culture, compared to African-­ American culture as it has evolved in the U.S. So although you identify as black, you don’t have an African American dad: you’ve got a Jewish dad and an Ethiopian dad. That’s a double whammy of patriarchy!” (laughter) Elsa: “And it’s funny, because my dad’s trying to raise me to be this outstanding kind of person. But then, I’m under his thumb in a way, too. And it’s just a weird dynamic that I have to figure out, around him.” I added, “I hear the complexity. Especially fathers who think boys are better, and don’t have sons, you know? The first-born girl usually gets slotted … you know, he probably wants you to be really strong and accomplished and everything.” Elsa: “Yeah, he’ll call me a boy sometimes. (laughter) He’ll do that a lot, too. He’ll say, ‘You’re like my boy, so you have to …’ (laughter) And I’m like: ‘I’m not. I’m not a boy.’” The University of Nevada Trisden turned the conversation to Elsa’s choice of college: “Let’s move on to how you got to UNR. What made you choose Nevada?”

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“So I chose between the WUE schools, right? [WUE is Western Undergraduate Exchange, a program that provides scholarships to students from the west, choosing to attend one of a network of western state universities.] And, of all the WUE schools, I only applied to Boise, and here [UNR]. Those are the only two schools I applied to. I got accepted to Boise, and I was supposed to go and play music there. But, the money they offered me didn’t make sense in comparison to UNR. And I just went with the cheapest option, really. I wanted to go to Boise. “And when I was deciding about college I still I thought I was going to go to medical school, or at least it was an idea. And they have the medical school up here [UNR], so it seemed like a smart idea. It was the cheapest place. My parents wouldn’t let me go to UNLV. My dad thought I needed to leave the nest, or whatever. So, UNR just kind of seemed like the perfect middle ground. And I wasn’t going to play music here. I kind of didn’t want to play at all, because I didn’t want to march. That’s a really big thing here, is marching, and pep band and crap.” Trisden: “And that’s the only option they have here?” “Not the only option. But they have concert season and they have marching season. Which is how high schools do it. Universities do it that way, too. Unless you go to a conservatory, and obviously, I wasn’t going to go to a conservatory and just study music. So, UNR was just a good fit, it was cheap, it was in-state. My mother didn’t want me to go too far. So.” Trisden: “So, when you got here, were you comfortable?” “I think as comfortable as any freshman was. I was fairly independent when I was growing up, as a teenager and in high school. My parents weren’t very strict on me being out. And I already was going to school thirty minutes away from home. So I was around Vegas a lot, and I was out fairly late. I think I was fairly comfortable being here by myself. It’s a little weird not having family, though. I grew up in a really family-­ structured kind of place. I also thought it was really weird not to have physical contact. That was a bit jarring to me. Like, not hugging people. Because, when you’re a freshman you don’t know a lot of people, and you don’t hug your roommate. (laughter) “I didn’t even join BSO [Black Student Organization] until my sophomore year. But, I was fortunate enough to have really great freshman roommates, a lot of whom I still talk to and still see. And I just hung out with them mostly my freshman year. I wasn’t really too involved in other activities, but I was comfortable. Everything here is super white, right? There’s a lot of white people. But I kind of felt like that was normal. I

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went to white schools all the time. I didn’t even realize it was an issue until I went to Black Student Organization and people were unsettled by it.” I probed, “Unsettled by what?” “By being the only black kid in class. And being in these big white spaces. But it was kind of normal to me.” Trisden noted that Elsa and Aiko went to the same high school, but Elsa was comfortable at UNR, while Aiko hated it and left as soon as she could transfer back to UNLV: “So, that’s a contrast between Elsa and Aiko. They went to the same high school. But, they get here and Elsa feels much more comfortable; but Aiko’s like: ‘I got to go.’” I responded: “I was thinking of that also. You know: how Aiko in her interview yesterday, was talking about how uncomfortable she was being the only black girl in every class. I was thinking about that one class that I taught where I first met you, Trisden. And Gabee was there; and Aiko too …” Trisden added, “And Kristen.” “And Kristen. And I was thinking, Oh, this is fantastic! There are four black kids. But there were sixty-five people in the class. And that is not really representative of anything in the nation.” Elsa guffawed, “Except for Reno, where it was downright integrated! Call in the Reverend! Let’s take a picture!” We were all laughing because it was so illustrative of white space. Four black students in a class of 65, and most of the white students regarded it as a diverse classroom. I recalled a discussion of the Black Panthers in that class. “The three most outspoken conservative white men all sat together, and the four black students also sat together in the row in front of them. And we had this discussion of Black Panthers one time.…” Trisden finished my story: “And they sat right behind us, too. So, it’s like, us four sitting there, and behind us, those three. So whenever they say something, all four of our hands go up immediately in response.” I continued the story to Elsa: “And in the discussion of the Black Panthers, when the three white kids said something about the Panthers that showed ignorance and hostility, the four black kids came right out of their seats and turned around to face them and disagree.” Trisden: One of them said something out like, “The Black Panthers were a terrorist group,” and then started to continue, and all four of us turned around and stopped him, saying ‘Oh no no no!!’”

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I added: “But Aiko said this was the only time she’d had anybody else black in the class. The first time she had three friends with her to argue her side about a race issue. And she obviously just hates being the only one and is really alienated.” “As Aiko was describing how she felt when she was almost always the only black student in a classroom, I finally saw it, you know? Really for the first time I saw vividly, what it must feel like to be the only black face in a classroom of white people. And Elsa, you’re saying, ‘Well, I’m used to it. It’s the way I grew up. It’s not something that startles me or makes me very uncomfortable.’ And that makes me wonder about the difference between your experience and Aiko’s. You both attended the same high school. So what do you think the reason is that she hates being the only black girl in the class, and you’re used to it. Is it a class issue? You’re from the middle class. Aiko grew up poor, with a single mom. But in her interview she emphasized that she was one of only fourteen other black girls at LVA. In the entire school! That’s what she was aware of. And you barely noticed it!” Elsa was taken aback at the difference between her perception and Aiko’s: “Really!” I laughed and said, “She knew. Exactly how many black students attended LVA.” Elsa began laughing: “That’s a funny figure. I’m trying to think. Yeah … not very many.” Trisden picked up my thread of why the two girls had such different perceptions of the same place: “I’m thinking the same thing. I think it’s because of economic class, as well as immigration. When we were reading [Hannah] Arendt, she was talking about how people, when they get here, they’re just trying to assimilate. [Trisden was referring to an essay by Hannah Arendt that I had assigned in my class on identity: “We Refugees.”] She made me think immigrants often have the attitude: ‘We need to be like them, and then we can move past that.’ So, I think that’s another reason you [Elsa] became so familiar with white culture. Your parents were immigrants and working so hard to assimilate.” Trisden continued: “So, of course, you’re black; but you’re not … African American. You’re away from that culture already, like you talked about. You had that separation from African American culture, and your mom was always saying you’re not like ‘them.’ So, if you’re not introduced to black culture, white culture is what you assimilate to. And that’s pretty much your culture until you got here. You do have some shared

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experiences, as you talked about when you got to BSO, and you could feel that. But, at the time, that was just kind of so far removed from your actual experience as a Black—but international Black—American.” “Exactly. And I feel that way when people talk about … I remember, when I first got here, black people used to say ‘Fuck the Police,’ and duh-­ duh-­ duh-duh-duh. And I never had that experience. You know? The police didn’t patrol my neighborhood when I was growing up. And I never saw the police shake down my brothers and fathers and uncles. When we saw police we would say, ‘Hey! How you guys doing?’—like how the white kids act when they see police. And when I see police at home in my neighborhood now, I probably know one of them, and I go up and hug them. And I don’t have the disconnect … or that fear, or whatever black people feel in those neighborhoods in poverty. It wasn’t passed down to me. I know a lot of what black people feel … they gained their culture from their parents, and from their environment. But I never had that. That’s one really big example where I figured that I don’t really fit into Black American culture, because I don’t really have a lot of those same shared experiences.” I asked, “Have you ever experienced racial taunts, here? At Nevada?” “Here at Nevada? I don’t really think so. I get, like, the athlete thing. Which is like when people ask if I’m an athlete.” Trisden: “Or what team you’re on.” Elsa: “Or what team we’re on. And that’s just silly. And I think people don’t even realize that it’s racist. And I’ve been followed. But, I’ve always been followed. Even when I was younger, I used to get followed, like in stores. But, whatever.” Trisden: “Did you ever wonder why you got followed?” “I knew why. And I can imagine times when maybe my parents were discriminated against. But they have kind of a double whammy, because they have really thick accents. And they’re obviously from a different country. A lot of people have patronized them and treated them very differently. So I never knew if it was a black thing, or an Ethiopian thing, or what. You know? But, here, nobody’s ever called me a nigger or anything crazy. One time, we weren’t let into a party because we were a group of black girls. But, I don’t know if it was a race thing; or if the party was full! (laughter) Or what!” I asked Elsa, “So, you do hang out with black kids now … Like, both your roommates are black. So, something shifted in your consciousness … do you think?”

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“Maybe, yeah. I think it was kind of like a home I never knew needed, or never knew I was a part of, in a way. Like, a community that I never knew I was allowed to be a part of. I’ve kind of always assumed that black kids aren’t going to like me … so I’m not going to try with them. But then when I came here … it’s like when people go to college, they kind of get going, trying to figure out where they belong … they join a fraternity or they join a something. I don’t know exactly why I joined the Black Student Organization. I think I just did. I went to a meeting. I think I went with Catalina, because she lived on my floor, and she wanted to go.” Trisden: “You went your freshman year, or your sophomore year?” “My sophomore year. I went, and was like, ‘These are my people!’ Somewhere and somehow, I knew, ‘These are my people; these are my folks.’ These are the black kids I never thought I knew, and they like me, and they’re not mean to me, and the girls don’t just think I’m this uppity, light-skinned girl. So I think I needed to feel accepted to be more comfortable in that situation.” “It makes you wonder who really does fit. And who really does feel accepted by the black community. If so many of us don’t feel included, is being black defined by the kids who aren’t ambitious? Or who aren’t smart, in that way? Who don’t want to pursue what we want to pursue? Because, I have met a lot of people who feel the same way I do: never quite ‘right’ as a black person. Like Krissy. [Kristen, a participant in this study.] Where is Krissy from? Is she from Vegas? Where did she go to high school?” Trisden: “West Prep.” Elsa: “Oh, really? Krissy is someone I feel like I would’ve known in high school. Someone who wears, like, thrift shop clothes. And who, like, you know—does the same stuff we do. And Aiko is someone who wears overalls to school. You know her. And she’s someone who went to LVA and is the type of black person I would know. But, it seems that a lot of black kids are that way, and they haven’t been allowed to be. Or, just now, in college, they kind of figure it out.” Thinking about her high school years, Elsa noted, “See, I think that, with black girls, specifically, I always felt a really big disconnect. I dated black boys. But black girls, I really just had no communication with. Because I was like, ‘You don’t like me, I don’t like you,’ and it was just kind of how it was. Aiko was one of my first real black friends. Me and Aiko would play basketball together. And that was why. Just because of basketball. But, I think that, in college, I’m trying to connect with black women, because I don’t have a lot of black female friends. And that’s so

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important to me now: this unity that I’m hoping to feel with other black women, with our shared experience and our unique status. I think that’s honestly the one identifying factor above all.” Trisden, turning back to the interview template, continued with the next question: “You said you haven’t directly felt any type of overt or blatant racism towards you? Have you seen that towards anyone else?” “I don’t think so. No. I don’t think so. I think racism is very theoretical to me. Like, I feel almost white, in that sense. It’s almost like it’s something that happens to other people. Maybe because I’m not black enough to receive it. I think, sometimes, you know, people don’t really question how dangerous I’m going to be because I’m lighter skinned. And that’s a privilege I have and I know I have. So I think a lot of times I’ve been able to fly under the radar a bit. And now that I have short hair, people are like, ‘What are you? Oh, wow!’” I asked, “Short hair is not … good? For black girls?” I wasn’t sure what the significance of cutting her hair was … but I think she meant that it made her seem more black to her white friends. Elsa currently wears her hair in a short natural. “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s weird. I think it masculinizes me a lot more than I ever thought it would. And I think that’s like the biggest thing that comes with the hair. But, I’m not sure if it makes me blacker, or if it makes me more exotic. I don’t know.” Trisden, pushing on with the interview questions: “So, do you believe racial tensions exist on campus?” “Oh, absolutely. I think they’re kind of suppressed because, you know, we’re all here to go to school, like: you need to chill out. But I think they’re more insidious than we all like to believe they are. And I sometimes don’t think we’re very conscious of them. Especially in the classroom. A lot of things—until you have the wool taken from your eyes—just go unnoticed for a lot of people. And I feel like I can speak to that point, because I really did have the wool over my eyes for a very, very long time. And since I never had ‘the talk,’ I was never really black, I never felt like I was part of that group. It’s like learning about Civil Rights, and learning about slavery and still feeling a disconnect, because I don’t actually know that history.” “I think racial tensions do exist [at Nevada], but people would like to believe they don’t. They’d like to be believe that their comments are harmless, and that they’re well-intentioned at heart. And most people are. And I think that most people are inherently good. But, that doesn’t mean

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that people don’t participate in racial behavior, and contribute to racial discrimination. Especially on campus. Even professors and people you’d like to think are above it, or who are more educated and really don’t have the excuse of being ignorant, in a way, really have no incentive to think about race. Race is always on the side. Even in political science classes. It’s like, ‘Here’s political science, and race is over there.’ So even if you are very well educated, you never have any real need to know about race or why it exits, or ethnicity, or any of those things.” Trisden: “Have you seen racism from faculty in the classroom? Or just students?” “I think sometimes I’ve heard faculty be a bit insensitive or say things that are a bit borderline, maybe, where you’re left thinking, ‘I don’t know if that maybe just hit me the wrong way,’ you know? But, I think with students, I’ve heard my fair share of stupid things Stupid, stupid things that people say—not necessarily about race directly, but about history. People don’t know their history. They don’t understand the circumstances that have led us to this situation and to the racial climate that we have now. I haven’t been in a lot of classes that discuss race or anything like that, but people are generally very oblivious to the subject. Like, in my AIDS class— my AIDSs Social Psych class. A lot of it is about activism and a lot of the history of the queer movement. And people will watch documentaries on the Stonewall riots, and watch gay people being beaten in the streets, and they have almost this very big wall, that doesn’t allow them to show compassion or empathy. When I watched the Stonewall riots, I was like, ‘What is this!!?? What happened?? Why haven’t they told us about this??’ I’m twenty-one years old and I didn’t even know about the Stonewall riots. And that’s a huge piece of history. And a very remarkable piece of history for a big group of people.” “But, if you’re in the mainstream and you subscribe to all of those teachings about what it means to be a mainstream white person, you don’t even have to deviate from what you need to learn or what’s in your major. And you basically get nothing for trying to be empathetic or trying to learn from someone else’s history. Because it’s not your history. So why care? ‘Why do we need to know about Latinx stuff? Or immigration? It doesn’t affect me or my family.’” Trisden: “It’s like tunnel vision.” “Exactly. It’s like tunnel vision. If it doesn’t even affect you whatsoever … like, if you’re a white, straight, male, and you’re just trying to get this business degree, take over your dad’s business … there’s really

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nothing to keep you from that. And you don’t really need to be inspired to learn about all these things that oppress other people. Because they don’t oppress you.” I followed up on the question of whether faculty were guilty of the same obliviousness: “And you’re saying, faculty is that way, too?” Elsa: “The faculty kind of operate in the same way—they’re just older people. (laughter) So. If you know the people that make the system, if you know the people who write the history books, you just keep it going. There’s no need to rock the boat. This system keeps patting you on the back, and you keep riding along with it. There’s no need to fix what’s not broken.” Trisden once again moved us along in the interview format: “So, have you ever had a black professor?” Elsa: “Yes. Dr. Hall. Precious Hall. The love of my life. Auntie Hall. She was so mean to us. (laughter) But, she loved us. I’d like to think that she was mean to us because we were the black kids. But, I’m OK with it, at that point. Even if she gave us lesser scores, because we were the black kids. I’m OK with it.” I asked, “Is this the class you were in together?” Trisden: “Yes. It was the New Jim Crow class.” Elsa: “The best class. I loved that class. And I’m so sad that it’s over. I loved Dr. Hall. She’s such an inspiration, to me.” Trisden: “Do you want to talk about the pressure you felt, having her as a black professor?” “I think, at first, I was just kind of worried—that I needed to bring my A game! I’m going to be a black woman in her class. She’s a black woman. I need to show up, and show out. Show her that I can do this. Show her that I’m going to be good. And that I’m going to come to class. I’m going to contribute. I don’t think I ever took a day off of that class. When you’re there, it feels like you have to talk. It’s like we have to show her that we’re here, too. She’s a trailblazer. And that we need to also be following what she’s accomplished and what she’s done. In that ‘linked fate’ kind of way that she always talks about. That we all need to do this for each other; and that her success is connected to my success, and my success is connected to someone else’s, too.” Trisden: “And, did you find that as a positive experience?” “Yes, definitely. I think that I could have had a black professor and it could have gone entirely the opposite way. But she’s an incredible professor and it was an incredible class. The first part was foundational work.

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And talk about other ethnicities. And the histories of other races. Just frameworks, and other theory. Like, the Japanese internment, for example. And then we focused on the book [Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow]. Applied a lot of those theories to the book. I’d really take that class again. Just, all over again.” Trisden was equally enthusiastic: “Same! Same. And just, having her as a professor. I don’t know, for me, I felt a personal connection, too. Some things she was saying, I’m like: ‘We’re here.’ I think she just got down to my level so often, to where she explained it in terms that I really, truly understood and could hold onto.” Elsa: “It’s great to feel that connection with a professor. You’re almost more ready to learn. Everything she said was like gold to me, because she was a black woman. It was like when I had that meeting with all of the Big Wigs, and What’s-Her-Face asked me, you know, ‘Why do you guys need a black professor? Why is that so important to you?’” Me: “One of the administrators?” Elsa: “One of the administrators.” Elsa: “And I had to explain to her, that basic human connection, you know? That, if someone looks like you, talks like you, is from the same place as you, what they say is more trustworthy. Just, off the top.” Trisden: “Off the bat.” Elsa: “And we would just understand everything that she said. And if we didn’t, she would explain it a different way. And she would talk about different social phenomena that go on, colorism, or the natural hair movement, or Black Lives Matter. And she had to struggle through similar things, being a black woman. And she would tell us about her experiences being an undergrad, a member of her family, a PhD student, all of these things. And we can relate. So it was just an incredible experience, having that class.” I noted: “It transcends what you all have been saying about feeling marginalized and alienated as black teenagers. When you get in a room with an educated black professor, especially if you’re a woman, an educated black woman, it allows you to put all the conflicting pieces together. Does that make sense?” Trisden’s and Elsa’s excitement over taking a class on “The New Jim Crow” with Professor Precious Hall, the only black professor either had had, was palpable. In the end, it was also a portentous discussion: unknown to the three of us at the time, both Trisden and Elsa would follow in

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Professor Hall’s footsteps, pursuing graduate degrees in African American Studies at UCLA and preparing to be black scholars themselves. However, one important detail struck me, that may have escaped their notice in their excitement about what they were learning from Precious Hall: She is a Professor of Political Science at Truckee Meadows Community College, not the University of Nevada. She is an adjunct at UNR: not a regular faculty member with all the privileges and salary that go with the title. The only black female professor either Elsa or Trisden had experienced in their university careers, was not a regular faculty member at their university. The question raised by the UNR administrator who inquired of Elsa about why having black professors was important reflected the administration’s lack of comprehension of the reality of the experiences of students of color on campus, as well as the mechanism by which the racial divide at UNR persists: two bright black students had to go off campus to the local community college to find a black professor who made them feel fully at ease in the classroom.

Yesenia I am always talking to the custodians. Because I relate. That is my dad. That is my mom.

Interview by Trisden Shaw and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring and Trisden Shaw Yesenia worked with Trisden at UNR’s campus bookstore. She was the first person he thought of inviting to take part in this study. When Trisden introduced Yesenia to Jennifer, Jennifer mentioned Trisden’s encounter with racists on his way to his interview and half-jokingly asked if Yesenia had encountered any racial hostility recently. At first Yesenia laughed off Jennifer’s question, but then she remembered: “Wait! I got stopped by ICE on my way home from campus yesterday!” Jennifer had not been expecting an affirmative response. She had meant the question as a humorous “ice breaker” [pun intended] and realized with dismay that the first two students to be interviewed had endured recent racial incidents. So Yesenia, like Trisden, began her interview by describing an unpleasant racist encounter. “So I was driving up to Stead [a working class neighborhood just outside of Reno proper]. There was a sheriff on one side and a white truck on the shoulder next to him. It looked like the sheriff was

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pulling the truck over for speeding. But I didn’t worry because I was going exactly 65. As I was getting off the highway, the truck pulled up behind me, and I thought it was just a truck. Then the lights started going off on it. And I thought, ‘What the heck?’ So I pulled over on the exit ramp by O’Brien Middle School, and I see that a cop is getting out. And he had a green uniform on. So I knew: This is Homeland Security. ICE … I know who they are.” The ICE agent asked to see her license. She agreed to produce it, but asked why he had pulled her over. “He said, ‘Oh, we’re just making sure that all of our students are safe in the speed limit.’ And I said, ‘But I wasn’t going over the speed limit.’ And he goes, ‘Yes, I understand, but we still need to see your license.’” After examining her license and her registration, he asked to tell him her social security. When she asked why, he said, it was to make sure that she was a legal citizen of the United States. He went back to his truck to check out her information. Twenty minutes later, he released her. Yesenia is an American citizen, born just a few miles away from where she was stopped. She resented the stop, which she interpreted as “driving while looking Mexican.” The incident might seem minor to those who have never had to endure anything similar, but to Yesenia it was infuriating—especially after she saw other, similar trucks stopping drivers on the side of the road. When she reached her boyfriend’s house, he informed her that ICE had already rounded up 75 or 80 undocumented people in the area. Yesenia grew teary eyed as she told us this. Trisden asked her if the area where she was stopped, and where she saw the other trucks, was predominantly Hispanic. She explained that it’s not so simple: depending on which neighborhood you’re in, you might see mostly white people—“conservative white people who have their farms and stuff like that.” Trisden asked whether she’d had other run-ins with ICE. Yesenia told of a time in middle school when there was a roundup of undocumented people. “I remember that week a lot of kids didn’t come to school, because a lot of their parents had been deported at that time.” It happened when she was in seventh grade, in 2007. That incident marked the dawn of Yesenia’s awareness of immigration issues. “That was when we started picking up on what ‘illegal’ was. We didn’t know if we were undocumented or documented, because we were all Latinos. Some of my friends were born in Mexico, and some of us weren’t. But that didn’t help us understand what ‘undocumented’ meant.

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I remember … I was so scared. I asked my parents, ‘Are we going to get deported?’ And they said, ‘No,’ because my dad was a citizen, and my mom had her green card. They said, ‘We’re fine. But we do need to worry about your uncles, and we do need to worry about your cousins.’ But they still didn’t explain what ‘undocumented’ meant.” For that information, she relied on her teachers. “[B]ecause of how many people were born outside of the country, they were trying to explain to us what it meant to be undocumented, and what it meant for us, and how this affected us.” She described a terrifying incident when several ICE vans pulled up to a friend’s house one afternoon with sirens blaring. Yesenia and some friends had gathered there to play after school. In addition to the group of 12-year-old girls, there were some younger siblings. The children had been told not to open the door to strangers, and they huddled in a corner trembling and crying while the agents pounded on the door shouting, “Police. Open up!” It seemed to the children that the agents were trying to break down the door. Ultimately the agents retreated without breaking into the house. As she told us the story, Yesenia began to sob. She doesn’t know how the story ended for her friend’s family, but she thinks they may have decided to return to Mexico soon afterwards. Struggling to regain her composure, she told us that had been the first time she came in contact with ICE. “And that was technically the last time I ever dealt with them, until yesterday.” Too upset to go on, she apologized for her tears. When she had collected herself, I asked if she would mind telling us what she was feeling now, at that moment. “I guess obviously I’m sad. I’m sad that …” She broke down again, her voice trailing off as she struggled to finish her sentence. “Sad that we have this fear in us. Like, we all come … our parents come to this country to find better hope and to give us an opportunity that they didn’t have. My parents didn’t go to school because they had to work. Their parents, you know, also needed their kids to work to help the family. My dad took up his first job when he was nine, and my mom did, too … My father originally came to this country just to work. So he would come, go back. Come, go back. Because obviously in Mexico, he couldn’t make what he could here. And so it got to the point where my dad just … he came during Reagan’s era, when Reagan was giving people papers, like official papers. So my dad became a resident through that. And then once he got

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the chance, he arranged my mom’s papers, and papers for my older brother and sister, because they were also born in Mexico. And my other sister was born here. I come from five children. I’m the youngest out of them.” Among her four siblings, only she and one older sister were born in the United States. Her older siblings, and many of her friends, came here as children. “So many students I know who were born outside the country but raised in this country, grow up knowing only this culture. They grow up knowing United States history … The only thing that doesn’t make them Americans is a piece of paper. It makes me super sad and angry that they get sent back to a country they don’t know anything about. I was fortunate enough to be born in this country, and my parents didn’t suffer the way so many undocumented parents do. But it just drives me crazy that people [white Americans] don’t try to understand why these parents come here, why they leave their country. Everyone struggles in their country, and they try to go to somewhere else so that they can better themselves. Make things better for their children and for generations to come. And then they don’t get the chances that we do because of a piece of a paper. It hurts so much, because I can’t do anything for them.” Childhood: Family, Community and ICE Trisden asked her to tell us more about her family. “My parents moved to our house in 1994. Really close to Montello. In that neighborhood, you will see a lot of people of color. It’s either Mexicans or Latinos or black people. Those are the two races that predominantly make up my neighborhood.” Parents bought the house with her uncle, her father’s brother, who is also her godfather. She had four siblings, and her godfather had four children. “So in total, we were like … thirteen people. The house only has three rooms and two bathrooms.” Yesenia’s father has worked at a hospital, as a cook in the kitchen, all her life. He also works at a casino, as a steward. “He’s had those two jobs for 25 years plus. He would get up every morning at five AM, go to work at the hospital until about 2:30 or 3:00. And then he’d get home, shower, and then leave to go to work at the casino. Wouldn’t come until one in the morning.” In other words, for 25 years, her father got by on four hours of sleep a night.

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Her mother had worked as a “picker” at a Barnes and Noble distribution center for the past seven years. Yesenia had mixed thoughts about the community she grew up in. “Obviously, that neighborhood isn’t the best neighborhood. But I’ve always felt like it was something I was proud of because of how close-knit we were. My brother was part of a gang, and that actually ties in with being more close. Because when he died, a lot of his gang members … they actually took care of us. So when we were out and walking around and stuff like that, they’d be like, ‘Aren’t you Luciano’s little sister?’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah.’ And they’d be like, ‘Get your ass home!’ All the time.” All her siblings went to the same schools, but none of her older brothers and sisters made it all the way though 12th grade. “I’m the only one that graduated high school and came to higher education. Because my parents were always working, we didn’t have someone at our house to tell us what to do … When we got out of school, we would have to go home by ourselves. And we would actually just go back and hang out by the middle school and watch people play soccer. And then we would walk the streets and stuff, or we would go to our other friends’ houses and hang out around there.” “It was always like everyone hanging out with everyone. And we didn’t see much trouble. We would see police officers once in a while and stuff like that, and we would see some violence. But it wasn’t too bad. Everything that happened that was really violent would happen after hours, like maybe at midnight and later. So luckily, we didn’t really have to get involved with that. And because I had seen my brother go through being a gang member, and saw my sisters participating in that too, I knew I didn’t want that path.” In an important way, her eldest brother’s involvement with his gang insulated her from harm. “No one really tried to start issues with me, because I was known. Because of my brother, everybody knew me and no one wanted to do anything to me. And that included other gangs, too, because everybody just knew each other and everyone tried to keep peace. They wouldn’t do any harm or anything. So I went on to high school.” Although she flourished in college, she wasn’t always a model student in high school. But she learned from the mistakes of her siblings. “In middle school, I was a little bad kid. Because I have the same temper as my older brother and my older sisters, I would argue with people. And it would get to the point where I would get in trouble. And when I was in high school, I decided that that wasn’t what I wanted, because I saw all

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the mistakes that my sisters were making. My oldest sister, Ana, dropped out of school at the age of 15 and got pregnant right away, and was addicted to drugs. She ended up running away and my dad basically disowned her, because he comes from a very machista culture. If the children disobey their parents in any way, they disown them. And whatever happens to you, you’re on your own, and that’s it.” That sister wasn’t allowed back in the house until the death of their older brother. “In order to see her, I would have to sneak out with my other sisters … And there were times when I remember she would come over to see my mom when my dad wasn’t home, and if he got off work early and we weren’t expecting him, we would see his truck and she would have to hide in one of our rooms and then sneak out of the house.” Fortunately, her sister and her father have reconciled. Another sister did somewhat better: she had two babies a year apart and got married at 18. But she dropped out of high school because of a failing grade on a proficiency exam. Her husband was abusive to both his wife and his children, who were taken away from her. (Yesenia’s parents became the children’s temporary guardians, and she and another sister, Marisol, would babysit the infants while their parents worked.) Because she was responsible for the care of a three-month-old, Yesenia couldn’t take part in after-school activities during middle school. Her sister didn’t get the children back until Yesenia was in high school. Marisol agreed with Yesenia that she didn’t want to follow their older sister’s path—but she ended up getting pregnant and didn’t finish high school, having missed a passing grade in math by one point. “So like all my sisters, she lived the same life, having babies with different men. In total, my sisters have eleven kids distributed between the three of them. And then my brother has his child that he left when he died. In total, I have twelve nephews and nieces. So I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to let that happen to me.” Talking about all this brought Yesenia to tears again. Stifling her sobs, she continued. Trisden and I noticed how pulling herself together in the interview paralleled her survival skills in life: just as she had forged ahead in her life, vowing to avoid the destructive pattern her older siblings had followed, she now composed herself and found the strength to continue with her story.

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High Schools: College Bound, Making Things Work, and Losing Her Brother Yesenia worried that her high school wasn’t challenging her academically and wouldn’t adequately prepare her to get into college, let alone do college work. After her sophomore year, she requested a transfer to a predominantly white school, which she knew was more academically rigorous. After only a year, though, she transferred back to her old high school: not because she couldn’t handle the work, but because of the racism she encountered at the new school. Yesenia described what she went through at the white school: “My level of education compared to these students’ education was completely different. And I knew that I had to work ten times harder to be the same as them. But I was like, ‘I don’t care. I need to do it. I need to do it. Because if this is the challenge that I’m going to get at a university, then I need to be on top of it.’ And I was loving it there, and I loved the people I hung out with. But I just couldn’t deal with the racism that was going on … There were so many white kids there that would just stereotype people. I would hear all the time, all the time they’d be sarcastic and say to me, ‘Gracias.’ Or ‘Amigo.’ … I wouldn’t take it offensively because obviously I didn’t think it was that offensive. But then when I would get a good grade in class, the white students would say ‘Are you sure she got better than me?’” Every morning, she would wake up not wanting to go to school. She would tell her parents she was sick, and they would dutifully call the school to report that she couldn’t go in. “It got to the point where I passed my classes with about, I think it was a 3. 0, just 3.0 average, which wasn’t something that I was used to. At Wooster, I had a 4.0 all the time.” She decided to transfer back to Wooster for her senior year and seek out teachers who would prepare her to attend university. “It was the best decision I could have made, because I not only challenged my teachers at the time to give me harder work, but I challenged my friends and everything. We were in calculus, and we were the highest class of calculus. And our teacher pushed us so that we can do very well on the AP exams and stuff. And I was one of the two students in all of her classes to get 100% on both finals, the first semester and second semester. And I got an A in her class, which was hard to do. I wasn’t playing around. I needed to do better.” This attitude carried Yesenia through college. She felt the weight of her entire family’s dreams on her shoulders: “Because when I get my diploma, it’s not just me who’s receiving it. It’s my parents who are receiving it, too. And now my nephews, because they all look up to me.”

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She listed the many AP and honors classes she had taken at her high school. One of those was an honors history class called “We the People”: a course all about the U.S. Constitution that Trisden had also taken at his high school in Las Vegas. Upon completing the course, students enter a national competition. They have to write an essay on each of three topics. There’s an in-person competition as well, in which judges question the students about specific Amendments. At this point in our conversation, Trisden and Yesenia were completing each other’s sentences, energized by their memories of the national competition. “At the beginning of the year,” Yesenia said, “they showed us the actual U.S. citizenship test. We saw statistics showing that if every adult American born in the U.S. were to take that exam, only 33% would actually pass it. At the end of the course 88% of our class passed.” Among the judges Yesenia had faced were U.S. Senator Harry Reid’s assistant and the author of the course textbook. At the end of the competition, the top five schools in northern Nevada would go on to the Regionals, which were held in Las Vegas. And the top five schools who won there would represent Nevada at the national competition in Washington, DC. But Yesenia and her teammates placed fifth and were scheduled to represent their school in Washington D.C. But at the last minute, the rules were changed and only four teams went to the Regionals. It was a crushing disappointment. Still, she remains proud of their accomplishment. “We got the highest score of all of the schools here in Reno … The white schools in Reno couldn’t believe we beat them.” Yesenia attributes much of her success to inspiring teachers. “I had amazing teachers who pushed me. I had Mr. Roberts, my English teacher, who I loved and adored. I had Mr. Fitzpatrick, who was my We the People teacher, and he adored me and he would push me all the time. He always reminded me how smart I was and how much I could accomplish. And then also Mr. Aytes, who changed my life so much. He is someone I’m still working with right now, to help more first-generation students come to the university and pursue higher education. I was pushed by these teachers who cared enough to take the time to push me. I honestly believe that if it wasn’t for them, I would still be struggling to get my high school diploma. Because sometimes, I just didn’t want to do school anymore because of family reasons and all my responsibilities to my family. But they would tell me, ‘You can’t do that. You’re going to be the first of

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everything in your family. Do you want to take that risk of not making your parents proud?’ So they pushed me a lot.” Trisden observed, “That’s a lot of pressure ….” Yesenia responded quickly. “Well, honestly, I would rather take that pressure than let my parents see me fail. Because they worked so hard to be here. They worked so hard. And when my dad got that citizenship, he was so happy. Like so, so happy. I remember he used to tell us he worked his two jobs, plus he paid for classes so that he could learn better English so that he knew what was on the exam. At the time, he had to take the citizenship exam in English. He couldn’t take it in Spanish. And so he did that. Then he actually passed the test on his first try. So I just didn’t want to fail him. That was my biggest thing. Because he’s my everything. Him and my mom have worked so hard for us in general. My parents have always taken care of their kids, always. Financially and emotionally. Even though we grew up not having them around because they were always working.” Jennifer asked who took care of her when she was young. Who made dinner? Did she have to prepare it herself? Yesenia’s answer surprised Jennifer and made her aware of her own preconceptions about gang members in the communities of people of color. It was Yesenia’s oldest brother, the “gangbanger,” who took care of his four younger siblings while their parents were working. “Even though he was doing things I don’t approve of, and there were so many times that he was actually incarcerated and everything, he still managed to figure out how to look after us. He was the one on top of our schoolwork, so if we got called into the principal’s office for whatever reason and they needed a parent to come pick us up, my parents couldn’t. It was him. He was always the one, always doing it. When I was sick, he was the one taking care of me. And so when he got cancer, it was a really big … The worst thing is that my brother died in my mom’s arms.” “He went to the hospital that day, and they just told him there was nothing they could do for him.” She was ten at the time and didn’t understand much of what was happening. Telling this story reduced Yesenia to tears again. She apologized between sobs. Jennifer and Trisden were moved to tears by the story and encouraged her to take her time. But Yesenia has not gotten where she is by giving in to her sadness. She soldiered on, sobbing as she spoke and stopping occasionally to compose herself.

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“Recently I found out that my brother had known for several years that he had cancer. But he didn’t tell us because he was worried about the money situation. And my mom holds it against herself, because she thinks that if we would have known, he could have still been alive.” Her voice trailed off in tears again. Jennifer said gently, “There are a lot of heroes in your family.” “Yeah, seriously.” Her brother had had testicular cancer, she explained. It had spread to his kidneys and then to his liver, possibly to his lungs as well. “When he was dying, he was so skinny. He couldn’t get up because his feet were so swollen. And he couldn’t talk, and so he would just sleep on the couch … And then the day that he died, he woke up and he looked at my mom. And she went towards him to see what was wrong. And he started spitting up water … And so then my mom said that all she remembers was him looking towards the door. And at that point, she grabbed him and held him. And he just closed his eyes.” Yesenia was telling this story through sobs and tears that felt fresh, as though this had just happened days before. She says she has told the story many times, and it never gets easier. Luciano wrote a letter to their mother shortly before he died. In it, he said he felt that Yesenia was like his child. “I was super close to him, so I expect this pain to continue forever. But … I’m a strong believer in God. Not like super strong, but I believe that if that was his fate, that was his fate.” She considers her brother her guardian angel—a role he shares with her parents. She says she would never sneak out of the house: “because I was so scared that, a) my parents would find out, and they would be so upset with me, and, b) my brother was watching me from heaven and he would kill me … I put those pressures on myself, obviously.” When Yesenia finished speaking, all three, Yesenia, Jennifer, and Trisden, needed a moment to catch their breath. Trisden, trying to find words, said, “I had known a bunch about you, but not all of that … I’m so sorry.” With her indomitable strength and resilience, Yesenia took it on herself to comfort Trisden. “It’s okay, dude.” Trisden saw a connection between her brother’s tragic early death and Yesenia’s determination to make something positive of her life. She agreed and explored the idea: “I was so young [when he died] … but I never thought of growing up to be something higher. You know there’s so many

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kids that think, oh, I want to be a doctor … We never grew up having those kind of motivations. All we thought about was working after high school. That’s all there was, because that’s all we saw our parents do. We went to so many school activities, and our parents were never there because they were always working. And that was the same with a lot of our friends. And it was something that I was comfortable with, because it was a constant thing in my life. When I was in high school my senior year, I was involved in the theater program at Wooster. I was always the stage manager, though. I never performed. But then my senior year my teacher urged me, ‘You have to at least participate in one.’” She performed in a murder mystery called Thirteen Past Midnight. “My drama teacher, Mr. Roberts, who was also my English teacher, loved how I acted. So he put me in one of the highest roles in the show, and I told my parents, ‘Oh, hey, I’m going to be in this play. You should come.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, okay, we’ll go.’ And then I called them an hour before. I was like, ‘You guys are still coming, right?’ And they were like, ‘Oh, we can’t. We have to work.’ My dad didn’t ask for the day off. He usually never asked for days off, like birthdays, holidays, nothing. “That was the first time I was really hurt by it, but it was one of those things that I thought, ‘I have to understand it.’ And a lot of my theatre friends were white, and so on the last day, all of their parents would always be there and would always bring their kids roses and stuff.” A tribute to her teachers: Mr. Roberts and his wife always brought flowers for all the Latino kids. “We always told them that they were like our parents, because they always treated us like they were. They had a huge influence.” Trisden asked Yesenia what influences in her life had led her to expect more than a job and babies after graduating high school. Her parents assumed she would simply find a job after graduating high school—“Were there any expectations from anyone else? Did you have other mentors who had an expectation of you to get to higher education?” She confirmed Trisden’s assumption that her parents expected her to marry and have children. “My father was raised to believe that women’s place was to be a wife. Like, ‘Yeah, you can continue your career, but you also need to do your duties as a woman.’ And so I grew up just thinking that that was the most that I wanted to do. But then when I went to Wooster and met Aytes and Fitz [her teachers and advisors], they wouldn’t let that happen. Aytes actually would sit down with me and go through

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scholarships and help me apply … I had him for a seminar class, which was all about scholarships.” Her first day in this seminar, Mr. Aytes asked what college she hoped to attend. By then, she had an answer ready. “I was like, ‘I want to go to NYU.’ That was the school I was dying to go … I wanted to live in New York. And then if not, I want to go to the School of Economics in London. I want those two places, and that’s all I want. And UNR was my Plan Z. It was if I couldn’t get into anything else, and that was all.” She said that Mr. Aytes replied, “Well, we need to work on everything to get you up to that school.” But he also wanted her to apply to UNR and Truckee Meadows Community College, “just in case.” At first she refused, but he insisted. Most of the schools she applied to accepted her, including NYU. “But then the tuition was killing me. When I got my packet from NYU it was like $40,000.” She wasn’t fazed. She figured she would apply for scholarships. Unfortunately, when her parents filled out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form, their combined income made her ineligible for need-based financial aid. That seemed to both Jennifer and Trisden an outrageous injustice: Yesenia’s parents were working three jobs to make ends meet for five kids—but on paper, their income disqualified her for aid. Her parents had done everything we ask of law-abiding immigrants. They learned English. They worked double shifts, three jobs between two parents. Their children took care of each other while the parents worked. The father and his brother pooled their savings to buy a three-room house where four parents and seven children lived. Her father studied and passed his citizenship exam in English while working two jobs and supporting his family of seven. Then, when his youngest daughter is admitted to several competitive colleges, the family is penalized for being “too successful.” Her older siblings could be considered casualties of poverty: joining gangs, not finishing high school, getting pregnant, falling victim to drug addiction and domestic violence. But Yesenia, the youngest daughter, had learned from their mistakes and done everything right. A small, elite college might have taken a closer look at her situation and given her the aid she so clearly deserved, but it never occurred to her to apply to a small, elite college. She received a handful of small private scholarships, but they weren’t enough to enable her to pay NYU’s tuition. In the end, she had to fall

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back on “Plan Z,” the University of Nevada, Reno, where she would be able to take advantage of the state’s “Millennium Scholarship” awarded to Nevada high school students who graduated with a certain grade point average and planned to attend the University of Nevada. She would be able to pay in-state tuition and live at home. Her father, a traditional man who never expected his daughters to aspire to anything more than marriage and motherhood, recognized his youngest daughter’s extraordinary achievement and took out loans against his retirement savings so that Yesenia could attend the University of Nevada. She arrived at UNR with three scholarships, including the Millennium Scholarship, and one from the Reno Firefighters, which Mr. Aytes had applied for on her behalf, in secret. “He didn’t want me to know, because everytime I didn’t get a scholarship I would cry … I owe him a lot.” Her father paid whatever fees remained. Arriving at college should have been a moment of triumph for Yesenia, but she couldn’t forget the dreams that had collapsed. “My first day at UNR … I was crying. I was so upset … I got a parking pass in the garage and I sat in my car, crying. And I was like, ‘I don’t want to go to this school. I don’t want to be here.’” To her own surprise, however, this far-from-prestigious college turned out to be a life-changing experience. “I’m so thankful that I came here … I’ve gotten so many opportunities here. I’ve gone to Chicago, all paid for through the Latino Student Advisory Board. I’ve gone to Stanford University to watch another conference called Voto Latino, which is another thing that I got through LSAB [Latino Student Advisory Board]. I got a scholarship to go study in London through the School of Business. I went to London School of Economics for a month to study.” She went on to list further opportunities—including the chance to meet with UNR’s President, Marc Johnson, to discuss diversity and the problems of undocumented students. “You can say that maybe it can happen at bigger schools too, but I’m just so glad that I came here, because I think that if I were to try to accomplish the same things at a bigger name school, I wouldn’t have been as successful at those schools as I have been here.” Trisden asked if she could explain why this particular university had enabled her to thrive, when a more prestigious one might not have. Yesenia replied, “I think UNR is trying to be more diverse. You know, the university is trying to have more influence on our community, because

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they do see that outside of the university, it’s all diverse. Reno isn’t just made up of white people. And we have so many students that are undocumented, from different races, not just Latinos. And how [are Trump’s immigration policies] affecting them? A lot of those students are some of the brightest in the university, and they’re going to lose them over a piece of paper. So how do we make that better? That’s what I was asking President Johnson. I think we actually opened his eyes to what being undocumented means to DACA students.” She stressed this point, which is so crucial to so many people she knows. “The only thing that sets DACA students apart from us is a piece of paper. A paper. One of my friends is a citizen of the United States, but her parents are undocumented. And she struggles all the time, because she grew up in a predominantly white area. So she is really close to understanding white people. But she’s so confused, because her parents are undocumented. So her white friends don’t fear anything like that, and they don’t understand that. When I started hanging out with her, and me being so involved in my Latino heritage, she started opening her eyes a little bit more. I was telling her, ‘You can’t let that happen’ [i.e., losing her connection with Latino culture]. And she was like, ‘You can’t argue with them [white people]. That’s how it is.’ And I was like, ‘No, it isn’t like that. You can’t think that way.’” The conversation had entered unfamiliar territory for Jennifer, and she asked Yesenia to explain what she meant about not being able to argue with white people. “Because they assume their world is the way the whole world is. Thinking that you have to have the nicest outfits, you have to have the nicest car. In my culture, you will never get a brand new car. Your first will never be a nice car. It will be a car that your parents paid maybe a thousand for. And if it gets you from Point A to Point B, that’s all you need.” Trisden had lived the same experience, having inherited a temperamental pickup truck from his stepfather. He chimed in, “And you better be happy!” Yesenia explained that her friend had fallen into the trap of believing that she needed the same luxuries as her white friends. “Because all her white friends had gotten brand new cars with zero miles on it, that’s what she wanted. And she wanted the nice clothes, the designer bags, the designer everything, because her friends had it. So why wasn’t she getting it? She thought she should have it, just like her white friends did. And to me, I’m like … I love hand-me-downs. Because that’s what I grew up on,

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and I’m never going to judge my parents because they couldn’t give me all that new stuff. And I’m never going to feel like a shitty person because I didn’t have that.” This resonated with Trisden. He added, “Yeah, exactly. Like, you have to work for something. My truck is terrible. Sometimes, it doesn’t want to start. But it teaches me things. I try to … I give it about 10 minutes to keep trying it, and finally it kicks on. It teaches me a little bit about patience. I’m not going to completely give up on you, Hot Sauce. You’re going to be fine! I feel like it teaches you … It gives you a little bit more character.” Yesenia said, “It gives you a reason to actually do more, you know?” From there, it was a short jump to other cultural differences Yesenia had observed. “I see kids who throw fits in the stores or something, and I see it a lot from white families. A lot of the white families, they let their kids act up. And they let their kids hit them. And in my family, if we ever spoke back to my parents, a slap across our face! That’s how we were raised. I remember when my sisters and I would argue, my dad would just go, ‘Shh.’ And everybody would shut up. No one said anything more. And so that’s something that I realize that, my parents, they taught us how to have manners. I know a lot of white people obviously have manners, too. But for example, if I’m talking to Trisden, my nephews won’t interrupt because we taught them not to do that. And when I used to volunteer at elementary schools, I would be talking to someone, and a white child would come up and be like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.’ And constantly pulling on me. And I would have to tell them, ‘Give me a minute.’ I noticed that difference.” Manners weren’t the only area of difference she experienced. Another surprise: when Trisden asked at what point she realized that being Latina was different than being white, Yesenia said, “‘I think the We the People’ competition was what did it. That was the first time I remember being angry about being a POC [Person of Color]. I genuinely felt it was white resentment about Wooster competing for the state championship. Every time you hear about Wooster, it’s stereotypical. We’re pregnant all the time. We’re gangsters. We fight teachers. We do this, this, and that. It was always brought back to our color: ‘Because they’re black, because they’re Mexican …’ The reason I was so upset was because one of the Reed kids [i.e., from an affluent, white high school in the area] said, ‘Why don’t you just go back to playing soccer?’ They told me that.”

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Yesenia’s team had scored just one point below the Reed team’s—and then the number of teams that would go to the state championship was dropped to four, and they were excluded. Her team tried to take the disappointment in stride, but when they were lining up to take a photo with the judges, one of the Reed students made the dismissive soccer comment. “And then I was just like, ‘What does that mean? I don’t even play soccer. I don’t follow that sport. Now you’re just being stereotypical about a race …’” The Reed students rolled their eyes and walked away. But Yesenia was furious. “I asked my teacher, ‘Did you just hear him? Did you just see that?’ And he was like, ‘Just let it go. Just let it go.’ And I told him, ‘You can let it go because you’re a white man. It’s fine for you to let things go. But me, I’m a Latina woman, and you’re telling me to let something like that go? No.’” She wasn’t the only one on her team who was upset by the comment. “I know a lot of my friends were heated about it. And that was wrong obviously, because we were allowing these stereotypes to come true. Because we were even more upset that we weren’t supposed to say anything about it. I was so upset, I was in tears. But I knew we just had to let it go. Right now, we’re just confirming to them that we are what they say we are.” The incident was a crystallizing moment for her cultural consciousness. Obviously, she had known that her family was Mexican-American for many years. But this experience at “We the People” inspired her to take renewed pride in her culture. “I’m like … why do I have to be constantly triggered because I’m brown? Why is that affecting me? Why does it continue to affect me? I speak English. I write in English.” Trisden pointed out, “And you’re debating the Constitution!”—something most white Americans could never do. “Yeah, exactly. I read and write English better than I write in Spanish …” The conversation moved on to her experiences at UNR. Trisden asked whether she had ever experienced overt racism on campus, or if she’d ever seen it happen to other people. The answer was No. But Yesenia had something else to say on the subject: something more subtle. She noted, “Obviously in classes, it’s always that feeling, like, Do I belong here?” It was difficult for Jennifer to hear the words “obviously in classes,” which she saw Trisden nod in agreement with. She wondered if, as a

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member of the faculty, her classes were part of the problem. She had questions to ask, but those would have to wait. As a Latina student in the business school, Yesenia found very few others of her ethnicity in her classes. “I wanted to do business because I felt that it was one of those things that, no matter where you go you can always use a business degree. And then I started taking classes and questioned myself: ‘Do I belong here? There are so many white people.’” It wasn’t just a matter of skin color, though. “There are so many things that people say that just slide by people. And to me, ‘That’s racist. You can’t say that. That’s disrespectful.’ And people try to tell me, ‘It’s fine, it’s fine. Just let it go.’ And I’m thinking, ‘No.’ It’s just like it was at [the white high school she attended for her junior year], when people would say like, ‘Oh, gracias,’ or, ‘Amigo’, or something like that. And I knew it was in a mocking way. And I’m just like, ‘You can’t talk to me like that.’” She observed that some of her peers tried to cope with the subtle racism by assimilating. “Then there are the [Latino] students here who try to fit in so much. They’ll be like, ‘Oh, I don’t speak Spanish. Yeah, I’m Mexican-­ American, but I’m not really part of that culture.’ It makes me so upset. You know, there are so many Latino custodians. And there are Latino students who won’t talk to the custodians. It’s like they’re saying, ‘Don’t talk to me. You’re dirty compared to me.’ … I am always talking to the custodians. Because I relate. That is my dad. That is my mom … I feel this sympathy … You should never make someone else feel like a shitty person or a shitty employee because they’re not where you are. It pisses me off so much.” The anger she felt at that moment led her to the issue that underlies all conversations about race and immigration in America in recent years. “And then you just hear things, especially with this [2016] election. This election ruined it a lot. Not ruined it, but it added to it. So many people are like, ‘Thank God. I’m so tired of all these colored people taking up my seat …’” That surprised Jennifer, who asked her to confirm that she had literally heard students say such things. “Yeah, in the business school, they say that a lot. Like, ‘I’m so tired of you guys being here.’” “To you?!” “Yeah, exactly. I’ve seen it when they think they’re joking around: ‘Hey, here comes Trump. I hope you guys already packed your bags.’ They

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don’t look at me directly. But they’ll say it loud enough so they know I hear.” On Election Day, 2016, a student in her Management class wore his Trump shirt. “He was like, ‘Oh, Yesenia, who are you voting for?’ And I said, ‘Obviously Hillary. Who else would I vote for? You think I’m going to vote for that piece of shit that you call a presidential candidate?’ And then he said, ‘Oh, well you want to bet on who’s going to win?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you.’ At the time it was a joke. He said, ‘If Trump wins, you have to make me traditional Mexican food.’ And I said, ‘Okay then I want traditional American food if he loses. Can you tell me what that is? I want what your ancestors were eating.’ And so then obviously, Trump won. And then that Thursday, the next class, he said, ‘Are you ready to go back to your country?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah. Are you ready to go back to yours? Because weren’t you claiming last week that you were German? Oh, now you’re not? Now you don’t want to claim it? Because trust me, if Trump is trying to kick out all of us Mexicans, he’s going to kick out your family, too.’ He just stayed quiet. And I was like, ‘This land that you are standing on belonged to my people, because it was Mexico’s land before it was yours.’ And then he just said, ‘Whatever …’” By then, the conversation had lasted two hours. Jennifer and Trisden didn’t want to make Yesenia late for work. She agreed to stay a while longer and to meet again to cover anything that was left out. Jennifer raised the question that had been so troubling, about the racial environment in the university’s classrooms. When Yesenia and Trisden had agreed that they’d both experienced discomfort in classes, that had upset Jennifer. “When I see the two of you roll your eyes at the thought of being in a classroom at Nevada, I wonder what is going on in my classes that I am unaware of. What’s it like to be a student of color in a Nevada classroom? What caused you to roll your eyes?” The answer in a nutshell was microaggressions: a racist undertone to everyday interactions that white people tend not to notice, but which are exhausting and depressing to people who are the targets of these stereotypes. When Trisden was called the N-word by his fellow students—when Yesenia was told to ‘pack her bags and go back to where you came from’ after Trump was elected—those were explicit moments of hostile racism. But what exhausts Yesenia, Trisden, and other students of color daily are the assumptions expressed in university classrooms by white Christian students about people with darker skin.

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Trisden gave some specifics. “For me, I’m a political science major in political science classes, so it’s always a constant struggle, because we’re talking about the policies that help sustain this racial environment. And if we’re not challenging these things that we’re hearing, then we’re never going to make that real change, like you said. And I’ve had classes, like your class on race and gender, that were enlightened about race, and yet we still had the Three Stooges in the back.” The Three Stooges was an apt description, Jennifer agreed, of the three students, all white males, who didn’t believe that racism was a problem in the United States (as proof, one of them frequently reminded us that he had a Mexican friend and a black friend), and who continually injected their opinions into class discussions, though it was clear to everybody that they had not done the readings and were not paying attention to the lectures. Other students complained to Jennifer that these three were hijacking the class. For Jennifer, they ruined the class, and the other students, no matter their race, seemed to feel the same way. As a teacher, they had put Jennifer in a difficult position: she didn’t want to silence them entirely, but she also didn’t want them to send every discussion off the rails with their smug biases. Trisden asked Yesenia whether she had ever had a professor of color in the business school. The answer was No. “I’ve never had a Mexican professor or a person that I can personally connect to. I’ve never even had a black teacher. And then even in my Spanish courses, I was being taught by white people. I wanted to take Professor [Daniel] Perez. He’s someone who speaks on being gay and … he’s amazing. I wanted to take him because he had a class on Chicano culture and especially the L.A. Chicano lifestyle. That’s how I grew up, because of my brother being gang-affiliated. I love that culture. I can relate. Everything that they do, I grew up on.” She was torn, though, because she had several courses left to take to fulfill her major’s requirements, and this one seemed a luxury. “But then I was thinking, ‘Since when was taking a course on your culture unnecessary?’ And it was really sad to me that I would think like that … that it was more important to take other courses than it was to take that one.” She decided not to take that course, and regrets her decision to this day. At that point, Yesenia had to go to work. None of us felt that we were finished, though, and we resumed the conversation several weeks later.

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No Spanish Spoken Here Trisden asked if it would be accurate to say that, in Yesenia’s college experience, she hadn’t experienced much overt racism, “but those constant micro-aggressions are very demeaning.” Yesenia affirmed this strongly. Trisden then asked a question to which he seemed to already know the answer. He asked whether she had experienced microaggressions while working on campus. Yesenia told a story that shocked Jennifer. “When I first started working at the Wolf Shop [the campus store], I would speak both languages … I could be talking to one of my friends, who also speaks Spanish, and I can literally say something in Spanish and then go into English. And that’s like how we’ll talk back and forth. Or we’ll just talk completely in Spanish. Whatever language we’re comfortable with at that moment is what we’ll talk. And my store director said, ‘Hey, no more. You guys cannot speak Spanish here anymore.’” She asked why not, and he didn’t answer—but he told her two Latina coworkers the same thing. “That day, my co-worker had called me because we co-supervise. She called me and she was crying and really upset. I asked, ‘What’s up?’ And she said, ‘Well, he pulled me into his office and was telling me that next time we speak Spanish, we’re going to get fired.’” Jennifer knew that both Yesenia and Trisden worked as managers at the Wolf Shop, but she had no idea that anything like this went on there. According to Yesenia’s friend, the store director had told her “that people are saying we are talking bad about other people in our language. And so he didn’t want us speaking it at all.” This infuriated Yesenia. She wanted to defy the store director by speaking her first language freely—but she didn’t want to get fired, so she visited the campus Diversity Center and consulted the advisors there. She asked if it was possible to get fired just for speaking Spanish. The advisor asked her whether she had been gossiping in Spanish, that is, talking maliciously about other people. She assured them, “No, whenever we’re talking, it’s something like ‘Hey, can you hand me that?’ Or, ‘Hey, like, did you hear about this, this and this?’” The Director of the Diversity Center agreed that this shouldn’t have happened. He said, “That’s not acceptable. Don’t bring it up to your boss. Don’t say anything. Let him come to you.” Yesenia and her friend weren’t the only workers at the shop who spoke to each other in Spanish. There was also an older man, a manager. “When he saw us, he would talk to us in Spanish. There were two Yesenias at my

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job. And so, he gave me a nickname in Spanish so that he can distinguish us. So, he’d call me Nena. It means ‘short’. Or he would say ‘Mija,’ to all of us. Anyone who spoke Spanish, it would be like Mija or Mijo.” (This is a contraction for “Mi hija” or “Mi hijo,” “My daughter,” or “My son”: a common way to address a younger person affectionately.) Trisden observed, “It’s kind of endearing, especially within the community of the Wolf Shop where it’s predominately white. It brings it closer to home.” “Yeah, exactly,” Yesenia agreed. “And so, he would always talk to me in Spanish, always talk to my other two co-workers Spanish. It was fine. And then one day the store director was walking behind us and the manager was speaking to us in Spanish and then suddenly he switched to English and said ‘Oh, Yesenia, remember we can’t speak Spanish at work anymore.’ Like, out of nowhere. It was like a cut.” She turned around and saw the store director and understood. This was a special pain for her, seeing this older man complying with the unjust rule. The story took a surprising and encouraging turn at that point. The Director of the Diversity Center followed up on Yesenia’s inquiry and went to speak to the store director. At the very next meeting of the textbook department staff, the Director announced, “By the way, remember, the university is a melting pot just like the world is, and especially United States. And I want you guys to respect your cultures and other people’s culture. But make sure that you’re not being offensive to anyone.” Yesenia was suspicious of the sudden reversal. She wasn’t sure what to think. Then the store director called her into his office for a private discussion, at which he tried to explain why he had made that rule about not speaking Spanish. “He was just like, ‘Hey, this is what I heard, that you guys were talking badly about people in Spanish.’ And I was like, ‘We have never talked bad about anyone in Spanish.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s just a few of your co-workers have said that you have made them feel uncomfortable with speaking Spanish around them.’” He seemed to be saying contradictory things. She challenged him. “I asked, ‘So what is it? Is it are we talking badly about them in Spanish or are we making them feel uncomfortable with us speaking Spanish?’ … He said, ‘It’s that you’re making them feel uncomfortable with you guys speaking Spanish around them.’ And I told him, ‘I never speak Spanish to my co-workers if there’s someone who doesn’t speak Spanish there.

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Because we know how that makes people feel. We’ve already seen it. This is something that we deal with every day.’” Fed up with the entire situation, Yesenia stood up for herself firmly. She told her supervisor, if he had a serious complaint about her performance, “then okay, fire me. Tell me that I’m doing something wrong if it’s interfering with my work. If it’s not, then don’t talk to me about it because I’m not having this conversation with you again.” Reflecting on the story she had just told, she observed, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so aware of being Mexican-American and … Latino until I came to this University. I never saw how much discrimination there was until I got here.” It reminded her, she said, of that one year at the mostly white high school, which sent her scrambling back to her less rigorous but more comfortable school. At UNR, though, she knew she had to stick it out. If she wanted to accomplish her goals in life, she would have to learn to live with white people and racism, both implicit and explicit. “I could run from it when I was younger, when I went back to Wooster from Damonte, but that’s not an option any more. So, I need to face it. And I need to be as proud about my race as I am about being an American because that’s what’s going to help me.” “A lot of my friends are like, ‘Keep it down that you’re Hispanic.’ I had a friend when I was at Damonte who was Latina. I saw her as being so white-washed … She had gone to all these schools that were predominately white. But then coming here to the university, I met up with her our sophomore year and she was all involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. And she said, ‘I never realized how racist people are until we got to higher education and saw we’re not the same.’” Trisden observed, “I’ve seen a recurring theme in these interviews. Within the black community, when you are thriving and prospering, you’re accused of being not black enough. You’re ‘white-washed,’ the same term you used. My question is, do you see that in your community? When you came back from Damonte Ranch, did you get that type of criticism?” “Yeah, definitely. I think that’s something we’re still struggling with: ‘How Latino are you?’ Like what percentage of Latino are you technically because of you being born in America? When I was younger, any time I went back to Mexico to see my cousins or any of my mom’s or my grandma’s neighbors, they’d be like, ‘She’s gringa, she’s gringa,’ which means like I’m white. Because I was born in America it makes me less Mexican. And that was the same situation when I came back to Wooster from

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Damonte Ranch. My friends at Wooster would like tease me and be like, ‘You’re so white-washed now. You’re so whitewashed.’” She offered a specific example of this culture clash between Latinos. “My boyfriend is from Mexico City. He was born there, raised there, and then brought to the States at the age of six. My dad was actually born in Spain, but raised in Mexico, so he considers himself Mexican. But my mom is from Michoacán. And her enchiladas are red. We put everything inside the tortilla, wrap it, and then that’s the enchilada. As for my boyfriend, they take the tortilla, dip it in the green sauce, and then they flatten it. Nothing inside. They put the chicken, cheese on top, then they add like onion, cilantro. So, when I first started going to his house, and like eating his mom’s food, I was like, ‘That’s not enchiladas!’ We only put chicken, cabbage, onion, and then some vinegar on top of it, and then we wrap it. And then we add cheese on top of that. And that’s how we do it. And then I had a friend, whose mom was from Jalisco. She used red sauce but she would take the red sauce, dip it, put the tortilla uncooked, then put that in the fryer. She would fry the sauce with it. And then put potato on top of it, and then wrap that. So, it was just different ways of cooking it. I was so confused. I was like, ‘That’s not Mexican!’” Another difference is the urban/rural divide. “There’s city folks, and then there’s like ranch folks. And my family is ranch. And my boyfriend’s family is city. So when they talk about like ranch people, they call them hicks. Redneck, you know? … That’s Mexicans themselves.” And, of course, as in many cultures, there is the issue of skin color. “Latinos, we have that racism of the darker you are, the poorer you are. And then we come here and then we have to figure out how Latino we are. Are we American enough, are we Mexican enough?” In Trisden’s interview, he had mentioned his sense that the more he succeeded in his goals, the more he was resented by the people he’d grown up with. He was accused of being “whitewashed” for leaving poverty and crime behind. It forced him to question himself and to think about how he could combine his sense of pride in being black with a new identity as an educated man trying to make a difference in the world. “Yesenia, does that also describe your conflict with ‘how Mexican’ you are? Is it that that you’re not Mexican enough because you’re succeeding? Or is it light skin? Or is it that the more more you become what American society defines as successful, the ‘whiter’ you become?” Yesenia tried to convey her experience this way: “You’re always battling with what you are. I’m the first in my family to graduate high school and

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come on to college. I have to fight that a lot with my own sisters. My sisters are always telling me, ‘Oh, you think you’re better than us because you went on to school.’ And they’ll always hit me with ‘Remember where you come from.’ It’s a constant struggle. If it’s not some stranger, it’s my own family. It’s always there.” Trisden summed up the experience this way: “If you’re moving up in life, esteem, prestige, maybe class … or really just education … it always seems that the higher you go up, the more white it is. And so, because you’re navigating more white space, you may seem more white, but you’re just navigating that space. You’re trying to make a space for yourself. And maybe a space for your community.” “But then, you’re not accepted by your community,” Yesenia said. Yesenia pointed out the example of Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic Senator from Nevada, the first Latina in the Senate, and the first woman and Latina Senator from Nevada: “In the Hispanic community there’s very little respect for her being Hispanic. And it’s because a lot of people believe that she’s third generation, so that makes her less Hispanic. And therefore, she exploited being Latina to win the election.” “She doesn’t affiliate. Like, she’s never affiliated with us … And that’s something that I think we fear. Being first generations, we’re like, okay, our kids are going to be second generation, and then their kids are going to be third generation. And then they’re just going to lose the culture as they go. That constant fear of losing who you are. I think about it a lot. Looking at my nephews … very few of them speak Spanish … Half of them do, half of them don’t.” Trisden asked if that was because their parents didn’t speak Spanish around them, or if there was a different reason. He had intuited the answer correctly. “When my parents came to the States, they wanted us to only learn English because they didn’t want us to be discriminated against.” Trisden concluded with this final question: “If white America were listening, what would you ask them? What would you want to say, or what do you think they need to know?” Yesenia replied, “I guess what I would ask them was like, what makes me different than you? We’re both going to the same public school. You learned the same things as I learned. We practically do the same activities. What makes me less than you? I would ask them that.”

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Paterno I don’t know what I am. I’m going to be entirely clear. I have no fucking clue what I am.

Interviewed by Trisden Shaw and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring and Reece Gibb Paterno was a student in Jennifer’s course on Ancient Political Philosophy. He quickly gained her attention as a regular contributor to class discussions with exceptional insights about Plato and Aristotle and an enthusiasm for engaging in philosophical debates. He was a frequent visitor to her office hours, asking questions about the Greeks, and wanting to discuss Immanuel Kant and other modern German philosophers that he was reading independently. He asked to do an independent reading course with Jennifer on the works of Karl Marx, and she invited him to do a paired course with another student who also wanted to read Marx. That other student was Henry, and the two struck up a friendship as they met weekly with Jennifer for lively and knowledgeable discussions on political and economic theory. Paterno and Henry hail from remarkably different backgrounds, which enhanced their impassioned discussions about theory. As they discussed issues of wealth and poverty, race and identity, they shared their perspectives, Paterno as the well-off son of immigrants of color, and Henry as the son of a deeply impoverished African American family, growing up in the worst conditions the United States has to offer its black citizens. Paterno’s passion for philosophy was all the more impressive when it became clear to Jennifer that his “real” interests, or at least, his major subjects at UNR, were economics and math. As we got to know each other, and as he and Henry continued their discussions in various pubs after our meetings, Paterno’s political ideas began to change. From the outset of our discussion, Paterno defied any one particular box or label. The son of Bolivian and Filipino parents, his racial and cultural origin is often confused (he’s been called Mexican in some instances and culturally white in others). While he had a comfortably upper-middle-­ class upbringing, Paterno has had his fair share of crises and events that set him apart from a hum-drum middle-class existence. Most of our conversation in this interview touched on his childhood and early adolescence, which did not take place in Nevada. As a child, he lived out of Russian hotels, traveled to Buenos Aires for a short time to

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attend British primary school, and went to a Christian middle school in Singapore for over a year—to name just a few stops on his journeys. When his father wasn’t working abroad, the family made their home in Houston, Texas, where Paterno spent his adolescence. There he became all too accustomed to divisions of class, race, religion, and politics. Perhaps because much of his childhood was uprooted, Paterno was determined to fit in, to acclimate to cultures or groups he didn’t feel fully a part of. Paterno had to grapple with the ambiguity of never quite fitting into the socially and culturally prescribed boundaries of race, class, religion, and politics. Childhood on the Road Trisden began the interview with the standard question, asking Paterno how he identifies, and to describe his family. This was not a question that was easily answered! He began by telling us that his dad was married once before he married Paterno’s mother. Paterno has two half-sisters by his father’s first marriage. Paterno has a younger brother, and years after Paterno and his brother were born, their family would welcome an adopted orphan boy, Alejandro, from Henan, China. His parents came from two very distinct racial, cultural backgrounds, and Paterno, it seemed, was the product of an actual melting pot, carrying with him mixed languages and origins. Trisden asked Paterno to describe his neighborhood growing up, and it was not a question that Paterno could answer. He responded with a dizzying list of cities and countries that the family moved to in his first years of life, following the father’s career. “I only lived in Bakersfield for two years. My dad worked for an oil company. Well, he worked for a sporting goods company for a while, I guess, but eventually I think it was oil by the time I was born. But we left there pretty early on. We only lived there for two years, and then we moved to LA for a bit, and then San Jose, but my first real memory of any neighborhood was when we moved to Chile when I was four. We lived in an apartment complex there. My dad was working on the highest altitude pipeline in the world. I went to a British kindergarten school in Chile. And then my younger brother was born. So I don’t really have a hometown.” Paterno continued to describe his father’s globe-trotting journey as a young professional. His father’s career was the driver of where the family went and why.

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“Industrial engineering is mostly, as far as my understanding goes, optimization. Operations research is what it’s called. Like, you know, what’s the optimal amount of aisles to have open when there’s lines at a grocery store … things like that. It’s all about optimization. Then he was transferred into finances, and from finances he went to banking. He worked for a credit union that was eventually bought out by Wells Fargo in Bakersfield, and then from there had got a job with a big construction company, but they do a lot of oil and gas projects. but because of his engineering training and financial background they made him the business manager. And then we were in Chile for a couple years, where my younger brother was born and then after Chile my dad got a job in Russia. Is it cool if I just go through that whole story like this?” Trisden: “Yeah, absolutely.” “Okay. So he got a job in Russia. We lived there for six months. We stayed in a hotel room, and my dad would fly out. We lived in Moscow, not too far out from the Kremlin. At the time it was cool. I don’t know if it’s still cool now, but he would fly out to like a remote part in Russia, and we would just stay in Moscow in the hotel. And my mom hated that, because, you know, when you have a ton of single engineering men living in a hotel, you know, it’s not the best place to raise a family, right. So my mom was like, ‘Yo, we’re out of here!’ My mom took me and my brother to Buenos Aires for three months because my grandparents were there.” “And I went to a British school again there. Then we went to Bolivia for another three months at which point my dad, who was still in Russia, said, ‘Hey the project’s almost done. Please come back.’ And my mom said okay to that, so we regrouped in Russia. From Russia, if I can remember correctly, this was around first grade, we went to Houston, which is where the majority of my life has been. And since my dad is an engineer, in Russia where I was home-schooled, my dad would just give me math problems. I couldn’t read, but I could do math problems. Oh wait … actually we moved to San Jose from Russia … just for a little while. I don’t really remember it. But then my dad took a job with Enron and we moved to Houston.” I asked, “What language were you brought up speaking?” “My mom would speak to me in Spanish, and my dad would speak to me in English. So I would speak both. My mom used to tell me that in my sleep I had conversations with myself, like one in English, one in Spanish, which I hope doesn’t reveal too much about my personality …! Now I speak a conversational Spanish. It’s with a dismal accent, but I can speak

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it. I can understand it, but English is definitely my main language. My dad never taught me Tagalog because it wasn’t a business language. He says I should learn Mandarin. That’s a tough language though.” Family and Language Even when the family remained in Houston or Chile for several years, Paterno scarcely had time to put down roots in the local community. He didn’t feel as though he had a hometown, and constant moving ensured that he would have to change schools frequently. His family provided him with that necessary emotional and supportive grounding to get through turbulent times. Paterno was five years old and had moved more times than most people do in a lifetime. He had a rough entry to his new school in Houston. His father had done such a good job of teaching him math that he was placed in the first grade instead of kindergarten. It’s hard to imagine a more emotionally challenging situation for a little boy, especially a brown-skinned boy who spoke Spanish but was not Mexican, in the mostly white metropolitan area of Houston. He hated school and really needed his mother by his side for courage. That need earned him nothing but disrespect at his new school. “I’m a mama’s boy. I’ll admit that. I love my mom, and I guess as a kid it was even worse, right? So my mom would drop me off at school, and I would cry. I used to get made fun of for crying because my mom left, which I think is a totally valid thing to do, right?” Trisden confirmed his belief that it was okay for a five-year-old to cry when his mom left him at school. Perhaps Paterno’s attachment to his mother resonated with Trisden’s experience growing up with his mother as his only parent in his young years. But Paterno still felt the need to apologize for that “weakness” of crying for his mom in first grade. He added as rationale, “Yeah, you know, I got uplifted and moved around so many times! I’m allowed to cry! I still cry for no reason … I was just a kid, you know, a little kid! I was chubby too. There was a chubby stage in my life, so I was probably ripe for the picking. I just hated that school. I despised it. And yeah, so we were there for a semester, and then my dad was like, ‘Hey—we want to buy a house!’” So they moved again to an all-white suburb in Houston, part of the “energy corridor” where everybody is part of some aspect of the energy industry. His dad worked for Enron.

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Despite, or because of, their constant moving and uprooting, Paterno’s anchor was family. On both his mother and father’s side of the family, his grandparents were bankers and oil group presidents. His mother wasn’t working, especially as they moved from country to country, but she provided him ample emotional and parental support. His father set an example as a self-made immigrant building a career and family. Because they were upper middle class, Paterno seldom wanted for anything. When the family went to a restaurant Paterno’s father would encourage him to get whatever he wanted on the menu. “It was always get what you want!” Paterno did remark, however, that when it came to clothes, his father was more frugal. If Paterno wanted the latest in athletic footwear to qualify as cool at school, “he’d be like, ‘Well, you’re going to grow out of those shoes anyway. You don’t need the Nikes.’ I kept telling him, ‘Then I’m going to get bullied!’ But I couldn’t convince him.” Shortly after they moved to the Houston suburbs, Paterno’s dad was diagnosed with cancer. After undergoing successful treatment, he moved the family yet again, to a different part of the Houston “energy corridor.” Here the family remained for a while. And here Paterno first became aware of race. Race and Religion Trisden asked Paterno if he felt racialized in anyway, living in a predominantly white neighborhood in the Houston suburbs. “Not quite. I mean, I think I may have been too young to even have recognized it at the time except for Halloween. At Halloween I always knew that race was a thing because, you know, I had this awesome Russian military uniform, which probably does not sound awesome, but at the time, when you’re in first grade, this is the coolest thing ever.” Paterno’s Russian soldier uniform was a souvenir from his time in Russia. “So I didn’t have an American one. I had a Russian one. Right now I can’t run for office!” We laughed and countered that the Russian uniform might gain him a position in the Trump administration. However, Paterno’s skin color (and the limited costume choices) proved an obstacle to him becoming a part of his Houston school community. The uniform failed to impress his first-­ grade Texas classmates, because in the minds of his little Texas buddies, Paterno wasn’t white enough to be a Russian. “I remember my friends

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would say, ‘You don’t look Russian.’ And I would ask, ‘Well, why not?’ And then you get that subtle reminder, right?” If he couldn’t be a Russian military officer on Halloween in Texas, neither could he be any of the superheroes that were his backup choices. The alternative costumes to the Russian military officer were also limited by racism in Texas: “All the famous superheroes are white, so you couldn’t dress up as, you know, Superman, Batman. I loved Batman!” Trisden asked, “Was that the first moment you started realizing your race?” “Yeah, it was that and also when I moved to Houston another distinguishing factor was, I was raised Catholic. My parents are very devout. We’d go to church every Sunday, or mass and my mom always told me ‘We’re Catholic.’ I didn’t think anything about it until around Christmas time, soon after we arrived in Houston, there was a Christmas tree in the school. Because we moved around all the time we never had a Christmas tree, or maybe I’m totally blanking. But I remember seeing this Christmas tree at school and asking, ‘What’s that for?’ And my friend said, ‘Oh, you don’t celebrate Christmas! Are you a Christian?’ I said, ‘No, I’m Catholic. I know the cross, we have that …’ And my friend said, ‘Well, if you don’t celebrate Christmas you’re not Christian. And I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ So that, to be honest, was my first memory of being different in any way. It was funny, because that kid also went to my mass, so he was Catholic too. He just didn’t recognize himself to be Catholic. In Texas it’s like you’re Christian or you’re not. Actually, I experienced the same thing several years later when I was in middle school in Singapore: Protestants think they are the only Christians. Catholics are always treated as something different. But we’re all Christians.” Race and religion were a constant part of the banter between Paterno and his schoolboy friends. He is convinced that the baiting and teasing at that age was never malicious: not “racist” in the way adults understand the term. But the racial and religious tropes were readily available when school age boys were looking for ways to tease each other. Paterno described how he and a small contingent of Catholic friends were regularly sent to a Catholic retreat. No one in the group was Jewish, but one boy had curly hair. That was enough to earn him the nickname “Jew Boy.” This led the boys to call the retreat “Jew camp.” Looking back, Paterno doesn’t think it was intentionally racist. As he later elaborated in our discussion of race and identity, “Growing up in Texas, it was thought to be acceptable to lob around slurs about someone’s identity or race or character. We were boys.

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We said anything that would tear someone else apart. We loved that, and that was the easiest thing for them to get me for. It’s like, ‘You’re Mexican’, you know. I was like well, ‘You’re ugly.’” Ultimately, the constant bombardment about his religion from non-­ Catholics in Texas gave rise to Paterno’s refined, and always available, sarcasm, at which he continues to be adept: “If someone came up to me and asked, ‘Hey, are you Catholic?’ I’d just say, ‘No, no, no! Not if you’re getting rid of them! Not me!! No way I’m Catholic!’” He laughed as he described that sarcastic response stance. But then Paterno became more serious and asked, at least hypothetically, “Why couldn’t you just lie about it? That was the question I asked in junior study group. And they said, ‘No, no because it’s all about, you know, your faith. You don’t lie about what you’re faithful to.’ I was thinking, ‘Ah, I don’t know about that.’ So it was a mixture of church and my friends that made Catholicism more central to my identity. My closest friends were at my church. So I figured, ‘All right, I’m Catholic, but that’s fine because I have friends who are Catholic too. I’m not completely ostracized. Nothing besides that struggle with Catholicism really bothered me about being different when I was a kid … except for Halloween when I couldn’t be the white superhero.’” In addition to feeling marginalized as Catholic, none of his schoolmates in Houston could be convinced that he was anything other than Mexican: “I was always called a Mexican my entire life. It was never, ‘Oh, you’re Filipino and Bolivian.’ It was always, ‘You’re Mexican.’ I can’t even grow facial hair! It’s pretty obvious I’m Asian, you know? But, ‘No, you’re Mexican.’ You’re just always Mexican. If you’re brown you’re Mexican. There is a huge Vietnamese population at the school, so white people assumed all the Asians were Vietnamese. But there’s not too many Filipinos, and there are no Bolivians. So we were all just assumed to be Mexicans. There was another family who were Peruvian. The mother in the family was my mom’s best friend, and I grew up with the kids. We used to have dinner all the time together, and they were Peruvian. We were Bolivian, they were Peruvian, but to the white people we were all still Mexican. Nobody even bothered to ask.” Paterno’s family had their own perspective on race and color. His mother’s side of the family (the Bolivian side) is partly European, descended from European immigrants to Bolivia. Paterno remarked of his maternal cousins, “If I showed you pictures you would not believe they’re my cousins because they’re blond and white, you know because all the

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women married white men except for my Mom. She rebelled a bit. I used to be called Negrito by my grandmother, which does not sound nice, but she meant it like, ‘Hey, you’re my little …. black kid’. All my cousins are white except for me and my brother because my mom’s family, being of European descent, looks pretty white. But don’t take that word— Negrito—the wrong way. My grandmother was very loving to me. It’s just the way we talked to each other. She would call me Negrito and mean it affectionately. I was her dark-skinned grandson, and so was my brother. I would call her ‘Old Witch’ or ‘Vieja de Mierda’, which literally translates to ‘Shitty Old Woman.’ We were just playful with each other that way. It was a sign of closeness.” Christian School and Sex Paterno attended Watkins Middle School in Texas, a truly diverse school that he enjoyed. Adjacent to the predominantly white neighborhood of Deerfield, Watkins attracted some well-to-do white students and also children from blue-collar homes in Windsong, a working-class neighborhood. The school was also zoned for minority students from Highway 6, an area that was thought of as sketchy—“they have bars on their windows, right? So people think it’s sketchy. I don’t know why because I don’t think it’s that bad.” A member of the more privileged Deerfield cohort, Paterno ran with a predominantly white crowd. He recalled, “If you look at the Deerfield pictures it’s all these white kids, and you can see me right in the middle. You could always point me out.” When he was in eighth grade, Paterno moved again with his family, this time to Singapore. His father had grown restless and bored with his job in Houston, and happily accepted a job offer overseas with a petrochemical multinational corporation. In Singapore Paterno attended a fundamentalist Christian school, and this time the move really set off an emotional crisis that affected his religious identity and took several years to work through. Difficult as it was, that crisis led Paterno to a formative period of reevaluation about his religious identity and emotional state. Paterno had lobbied to go to the American school in Singapore (because they had a swim team and he wanted to join), but he was instead sent to a Christian school because that school had room for his brother as well. His father was working for an extraordinarily wealthy oil corporation, and so, reported Paterno, “We had free housing. We had free schooling. They paid for everything.”

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On his first day of class, Paterno was treated to a lesson on sex and homosexuality straight from the fundamentalist Christian school of alarmism and abstinence. The environment pushed Paterno into a pattern of homophobia and germophobia for the duration of his stay in Singapore, as he listened to horror stories of how any sort of sexual behavior, but particularly homosexuality, could lead directly to AIDS and death. “I remember the first day I was there I had my second ever sex-ed class taught by Christians, and they did the peanut butter and jelly thing where they slap them together to show you how ‘You retain a portion of the other person.’” [The peanut butter and jelly demonstration was apparently intended to demonstrate the sex act, JR] “I thought, ‘What is this??’ Then they went into this huge AIDS discussion and told us ‘You can pick up AIDS from having sex.’ My response was, ‘Okay then!! I am never having sex!!!’” “Telling us about AIDS in a Christian school they made it clear that being gay is not allowed. You’re also told that gay people have AIDS. They made it sound as though overlap is near perfect. Everybody gay has AIDS. The result of all this is that I had a low point in my life, a really low point in my life.” Paterno began to experience intense feelings of germaphobia and an obsessive fear that he would “pick up something” from gay people. “They made gay people and AIDS synonymous, right? I used to pull my hair in Singapore. I was not too happy there. I don’t know. I was not feeling good. I used to wash my hands like eight times. I showered for like three hours. I had this germophobia, and I was just afraid of being around gay people. That was my thing. I thought, ‘I can’t be around them. I’m going to pick up something.’ [The Christian teachings about sex] are the only thing I can point to where that phobia might have started from because before I used to joke about it in my American middle school. I’m not proud of it … we would say to each other ‘Ah, you’re gay,’ you know, just as a way of insulting each other. Those are comments I used to make. I know that’s not cool. But this was different. It was really crazy. More like an irrational fear … Like, ‘Oh no. It’s real!’” While Paterno was receptive to the lessons taught in his Christian school, he still felt as though his Catholicism singled him out from the other students. “I was definitely not a Christian at that school. They would never accept me. Kids would say to me, ‘You guys worship Mary.’ I would answer, ‘If you can talk to God, I don’t see why you can’t talk to his

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mom!’ It’s like they were saying, ‘No, you can only talk to God.’ That makes no sense.” It was at that point that despite becoming a self-described “religious zealot” and adherent of many of their fundamentalist ideals, he concluded that “I’m not a Christian,” because of that gulf in worship. “I remember wanting to leave Catholicism, but I never did. I’ve got Catholic guilt, right? If you leave you’re screwed! So I did everything I was supposed to do. I memorized the right verses. I did all the right things I was supposed to do, but everything was under this paradigm [of feeling the pressure in his Christian environment that Catholicism was somehow ‘wrong,’ but wanting to hedge his bets and minimize the likelihood of going to hell.]” He did have one thing up on his disdainful Christian classmates: “In Singapore I was a cool kid because you go to seventh grade in a public school in Texas, you have the maturity of a tenth grader in a Christian private school in Singapore.” After a year and a half of crisis and indoctrination, Paterno returned to Houston, and attended Cyprus Lakes, in the neighborhood he had left 18 months earlier. Cyprus Lakes wasn’t a wealthy school: it was economically and racially diverse, and a Title 1 (free lunch) school. But also attending were some white students from Deerfield, the wealthy community zoned for Cyprus Lakes. While the school as a whole was racially diverse, the students from the Deerfield neighborhood and their parents were as Christian fundamentalist as the people who attended Paterno’s Singapore school. With his experience at the fundamentalist Christian school in Singapore under his belt, Paterno “passed” for the first time in his life, as a “good Christian boy” at Cyprus Lakes. He enjoyed being respected for the first time by his Christian friends and their parents, and tried to fit in, but it wasn’t long before he was raising questions again. “Oh man! I was loved by everyone’s parents! ‘Oh, Paterno came back such a good Christian boy,’ you know. That was the new viewpoint of me. I thought, ‘Okay cool. I guess I’m a good Christian boy now! So still being influenced by that, and rewarded for it, I spent most of 10th grade sticking with this very religious mentality.’” But Paterno was able to see through the superficiality of this sort of enforced fundamentalism. He just couldn’t get with the program and still felt like an outsider. He described his “devout” classmates’ efforts to skirt the regimen: “Students could not swear, but they would say frick and shiz instead of like, you know, fuck and shit, and they would think that was fine. They didn’t think that was swearing. But we used to go to Bible study

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and get in trouble for saying frick and shiz. I’m thinking, ‘It’s the same thing. You’re still using profanity.’ So I would say, ‘This sucks.’ And then I got in trouble for saying sucks, because apparently that’s a derogatory term for blow jobs. I just thought, ‘Whoa!’ We’re going to extremes! This is crazy!” By the end of sophomore year in high school he began to unwind and let go of his own extremism. He was able to relinquish the germaphobia that had tormented him during his time in Singapore. He now recognized his behavior in Singapore as “sick.” “I think that the sickness came from whatever I was going through in Singapore. That’s something I feel is really important. In Singapore I wouldn’t even touch anyone. If I walked down a street and someone touched me I’d have to take a shower. So that was entirely me going through some sort of crisis. My dad’s not the best at understanding that sort of thing. His whole mentality was ‘Snap out of it!’ My mom wasn’t much more helpful. I would try to explain it to her, but she was baffled. She tried, but she would say, ‘I don’t understand. I don’t get it.’ ‘That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know what that means’. I said ‘I don’t know what it is either. I just don’t feel good.’” The real turning point for Paterno came during a visit to his maternal grandparents in Bolivia. His grandfather helped him emerge from his crisis—albeit without much psycho-therapeutic finesse. When he described to his grandfather the fundamentalist tendencies he’d picked up abroad, and his compulsive behavior, his grandfather was pretty direct with him: “My grandpa was like, ‘You’re crazy. You’re crazy! It’s good for you to be religious, but you’re crazy!’ And I said, ‘I don’t see how you can be a casual Christian.’” Paterno’s grandfather lent him the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond to provide some perspective, an intellectual diversion to Paterno’s religious extremism. The combination of Diamond’s book and his grandfather’s attentiveness worked for Paterno. Guns, Germs, and Steel was Paterno’s first exposure to historical theories of human development. It taught him the evolutionary processes by which human civilization survived. Paterno was never a person to take any idea lightly. He pivoted from fundamentalist Christianity and germaphobia and became obsessed with Diamond’s work and related texts. He became a self-professed “person of extremes,” passionately poring over both biblical texts and cultural anthropology. Paterno’s fundamentalist side was doing battle with an inchoate

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emerging intellectualism, and somewhere in the midst of the clash of extremes, Paterno found some balance and some peace. “I went through this weeklong crisis where I was torn between thinking ‘This is the book of the devil’, and ‘This is the best book I’ve ever read.’ And then finally I decided, ‘This book is awesome!’ I accepted Diamond’s book. And I’m a person of extremes I guess, so I became an evolutionary guy!” Over the course of that week, Paterno became unmoored from his religious extremism. The fog of crisis and doubt that had afflicted him from his time abroad lifted. He began to study evolution. He became less prejudiced toward gay people. He even tried marijuana for the first time. Understanding Race When he returned from his trip to Bolivia, Paterno was able to leave behind his obsessive behavior about germs and homosexuals. His fundamentalist Christianity was softened by his exposure to the evolutionary theory he had been reading. He tried to fit in with his white, conservative friends in high school. He joined the Boy Scouts and exposed himself to the “cowboy machismo” customary to Texan Boy Scout culture. Part of that machismo entailed racially charged language and jokes traded between well-intentioned friends. “So my two best friends are both white, and they both loved calling me Mexican. It was like a joke at this point. I don’t think they meant it in an angry way or anything like that. And I still hold this belief that the majority of the time I don’t think it’s malicious. I think it’s more of a lack of knowing. They used to wear border patrol hats and come to my house wearing their border patrol hats calling me a Mexican. I don’t know if they understood that my parents are both immigrants. My dad and my mom weren’t too bothered. They said, ‘Oh they’re just kids. They’re just kids being kids.’ And I agreed: ‘Whatever. They’re just doing that.’” If Paterno and his parents were willing to overlook the racist behavior of his closest friends, it was harder to get past some of the other examples of “the usual” Texas boyhood racism: “Some of the older kids in Texas had this pickup truck. They would stick a Texas flag and a confederate flag on the truck, and they would just ‘VRROOOM!’ (mimics car sound) roar through the neighborhood. There was a loop that went around the neighborhood. They would go roaring around the loop in their truck. You know, that’s all they did. Just

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flying their flags around. And I would just think, ‘Well, whatever …’ My best friend also had a confederate flag. I joined the Boy Scouts, where in Texas, cowboy-ism or whatever we want to call that kind of behavior—is the way to be. But I never felt like a Boy Scout. I never felt like I was really a Texan because my version of being a Texan was you drove around in a pickup truck waving a confederate flag. It’s not that I didn’t want to waive a confederate flag. I did. I just couldn’t. I keep thinking back, if I live in the Confederate states, I don’t think I fit in too well. I’m not white.” I asked him how aware he was that his marginalization was the result of his race. He responded that it was complicated, because even though he was not white in Texas, he knew he was not a “poor Mexican,” and that in fact he was in a higher economic class than his good ol’ boy white high school buddies. “This is why I wanted to tell the story about Singapore … because in 10th grade I was a ‘good southern boy,’ being Christian and all these things. But then when I started shifting away from that, I started wondering, ‘All right, if I’m not a good southern Christian boy then what am I?’ And that’s when I began to realize, ‘So race is something here.’ When I was growing up I was given everything I wanted. If I really begged and cried enough, I was given it. I was not an impoverished person who could identify his problem as race. It was more, ‘Look, I am in the same class as these [white] people,’ and frankly I was in the class above some of them, yet they were cowboys, and I was not.” Trisden suggested, “Yeah, there was a community. And you couldn’t belong to it.” Paterno agreed: “I was never there. I never had Southern pride. I never owned a Confederate flag. I never owned a Texan flag. I just never did any of that because I couldn’t.” Feeling like an outsider was a familiar for Paterno. In early childhood he could not wear the Halloween costumes of superheroes because his friends told him Batman and Superman were white. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he was told he was too Catholic to be Christian, and then in high school, he was too brown to be Texan. The solution he finally arrived at was to stop struggling so hard about his identity. “This is where I started becoming more lighthearted about being called a Mexican. I went along with it: ‘Yeah, sure, I’m a Mexican. Whatever you say.’ Because I just didn’t care. I figured, ‘They’re not doing anything malicious against me. I just can’t be a cowboy, and that’s fine. They sound stupid anyway.’ I never owned boots for the same reason. My two best

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friends were still in that group. They could still be cowboys. I just couldn’t. And they still hung out with me all the time. It was the three of us. We were still friends, but they were part of something that I was never a part of. And luckily we had moved past the whole Halloween stage where I couldn’t be Batman or Superman or the Flash because I’m not white.” There is a performative aspect to how, as a boy, Paterno regarded whiteness. His first awareness of race occurred when he had difficulty finding a Halloween costumes because he wasn’t white. Later on, he described his frustrations with not being able to act like one of the other guys, not being able to wave Texas and Confederate flags and put on the show of machismo that others could. He had friends. He trusted them and did not take seriously their persistent teasing about having brown skin or calling him “Mexican.” He survived in a deeply racist, segregated environment by brushing it off, aware that he was failing at being a Texan, or at least failing at performing Texan. But he saw no alternative if he wanted to keep his friends. He couldn’t perform whiteness like they could. At the time, he decided it was no big deal. Still, the older he got, the more Paterno became attuned to the dynamics of race and the ambiguity of his own identity. In our discussion he recalled that every school he’d attended in Texas forbade students from wearing solid colored tee shirts, and minority students in particular from wearing the same color shirt more than three days in a row, or they would be called to the principal’s office. This entire system was predicated on racial profiling: gangs are denoted by different colors. But in the racialized view of the school administration, only the students of color were singled out as potentially liable to be members of gangs. “At both my middle school and high school, we were not allowed to wear solid colors. You just weren’t allowed to wear a solid colored tee shirt. Because you might be in a gang, you know. If you were a minority and you wore the same color three days in a row you would get sent to the principal’s office for sure. But if you were a white kid, they would just say, ‘Look, it’s for your safety. You really need to wear something else.’” I asked him, “So for those purposes were you white in school?” Paterno responded, “I guess so. I took AP classes. Because I was in the AP classes they wouldn’t believe I was in a gang. I don’t know what I am. I’m going to be entirely clear. I have no fucking clue what I am.” Our questioning cut to the core of his identity crisis: he can’t be quickly or simply labeled. He was brown-skinned but in AP classes. He was Catholic, not Christian, but he moved away from strict Catholic

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observance. He spoke Spanish, but not Mexican Spanish. His religion, race, and background are complicated and truly intersectional. He is from a relatively wealthy family. His awareness that he doesn’t know “what the fuck” he is points straight to the artificiality of trying to identify people with oversimplified racial, religious, and class identifiers. Moving to Nevada During his senior year of high school, Paterno was accepted for college at Georgetown University, the University of Colorado, and the University of Texas (UT). He was dating a girl who planned to attend the University of Texas, and he was going to stay in Texas and attend UT with her. Then his father surprised him with the announcement that he had accepted a job in Shanghai and was planning to move the family again. Paterno would, of course, stay in the United States to attend college. His father offered him the family house while he was attending Texas. But the prospect of being alone in his family home while his family was in China did not sound like the college experience Paterno longed for—especially since the family house was in Houston and the University of Texas is in Austin. While mulling over his decision about where to attend college, he visited his two half-sisters, who lived in Northern California, and whose mother had recently died. While visiting the sister who lived in Tahoe, he decided to attend University of Nevada. Its convenience and proximity to that side of his family appealed to him. And while staying with his sister in Tahoe, he learned to ski. More of an optimal choice than a real preference, the University of Nevada seemed like a good stop-gap measure for Paterno. “I thought, ‘Well, Nevada’s here. Why don’t I just apply, and I can go hang out with my sisters for a year, and then if I don’t like it, I can transfer out.’ So I came here, not knowing what I was doing and just to be with my sisters. I stayed with my sister Reese the summer before school. She drove me down [to Reno] when school started. She moved me into the dorms at Argenta, and she was like my mom. I mean, she’s 10 years older than me, you know, so she just guided me. I would go up to her house for the weekends and hang out. She helped me get my first job as a ski instructor. I came here for my sisters, and it turned out skiing’s awesome! So I stayed here.” He found family and stability with his half-sisters and the University of Nevada, while his father, mother, and brothers moved overseas again.

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The one thing Paterno had absorbed in Texas was its political conservatism. When he moved to Nevada to attend university, Paterno brought with him not only that conservative ideology but also the buttoned-up personality he had fostered as a dutiful southern Christian boy. “Surprisingly throughout all of this [his growing awareness of race and his move away from strict religious observance] I had a really conservative mentality on life. I think it was part of me still wanting to be Texan and part of me knowing I couldn’t be Texan, but I could be a conservative, like everybody else in Texas. Everyone I knew in Texas was conservative, so it seemed natural. The attitude was just, ‘If you don’t work hard you’re not going to get anything.’ That’s their whole mentality. No awareness that some people are born with opportunities that other people don’t have. And it was actually not until I came to Professor Ring’s classes that I began to think more like a liberal.” (We all laughed.) In Nevada, as compared to Texas, Paterno encountered very little overt, hostile racism. Compared to Trisden’s Reno experience of being the target of openly expressed racial slurs, Paterno has experienced a tamer, milder racial climate in Nevada than the one he grew up with in Texas, where “any slight thing will put you in a different group.” “It’s way easier not to be white here than in Texas,” he sighed. “The funniest part is that when I moved here to Reno my new friends Michael and Julio would tell me, ‘No, dude, you’re white.’ And I would tell them, ‘I’m not white, obviously.’ They would come back with, ‘You look white. You act white. You ski, you know!’ To be fair, I do ski, and I ride my bike, and I golf. Those are predominantly white sports. I accept that.” I reminded him, with a chuckle, “Don’t forget swimming.” “Swimming, yeah okay, let’s not forget that. But one of my white Nevada friends even told me, ‘Dude, I’m more of a minority than you.’ I was like ‘No, you’re not.’” Trisden and I asked what his white friend was referring to and Paterno responded that instead of skiing and swimming and biking, his [white] friend played basketball and listened to rap music. Therefore, he reasoned, he was “more black” than Paterno, in spite of his white skin and Paterno’s brown skin. Paterno averred about this friend, “He’s not the brightest guy.” Paterno and Trisden discussed the complexities of being people of color, and from a higher or lower economic class. Paterno regards himself as fairly well-off, and Trisden identifies with the middle class, his mother a

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school administrator with an advanced degree, and his step-father a well-­ paid Las Vegas firefighter. So poverty was not an issue for either of them growing up (although poverty is what motivated Trisden’s mother to move from the Cleveland projects to Las Vegas.). Paterno says, “I feel more white in Nevada than I did in Texas. Maybe white’s not the right term. I feel normal. There’s no identity really.” But “no identity” is, in a nutshell, the definition of whiteness. As a member of the majority, you don’t feel watched over or eyed with suspicion. You just exist, unmolested. For Paterno, Nevada wasn’t as racialized as Texas, where the simple act of dating someone from another racial group would draw the ire of your clique. In Nevada, identity wasn’t something that pervaded conversation and social decorum for Paterno. Still, while Nevada released him from everyday racism, Paterno was aware of the maddening ambiguity of not quite knowing when and where race or racism will be an issue. Jennifer asked him, “Doesn’t this drive you crazy? I mean, you know you are a person of color and may be the target of racism, but you don’t know where to expect it from.” Trisden added, “It’s not consistent. That must be almost more frustrating. With me, I’m getting the same thing every time. People, for the most part, view black people in the same way. I’m not racially ambiguous … I know where I lie. But with you it just kind of depends on what group you happen to be with.” “Yeah, that’s true. I get called a Mexican by white people, but then the Mexicans never want me as their friend because I can’t speak Spanish as well as they can.” Being brown-skinned and upper middle class, Paterno lives in a sort of racial netherworld, at least in the United States. He has been called a Muslim and advised not to grow a beard in case he needs to get on a plane. “I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but now it’s not funny. You know, I know I can go to any country, and I will fit in as a local … except the one I’m from!” At the University of Nevada Paterno was exposed to types of diversity of which he had been completely ignorant in Texas. In Texas he had been immersed in a toxic view of gay people, but at the University of Nevada, his mindset changed. His job as a tutor at the University’s Writing Center helped broaden his thinking. His coworkers at the Writing Center were “probably my first real group of friends on campus beyond my roommates, and they’re super diverse. There are a lot of white kids, sure, but

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there are also gay, bisexual, genderless. There are things that I had never even thought about before coming here and I thought, ‘This is cool! Everyone’s everything!’ There was a super masculine dude who works on cars and describes himself as bisexual. I was like ‘I never would have guessed that!’ I didn’t think bisexuals worked on cars!” In meeting these people and coming in contact with a diverse set of people, Paterno was able to understand a fuller sense of identity. Not only can masculine guys be bisexual and work on cars, but “You could be black and gay! That’s not something that you were in Texas. I never have seen that before. When I go back to Texas, I do see it now, but it was totally invisible to me when I was living there.” While Paterno personally experienced less racism in Nevada, his friendships with coworkers allowed him the opportunity to talk openly about racial tension in a way that was mindful and sensitive. More than anything, he learned from these friendships how to conscientiously discuss topics in the Trump era. Some of his friends are conservative, but he disagrees with them when they say that racism isn’t real when they claim that racism is just people of color being “too sensitive.” He was able to notice the shift in racial climate at Nevada when Trump came to power. “Following the election you see it a lot more. Saw a dude yesterday just wearing this like tight-fitting shirt and his boots, just had Trump all over it.” Trisden recognized the description: “That’s so funny! He’s in my racial profiling class!” Paterno: “No way!” Trisden: “He’s the worst type of person.” Paterno: “Yeah, I see this guy, and he just walks by me looking on his phone, and I just can’t stop staring. I’m just looking at him.” Trisden: “Trump faces everywhere!” Paterno: “Everywhere! I saw him yesterday.” Trisden: “He wore it yesterday.” Paterno: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see him everywhere. He just walks by me, and I thought, ‘Does this guy have no fucking clue what’s going on?’ That’s crazy to me. I don’t want to paint all Trump people as racists, right, because I don’t think they are. I just think that they may have an inkling of a racist in them. I think that’s a bigger issue too: if you keep calling everyone a racist they’re never going to see it in themselves. If I kept calling my friends in Texas racists they would never have been my friends. But I do think it’s fair to say that everyone has a touch of racism in them. I

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mean, I had a lot of homophobia in me. That’s something I had. But I’m not a homophobic now.” Trisden offered, “It stems from ignorance.” Paterno responded, “I didn’t even know a gay person during that time period [during the time when he was terrified to touch a gay person]! So whenever I do see a Trump supporter, whenever they wear their ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, or if I see a Trump sticker on their computer, you know, I don’t assume, ‘Hey, that person’s a racist.’ My first thought is ‘I wonder who gets offended by that sticker or that hat? I wonder who feels like that hat or that sticker is an attack?’ I know there’s a huge community of people that feel threatened and marginalized because of Trump. I didn’t feel that way after the election because I am very organized, and I have my birth certificate, and passports in a safe place. I didn’t see it [the threat of being deported for looking non-white] before, but now we’re in this moment where it’s visible.” Trisden wasn’t so sure it was inaccurate to accuse Trump supporters of being racists: “What you say makes sense. But I’m thinking about how you described the Trump supporters wearing their paraphernalia, whether it’s the hats or the shirts, and I feel like that’s almost a passive aggressive act. I don’t know if I would necessarily say that automatically makes them racist, but I can’t excuse the fact that they know how they are making people of color feel.” Paterno responded, “I fully agree with that too. They have to know that people aren’t happy about it, right, but I think that also stems in part from the fact that people keep calling them racists.” Trisden: “That’s true.” “And this is something that upset me about the Left after the election. They kept saying all these racist people voted for Trump, and I don’t think they’re all racists. One of them is my Godmother. She’s super nice. She’s also very religious, so I could see why she did that. Actually, no, I’m still trying to figure that one out, but I feel if I keep saying, ‘Hey, you are a racist’, the more they’ll be willing to wear that paraphernalia. It’s like a reaction: ‘Look, I’m not a racist, but if you’re going to keep calling me this I’m going to keep wearing it.’ It just becomes this back and forth loop that leads to everyone just antagonize each other. That’s the tension I see.” In terms of the idea that Trump and his supporters have “normalized racism,” Paterno noted, “Maybe I’m a bit more of a cynic on this end, but I think racism was ‘normalized’ ages ago. I don’t think it’s anything new that we’re doing now. It’s new for a candidate that’s running for president

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to so vocally do that, but the fact that I’m still friends with the kids that said I couldn’t be a certain superhero … I’ve already normalized racism by doing that, and that’s awful on my end, right?” This struck me as a particularly insightful and brutally honest observation about himself. Well done, Paterno! While his old friends in Texas may not actively seek to deport friends or acquaintances, they still hold what Paterno believes is a mindset of othering and objectifying immigrants. He described an exchange with one friend who “described people as like marbles in a jar. He said, ‘Of course we’ve got to get rid of some of them. Why don’t we just get rid of the illegals because when you put marbles in a jar, eventually the jar’s going to overflow.’ And I said to him, ‘It doesn’t work like that. People go in and out of this country all the time. Do you know how much space there is? There’s a ton of space all over the place. We have room. We can’t keep saying we’re the greatest country in the world if we’re not going to allow someone to come in. That’s fucked up. How can you be a good Christian and good heart and do that?’” Paterno’s perspective has been hard won. He has spent his life navigating false labels about himself. His awareness that calling somebody a racist is not going to make them any less racist reminds me of his own stubborn resistance when told by his schoolmates that he was “not a Christian.” His response, when that happened repeatedly, was “Fine! Then I’m not a Christian! Whatever!” Same thing with being called Mexican all the time by his Houston friends. At a certain point he just said, “Fine. I’m a Mexican. Whatever you say.” Paterno’s belief that refusing to listen to the perspective of Trump supporters is counterproductive reveals his own lived experience. As someone who has been mislabeled most of his life, he is opposed to labeling others in a kneejerk manner. Having lived in Texas, he was forced to navigate Red America, learning to coexist with people who espouse overtly racist views. His time in Texas helped him to build his own hard exterior shell to deflect the occasional racially ignorant comment, and also led him to believe that people may have racist or homophobic feelings but not necessarily “be” racists. Paterno believes there is a distinction between a racist action and being a racist. Instead of bristling at the ignorance of Trump supporters, he bristles at the insensitivity of liberals and progressives who would find a Make America Great Again sticker offensive. To Paterno, it seems high-handed and elitist for liberals to assume they see things better than Trump supporters, and not to have the humility to

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admit “I’m sure there are plenty of things I don’t see either.” Describing his conservative high school friends, he warned about the futility of talking down to them: “These are the same kids that never opened a book, and if you say, ‘Oh, you’re normalizing racism,’ they’ll just say, ‘Don’t you speak academic to me.’ You can’t do that. If you say, ‘Well, intersectionality of race …’ they’ll say, ‘What the hell does that mean?’ These guys … they work construction. Not that that makes them stupid. It makes them way more brilliant than me in some ways, but we don’t speak the same language.” Resisting the impulse to lecture others or “make them feel stupid,” Paterno instead tries to give conservative friends and acquaintances the benefit of the doubt, not labeling or assuming anything about them. It’s not often that others return the favor. He described attending a friend’s birthday celebration and meeting a veteran of the Middle East wars. “My friend is a libertarian, and his friend came back from serving in the army in the Middle East. Here he comes back for leave and we’re talking, no mention of politics throughout this entire time, and then he looks at me. He’s like, ‘I’m sorry if you’re a liberal, but—’ And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. How did you know I was a liberal? He was like, ‘Well you just—you talk funny,’ is what he told me. I talk funny. And if that’s even a barrier on its own then I’m fucked.” Whiteness Throughout our conversations on identity, it struck us how singular Paterno’s experiences are, especially for a person of color. He didn’t experience oppression unique to the African American or Latinx communities. Instead, he was, as Trisden put it, “able to navigate white space very well because you’re almost white passing in a way.” Although he had spent most of his life minimizing the impact of racism on himself, he had experiences he could draw on when he was ready to see how it impacted his daily life. He told us a story of how, when he was in his sophomore year at UNR, he and his two brothers-in-law went skiing and stopped at a convenience store for beers afterward. Just as he turned around to return to his car, can of beer in hand, “the cops pulled up. They demanded to see my ID. And I was just about to open the beer, but I said, ‘I’ll be honest with you guys. I’m not 21.’ They said ‘All right,’ and started writing me up. I was thinking, ‘All right. I’m going to get an MIC. I was a little upset, but I mean, I got caught fair and square.’”

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But one of his (white) brothers-in-law stepped in, objecting that Paterno shouldn’t be given a ticket because “I hadn’t even opened the beer yet. My brother-in-law said, ‘There’s no way that that’s valid.’ The cop said, ‘He has a beer in his hand!’ My brother-in-law said, ‘Yeah, he was handing it to me.’ He goes into this whole argument with the cops, right, and the cop is like literally writing it down. And then one cop asks the other, ‘Do we have a breathalyzer? No, we don’t have a breathalyzer.’ My brother-in-law said, ‘Well, that’s your fucking fault.’ And the next thing you know they’re like, ‘All right, that’s fine.’ And they were letting us go.” But his brother-in-law persisted, asking the officer for his badge number. Paterno was shaken and attributed his brother-in-law’s boldness to his white privilege. Paterno knew he never would have dared to confront the police in that aggressive manner. Aware of his skin color and the risk that accompanies it, he decided to “drive really slow and maybe not drink in public until I’m 21.” He also shared a couple of moments when his parents warned him about being careful in Texas. In spite of the fact that he had not experienced what he would define as “an over act of racism,” and despite the fact that his family’s wealth protected him from some of the dangers faced by working-class people of color, he was told by his father “‘Hey, when you drive out to central Texas don’t get a flat tire,’” implying that as a person of color, he should be careful. Paterno also heard stories about his uncle, who encountered some racist Texans while playing baseball with his friends. The white guys said, “‘You’re a Mexican.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m Bolivian.’ ‘No, you’re a Mexican.’ ‘No, I’m Bolivian’, right? They said, ‘You’re a Mexican’, and then they beat him up. And he ended up in the hospital. And you know, my grandpa got a call in the middle of the night saying hey, your son’s in the ER. He’s beat to a pulp.’ We rushed to the hospital, and you know, he’s all beat up, bloodied. My mom told me that story. Having my mom tell me, ‘Hey, your uncle got beat up for being called a Mexican,’ and dad telling me not to get a flat tire in central Texas, you know, it’s pretty obvious.” “I’m not combative in that sense. Maybe I am some bystander in a racist system, but I don’t want to get beat up either, so I mean, I—yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I’m a little bit of a coward. I’ll be honest. I’ll say that. That’s okay. I’ve always stood on the periphery because it’s safer there, you know?”

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Tara White Privilege is not having to deal with questions of why you belong here.

Interview conducted by Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring Soon after she enrolled in my “Identity Politics” class, Tara asked me to read a draft of a novel she was writing about her family. I barely knew Tara, but I agreed to read it because it was such an act of trust on her part. She showed me what was more an extended autobiographical essay, about 50 pages, rather than a “novel.” The characters had fictional names, but it was clearly a story about her large and multi-generational immigrant family, filled with details of family relations, holidays, festive meals, and the ordeal of being a family from India, in which the elder men wear turbans in Post-911 United States. There were joyful, intimate moments describing the children, a horde of siblings and cousins reveling in delicious mischief on sleepovers and holidays when the entire family gathered in the modest homes of one or another aunt or uncle; the pleasure the older girls took in helping the moms and aunties cook festive meals and decorate the house for special occasions. There were also stories of hard, hot work as multiple generations of the family worked together in the fruit orchards of California’s central valley. Summer, even for the children, was for work, not play. Tara’s novel also related a horrifying moment of racial vandalism against the family home, which forced the extended family to close ranks and live in one house while the damaged house was rebuilt. The details of the white terrorism were left vague in the novel, too painful for Tara to relate in all but hints. Tara’s book—or essay—was beautifully written, bristling with the rich details that give a story texture and credibility. I had been apprehensive when I agreed to read it, worried that it wouldn’t be good and that I would somehow have to convey that to the young author. What a relief it was to find that Tara can write! I made some suggestions for revision and gave her the name of a colleague in the English department to ask where she might submit it for publication. Tara launched herself onto my radar with that autobiographical essay, which was a good thing, because she was otherwise so quiet in the classroom that I would have had no awareness of who she was. Then one day the class was discussing the indigenous people of North America, considering the stubbornly erroneous term for the original inhabitants of the

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continent, labelled “Indians” because Columbus had mistakenly believed that his voyage across the Atlantic had brought him to the Indian subcontinent. At that moment in the discussion, the usually quiet Tara spoke up. She suggested that calling all the original inhabitants of North America one name, “Indians” was as inaccurate as calling all the inhabitants of the European continent “Europeans,” and refusing to distinguish between the histories of the Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Teutons, Scandinavians, Greeks, Italians, Slavs, Iberians, and so forth. Different histories, different languages, and a history of warfare as much as peaceful similarity made reducing all Europeans to one label a complete cultural distortion. It was such an obvious and important point that it startled me, along with the rest of the students. Then Tara added one final point, which felt like the “coup de grace.” She said, “As a Punjabi, I can tell you that even reducing the people who live in India to the name ‘Indian’ is a total distortion. There are so many geographical regions, cultures, religions and languages in India that calling all Indians ‘Indians’ is as stupid as lumping all the indigenous people of the Americas into one group called ‘Indians.’” NOW, Tara was really on my radar: I knew if I paid close attention to her, I would learn something. Given all that, Tara was a natural choice to participate in this study. I looked forward to hearing her insights about her own life. But she was studying for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT)’s and completing law school applications. Finding a time when we could coordinate a meeting with Trisden and me proved difficult, and finally I offered to interview her myself. My thinking was that she already knew me and had already shared an intimate autobiographical essay with me. This seemed to make Trisden’s presence as the more approachable peer—the “non-professor” in the interview room—less crucial than with students I knew less well. I suggested a one-on-one interview with her, and she agreed. Childhood: Beloved Family As we began, I asked her about her given name, which is a beautiful Punjabi name. She explained to me how her parents named her, even as she asked me not to use the name in this book. “So Tara, I’ve known you as a student for a number of years now, and let’s just begin at the beginning. This interview is about your experiences with race, growing up in California, and then as a student at Nevada. The

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catalyst for this project was the election of Donald Trump, and the heightened racial tension that emerged during the presidential campaign and now. We’re looking for your thoughts on what, if anything, has changed since the election of Trump. But before we discuss that, let’s begin by discussing your childhood, First, how do you identify?” Tara responded, “Now this is interesting. It’s taken me a while to figure out what my identity is. I mean, I know I’m a heterosexual woman, and I know I’m Punjabi, but I was wondering … I mean, I’ve always wondered, am I specifically Indian? Or American? Because Indian is a culture and nationality, right? So I am Indian, but I’m also American, and I’m specifically Punjabi. So I guess I identify myself as a Sikh American Punjabi female. That’s how I would identify. It’s taken me a while to come to that conclusion, though, because it was confusing for a long time for me.” I asked, “Will you talk about how you came to that conclusion? Tell me about your family. How many siblings you have, what your parents’ occupations are, that kind of background. And as you’re telling me that, maybe also think about how you figured out who you are racially or ethnically. How did you come to that?” “Well, starting with my family history, both sets of my grandparents were born in Fiji. My great grandparents on both sides were born in India, and immigrated to Fiji, where my grandparents were born. That’s also where my mom was born. But my dad was born in San Francisco. I have one younger sibling. He is two years younger than me. And the reason why it took me a while to decide about my identity was because it’s really hard to say I’m just an Asian American. I mean, I understand South Asian. That’s specifically Indian. But also, I’ve always thought if you plopped me in the middle of India, I wouldn’t know what to do. I mean, like any other country you would visit, you sightsee, specifically I guess with my family history we would visit certain cultural aspects, religious aspects. But it’s not my home. I wouldn’t consider it my home country. I consider the United States my home country. I was born here and this is where I’ve lived my whole life. “It throws me for a loop when someone asks ‘Where are you from from?’ I would say American-Punjabi culture as opposed to Indian-Punjabi culture. I’m not saying those are super different. I actually don’t know, I’ve never been to India. Neither, actually, have my parents. So it’s hard for me to distinguish between Indian and American Punjabi culture.” “Your parents have not been to India either?”

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“No, because my dad was born here and then my mom was born in Fiji, so nobody is really ‘from’ India. Which is why it’s so weird when somebody asks us where we are ‘from from.’ For my dad, and me and my brother, it’s California. For my mom it’s more Canada than anywhere else, even though she was born in Fiji.” “Does your mom identify as Fijian?” “No, Canadian. She moved to Canada with my grandparents and her family when she was two, so she spent all of her life in Canada up until the age of 16, and then she came to the US. There are a lot of intersecting identities. There’s the Fiji Indian, there’s the Fiji American, Punjabi, it’s just—I don’t know. But I, specifically, for my own identity, I find myself identifying as Sikh American Punjabi female.” “Is that what you felt like growing up? Or is that more recent?” “Growing up I felt, ‘Okay, I am American, I am Punjabi.’ I’m really proud of my Punjabi culture, just, it took me a long time. Are you asking how I came to that conclusion, and if I felt that way my whole life?” “If it’s appropriate. I don’t want to impose a theory that you had some revelation or big awakening about your race.” “No, it took me a while to come to that conclusion for myself, because, for a while there … [she interrupted herself by laughing and then explained her amusement]: When I was in fourth grade I learned a little bit more about the history of Gandhi and that’s when Pakistan split from India, so for about two weeks, I thought I was Pakistani! Because it was the northern part of India, specifically in the Punjab region. So part of the Punjab region became Pakistan, right?” “Is Punjab a geographically defined region of India?” “Yeah. I’d say it is, because that’s where the Punjabi culture is. A lot of Sikhs do live in that region. So, for awhile I was confused. It’s not like it’s something that I think about all the time, but it’s something that I do think about here and there when I hear about the cultures of others. I’ve always loved reading, learning about culture and history. My God, my wheels are really turning!” I was pleased that the interview process was making her think about things she hadn’t thought much about and prompted, “Well let’s go back to when you were a kid. Can you describe your neighborhood?” “My neighborhood as a child was living on the same street as a lot of my dad’s extended family. There were four houses, and I lived in one of them with my dad, my mom, my machi and bubba, my paternal grandparents, and, obviously, when my brother was born, with my brother.”

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“How much younger than you is he?” “Two years. We were all in one house. Sometimes my aunt and uncle, my dad’s brother and his wife, would live with us. Because he was going to medical school, so he was getting sent all around the country and he would stay with us sometimes when he was near. But early on in my life, we all lived together permanently, so there were about three generations in one home. That’s typically how it was in each of the four houses my family owned. The other three houses were owned by my bubba’s (grandfather’s) three brothers. And their families all lived in each house. Now we’re a lot more spread out. The family has just grown so much, but back then it was really nice growing up close to so much family. The cousins that were my age all went to the same school. My mom would take us all in the morning, and then pick us up. I didn’t really know the meaning of ‘extended family’ as a term, because I thought, oh, it’s just all family. Cousins. Only high school, when my family moved to Lafayette did I learn, ‘Ohhhh! Okay, there’s immediate family and extended family!’” I asked where the extended family lived before Tara’s immediate family moved to Lafayette. (Lafayette is a wealthy suburb near the Bay Area in California. Her early childhood home with extended family was more middle and working class.) “In San José. Santa Teresa area, Oak Grove. I’d say it was pretty diverse. There were Caucasian families, Asian families, but the cul-de-sac was really made up of our family houses. And it was really fun. We would have sleepovers. And we’d have a lot more religious gatherings. Girthan or Gandpat.” “What do those terms mean?” “Girthan is a morning prayer, and typically people do that when something good has happened. Gandpat happens in the same context, but it’s held over a three-day period when we read the whole book, the Guru Granth Sahib throughout three days. Girthan is just like a morning segment of it. And some of my best memories are actually during those gatherings, because all of our cousins would be together. We were all in elementary school.” “Was it held at one of the houses in your family?” “It would switch depending on the family. Say my family would want to celebrate a birthday, and they wanted to do Girthan, it would be at our house. And the whole block would come, and they’d also invite members of the larger Sikh community, to come. The night before, the women would make food. As a kid, I didn’t really understand the meaning of it. I

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don’t know if I really do now either, but the memories and the experiences definitely taught me the importance of family and communication and keeping a good relationship with family members. My cousins and I definitely got closer because of those moments, too. After the celebration, shiny stuff would fall off of the women’s clothes, because there were sparkles on the dresses. So after everyone was gone, my cousin and I would pick up little shiny things. Just memories like that.” I asked, “And it felt cultural more than religious? Do you consider yourself religious?” “I would say I’m religious but I can’t say I go every Sunday. I’m not that religious. I’m definitely spiritual. I do believe that there’s someone who’s watching over me. It also helped me when I moved over here, to Nevada, away from my family, that someone is looking out for me. Because I was really alone up here. I was aware of certain things that might have scared me, but I always felt that someone was watching over me. I always felt a comfort knowing that.” High School: Class Privilege and the Price of Assimilation I asked, “You moved at a certain point from your childhood home in San José to Lafayette, right? You maintained a sense of closeness to your family, and a real identification with who you are, even if it took your lifetime name it. It seems that traditional foods and religious ceremonies and a close extended family are all a part of who you are. And yet, neither of your parents were actually immigrants. Did your family speak Punjabi?” “None of us speak Punjabi well, in my family at least. My mom’s family speaks it a little more, but not a lot.” “Did that matter when you were young?” “You know, not really. I asked my parents ‘Why didn’t you teach us?’ For one thing, my mom knew more Punjabi than my dad, because she grew up in Fiji, my dad grew up here. He was born in San Francisco and then moved to San José before he was twelve. But, the importance of schooling, and getting an education in the United States is really, really important in my family. So they figured, it’s not like United States school system really knows Punjabi. They’re not going to teach it, they’re not going to speak it, and we spend most of our time at school anyway as kids. We’re not going to retain it. It’ll just decrease. I can’t speak for my little cousins now, because they’re learning Punjabi. They go to Punjabi school and they speak it at home. But in my household, for me and my brother,

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my parents thought, ‘Okay, you guys are just going to forget it because we don’t really speak it that often either.’ We tried going to Punjabi school. I can’t say I retained it well, though. That was a long time ago. I think it trickles away in every single generation. It’s evidence of how certain groups assimilate into the United States culture.” “What do your parents do for a living?” “My mom used to be a dental assistant. She wanted to be a hygienist, but then she had us. My dad started off in business now he’s a project manager at a corporation. They both have Bachelors’ degrees from San José State.” “So, a middle-class white-collar family?” “Definitely. We’re really fortunate. I’d say my immediate family, is economically privileged for sure.” “Were your schools racially and ethnically diverse?” “My family were the only Punjabi kids and Indian kids. There were some Muslims students as well, but my elementary school was predominantly Hispanic and Asian. And a few Caucasians as well. But that was elementary school. I spent middle school and high school in Lafayette, which is a white, affluent community. So I switched from Hispanic in elementary, to a predominantly White and Asian middle school, and then my high school in Lafayette was almost entirely White. And very wealthy.” “Was your move because of financial success in your family?” “My parents just wanted to move closer to my uncle, because he settled in Lafayette.” “Your father’s brother?” “Yeah, my cha-cha. My dad’s younger brother. Also we wanted to be closer to my mom’s side of the family, because they live in Tracy and Sacramento, and Lafayette is closer to them than San Jose is. But the move to Lafayette was also for the schools, which really did prepare me for college.” “A lot of things that my parents did were for us in terms of schooling. Education was really important in my family. Getting into college. Getting that college degree. Especially in my grandfather’s mind that was really important. My mom always stressed just because you have a college degree doesn’t mean you know everything, it doesn’t mean you’re higher than say someone without it. Everyone has to work hard. No matter what you do, you always have to work hard. So the work ethic in general was always pushed, because my mom’s parents didn’t have college degrees. When they came here, they were dishwashers, worked in a factory.”

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“My mom always instilled in us the idea of respect. I know there are a lot of Asian communities that really put pressure on kids to always get college degree. But in my family it’s also just pure work ethic that needs to be there if you want to be successful. Your education doesn’t necessarily make you any more of a person. “But my parents figured the schools in Lafayette were good and they were public schools. So, they said, ‘Okay, the best chance of you getting prepared for college would be going to these schools.’ We had moved out of my grandparent’s home earlier when my parents bought a house in San José … near Morgan Hill. And then, we sold that Morgan Hill house when the market was doing really well, and that’s how we were able to get into Lafayette.” “Tell me about Lafayette and your experience there, because for the first time you were with a different mixture of kids economically and racially. How did you experience that difference?” “I remember being enrolled in soccer, and there were a lot of girls who were Indian and Middle Eastern on that team, as well as Caucasian. I just wanted to make friends so I could do okay in middle school because, God, middle school was just a terrible time for me.” “I think you’re in good company with that. Nobody remembers middle school as a great time!” “Yeah, we moved right before seventh grade. And the middle schools in that area were from sixth to eighth, so these kids already knew each other. But that wasn’t really the issue. I found some good people. But now looking back at it, after having learned so much about women’s studies, sociology, political science here [in college], I look back and the ‘popular kids’ at my middle school were all white. And also the kids who, based on characteristics and appearance, had predominantly western features. Once I got into high school.” I interrupted her, asking “Is this part of the middle school story?” Tara responded, “Oh, no. This is high school. Now I’m switching to high school.” “You don’t want to talk about middle school?” She laughed, “No, I just don’t remember too much about it.” I apologized, “No, go ahead. I’m sorry. I don’t want to interrupt your stories.” “Okay. It was during my senior year [at the wealthy white high school in Lafayette]. I was in my government class, and our teacher asked us about … God, I still remember this! I wish I hadn’t kept quiet, because it

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still irks me to this day. The teacher asked us our opinion about affirmative action. Because we had all just applied to college. We were just waiting to hear where we got accepted. And the kids in my class were predominantly white. And my teacher asked our opinion about affirmative action and a lot of them said, ‘Well, if they have a lower GPA than me or a lower SAT score, they shouldn’t be allowed!’ A lot of them didn’t understand the merit and the privilege they already had. These kids were able to go to lacrosse games, do lacrosse, some of them equestrian—and equestrian is expensive! Same with many things they did, but equestrian especially is expensive. Also, tennis. They would go to tennis matches. I understand they worked hard, and that’s great, but in that class, a lot of them objected to affirmative action and said, ‘I work as hard [as any minority student]!’ ” “And I thought, ‘You don’t understand the things that are going on in certain ethnic communities.’ And I remember just sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my God, I need to get out of here. And I didn’t say a word. I was always a quiet person. I just wanted to get through high school and move on.’ “I made some good friends in high school, don’t get me wrong. But my stance was ‘Okay, just be the nice person, get through high school, it’s a hard time for a lot of kids. Just get through it, just go to college.’ So I did. But I wish I had spoken up [during that affirmative action discussion] and said, ‘I understand there are broken homes here as well, but it’s not like kids in other communities can go to soccer practice, get new shoes every single season. It’s those things, those details, that a lot of privileged people never think about. Especially growing … Okay, sorry I’m switching to college now.” “Just go! This is great! Follow your own thoughts about how these themes are linked. We can always circle back.” Tara, who prefers to keep a low profile in a public setting, had unexpectedly struck a nerve with these memories and let loose with thoughts that she usually keeps to herself. Until this point in the interview she had been very careful not to appear to be complaining about race and class. She deliberately focused on the empowering things about her childhood— her strong family bonds, their work ethic and financial success. She was quick to apologize whenever she thought she might be interpreted to be complaining, insisting instead that she was lucky and had no problems big enough to dwell upon. And then, while discussing the social environment

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and sense of entitlement at her very privileged white high school, she was unable to suppress her anger any longer. She regarded her family as privileged rather than the victims of racial discrimination. But looking back on the environment of her privileged high school, the impact of race and class was impossible to ignore. When recounting the story about her classmates’ attitudes on affirmative action, her language reveals the distance she felt from them: “and my teacher asked our opinion about affirmative action and a lot of them said.” She was very angry, still angry, about her classmates’ attitudes in that affirmative action discussion, and some of her thoughts may have been articulated for the first time in this interview. But back in high school, she kept her silence. Her memory of that discussion in her high school government class led to more recent memories of experiences with race and class. “This past summer I stayed in Reno and volunteered with the public defender’s office, specifically working with inmates at the jail. There I really saw how the cycle of poverty affects people. If you’re growing up living, say, in one motel after another, and your father isn’t around, and, say, your mom is a drug addict, how can you expect someone from that sort of background to find hope in terms of what they can do with themselves and the potential they have? I always think, ‘Okay, I’m really lucky for the family I grew up in and the communities I’ve grown up in. Now, if I was put in that other situation, how would I have turned out?’ That’s incredibly hard when there’s no hope around you and there’s really no one you can really talk to. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “I do. Yeah.” “And then I always think back to that moment in school with the question of affirmative action and these kids just spewing the stuff, these struggles they think they’ve been through. I think, ‘You really don’t know what these kids who attend college under affirmative action go through. These rich white kids are just unaware of the struggles of people without their privileges.’” I commented, “White privilege blinds you to the fact that there’s a world outside of your experience. But you were sitting there in that classroom, fuming but not saying anything. And your classmates were talking about their entitlement and not questioning how they got it. So what made you different from them in that situation?” “That’s the thing. I think about that. I mean I was able to go to a school like that, and my parents were able to provide for me and I have

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two parents. So, I don’t think a lot of things make me different, at least economically.” “But at that moment, you were sitting there thinking, ‘This is not right.’ And you were confident that you could have been articulate about it if you wanted to. You knew what you wanted to say?” “Yeah.” “And so why do you think you had those thoughts and other classmates in the room did not have them?” “I think there are a lot of factors. I think it’s partly because I lived in in San José when I was young … I’m not saying I encountered kids that were starving or anything like that. Every kid in my classroom at elementary school had their own lunch. Nobody was on the school lunch program. We’d trade snacks, that sort of thing. But I also remember some kids talking about how ‘After high school, that’s going to be it for me, I’m going to be taking a job.’ Maybe growing up in San José before we moved to Lafayette made me different from the Lafayette kids. I think that was a factor. But also, I think, reading about certain stories, reading about … I was a huge reader! Certain books and histories about California history and Mexican Americans, learning about missions. All that history about certain ethnic groups that I read before high school makes you more aware of what other people go through. Especially immigrants. Specifically immigrants, because that’s what I read as a kid. I read that series American Girl, about the diaries of different girls within America. You know those books?” “Yes, sure. With the dolls?” “Yeah. I mean I never got a doll, but all the reading I did helped me see the different stories Americans have.” “And you were in grade school predominantly with Mexican Americans, right?” “Yeah. I had a friend who was Peruvian. I would come over to her house and her grandma would make tamales. I think all of that impacted me and I thought, ‘Okay, everyone has different struggles. We can’t just say our struggles are bigger than others.’ And I think that’s why the affirmative action talk in that classroom really annoyed me. I wanted to say to those kids, ‘You don’t know what other people are going through.’” “Would that have been the first time that you perhaps, saw how white privilege works? I’m not sure if you’re saying that exactly.” “I think I pretty much am. Yeah.” “And recognized it for what it is?”

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“Yeah. There was also … prom.” Tara’s phrasing about “prom” was so deliberate that I laughed. “Okay. We’re gettin’ down to it! Let’s talk about prom.” Tara plunged into her memories of senior prom: “I remember I was able to get my hair done. I was privileged economically, for sure. I was able to get my hair done, nails done, make-up done for prom. And get a prom dress. There are many girls who do not have that. “I had just gotten this dress from Kohl’s, and I was like, ‘Yeah, this is going to be nice!’ I got it on clearance, it was great. And I was getting my hair done. One of the cheerleaders from my high school was in the salon getting her hair done there. too. She had this beautiful pink gown and she was telling the hairdresser, ‘Yeah, my parents got it shipped from New York,’ and I just thought, ‘Oh my God! All right.’ I mean, she was a sweet enough girl, but I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Damn, New York! Wow, New York! My God! I go to one heck of a school.’” Tara immediately apologized for perhaps seeming hostile or resentful. She clearly recognized an economic difference between her background and those of the social elite at her high school. But she did not want to appear unaware of her own relative privilege. It was hard for her to articulate the difference between her family and those of the wealthy kids at her high school. She was disturbed by their assumed entitlement, but she did not regard her life as ‘underprivileged’ in any way: ‘Not to diminish the character of that [upper class] society, it’s just that for some people that’s how it really is. That’s reality for some people. I’m not trying to diminish … you know, degrade. Not degrade … what’s the right word …?’” I tried to fill in what she was fumbling to say: “You don’t want to lump them all into a group. You know even among the very privileged, there are good people and really spoiled mindless people too.” “Some of them are definitely really nice. Some of those super rich kids at my high school were really nice, but some of them were not.” She reiterated, “I was born into really privileged family and I was lucky that that my family believed that education was a really good stepping-­ stone to being successful whether you were a female or a male.” Then I understood what Tara was struggling to articulate. Tara was also talking about a struggle for gender equality in her own culture. Tara’s mother came from a traditional culture and yet rose above the oppressive tradition that kept girls from getting an education. I asked, “Did your mom have to struggle for that?”

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“Yeah. And that’s part of the reason why I strive so much to do as well as I can and work hard. It’s because of the struggle my family has been through in terms of just coming here and getting started as well as … I think my mom’s struggle to get an education was similar to that of my aunts. Now I’m given the opportunity to go college and beyond, instead of getting married right out of school. I’m going to do as much as I can with that, you know, as much as I possibly can. Sorry, this is going all over the place!” “No, no, you’re doing exactly what you should be doing.” Microaggressions, Stereotypes, and Islamophobia I continued, “Did race have anything to do with your experience? You’ve been focusing on class and nationality, background, culture. But the rich kids and the popular kids at your high school were mostly white?” “Yeah. And Asian. The whole idea of the model minority is definitely prevalent. It’s still a weird term.” “Did you experience people stereotyping you racially?” “A lot of people just figured, when I first came to Lafayette, that I was good at math. It’s funny to me.” “Are you?” “No! I’m the farthest thing from it!” she laughed. “Kids would say, ‘Oh, are you really good at math?’ And I would respond, ‘No. Don’t ask me to try to help you with your homework.’ Then when people actually got to know me they were like ‘Okay! Not going to ask you for help!’” [She laughed again.] “But you didn’t see that as racial stereotyping?” “I saw it as racial stereotyping, but it was like, okay, you just have to laugh about it.” “Were there any moments that you didn’t want to laugh at? Things said that really hurt?” “Yeah, because when I got to Lafayette I was placed into a lower math class in comparison to everyone else. I think it affected me a little bit until I came to terms with who I was and what I was good at and what I was interested in. And math wasn’t one of them! Whatsoever! And same with sciences. But I still felt ‘Why am I not as good as some of these other kids?’ And ‘some other kids’ meant the rest of the rest of the kids in my class, who were white, because it was only me and another Indian girl, and another Indian guy who were in the lower division math class.”

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I mused, “That’s so interesting, because they assume something about you, which is stereotypical, but not in a negative way. They’re not putting you down, they’re just assuming you must be like this and then when in fact you don’t meet the stereotype—when you aren’t good at math, for example—you think you should be the way they have labelled you. But at the same time, you perceive race to be an issue when you’re not placed in the highest math class. You can’t win that one!” “Precisely.” Now that Tara was able to acknowledge that race played a role in her experiences, she had no trouble describing the subtleties of racism, even when it is presented as “positive” stereotyping. Tara is averse to conflict, and rarely directly confronted racism when she encountered it. But she described the pervasiveness of racial stereotypes, even while she acknowledged that she escaped some of the worst aspects by having light skin: “There was also—and I hate this phrase. I don’t understand why people say it—but, ‘You’re pretty for an Indian girl.’ And you know, I am privileged in the sense that I guess I have lighter skin, right? But I remember …” “People said that to you?” “Yeah. I’ve had people say that to me here [in Reno], I’ve had people say that to me in Lafayette. Do you realize what you’re saying when you’re saying that?” “So how do you respond to that?” “I look at them thinking, ‘Well, you clearly don’t know the meaning behind that statement.’ First time I was taken aback …” “Do you remember the first time specifically?” “Not really. I have a really fuzzy memory when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I remember feeling taken aback and thinking, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’” “Was that in high school?” “Yeah. I don’t know if it’s just the high school age. It seems like it exists in every high school. It’s like labelling a woman ‘exotic.’ That is also annoying. It’s like ‘What am I to you?’” “Have you heard that?” “Yeah. I’ve heard that from other girls, too. I mean it’s not just men that say it. Women say it to other women as well.” I suggested, “In high school, everybody’s so focused on what you’re wearing and what your hair is doing…. It’s a hyper-focus on appearance, and I can see them just going that next step and racializing it.”

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Tara responded, “I think that’s why I didn’t really put a lot of effort into my appearance when I was in high school. I just did not care. One, I wanted to be comfortable, and Two, I was like ‘Okay, I’m not going to go into that.’ That was my own silent rebellion. I just wore sweats, my hair in a bun. Still kind of what I wear here. The term ‘exotic’ as great as it sounds, is not that great. To me it’s like putting another person in the ‘other’ category. You know what I mean?” “Yeah. I do. Of course, that’s correct. It’s not a compliment, even if it’s meant to be positive. It’s a box they’re putting you in, and they’re bringing the box. They’re not asking you anything.” Tara added, “I think it happens at every high school. Any sort of setting, too. I’ve had friends say, ‘There was this co-worker who said I looked exotic.’ And I was like, ‘What???’ The term exotic is just categorizing in my opinion. Exotic. It’s just such an easy word to use and they use it specifically on women of color.” “So in your senior year of high school, you were grappling with an inchoate awareness of racial difference. You were aware of microaggressions, and remarks that are racist in a passive sort of way. ‘If I’m hearing you correctly, your response was incredulity when you heard a racialized barb’. It’s as though you were startled each time, thinking, ‘What was that?? I can’t believe you just said that!’” “Yeah. I think the best way to combat that stuff was just sitting back with the attitude, ‘Okay … all right … That wasn’t the best phrase to use, but … whatever.’” “Did it make you feel alienated? Did you have enough of a peer group to insulate you from the insults?” “I did. Luckily I was known as one of the ‘nicer people’ and that certainly helped. I had a good friend group of Asians, Indians, Caucasians. Really nice people. We talked about certain experiences as much as you could in high school. I can’t say that I ever felt super alienated or alone. But the little things you become aware of throughout your time at school make you really see.” Tara returned to the discussion of affirmative action at her high school, obviously still troubled by it. She emphasized yet again that she did not mean to judge the more privileged kids: “Going back to the whole Lafayette and privilege thing, I’m not trying to dog on them, because I have two cousins there. My uncle (the one who we moved to Lafayette to be closer to), has two sons, my cousins, whom I adore. And they’ve grown up in Lafayette, so they’ve had a different experience than me. I grew up

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in San Jose and moved to Lafayette when I was in middle school. But even though their life has been a little more sheltered than my early childhood was, they are pretty aware … I mean, they’re young though. They’re ten and eight years old.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I probed, “Aware of what?” “Aware of just certain things. I’d say the older one is more aware of just how the world is and I’m not going to get into a huge discussion with him until he’s probably a teenager.” I still wasn’t sure what Tara meant, but I noticed that she was being extremely cautious about what she was saying. Her two young cousins grew up in Lafayette, with more privilege than she had when she was their age, and it seems as though the older one was just becoming aware of racial difference, in spite of his economic privilege. But Tara did not want to speak for him. I asked her to elaborate, because her caution and circumspection pointed to the importance of this material. She was hesitant to discuss it and risk being misinterpreted by anybody reading her story. “And by ‘stuff going on in the world’ you mean …?” “Like Trump. That sort of thing. My cousin would watch the news and ask, ‘How could he get elected?’ I’m like, ‘That’s a whole different story.’ It’s not bagging on the people that live in Lafayette, just because they’re privileged. Because I lived there, and my cousins live there, and I love them to death …” I could see that Tara was conflicted about the environment of economic privilege in which her cousins were growing up. But I wasn’t sure why she was so reluctant to articulate what made her so uncomfortable. Maybe she was trying to sort out the difference between economic privilege and race privilege? She seemed reluctant to discuss white privilege because she feared it would be read as a criticism of all the people she grew up with in Lafayette. I pushed her a little: “I’m just trying to follow what you mean. You recognize that your family is economically privileged, but it feels different from what you perceived to be the white kids’ privileges? Is that what you’re saying?” “Yeah. I guess I don’t want people to equate my “bagging” on white privilege with bagging on my little cousins who are also growing up there. I want to distinguish between their experiences and white privilege. Like the whole affirmative action thing. I don’t want them to be connected to be put in that category.” “By whom?” “Just anyone who’s going to be reading this.”

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This segment of the interview was extremely tense and difficult. Tara was going to extraordinary lengths to express her ideas about race and privilege carefully and precisely. She was worried about being misunderstood, and I was feeling pretty dense, not sure I was comprehending the reasons for her discomfort or helping her to express it. At first I thought it had to do with the difference between economic “privilege” in the sense that her immigrant family had worked hard and succeeded to the point where they could live in an exclusive environment like Lafayette. She didn’t want her family’s success story to be confused with the affluence and entitlement of her truly rich classmates who had prom dresses shipped from New  York, who travelled to participate in equestrian and lacrosse tournaments, and who had voiced objections to affirmative action in her high school government class. But the more I probed and pushed her to explain to me again and yet again, it occurred to me that she was worried that her cousins might be the target of the white tone-deafness that minimizes the struggles of immigrants and people of color and criticizes affirmative action as taking advantage of hard-working white students. She worries that the readers of this book might think her cousins are spoiled or oblivious to the struggles of immigrants and people of color. Her struggle for clarity in this segment of the interview felt as though she was trying to explain the success her family enjoyed. Tara was reminding the reader not to confuse an immigrant success story with the inherited racial and economic privilege that makes one oblivious to the struggles of most Americans, who aren’t born to wealth. I suggested, “I think you’re trying to emphasize the difference between the privilege that you and your cousins enjoy because it was earned by your parents and grandparents, and the inherited wealth and privilege that enabled some of your classmates to think nothing of having their prom dresses shipped in from New York. Or Paris … or wherever. I know there is wealth out there that you and I can’t even imagine.” “Yeah, there is, there is. Wow.” “Do you think you may also be talking about culture and race as distinct from economic privilege?” “Yeah, I’d say so, because my cha chi and cha cha, like many of my family members before my generation, they definitely experienced race stuff that I never did. This was during the 80s, 70s. They experienced all sorts of race stuff.” “Did they talk about it?”

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“Not specifically. My dad would say, ‘Okay, your grandfather went through some things.’ My mom would say, ‘Yeah, your grandparents went through some things.’ But they would never talk about certain experiences. One experience I remember, though, happened when I was back home [on a break from UNR] and we were in Tracy, and that’s where my nonna and nonina live, my mom’s parents. My cousins were really annoyed when they were talking about how my nonna, my grandfather, was out for a walk with his friend. He was sitting with his friend in the park. His friend wears a turban [the religious headdress for Sikh men]. And these white kids drove by and threw ice cream at them and yelled racial slurs. I was just so mad when I heard that story. It was in Tracy which is, in my opinion, a diverse community, towards the Central Valley. I was just dumbfounded and said, ‘What?? How?? Really??’ I was so mad! “So that’s one racial incident pertaining to my family that I specifically heard about. I can’t say my family is super open about that stuff, though. That’s really the only one I’ve heard about. I was just so mad.” I suggested that not only was the story itself important, but equally telling was her parents’ reluctance to talk about it. Tara has clearly absorbed both messages: anger over the racist abuse her grandfather endured, and her parents’ message to keep quiet about those sorts of incidents. “That’s a double-sided message,” I suggested. “You get an important story passed down to your generation, and also you learn to be reticent about discussing it.” “Yeah.” “Maybe it’s too painful to talk about?” “Painful, and they also don’t want us to live in fear … I mean they want us to be aware that people don’t perceive us as American and don’t think we belong here. But they also don’t want to add that sort of thing to our sense of belonging. That story upset all of us so much. Maybe they were trying to protect us. But all of us are pretty aware that there are some people that aren’t very welcoming. Like when that a Sikh man was just waiting for the bus and was attacked by white men who cut his beard off.” [Referring to a recent racial assault on a Sikh man at a bus stop.] Tara continued, “It happens after incidents, after acts of terrorism. Then those racist incidents seem to spike because people don’t know and don’t care whether the man was Sikh or Muslim. People shouldn’t be acting this way anyway! I remember specifically after the attack in that Wisconsin gurdwara, the Sikh temple there, some of the comments were, ‘Oh, these people weren’t even Muslim,’ and I said, ‘Does it make a

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difference if they were?’ I remember thinking ‘Why would it make a difference if they were Muslim? That doesn’t make it right.’ I think people need to understand the meaning behind certain phrases … like ‘He wasn’t even a Muslim.’ Who cares if he’s Muslim? It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. Terrorizing people is wrong, no matter who they are.” University of Nevada, Reno The segment of our conversation in which we had just engaged was very intense, exhausting. I asked Tara if she wanted to continue: “Are you doing okay? If you need to take a break we can do that. It’s hot in this office.” But she wanted to keep going. “Trust me, I’m doing fine.” “Okay, so, let’s get you to UNR. Tell me how you decided to come here, and what your experience has been like.” “What got me to come here was when my brother was on a traveling baseball team. We came here for a tournament. This was before my senior year in high school. My dad said, ‘You know what? Let’s just look at the campus. Just to see if you’d want to come here.’ I came to campus and it was a beautiful day, I went to the quad and thought, ‘I love it here.’ It really is gorgeous. And the fact that I got the WUE was really helpful.” The WUE refers to the Western Undergraduate Exchange, a program that reduces tuition for students who want to have an out-of-state experience rather than attend their own state university in a cluster of public universities in the far west. “There are many schools on the West Coast that offer it, like University of Alaska, Oregon State …” “Did you have any other schools in mind at that time?” “I did. My dream school was actually Davis.” “It’s a beautiful place. “It is. I didn’t get into any of the UC’s except Riverside, and I also got into University of the Pacific but it was too expensive. And I wasn’t that interested in Riverside because it seemed too far from home, so UNR offered me the WUE and I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s move to Nevada.’ So I did, and I received a lot of support from my family. Really fortunate for that. My grandparents were really excited. But that first year, I was missing my family a lot. I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ “It has been, in general a great experience for college. There are certain things I notice about Reno where it’s like, ‘Okay, why does everyone stare

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at us?’ Me and my boyfriend are both Indian. ‘Why do we get stared at?’ I asked him, ‘Why do we get stared at when we go into bars?’ He says, ‘Just ignore it.’ I was like, ‘Fair enough.’ But when we walk into a place and all the heads turn, I think ‘Okay …’” That “Okay…” was the same “Okay…” Tara used when people would refer to her as “exotic.” Her tactic in dealing with most racism was to note it and try to move on quickly. She noticed and was disturbed by the rudeness and the racism of the people she encountered publicly in Reno, but her boyfriend urged her to rise above it. Tara is a young woman with plenty of equanimity, but I wondered if she really felt that calm when faced with strangers who stare at her because she is not white. I pushed her on that, trying to see if she would express anger at having to confront racism when you’re on a date with your boyfriend, but she insisted that she could ride out the racism, preferred not to make a scene about it. “Really? People stare at you and your boyfriend when you walk into a bar and you just think ‘Okay…’? You’re making excuses for horrible behavior from white people. You walk into a bar and everybody turns around …!” “Especially when you’re in a large group that’s predominantly Indian or something, there’s a lot of staring that happens if you’re in a group of four or more. I just think, ‘Okay …’ But aside from that …” “Do you think that has to do with just being ‘the racial other’ or do you think that has to do specifically with Islamophobia and people are thinking maybe you’re Muslim?” “I can’t say. Maybe it’s just, I don’t know, maybe people are not used to us … maybe we’re not that common here. I can’t speak on that. Maybe it’s the fact of the racial other, I don’t know. But it’s happened and I’m like, ‘Okay, this is really awkward.’ I mean we have brown skin, we are Indian … I don’t know.” “Okay, let’s just broaden this to what it feels like to be a student at UNR. You’ve got an Indian boyfriend, right? Is there an Indian or Punjabi community here? Do you have a lot of friends from your own ethnic group? Do you want to call it a racial group? What would you call it?” “I’d say ethnic-cultural group. But then again, there are very few just ‘Indian people’ here. So whenever you see someone, you ask, ‘Oh, what kind of Indian are you?’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi,’ and then you just talk about stuff like that. We just talk about stuff that we’ve been through. Just stuff with our families. In terms of my own

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friend group, it’s pretty diverse. I’d say Filipino, for sure. Latino. Indian. Caucasian.” “Did race have anything to do with your decision to come here? Did you think about what kind of a racial mix there was?” “When I came to Prospective Students Day, I saw how diverse it was in comparison to my high school, and I thought, ‘This is cool.’ Because there weren’t that many Filipinos or Latina or Latinos in Lafayette, so when I came here, I thought it was really cool.” I said, “I’m hearing a lot of that from the students I’m interviewing. Even though they’ve all experienced racism, nearly everybody, has said, ‘This place is pretty diverse compared to other places.’” “Throughout my time here, it seems like it’s been pretty welcoming to all sorts of identities. There are certain things … my sophomore year, I lived in Canada Hall. I was waiting at a crosswalk in front of campus to go to my dorm and there was this person in a pick-up. He was driving by, and he shouted, ‘Go back to your country!’” I wondered to myself, “Why does it always seem to be a white guy in a pickup truck? I wonder if it’s the same guy driving around tormenting students of color at UNR …?” Tara continued, “I told my cousins, my cousins who I’m really close to, but not my parents. Cause then they’ll worry. I know I’m safe here, it’s just there are stupid people.” “Did that scare you?” “A little bit. I ran straight to my room, and I called my friend, I called my boyfriend, and he said, ‘Okay, just stay in your room, I’ll be there.’ And, yeah, that’s pretty much how that day went and I didn’t stay in my room the whole day. We ended up going to get something to eat.” I suggested, “It poisoned the day, didn’t it?” “It really did. When that sort of thing happens, you just keep thinking about it.” Tara responded, now with more animation, about her perceptions of white American presumptuousness: “It drives me crazy when politicians talk about ‘good Christian values.’ Are you really speaking for all of us? It just annoys the heck out of me. I’m like, ‘Well, what about me? I’m Sikh. Are you speaking on behalf of me? I don’t think so! If you’re founding principles and politics off Christian values, you’re not speaking for all Americans. And if you think you are, well, I’m sorry to break it to you, you’re not!’ Yeah I feel like that is needed. Get off your high horse. You don’t speak for everyone.

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Christians—no offense … I don’t know a lot about Christianity—but Christians don’t speak for every single religion. That’s not ‘the’ religion. I think a lot of politicians fail to recognize that. Politicians say stupid stuff sometimes. Really? And you think you’re speaking on behalf of all citizens? No.” White Privilege and Colorism I wanted to support the anger that Tara was finally willing to share. “If I were to define the themes weaving their way through your narrative now, that you’re willing to express anger about—and I know you’re a calm and generous woman—but what gets you angry is the presumption of class privilege and white privilege. You’re very tolerant. From my standpoint I’d be madder than you are if people were always asking, me ‘What are you?’ Or assuming you have to somehow explain why your skin is darker than an Anglo-Saxon and why your hair is brown rather than blonde, right? I would be furious if people were always looking at me and saying, ‘Okay, explain yourself.’” “Well, yeah, and I think that’s part of the thing that a lot of people fail to recognize. Part of white privilege is not having to answer those questions. White privilege is not economic privilege, that’s a separate thing. It’s the fact that you don’t have to deal with questions of why you belong here. And just certain fears that you have, for example, for the older men with turbans. White people don’t have to sit there being afraid after a terrorist attack. I’m not diminishing how terrible terrorist attacks are, but ultimately, after that happens, there’s a lot more hostile interactions with men in turbans. White men don’t have to think about that. That is what white privilege is. Those are things that they don’t have to think about. Because my bubba wears turbans.…” “Does your dad?” “No. No, no, no. But my bubba does, and when he goes out on—well he used to go out on his morning walks every single morning with my grandma. You think in the back of your mind, ‘Okay, that could happen to anyone I know. Especially the people with turbans.’ But even my friends and families who don’t wear turbans but have brown skin. So that’s what white privilege is, not having that sort of fear. Some people try to use religion as the law of the land in terms of politics and a national culture, and I’m like, ‘No. Don’t impose your views on me. I have my own views. Sure,

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I’ll learn, I’ll listen. But don’t impose your views on me.’ That’s what I do not like.” This was definitely the most emotionally expressive part of Tara’s interview so far. I wanted to check in and make sure she was ready to continue: “How’s your energy holding up?” “Oh, it’s fine, I could keep going.” “Good. Good. So how about your experiences in the classrooms at UNR?” “I am majoring in Political Science, Sociology, and Women’s Studies.” “Three majors? Triple major?” “Somehow it all worked out. I don’t know how.” “They definitely go together.” “Really great classes. A lot of people are open-minded or they’re willing to learn. Sometimes that’s not the case, as you know from Identity Politics. There are different points of view but it has definitely made me open-­ minded. I don’t agree with certain viewpoints, but they are definitely there. That’s what these classes have taught me. I’m relatively quiet, but I’ll speak on experiences that I’ve observed or just my own experiences. Because my thing is, I don’t want to impose my viewpoint on others. I really do not like it when people do that to me. “In classroom discussions, we don’t go into depth in terms of race, because that’s such a touchy subject. I’d say the most in depth it has ever gotten was in your class, in Identity Politics. Caucasian students can’t seem to comprehend that racism not their personal fault, it’s institutional. It’s been like that for a long time. “I think I’m a lot more aware now in terms of race and its relation to western beauty standards and skin color, because it does pertain to both men and women, however a person identifies.” “Do you think you experience race differently as a woman than your Indian friends who are men?” “Yeah, I would say so. Punjabi is Northern Indian. So typically Punjab tend to have lighter skin color as opposed to South Indian.” “And is that more highly valued in Indian culture?” “So, this goes all the way back to colonialism … When the British ruled India, some slaves or servants worked inside. And the ones that were outside were doing the field labor. They got darker. It’s a class thing. The darker your skin, the less economic status you had. “My parents will joke about this because my parents were an arranged marriage, and one of the things was that my mom was lighter skinned. I

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think it’s stupid, obviously … but that’s how it was back then. And I see it sometimes now with this obsession with lighter skin. It stemmed from the colonial class system, but it also comes from western ideals, too. The media, and even Bollywood, centers around lighter-skinned women. Female actors in Bollywood, as well as actors in Hollywood, are cast lighter skin color, straighter hair, right? Just overall—and also in Asian culture specifically, there are skin-lightening creams and there are actors and actresses who advertise it, and it perpetuates the idea that that is beauty. And that’s typically stemmed from the whole western ideal.” She continued, “I see that in my family as well. I think it’s toxic. My mom thinks it’s stupid. I remember … and this still hurts me. I don’t know if I ever told anyone this. Well now I am, I guess. A couple of my younger cousins weren’t really allowed to go outside when they were younger because their skin would get darker. Recently I asked the youngest one, ‘How is your girlfriend?’ and he said, ‘Oh I don’t like her anymore.’ And I looked at him and asked, ‘Why? What happened? ’ And he said, ‘Oh, she got darker.’ And he doesn’t know the significance of that. So that ideal is toxic. And yeah, they’re my family, but that’s something that I’m completely against. I have a huge family. Everyone has different ideas about certain things. I understand that. But that’s one of those things that I think, ‘God that is a toxic thing.’ It’s something I’ve never really been vocal about, but obviously right now I’m just letting it all out. I hate it because it perpetuates that whole stigma of darker being not as beautiful. That is stupid, stupid, stupid. I can’t get any more riled up than that. And when I heard my little cousin say that I was like, ‘Excuse me, sir? No. She is …’ I told him she is just as beautiful as before. And he’s like, ‘Oh, okay.’ And I was like, ‘Yes.’” “So you planted a seed at least.” “I hope so, but I only see him like once or twice a year. Beauty is versatile; it’s not one specific thing. I just don’t get it.” “Have you noticed any differences since the election of Trump? Have you noticed a change in what this campus or Reno more generally feels like?” “Oh my God. I remember going into my political science class that morning of the election and I was ready for that day to make history. Everyone in that class at least was either non-partisan or going against Trump. So it was easy to talk. So it was really hard when … oh my God, that night. I was just like, ‘What the hell just happened? This is what America believes in? This is what the country I’m a part of believes in?’ I

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was just furious. I cried. Me and my friends had wine. We had beer that night.” “I went to school the day after the election and everything was quiet. I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe it.’ My friends were saying, ‘I can’t believe it.’ My cousins and I all texted, ‘What the hell?’ I texted my dad after Trump won Florida, and I was like, ‘Dad, what’s …?’ He said, ‘I don’t think this is going to be good.’ I’m like, ‘No.’ I need to talk about my family in this moment. Typically some of them have voted Republican in the past, but I have got to say that this time … My cousin Aron told me she went to San José and voted with our grandparents. And she was saying, ‘Yeah, everyone’s voting for Hillary.’ And typically, in the past, my grandparents—you know, the patriarchs of the family—they are traditional. I was actually wondering, ‘Would they vote for a woman in office?’ And when I heard that they did, I was so excited: ‘They see it!’ Because they’ve been through it. Their experience in this America hasn’t been a picture perfect, ‘Oh, we’re going to accept you.’ What they’ve been through is similar to every other ethnic group that has come to America. And obviously, they get it.”

Jose And then my friend comes up to me one day in second grade and says, ‘Hey, yeah, so you can’t come to my birthday party anymore.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ He was like, ‘Oh, because my mom doesn’t want any Mexicans at her house.’ No Mexicans here!! I said ‘Hi, I’m Joe.’ And I look white. So she thinks, ‘Oh, okay, you’re fine to be my son’s friend.’ You know, it was really a horrible thing.

Interview Conducted by Trisden Shaw and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring and Reece Gibb Introduction by Jennifer Ring: Trisden recruited Jose for this project, describing him to me as Mexican-­ American, a Marxist, and smart. When Jose walked into my office for his interview, I greeted a young man who was poised and seemed more mature than the average undergraduate. He appeared to me to be white, which only speaks to the fact that because of his name, I was expecting somebody who looked more stereotypically Latino. Jose speaks with confidence and carries himself with grace. His voice has the timbre, clarity,

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and dulcet tone of an American radio or television reporter. He is a self-­ composed, impressive young man with graceful presence. Family Background and Childhood Trisden began our discussion as usual, by asking how Jose identifies. Jose asked, “Race-wise? Or ethnicity-wise?” Trisden: “Just any identifying factors that you hold dear.” “Sure. Well, the interesting thing about identity is that it is very fluid, right? So it keeps changing. My identity today is very different than my identity four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, etc. I guess I would identify as a Mexican immigrant who is also a Marxist. I’m white. Even though I have a very strong Mexican background, I am white. Yeah, and a Marxist.” “OK. Will you explain that a little more?” “Sure. I was born in Mexico. My dad was born in Mexico as well, and my mom was born in the States. My mom is actually half white American, half Mexican, and my dad is full Mexican. However, with the history of Mexico, we kind of see how there’s been a huge Spanish influence there, and Spanish people tend to be very white. So my dad is a descendant of Spanish people with some indigenous blood, and my mom is half-Polish and half-Mexican; she’s also very white as well. So my white mom, who is half-Mexican, and my white dad, who is full Mexican, had me, and I guess I’m three-fourths Mexican.” “What do your parents do?” “My mom is a victim advocate for the district attorney’s office. She helps victims of crime. She’s been doing it for years, and it’s a very intense job, because she works with rape victims, domestic abuse victims, mothers who have lost their children, etc. “My dad started off as a bank auditor in his early twenties in Mexico. He worked his way up to a position of leadership in one of the big banks in Mexico, which is really ironic because now I’m a communist.” Not only does Jose identify as a communist, but his entire family has gradually come to embrace political ideologies sympathetic to communism: “My sister’s a communist, and my mom’s kind of a communist—maybe more of a social democrat, but she’s kind of a communist. And now my dad is starting to become a little more anti-capitalist, even though he has a very strong banking background. He works in finance for a communication technology company.”

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Trisden asked, “Were you born in Reno?” “No, I was born in Mexico City. My younger sister was born in Mexico City as well. We moved here when I was six and my sister was four. It was very challenging, making that transition, the move to Reno, you know. Learning how to speak the language, learning the cultural norms and customs and everything. It still takes some getting used to, even today. There are some very different cultural things that we still struggle with.” When Jose and his family moved to Reno, they stayed with his aunt in her attic for a few months and then moved to their own apartment where they stayed for five years. Then the family bought a home in south Reno, where Jose attended high school. The neighborhoods where he grew up were predominantly white and middle class. The schools he attended were majority white and well-off. When he graduated Damonte Ranch High School, Jose moved to Cincinnati for a year, where he attended University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, studying musical theater. When he told of his interest in musical theatre my initial impressions of him clicked into place: Jose’s physical presence, along with his voice and cadence, seems ready for the stage or microphone. Music and Marxism “I attended The College Conservatory of Music. I was into musical theatre from the time I was twelve, all through high school. I took voice lessons for years. When I was fifteen, I started taking ballet lessons and dance lessons, which was a lot of fun. I took acting lessons all through high school, did all the plays, all the shows, etc. I was also politicized at an early age. I was radicalized at a relatively young age.” Trisden asked, “By whom?” And after some prodding, Jose admitted that his mother was the greatest radicalizing influence on him at a young age. Jose: “It was actually in middle school. I mean, being an immigrant is different, because you always see things from an outsider’s perspective. I became an atheist when I was in seventh grade. It was kind of as a response to the theatre group I was in. The kids in theatre were very Christian, and so they would have all these insider events with each other at their church and stuff. And I was never a church person, I was never religious, so as a way of defying them and going against the grain, I turned to atheism. I was in middle school, in seventh or eighth grade, and I was feeling rebellious, you know, like, ‘Oh, man, these Americans, and these Christians,

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I’m gonna try to piss them off, whatever.’ I was doing very well academically, so I wasn’t rebellious in that other sense, but I was kind of trying to be more subversive, in a way.” Trisden: “Against the status quo …?” “Exactly, yeah. In eighth grade we had to do a project. We had to read a biography of an historical figure, and we had to do a book report. And so my mom and I went to Barnes and Noble, and I thought, ‘Who should I choose?’ And she said, ‘Well, if you really want to piss people off, read this biography on Che Guevara, the revolutionary.’” Jennifer remarked, admiringly, “I need to meet your mom!” “Oh, she’s wonderful, yeah! In sixth grade, for a science class, we had to dress up like these scientists from the past and do a presentation. And my mom told me in sixth grade, ‘If you really want to piss off your classmates and your teacher, you should do Charles Darwin.’ And I thought, ‘Okay, that sounds great!’ It didn’t really piss anybody off, but it was still kind of fun. “In eighth grade I read a biography of Che Guevara, and I was just fascinated by him, because he started going to med school and studying to be a doctor. And he traveled all through Latin America, and that’s what radicalized him. The poverty and strife he saw. And I identified with that. I thought it was really cool that he was a white Latin American person like me. He’s from Argentina. I thought, ‘Wow, this guy’s cool, but I don’t know about this communism stuff.’ And I kept revisiting it. There was a small two-paragraph description in the biography. It was a breakout box about explaining what socialism and communism were. And I would go back every now and then and just read it over, read it over, trying to understand more. When I was in eighth grade I decided, ‘Yeah, I’m a socialist, I identify as a socialist.’ And this was also when debates about healthcare were coming to the fore, right? So it all came together.” Jose had a transformative moment. He had been reading about Che Guevara, a white Latin American doctor who wanted to bring healthcare to poor people. He became very interested in the contemporary healthcare debate and reached the conclusion, “You know, universal healthcare, it’s a no-brainer. What are we doing?” Healthcare, the 2008 housing crisis, and reading about Latin American revolutionaries who wanted to fix similar problems were catalysts that prompted Jose to challenge the system and the views of others: “I would get into these fights with the Christian right-wingers who were in the theatre crew back in the day. It was a lot of fun, and I was sort of politicized

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by that, and then the financial crisis of 2008 happened. My next-door neighbor lost his home, things were kind of going down the toilet, and I was very confused by it. It just kind of didn’t make any sense to me, giving the banks bailouts and, you know, everybody losing their homes. I hadn’t come to these conclusions yet, but I was kind of … “I was starting to think more about politics, and then my freshman and sophomore years of high school I would watch documentaries and read Wikipedia pages on the history of Guatemala and the history of Mexico. And think, ‘These American imperialists are horrible!’ I was a junior in high school, and I read a lot, and I found this website called Marxist.com. I read a lot of their articles and I understood what they were saying, and it made sense. “Toward the end of my junior year, I had a sort of crisis. I was really invested in politics, and very invested in musical theatre as well. I thought I had to choose, but my mom just said, ‘Why don’t you just do both?’ I decided to study musical theatre and continue my political education by myself, and kind of do theatre for social change to bring people an understanding of class contradictions. “February of my senior year, I went to college auditions for musical theatre. I was interested in the University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Cincinnati. I didn’t audition for Michigan, but I auditioned for Carnegie Mellon and Cincinnati. The auditions went very well and I was very excited. I ended up getting accepted to the University of Cincinnati. Turns out more than 800 people auditioned, and they only accepted 25. “The way the musical theatre program in Cincinnati was structured, it’s very much lumped togetherness with the other people in the program. You spend every single day with the other 22 people in the musical theatre crowd. It gets very intense. And when I moved there … I mean, I’m not economically underprivileged or anything … we’re doing pretty well … but the students were way rich, you know, from Long Island, New York, and had all this money to dump into voice lessons and acting lessons and stuff. And so it was kind of a very elitist thing, and I kind of stuck with the people in the program who were more working-class. There were only two people of color in the program: myself and this other black guy. So I kind of latched onto my Mexican identity pretty strongly then.” It seemed telling that Jose had not up to this point in our conversation defined himself as a “person of color.” In fact, he had described himself as white several times. But the whiteness and richness of his program at the

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University of Cincinnati put him in touch with his “otherness.” I asked him, “Do you think they let you in because of your name and your heritage?” He responded, “You know, I don’t think so, because if they had been, I feel like they would have accepted more people of color as well. But they only accepted three people of color and only two ended up going. And I’d seen rumors on blog posts that the university was kind of racist, including the musical theatre program.” Escape to Nevada, Episode 1 I asked Jose what originally brought his family to Nevada. “In the ’90s when there were economic problems in the US, there was an economic crisis in Mexico. The value of the peso went way down and ever since then the Mexican economy has degenerated to the horrible point that it’s at today. In the early 2000s, a new president was elected: Fox. When he was elected, my parents started thinking about moving to the States. Education in Mexico isn’t great unless you have enough money to go to private school. Public education is really horrible in Mexico. My parents wanted to bring some positive changes for myself and my sister and for the entire family. They saw more opportunities here in the US, and my mom is a citizen, born in California. So it was super-easy for us to make that transition. Also, crime was horrible in Mexico City. In 1999 (I think) my dad was kidnapped—I don’t remember exactly which year.” I was astonished at the casual way that Jose mentioned this and gasped, “Your dad was kidnapped???” “My dad was kidnapped, yeah.” “Well that would be a little motivation to get out of there …!” “Well, we got him back.” Jose prefaced his story with a description of what he referred to as “express kidnappings” in Mexico: “They’re very common. Basically, he was driving home from work one night. He was helping to manage a restaurant at the time, so he was driving home at, like, three o’clock in the morning. Two cars pulled up beside him with guys waving guns. He tried to race home to our apartment complex. When he got there, the security guard who opens and closes the gate to get into the complex was asleep. And so my dad started honking and honking and honking, trying to wake him up. The two cars pulled up behind him, dragged him out, beat him up, put a bag over his head, and then took his money and drove him to

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ATMs all throughout the city and just try to get as much money out as possible. “Then they dumped him in some random neighborhood, ‘told him to wait five minutes, and then walk down that way, and you’ll find your car.’ And so he waited five minutes, and he walked. He was trying to knock on doors, but it was a very sketchy neighborhood. And nobody’s going to open the door to a bleeding man at 4:00  in the morning. Actually he found his car, and he came home and went to the hospital and everything was fine. I don’t know, it’s just kind of those things like that that made my parents decide to leave Mexico.” As if that weren’t enough, Jose described another incident: Jose’s pregnant mother was robbed while sitting in her car in traffic! Having absorbed the kidnapping story, Trisden and I once more became apoplectic at the assault on Jose’s pregnant mother. “Whaat???!!!” we blurted out together. Jose continued as nonchalantly as when he recounted the story of his father’s abduction: “Yeah. My mom was sitting in traffic once, when she was pregnant with my sister, and someone came and smashed her window and took her purse and ran off, just in the middle of traffic—it was like five o’clock in the afternoon. So little things like that become kind of—” I interjected, “Yeah, say no more!” “Yeah, yeah. (laughter) That’s kind of what motivated us to come to the States.” I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Jose’s narrative, but I asked him about his American-born mother and how she and his father first met. Jose explained that his mother was born in the United States. “She moved back and forth between the US and Mexico, so she grew up both in Mexico and here. In the late ’80s, early ’90s, my mom was living in Mexico and she met my dad, and they lived together.” Trisden interjected, “Earlier you talked about barriers that made it difficult for you to transition to life in Reno. Could you elaborate? Was it getting citizenship, language barriers, cultural barriers, any of that?” “Sure. Yeah, actually, my sister and I are dual citizens, because my mom is a U.S. citizen and my dad is a Mexican citizen. So it’s great, because we can vote in both Mexican elections and US elections, which is exciting … even though both elections are, you know, pretty terrible … (laughter).” “But the biggest challenge for me was the language. Those first few months I just didn’t know how to communicate with anybody. Two weeks

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after we moved here, I was thrown into first grade. I couldn’t communicate with any of my classmates, with the teacher.… I had no idea what was going on—I would just follow what other students were doing and play along. It was very different from what I was used to. So I think learning English was definitely a big thing. But it was also challenging culturally to be here. American customs are kind of strange compared to the way things are done in Mexico.…” I asked, “Like, what?” “Well, people in Mexico City are really easy-going. It’s just more relaxed, and coming to the States was very different. We’d get invited to birthday parties, and in Mexico you would invite kids to birthday parties and the parents would come, and the parents would be drinking and eating as well, and, you know, having fun with the children—the children would be playing on the playground. But here it’s, ‘OK, drop your children off, come back in two hours and pick them up.’ Or you’d go to friends’ houses to play and stuff, and the moms would have everything organized—‘OK, from this hour to this hour you’ve got to be doing this. From this to this you’re going to be doing that.’ It’s very structured here. “There was a very significant thing that happened when I was in second grade. My name is Jose, and on the classroom roster it was Jose. But when I moved here I wanted to have an Americanized name, so I went by Joe, and it stuck until I finished high school. Everybody knew me as Joe. But on the class rosters they sent to the parents so they could have a list of all the children in the class, they listed me as Jose. In second grade I got invited to my friend’s birthday party, and I was very excited about it. And then my friend comes up to me one day and he’s like, ‘Hey, yeah, so you can’t come to my birthday party anymore.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ He was like, ‘Oh, because my mom doesn’t want any Mexicans at her house.’ “The thing that was really horrible about that … the even more horrifying thing that happened afterwards, is the mom came to the classroom once. I was playing with her son and he introduced me as ‘Joe’ and she saw how white I was, and then I was okay to play with her child. Then it was okay for me to come over to her house.” He laughed at the memory, but it was painful. Trisden: “Wow.” Jose: “Then I was invited. Then I was accepted.” I asked: “Had you played with him before?” Jose: “Just in the school, like, in recess and stuff.”

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Me: “So the first time she sees you, your name’s Jose … but you’re white and your friend introduces you as Joe.…” Jose: “Yeah, Jose, and—no Mexicans here!! I said ‘Hi, I’m Joe.’ And I look white. So she thinks, ‘Oh, okay, you’re fine to be my son’s friend.’ You know, it was really a horrible thing. “When that happened I went through a kind of identity crisis. Like, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t want to be Mexican, if this is how they’re going to treat me, this is horrible, I don’t want to be Mexican.’ But after discussing it with my mom, I reconsidered. I thought, ‘You know what? Yeah, I’m Mexican. I’m gonna own it, and you know, if they don’t like me, well, screw them, you know? I’m just going to do my own thing and I have other friends, etc.’ So it was kind of a very interesting situation that happened in second grade.” “Interesting” doesn’t begin to describe the emotional challenge that seven-year-old Jose faced. It is clear that his mother, a white Californian, was a powerful force in guiding him toward accepting his Mexican identity, as well as teaching him about the pleasures of being socially and politically subversive. Trisden asked, “Is that when you started going by Jose again?” “No, I started going by Jose when I graduated high school, because I went to school in Cincinnati, and everybody would say, ‘Oh, hi, Jose, nice to meet you.’ I like Jose. It’s a good name. So I just went by it, but it was just kind of easier that once I got to college and started fresh. Everybody had known me as Joe growing up. I’m not a fan of the name Joe, but it stuck, so … whatever. So now I have friends from high school who still call me Joe and then friends from college and stuff, and so we get together, and they’re like, ‘Who’s Joe? Who are you? Oh, okay Jose, yeah.’” This disjunction, or fluidity in name and identity is not unique to Jose. Many immigrant children and children of immigrants are called one name by their family and another name by their American friends. Jose’s family, and especially his Mexican grandmother, who was more of a practicing Catholic than either of his parents, reminded him each year of his “Saint’s Day,” a day when all people named Jose are celebrated in Mexico. It is, in Mexico, a more important day than one’s individual birthday. At an early age, Jose learned to code switch between the Spanish and American versions of his name. Returning to the topic of nationality and race, Trisden asked, “So that instance in the second grade, when—‘We don’t want Mexicans at our

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house’—was that your awareness that that being Mexican was a less acceptable than being American, or a white American?” “I think it came earlier. When I moved to the States and I wasn’t able to communicate with people, and was seen as the kid who can’t speak English, you know? That’s when I first felt it, but it was solidified, I would say, when I was in second grade.” Jose attended Jessie Beck Elementary School, a modestly middle class, mostly white school in “Old South Reno.” When he graduated and moved on to Damonte Ranch middle and high school, Jose was awash in affluent white folks. Damonte Ranch is part of the new suburban sprawl as Reno creeps south toward Carson City and west toward Mt. Rose and the ski resorts. “Damonte Ranch is white. There are some buses that bring Latino students from the Meadowood Mall [a shopping mall that was losing its economic base and sliding into bankruptcy] area, and those apartments. And those are working-class people. But definitely the houses that surround Damonte Ranch are very suburban, white, pretty bourgeois, pretty middle-class. I spent most of my time just hanging around the theatre, with other theatre kids who were very rich, very white as well, very Christian, conservative. And even though I would hang out with them, because I really love theatre and I was really close to the teacher and everything, I remember getting into some, very aggressive verbal fights.” Economic Class Trisden asked, “So how would you identify socioeconomically?” “Growing up in Mexico, my dad was in a very high position with the bank. It was a pretty comfortable situation down there. We weren’t part of the very wealthy, but we were up there … I don’t know.…” Trisden suggested, “Well off?” “Petit bourgeois. Middle-class. When we moved to the States it dropped down pretty drastically, and so I would say working-class, but definitely upper echelons of the working class. Not struggling paycheck to paycheck, but selling our labor power.” When it came to his economic and familial upbringing, Jose chose a decidedly Marxist lexicon. “They’re both salaried, rather than wage earners. And my mom is a member of a union, which is great, but she doesn’t really get paid as much as other people in the district attorney’s office. But my dad does pretty

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well. I mean, the company my dad works in is a wealthy company and they need Spanish-speakers. So definitely, the upper echelons of a working-­ class, probably teetering on the brink of petit bourgeois, maybe, and.…” Trisden, translating from the Marxist vernacular into everyday English, suggested, “Your family definitely has its head above water, though …?” “Yeah, definitely, definitely. Personally, I wasn’t able to ever move out of their house. Ever since I transferred to UNR, I’ve been living with them. Even though I was working, I wasn’t able to pay rent to live with roommates or live by myself.” Trisden asked, “But were you living in the dorms in Cincinnati?” Jose: “I was, yeah. Yeah, it was expensive.” “So did you spend a whole year there?” “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I only came back once, for winter break, for Christmas. But everybody else there, for Thanksgiving or spring break and stuff, was traveling and going to this place and that place, and I would just stay in the dorms and eat pizza, because it’s very expensive to fly.…” Trisden knew what Jose was talking about: “Yeah, especially, like, you’re paying all that money for tuition, being an out-of-state kid too.…” Jose: “Exactly, yeah. Took out some nice loans we got going on, so a lot of debt. It’s exciting!” I asked, “You’ve got that now?” “Oh, yeah. Seventy, eighty.…” Me: “Wow.” Trisden: “That would have been me if I stayed in Boise. Every semester it was racking up, and I was like, ‘I hate it here.’ So I got out.” Jose: “Do you like UNR?” Trisden: “Yeah, especially if I compare it to Boise. Like, this is a safe haven. I didn’t have these resources everywhere. I think it’s not the best school, but, they do a decent job, for sure.” Jose: “Absolutely.” Trisden: “And I see improvements, too, so. Are you a first-generation college student?” Jose: “In the United States, yes. My parents both went to school in Mexico. My mom graduated with her bachelor’s, and my dad ended up getting a master’s in Mexico as well. But I’m the first in my family to graduate from a United States university.” “Was there an expectation for you to go to college?”

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“Yeah, I think so. And I expected it of myself as well. I really like school, and I like academia, and I take pride in my schoolwork. So it was never a thing that my parents were pressuring me to do, and I wasn’t rolling my eyes or dragging my feet. I’ve always wanted to go to college, and now I graduated. It’s been a month and I miss school already!” University of Cincinnati “When I was in Cincinnati, my political education was kind of put on the back burner, which I wasn’t happy about. Still, I had a big Che poster above my desk, and Zapata and Marx. When I was studying in Cincinnati the second semester, you had to take two electives. So I took International Human Rights, and Poverty in America. They were both fascinating. I decided to declare an International Human Rights minor at the University of Cincinnati. I was super passionate about it, and I would stay up at nights reading the textbooks and really applying myself, and then I found myself paying more attention to the Poverty in America classes and International Human Rights classes than I was my musical theatre. And I was there to study musical theatre. “I started thinking, ‘Ah, shit. Musical theatre’s probably not it.’ At the end of freshman year you have to perform in front of the whole faculty. So my first semester, seven of us failed. And I totally understood. I mean, it was my first semester away from home, I was partying a lot, I was not really applying myself. My second semester I was determined to do better. I was taking these other courses that I also like—Poverty in America, Human rights. And I was taking musical theatre. I was determined to apply myself. And I did really well that entire second semester, even to the point where my acting teacher brought me into his office, and said, ‘I’ve just got to tell you. I’m very proud of what you’re doing; it’s a very big improvement from last semester.’ “Then at the end of the semester we had the board examinations—the performances before the faculty. I did the audition, thought I did well, and then we got our letters. They didn’t even tell us in person, but they gave us letters. And I failed, along with two other students. I was so upset I was crying. I was on the phone with my parents … the problem is that if you fail three of these exams, you can’t graduate from the program.” Trisden: “And that’s two in your first year.” “And that’s two in the first year. I went to meetings with my professors and asked them, ‘What’s going on? What is this?’ And they told me, ‘You

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did really great work all semester, the audition was fine. However, you’re also studying International Human Rights, and this is just a musical theatre program.’ So they basically kind of gave me an ultimatum. They said, “Either just musical theatre, or.…” Trisden: “Pick one or the other.” Escape to Nevada, Episode 2: Racial Hinterlands “Exactly. And I said, ‘You know what? I’m out of here.’ So I came back home. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was working at a fast-food restaurant in Reno; I hadn’t even transferred to UNR yet. For the rest of that year I just worked in fast food and took an online course.” “When I came into UNR spring semester, I started organizing around campus and started the [Marxist] club. I used Marxism to make the transition from the disappointment of musical theatre to what I’ve been doing now.” Trisden asked, “Were you comfortable when you first got back to the University of Nevada? I guess since you’re from here, it might be a little more familiar, but were you comfortable on campus when you first got here?” “Yeah. When I left for Cincinnati after high school, people had a lot of expectations for me. So it was hard for me to come back and face the disappointment, even though maybe some people weren’t disappointed in me. But it felt that way, you know? But transferring into UNR, I had friends from high school, and they helped with that transition. In 2011, during Occupy Wall Street, I met a few people at the Occupy Reno protest. I was friends with them on Facebook. And so when I came back to Reno, I would go to protests and meetings, and would try to sell socialist papers to people. So I connected with the more activist kind of crew in Reno and they connected me to student organizers. I met Henry John. I love Henry to death, he’s a really good friend of mine, and I think it was very significant, meeting him and getting involved with the organizing students. I felt more comfortable, because I was politically more comfortable. “And there are more Latinos in Reno than in Cincinnati, especially with the crowd I was surrounding myself in Cincinnati, right? There are not many black people in Reno, but it was still…I felt a little better coming back to Reno, identity-wise, you know? Because there were more people

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who had similar political perspectives and more people of color. I felt more comfortable.” Still, Jose felt like he occupied the hinterlands of identity. “So this is the thing. Because I’m very white, sometimes Latinos don’t identify themselves with me, which is really hard. I feel like I’m stuck in this in-between place. White people see my name, see Jose, and identify me as a Mexican. But then again there are Latinos who may not even be Mexican, who may not even speak Spanish, but identify as Latinos, maybe Chicanos, etc., who see me and they don’t identify with me. Even though I identify with them, they don’t identify with me. Which is a bummer because I feel way more comfortable with Latino culture– you know, the parties, the type of jokes we do, kind of the way we interact and everything—but then I feel a sense of rejection from them. And in Mexico, it’s a lot more prevalent than it is here. People here pretend white privilege doesn’t exist in the United States. But you go to Mexico, and [he snaps his fingers] immediately you can taste it. You can feel it in the air, the white privilege, you know? So it’s easy for me in Mexico.” In the United States he was not accepted by many in the Latinx community, even though he was born in Mexico, speaks fluent Spanish, and identifies and feels more comfortable with Latino culture. But he looks white, so he’s not trusted by American Latinx. But in Mexico, there is no mystery about white-looking Mexicans, nor the fact that they enjoy white privilege. Jose is not an anomaly in Mexico: he’s a white-looking Mexican, which brings privilege culturally and in terms of economic class. He fits with others like him in Mexico. Trisden picked up the theme: “This is just super interesting, because, there’s colorism on one hand, but even if you don’t ascribe to that, you get this angst directed towards you, because of white passing privilege. Have you felt that on campus?” “You know, I have. I have, actually. And it’s totally understandable. When people meet me, they think I’m Italian or something, they don’t think I’m Mexican, right? Because I don’t look like a conventional Latino. I mean, there are Latino students who I am very close to and everything, but there are some who see me from a distance and think I’m an American or something. You know, it’s totally understandable. And I probably make the same judgments of others, right? …” He paused. And then continued, aware that he had forgotten to mention this painful event until now: “It’s an interesting omission and I just

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remembered it right now: I wasn’t invited to the Latino graduation at the end of the semester. But my friends were. It really really upset me.” I asked, “How do you get invited?” “Apparently they have, like, a listserv or something.” Trisden, who works at the Diversity Center on campus, responded: “Yeah, they have a listserv at the Center.” Jose said, “Yeah, I didn’t get invited even though, you know, all the boxes I check are Latino, Hispanic. My name is Latino. I was really bummed out.” Thinking of his coworkers at the Diversity Center, Trisden noted, “I’m fairly close to Ricky, and he usually runs the Latino graduation, and honestly, if you told him that, it might break his heart.” “I did tell him. I think it did break his heart a little.” (laughter) “I felt bad, but—yeah. I mean, I went to the event, because my best friend was walking [graduating]. I got there and it was really hard for me, you know?” Trisden: “Hard that you weren’t participating?” Jose: “Yeah. And all my Latino friends were.” I was like, “Ah, man, I’m a Mexican immigrant, you know? Come on! I don’t know, I mean, I don’t think it was intentional or anything, maybe it was just a logistical mess-up or something. Maybe my email sent it to the junk bin. It could have been a technical difficulty—it doesn’t matter though, right? It’s still one of those things that feels like maybe, you know, there might be a little something there, but you’d never know, right?” Trisden: “Yeah, yeah, absolutely.” Jose was bending over backwards to make sense of the pain he felt at being left out of the Latino graduation ceremony at his university. He even reached a historical/political conclusion about why looking white might have been the reason he was excluded: “I mean, it’s totally understandable. It’s the history of white people and the way they interact with people of color, not just here, but in Mexico as well, and the way they treat indigenous people, in Mexico.…” “Colonizers.” “Colonizers. Exploiters, right? It’s prevalent even today in Mexico. I have a lot of indigenous friends, and my family, my dad’s family, who still lives down there, they’re very racist, really blatantly racist, and they don’t make a secret about it.” I added, “It’s always the European descended versus the indigenous.” Trisden: “Yeah, indigenous people of anywhere.”

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Trisden asked whether Jose was a member of any Latinx groups at UNR. Jose said he had stayed away from the Latinx organizations. He was aware of grappling with his own privilege as white passing, and it made him hesitant to join any of the organizations on campus for Latinx students. “I think I had to deal with … the whiteness I have, right? I thought it was significant, although maybe I was rushing to judgment. I would think, ‘Maybe they’re not going to accept me because they think I feel privileged.’ I just tended to stay away, because of that. Recognizing my own privilege maybe held me back from wanting to join. I didn’t want to be this … this white person talking down to them, right? Even though I don’t think I interact that way on a personal level, but I didn’t want that. I don’t think I’m offensive in my way of speaking, or in my interpersonal interactions. But it’s always kind of there in the back of my head.” Wariness of saying something offensive, defending against that risk, was always in the back of Jose’s mind, as he continually examined his own behavior for unconscious acceptance of white superiority. Trisden urged him to take a load off himself: “It’s not you. It’s the perception of other people, too.” Jose’s hyper-vigilance about not offending his Latinx peers by appearing to overvalue his own light skin reminded me of Trisden’s response to the white racists who hurled hate speech at him on campus: he wondered what he might have done to provoke it. Now here was Jose taking on the same sense of personal responsibility for the pervasive racism in American society and the world, trying to be pre-emptive about his own perceived white privilege, and excusing the intolerance of the darker-skinned Latinx community in assuming that he might be one of the oppressors. Clearly racism is a trap that closes in on everybody, distorting our ability to interact with each other. Trisden asked Jose if he had experienced overt racism on campus. “I can’t say I have. Because usually, the professors I tend to interact with are, you know, college liberal arts professors, so, I mean, some could argue that there’s some racism there, but I never recognized it as such; I always felt very welcome and everything. But on an interpersonal note, I mean, if I’m just walking across campus, I’m white passing, so I don’t experience overt racism by other students. When people read my name, though, that’s significant, right?” People meet me, see me as white, read my name, and the interaction completely changes. I just got pulled over last week by a cop. Interaction was very civilized, gave him my license, he

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came back, and I don’t know if I was being overly sensitive or whatever, but I noticed kind of a more aggressive, kind of punchy approach to our conversation after I gave him my license and after he saw my name.” While Jose had been pulled over for a legitimate reason—he had been on his phone with his mom—the interaction highlighted how he could be judged on the basis of both his privilege and his name and subtle Spanish accent. He saw the shift that happened when the police officer thought he was white and then when he thought he was Mexican. “It’s just kind of those little things, right? People hear my name, or I tell them that I’m from Mexico, or there are some words that I have that I have a little bit of an accent with, and when they pick that up the interaction changes completely. The most fascinating thing I experience, though, is—and I experienced this through high school, mostly, but I have also experienced it here at UNR as well—is people call me a ‘whitewashed Mexican,’ and I still don’t know what that means. I’m just Mexican, you know? Mexicans you can be white and dark, you know? There are Afro-­ Mexicans, indigenous Mexicans, white Mexicans. But people have this expectation that Latinos, or Mexicans, are a certain way, whatever their misconception may be. And it’s my white friends that I hear ‘whitewashed Mexican’ from.” It reminded Trisden and me of Paterno whose racial ambiguity—being Filipino and Bolivian—was constantly policed, even by roommates, who were confounded by his white, upper-middle-class presentation, and his brown skin and ability to speak Spanish. Trisden had experienced similar racial assumptions and bristled at this sort of litmus test for whether a person aligns with the stereotypes of their given race or ethnicity: “The more I listen to this, the more it doesn’t make sense, because I’ve been in that position as a black person, and I’ve heard that from my black community and from white people as well. It’s hard to ever find a middle ground. How black is black enough? And what is black? Like what is Latin? When you don’t check all of the ‘right’ boxes, then you’re not that person. And that just erases your whole identity.” Exasperated, he continued, “It’s so weird that your community can say things like that, but also, white people feel that they’re able to say that. For me, that’s even more offensive. When a white kid told me that he felt like he was more black than me, I’m like—(laughter) ‘How many black people do you know?’” Jose stopped him, “Wait, a white person told you that?”

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“Yeah. I’ve heard it plenty of times. Like, even some of my white friends in Boise who never were really around other black kids would tell me that they are blacker than me. And I’m like, ‘Shut up. No. You’re not.’ That doesn’t make sense. And I understand that you can grow up culturally different than your race ascribes but that doesn’t take away your identity.” La Frontera This discussion sounded a consistent theme in all the interviews. Every student expressed a sense of being caught in the crossfire of colliding stereotypes. Jose has been targeted for his Spanish name and shunned by Latinos for being “too white to be Mexican.” Trisden’s childhood friends regarded his studiousness as something of a betrayal, and he has also been verbally assaulted by racists. Henry was “not black enough” because he read too much, in spite of having grown up in one of the toughest black neighborhoods in the United States; Paterno confused white Texans because he was a brown-skinned, well-off Spanish-speaking man who was not Mexican; Yesenia was accused of being “whitewashed” by her neighborhood friends because she wanted a university education and attended a white high school for a semester. Jose noted emphatically that being a “whitewashed” Mexican made no sense at all: Mexicans could be light or dark skinned, depending on their ancestry. The responsibility for the absurd conflicts experienced by these students should rest not with them, but with people who refuse to question racial stereotypes. Why does anybody feel entitled to be a gatekeeper of someone else’s identity? But too often the victims of contradictory racist attacks find themselves taking the racist message to heart and struggling with their fears that they may be betraying their community by staying strong and true to their life goals. Not having to shoulder those emotional conflicts is another signifier of white privilege. The microaggressions Jose experienced were often undetected by the very people who were expressing unconscious hostility. For example, he explained, when he’s introduced to people as Jose, “If they happen to forget my name, they don’t ask me, ‘What’s your name again?’ They just make a random guess, and it’s usually just the random Mexican name or Latin name that they pull out of the hat. ‘Oh, Pablo, right?’ What? No, where’d you get that? It doesn’t even sound like Jose, you know? Like, it doesn’t even start with the same letter or anything. And that happens

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pretty consistently. Even a TA in one of my classes said, ‘Pedro is going to pass the list around.…’ And I said, ‘It’s Jose.’ The TA felt really bad about it, and she apologized to me, she even pulled me aside after class and apologized again, she felt so bad. But still, it’s kind of those little, little things that you pick up along the way, right?” “When I’m on campus, I’m really good friends with the janitors at the Joe [the Joe Crowley Student Union]. They’re super nice. I’m always speaking in Spanish with them, always gossiping and talking about whatever. And when we do that, people hear us speaking Spanish, so they give us kind of a side-eye and kind of keep their eyes on each other.” This reminded Trisden and me of Yesenia’s identification with the maintenance staff at UNR because they seemed like family to her, and specifically like her father who has worked as a maintenance worker all his life. Trisden related Yesenia’s story to Jose, conveying her sense of outrage that even some of the Spanish-speaking students at UNR regarded it as beneath their station to speak with the custodial workers in Spanish. Jose responded, “Yeah. Even when I’m on the phone talking with my parents in Spanish, if I’m walking through campus I sense kind of a tone shift in the way people walk around me or look at me or something.” Trisden: “You can feel the shift.” Jose: “You can totally feel the shift, absolutely.” Trisden: “Like, you know the feeling when something around you is changing.” Jose: “Absolutely.” Not always veiled behind the passive aggressive side-eye or awkward vibes, the resistance against speaking Spanish in public can take the form of open, naked hostility. In 2017, a story made the local news about a white man in a wheelchair screaming racial epithets at a man talking on the phone to his mother in Spanish at the Reno Airport. The Spanish speaker declined to press charges, but it was an outright assault: the white man screamed verbal abuses at him and physically grabbed him. Jose noted that even the more progressive, left-leaning people were not immune to this sort of xenophobic aggression. “I was having a discussion about class unity and identity politics with somebody who identifies as a Marxist. He remarked that part of the difficulty in forging worker solidarity is because Latinos insist on speaking Spanish to each other: ‘You have immigrants talking on the phone loud in Spanish in Wal-Mart and stuff. Just speak English, and then you can see that you’re the same class as your fellow white workers!’ And I was like,

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‘Are you kidding me? Are you serious? No, it’s not Latinos speaking Spanish who have the responsibility of forging class unity. It’s the white people that have to recognize that they have more in common with people who speak Spanish than they do with Trump or whatever, you know?’ I was just like, ‘Man, what are you talking about?’” I was curious about Jose’s identification as a Marxist. He is a middle-­ class Mexican-American, who can pass as white. He hasn’t endured the most aggressive racism and hasn’t suffered from poverty. Perhaps because his identity falls across so many boundaries, Marxism allowed him to clarify some questions about himself. I remarked to him, “You talk about your heroes … the posters on the wall of your college dorm room … being Latin American revolutionaries. That was one of the first things you said in this interview. You’re the first person in our study to identify as a Marxist even before you mention race! Does any of that have to do with this kind of frontera, borderland Mexican identity, where you’re always thinking, ‘I can pass, but I can’t, and it’s in my head all the time that Mexican-Americans don’t identify with me, but I’m a real immigrant …’ I’m just wondering if you might think that in some sense your identity is best understood in terms of class politics rather than racial or ethnic politics.” “I think so, definitely. When I first started getting into class politics, I was very interested in Che Guevara and all these revolutionaries from all over the world, and they’re very anti-American imperialism. So I had this anti-imperialist mindset going in. That’s how it started: very disillusioned with wars in the Middle East, and economic policies in Latin America, etc. So that’s kind of how I got into it. But then the more I started understanding class politics, and the more I started reading and studying this, the less racial identity mattered to me, and more the politics of it did.” “I tend to identify with the Latin American revolutionaries. Zapata, I think he was really a fascinating historical figure; Che Guevara was fascinating as well. I think I identify with them.” I suggested that perhaps he identified with those revolutionaries because he shared some of their background: educated, European-­ descended Latin American. Not peasants, not indigenous, but upper-class Latin American revolutionaries. I noted, “You walk into the maelstrom of race that is the United States. You’re on the margins of race and class. You’re having trouble connecting and you’re being excluded by working-­ class Latinos, even those who don’t speak Spanish. I can see where educated Latin-American Marxism would appeal as a ‘safe space.’”

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As the interview drew to a close Trisden asked Jose about alleviating racism in America: “So if you could prescribe anything, what would you say could eventually cure racism? What steps do we need to take to cure it?” “I think racism is based in our material reality, right? Racism isn’t abstract. It’s not something we can’t understand. It’s something you can totally understand the causes of, right? Babies aren’t born racist. Racism is learned through experiences. I mean, I’m not an economic determinist whatsoever, I don’t mean to just narrow things down to economics, but I think racism is incredibly beneficial for capitalism. It’s incredibly beneficial. Malcolm X always said.…” Trisden: “It’s required.” “It’s required. Exactly. Malcolm X always said, you know, you can’t have capitalism without racism, and you can’t have racism without capitalism. I think Trump and these demagogues using immigrants as scapegoats, and using Muslims as scapegoats, help keep the structure of capitalism in place. I mean, white racists living in the South who don’t have their coal mining jobs anymore have more in common with myself or with Tristan or with black working-class people in New York or whatever than they do with Donald Trump, a capitalist who is exploiting both white and black working-class people.” “He’s exploiting everybody. I think class is what can bring us together. You know, any sort of discrimination, any sort of oppression based on identity, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism—all these horrors, all these ills, we don’t have to deal with them. I mean, they’re structures that we ourselves have put into place and that we ourselves can tear down, but I think that can only be done really with class unity and providing society with a new foundation, right? Getting rid of the capitalist system and establishing a democratically controlled economy.” “We have to be fighting for a democratically run society, not just politically democratic: economically democratic. The great American lie is that everybody thinks they’re temporarily poor. Everybody thinks they’re eventually going to be rich. It’s bunk.”

CHAPTER 4

White Wastelanders

Also Not a Group What about the White Wastelanders? Do we assume they grew up more privileged than their peers in this study? It is true that they possess the privilege of looking white in a racist society. And unlike their black peers, both White Wastelanders grew up in intact families with a mother, father, and siblings. They also experienced fewer relocations: their childhoods were relatively stable in these basic ways. But the categorization of these three as simply “white” proved no more helpful than our other attempts to fit students into neat boxes. Even when it comes to white privilege, the white voices in this book had much less at their disposal than most. Lucy has battled mental health issues, anxiety, depression and eating disorders for most of her life. There was stress in her family because of ongoing conflicts between her father, who disapproved of homosexuality, and her lesbian sister. Thom grew up in a loving, intact family, but he was a queer boy in a cowboy state, which made for a very specific kind of struggle. When he finally came out to his friends and family, he still struggled, because he didn’t fit any of the gay stereotypes. Identifying himself as queer rather than gay allowed him the flexibility to be who he is without forcing himself to fit what he sees as the artificial sexual binary of gay/straight. (Queer rejects this binary and allows an identity that is more organic, less constructed by society.) The original version of the chapter has been revised. A correction to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_8 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2023 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_4

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Trying to sort these young people by race or ethnicity gets us nowhere. But is there a common thread that actually illuminates their identity? We believe there is. Thom put it well when he described their “unbridled humanity.” Thinking back on all the conversations we’d had with them, both individually and in the group meetings, we found it noteworthy that there was no discussion of money, except occasional mentions of the lack of it. They had come to the university partly to escape the poverty many had experienced growing up—but all the students were much more focused on moving the campus culture (and American culture in general) beyond racism and classism, beyond inequality and injustice. Both of them had struggled with their own sense of isolation, their outrage at the injustices they witnessed, and their frustration with their political and social impotence while at college. They both joined groups they believed would help them fight for justice and equality, and many had felt a bit at odds even with the other members of those groups. But ideas about how to achieve their important, challenging goals only began to coalesce once they met together. We will see the results of that collaboration in the chapter on the group meetings.

Thom “The thing is, I’m kind of shocked that I haven’t perceived it until now!” Interviewed by Trisden Shaw and Jennifer Ring Written by Jennifer Ring

Thom seemed intent on avoiding being noticed in class. Nonetheless he drew my attention in “Race and Gender in American Politics,” as he took a seat next to the right-hand wall, quiet, rarely participating in class discussions. Often, after a particularly intense discussion had taken place, he would shyly approach me after class. Almost whispering, he would ask a question or add a comment so insightful I would be forced to rethink my own position on whatever issue had been discussed. I would listen intently to Thom’s remarks, because he spoke so quietly. When the time came for students to present their research to the entire class, I worried about his shyness. I needn’t have. Thom presented a section of his senior history thesis, a treatise on the history of cross-dressing in the United States. His lecture and power point were so meticulously researched and enlightening that when he finished, he received an ovation from the class. The thesis itself was one of the most impressive pieces of scholarship I had read from a student at Nevada.

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Thom enrolled in a second class with me the following semester, and true to form, kept quiet in class and raised his brilliant questions with me privately after class. I told him he shouldn’t hold back: he needed to share his insights with the class. I determined to tease and cajole him to speak up in class discussions. I could always tell by looking at him when he had something on his mind, and I was relentless in trying to get him to speak up in front of all of us. Slowly he emerged from his shyness, and his classmates quickly learned to hush themselves in order to hear his thought-­ provoking remarks. There was no question in my mind that Thom was one of the students from whom I could learn a lot. He graduated with honors in history and feminist studies and enrolled in the Masters’ Program in American History at Nevada, hoping that the degree would enable him to have influence on the world through his writing and teaching. During our many office hour conversations, I learned that his shy demeanor disguised not only deep intelligence, but a wonderful sense of humor. So when I saw Thom and Paterno walking on campus one day, I hailed them both and called out, “Hey Thom, do you want to participate in an oral history study on race at Nevada? We need a White guy!” Paterno broke out laughing, and Thom grinned and shot back, “Sure! Why not?” I told him, “Great, I’ll be in touch with you!” and we had our first “White guy” recruit. We set up an appointment for Thom’s interview. When he walked into my office, I introduced him to Trisden and we began. Trisden suggested, “Let’s just begin with our first question on the list. How do you identify?” Thom wasted no time in offering a short list: “White male, queer, and progressive.” Trisden followed up with questions about his family and childhood, and Thom answered with his customary deliberateness, as though thinking hard about each word before he let it go. Childhood, Carson City, Nevada Trisden: “Could you just talk a little bit about your family … how many siblings you have, what’s your parents’ occupation?” Thom: “I have one older brother. I’ve lived in Carson City for most of my life, since I was about five. My dad works for a manufacturing company in Carson, and my mom is an attorney. I guess you could say I grew up

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fairly … it was not … I grew up in a middle-class environment. And that’s pretty much who my family is.” Thom’s background and experiences were clearly going to provide a dramatically different story than other participants in the study. He is white and middle class, although he grew up feeling somewhat on the margins of expectations for a Northern Nevada boy. Our “word of mouth” method of recruiting gave us a panel with a consistently liberal approach to social and political issues. But the life stories of the participants diverged dramatically. While stories of poverty and racial abuse flowed from the working-class students of color, the middle-class white students seemed more hesitant—even apologetic—about sharing the stories of their comparatively stable young lives. Trisden and I had to find ways to embolden the white students to share their stories of relative privilege. Their role was not merely to provide contrast to the hardship of growing up a person of color in the United States. Indeed, we wanted to know how it felt to perceive racism growing up, without necessarily being its target. Still, without the obvious rough edges to the stories told by the students of color, the white students’ experiences required more coaxing and seemed at first less dramatic. But soon after Trisden asked Thom to describe his childhood neighborhood and school experiences, Thom was talking about the racial dimensions he had learned to recognize even from his economically safe perch. Trisden asked, “So could you describe your neighborhood? You said you identify as middle class. Was your neighborhood a middle-class neighborhood in Carson City? Was it diverse, or predominantly white?” Thom began in his customary deliberative, almost hesitant manner, but was soon talking boldly about what he had seen as a boy. “Yeah, since it was—since it was Carson, there was a-- there were actually—it was fairly— it was predominantly white. My parents did their best to expose me to as much diversity as possible, in terms of diversity points, as well as just diverse identities. So it wasn’t like I was completely sheltered from awareness that we were living within this bubble and not really being exposed to anything. But in terms of my environment and in terms of who I went to school with, who I lived near, all of those things, it was a predominantly white area. And I can’t say that I was exposed to many of the struggles of others, in terms of being surrounded by a lot of different perspectives.” “Could you talk a little bit about your schooling experience?” “Yeah. We have a few elementary schools in Carson and I went to one of the more predominantly white ones. I then went to one of two middle

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schools in the Carson area, Carson Middle School, and then Carson High School, after that. Because Carson City is the state capital it’s not stereotypically small-town-ish, but when I was growing up there, there were only about 50,000 people who lived there. It was enough of a small town to feel cliquish, like it’s hard to have your own privacy. Because small towns are so tight-knit, even if you don’t want to be within that tight-knit organization.” Trisden pushed him a little: “So that made you uncomfortable?” Thom answered, “Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to say it completely fit into the clichés of what a small-town environment is, which is like exclusionary and not necessarily welcoming to people. But growing up … not so consciously … but growing up knowing that I didn’t fit in with the kind of … to be … to (Thom laughed as he struggled to describe his sense of not fitting in with the culture of Carson City, which while small in population, was also the state capitol.) … I didn’t fit in to tread on the beaten path. To grow up in such a hetero-normative kind of environment.… it made me feel just out of place and uncomfortable with who … with who I was within that environment.” We were only five minutes into his interview, but Thom had already opened the doors to the complexity of white identity in Northern Nevada. The students of color we interviewed quickly expressed awareness of feeling like “others” racially, perhaps comfortable within their communities of color, but aware of America’s racial and economic divide, and also aware of the tension that their very success in school provoked in some of their friends who were not academically motivated. But as Thom offered an honest and critical perspective on his identity as progressive and queer as well as white and male, it became clear that his sense of estrangement was different. He described, almost apologetically, his childhood in a racially segregated middle-class neighborhood and school system, with a loving and stable family. But no sooner had he described his materially comfortable childhood situation, than he turned to his sense of discomfort in the predominant culture of Carson City. The hetero-normative and cloistered environment did not allow him to feel safe expressing and exploring who he was. He was not fully aware of not being straight as a child, but he knew that he didn’t fit with the prevailing “old-boy” culture of the small capital city in Northern Nevada. Masculine role models in Nevada are cowboys, athletes, politicians, miners, construction workers, and the like. None of those felt comfortable to Thom.

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I suggested that we follow his lead and focus on gender more than race for the time being: We’re about to ask about awareness of race and when you became aware of race. But do you think it might also be appropriate to focus on when you became aware of your sexuality and whether that impacted your experience in school and personally?

Thom began, hesitantly: “Well, it’s -- I think I tried to … there’s … there’s often this sense of internalized homophobia, as far as you’re taught to loathe yourself, [he laughed] almost, in that way. And so there’s this sense, initially, of not only denial but also…other people almost see who you are, before you see yourself. I had homophobic slurs thrown at me and written in my school planner, which may be instances that are all too common in a school environment, but I took it to heart. That, along with family struggles with substance abuse and my own (then unknown) health and mental health issues, and my being ‘in the closet’ made me more withdrawn and socially aloof. “And so I didn’t … I just came out of the closet last semester. ‘Came out of the closet’ is such a weird saying, anyway! It’s such a weird idiom. But, anyway. I … it … I didn’t … I haven’t …. become comfortable with myself until I came to college, until I started to really sort of ask some of those key questions about who I am and find some direction for myself. But as I said, it’s … my family, my friends, they all seemed to … they seemed to know, early on, despite my own obliviousness to it. [he laughed] Going into college, I had some short-lived relationships with the opposite sex, but I didn’t feel invested. A few years into college, I began to realize I had more robust feelings for other guys, making me question who I was. “So I hemmed and hawed for a few years, thinking that I might be gay or questioning or pansexual, starting to recognize as I took more women’s studies classes, that sexual identity, much like gender, contains a great deal of gray area and is not constrained by a binary. I finally came out to a fellow tutor, saying something to the effect of ‘I think I’m not straight.’ And since then the label of queer just stuck to express a spectrum of nuance.” Trisden: “And do you think that impacted how you viewed race? Has that perspective allowed you to understand race as a larger scheme?” “Yeah. It wasn’t the most beneficial thing for me, emotionally to remain secretive about my own identity. It wasn’t something like skin color, that you couldn’t hide. And so I think one of the things that I’ve appreciated

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is the notion of… I can retain my privilege because I get to choose who I come out to. If I were a person of color, then I couldn’t -- I can’t automatically say, ‘Oh, yes, I want to expose that I am a person of color to X, Y, and Z. So that’s the distinction that I’ve come to respect in other marginalized communities, is that race just doesn’t go away. It’s not something that you can just boil down to an internalized thought.…” Trisden continued: “When did you realize that anybody who wasn’t white was treated a little different? Did you come to that realization fairly recently or did you understand that growing up?” Thom responded: “I suppose, in trying to stay as informed as possible, there was always an inkling of ‘OK. I clearly have things others don’t. I clearly have the privilege and the benefit of the doubt, in terms of not being constantly dogged by the authorities or by the criminal justice system, all that stuff. Right?’ So there’s automatically the assumption of, ‘OK, I’m growing up in a fairly sheltered way.’ But I don’t think I realized -- I don’t think I realized the potency of race and what others have to go through, until the Obama era, in which there was almost a rabid double standard for the president, when others could get away with the exact same thing that he did. “Just the Tea Party movement throwing around these terrible caricatures of him and racial stereotypes that were sent around by officials. It made me aware of the despicable views that people hold and how much you -- as a person of color -- you just can’t do well, you have to do superb. And it’s never good enough. it’s something that [as a white person] you can’t feel yourself, but you have to at least try to see within a broader national dialogue, if that makes sense.” Trisden: “Absolutely, absolutely. Was there any overt discrimination within your community, that made you aware?” “Yeah. I worked one summer in retail. And there were racial contingents within that workplace. People formed cliques within the workplace and clearly viewed one another with … or actually it was the white workers, who were white older women, who listened to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity during breaks. I sat through them constantly not only viewing the president through that talk radio lens, not only viewing the president as suspicious, or as an agent who was turning America back in their eyes. But also viewing the Latina women in our workplace as ‘lesser than’ or … just at arm’s length, as untouchable. And so I saw their prejudice manifesting on a day-to-day basis, by how they carried themselves and how they grouped together within the workplace.”

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I asked, “How old were you?” “I was fifteen.” “And how old were you when Obama was elected?” “That was eight years ago. So I was fifteen.” “And this was in Carson or the Carson area?” “Yeah.” “What was your job?” “I was kind of like a [laughing] de facto box boy there, moving things around, doing some heavy lifting.” I asked, “So how did the workers relate to you? Was it primarily a female workforce?” “Mm-hmm. Actually, yeah, it was a predominantly female workforce. There were a handful of males who worked there. But the males who did work there were the supervisors. The managers, you know. So there was clearly a male-dominated environment, with female subordinates.” Trisden asked, “And then, the female workers, were they divided along racial lines, like between Latino and white? Or was there just a small subsection of Latina women?” “Well, that was the interesting thing. The white women were in their own area. The Latina women were in their own area. They outnumbered the white women. But there was mostly this sense of self-sorting, self-­ segregation from one another.” I asked, “Were they doing the same level work or the same kind of work?” “Some of them were doing the same work. So there were some women who were packing products for shipment, others who were checking inventory. But they would often come together as teams, where they would go into their own separate areas, and listen to the radio over break.” I wisecracked, “I’m thinking of Rush Limbaugh coming from some areas and Spanish-language radio coming from others …” But Thom let me know it was no joke: “That’s exactly what it was! That’s exactly what it was!” and he laughed. We all laughed, and Trisden shook his head and said, “Wow!” I couldn’t quite let it go, so I said, “I’m going to let Tristan take the lead again but I’m just so fascinated: You’re fifteen. Obama is elected president. You start seeing, partly because you’re exposed to this rightwing stuff, how people are reacting to him as an African American president. And you’re also, for the first time in your life, put into a situation

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where you really are working with racial differentials. A lot of stuff is going on, in terms of your racial awareness, right?” “Right, yeah. A lot of things are kind of colliding, with my awareness of how those different cohorts would interact with one another -- or actually, their complete lack of interaction. Like some of the Latina women would actually go outside and have lunch…there’s a small table and kind of a picnic area, where people would coalesce. And the white women would stay indoors in the break room and eat there. And so there was this clear division between people. And I would eat in the break room with the white ladies. They would gossip about politics. They would express their disgust or distrust of the president. It was maddening, as someone who had grown up with a liberal upbringing, to see people who were so utterly paranoid and didn’t have the necessary…the intellectual understanding … that things aren’t going to go to hell in a handbasket, because we have a capable president on our hands.” Trisden returned to his question about Thom’s emerging sense of race: “You said you grew up in a liberal household. So have you always had this progressive ideology?” “For the most part, yeah. My early memories of politics were mostly my parents complaining about George W. Bush …” He laughed. “Or of my family watching with bated breath the recount for Gore -between Gore and Bush, and then my arguing with a Mormon friend. His parents voted for Bush. And I was like, ‘Why? What possibly came over them, that they would (laughter) that they would do that?’ It’s mostly one of those things, like you pick up politics by osmosis. Your parents are the primary socializing agents. You’re almost like a vessel for their views.” “I would say that I sort of had my own awakening by finally seeing a lot of those progressive deals enacted, when we had a unified Congress in 2009, as well as the presidency. One of my first political memories was seeing the Affordable Care Act pass and watching that on C-SPAN. And they were reporting on it. And it was a genuinely moving … almost a tearful moment for me.” “That was my first political memory. I also started to feed into this notion that progressive ideals are superior when Obama did a press conference with congressional Republicans, in which they were trying to just smear him as much as possible and just never gave him the credit he was due. And so it started to harden my beliefs. Some political ideals are more legitimate than others and we can’t live by this false equivalency of one ideology being the same as the other. Yeah.”

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Trisden asked, “Did you see that workplace segregation also happening in the rest of Carson?” “Hmm. So I would say, in terms of how Carson itself was divided up, there was definitely a way in which people self-sorted into their own their own communities of White or Latino. And then, of course, by class: the ultra-rich, up in the hills, looking down on (he laughs) the rest of us. And then other people driving in from out in the sticks…out on a dirt road somewhere. There was this clear divide, in terms of how people lived and how they self-sorted. Being a small town, there’s just this clear division between both sides of the tracks.” I prompted, “It sounds like there were no black people at all there.” “Very few. Yeah.” Trisden asked, “Are there any predominantly minority high schools in Carson City?” “No. There were Latino contingents within our high school, but we would often view other high schools as more racialized. Like a few people on my tennis team would sneer whenever we would play Hug High School. To some, they associated an inherent inferiority to that high school, by virtue of the racial dimension, right? And so there was just a sense of superiority on part of a lot of the Carson students. It’s kind of weird being in the political minority of a place like that, having so many outspoken conservatives there.” “Would you say you were like unaware of race, as a youngster?” “Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And not to any positive benefit for me. Because I think that -- while these things come with time, I think that, by virtue of my growing up in a middle-class household, there wasn’t an emphasis on race there. Because there wasn’t the necessity to have an emphasis on that, no matter how progressive my parents were. It just didn’t have a place because it didn’t seem to have any utility then. But if I had known more about those issues earlier on, I think I could have gotten over a lot of those hurdles and become more of a progressive person…if I had made those jumps into trying to understand what other people are going through, and not stayed in this monotonous slog of my own bubble. Right? As progressives, we often talk about conservatives being within their own bubble of alternative facts and all this stuff. If we want to be able to criticize those people for having such myopic views of the world, then we should be able to live by example and lead by example. And I think that’s something that I would have changed, if I had known that it was such an important thing to talk about.”

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College: University of Nevada Trisden asked Thom why he chose the University of Nevada. “UNR seemed like the best sort of option, in terms of I had the most financial aid for it, as well as it was just close … it was closer just to home. I went to UNR for a bachelor’s degree, in history and political science, a double major.” This was a consistent theme with all the students we interviewed: Nevada was an economically feasible choice for college, and close to home. Thom was not wealthy, except in comparison with his impoverished classmates. He was comfortably middle class, but that still required financial thinking when it came to choosing a college. While he did not want to stay in provincial Carson City, he might have felt safer at a college that was fairly close to his family. Trisden asked, “So did our campus give you more of an exposure to race and an understanding of that? I know our campus is predominantly white still.” “You don’t grow unless you’re uncomfortable. Right? You don’t shape your views, unless you challenge what you currently hold as views. So I went to various political science classes and one of the professors led a discussion on things like affirmative action and various other race-related issues. But there were no people of color in the class. And there was clearly no self-awareness of the issue. He viewed affirmative action as a system of privileging other people, when really it’s making the world more equitable. So I began to realize, ‘Oh, we clearly don’t have a diverse set of voices here!’” “It’s both appalling and it opens your eyes to the fact that academia itself is such a mono-cultural, whitewashing of so many ideas and forums. And so I came into a lot of those discussions knowing full well that, ‘Okay, this is just downright wrong.’ “And then when I worked as an undergraduate writing tutor for the university, we got a lot of ELL students [English Language Learners—JR] coming in and a lot of people who felt isolated on a campus where they feel like they’re pariahs, and who not only can’t find a group of friends, but feel ostracized from the majority of people, who they think are prejudiced against them. And so a lot of my capacity as a tutor was and is, to some extent, to really comfort—or to try to collaborate with—students of color who are having such a hard time adapting to a singular kind of campus.”

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Trisden: “So are they comfortable coming to you or speaking with you about their discomfort with the campus and its climate?” “Yeah. I mean, at work we pride ourselves on having tutors from a diversity of majors and also a diversity of people from different perspectives, anywhere from non-binary, to anyone along the LGBTQ spectrum, as well as people of different ethnic backgrounds. And so we have all those consultants there, not only to help people with writing in various disciplines, but also to give people comfort in seeing themselves represented in the institutions that they’re attending. And I … well, I’m not the [Thom laughed at this] … I’m not the person that a majority of people of color come to for comfort in these sorts of things. But it’s a great opportunity to provide comfort, by giving another voice that maybe has experienced similar things or at least knows what they’re going up against.” Trisden asked, “So have you ever viewed overt or blatant racism on our campus? Or has anyone spoken to you about it in your capacity as a tutor? Have you had discussions about it?” “Yeah. Actually it’s one of the main things that we’re trying to grapple with now. There’s a great book that I’ve read called Writing Centers and the New Racism. It discusses the idea that academia itself is such a racialized, exclusionary institution, that tutors have to offer a sanctuary for students who may not feel comfortable existing within academia in a broader sense. And part of that is learning how to navigate people’s own sense of the world. Like do we push the singular mainstream view on how people should write or talk or understand certain things? Or should we welcome a diverse set of opinions and perspectives? Because ultimately, yeah, we want them to get good grades on their papers but we want to make them good writers, within their own personal context, not just make them assimilate.” I offered, “You’re making me think of a number of black feminist writers, who talk about the King’s English and how that’s what we’re taught. If we are educated people, we’re speaking the language of oppression. I never thought about English writing being at the heart of that conflict.” Thom laughed: “We both perpetuate and try to solve the problem. At the same time.” Trisden recalled, “I had a similar problem in my journalism class. A lot of people I’m talking to who are journalism majors are leaving the major because they don’t feel comfortable with either the program or the grades that they’re getting, because they’re writing a certain way. And these are people whom I know are great writers. But they’re not the cookie cutter

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model of writer. So it’s interesting to see that you have that dilemma. Because no matter how good a writer they are, they’re always going to lose points because they’re not writing that certain way. But they are the best writer that they can be, in their own styles.” Thom: “Exactly. We have to determine whether we want to create people out of a mold or whether we want to create individual personalities that can thrive and shine.” I said, “I heard a black broadcast journalist on NPR who talked about how he had to change the way he spoke to be acceptable on radio. He said, ‘I can’t talk like I’m talking now.’ And before he even said that I had been aware, just by listening to him, that he was black. That was perfectly obvious to me. But what he was saying was, ‘No, this is me talking white.’ It just shows the many levels of hoops we make people jump through to erase their identity in public.” “Yeah. Right. Well, the thing is … like in the early part of the 2007-2008 primaries, Harry Reid said about Barack Obama, that he doesn’t speak in a black dialect. And so there’s this confounding sense of how we want to tout diversity but we want people to conform and to fit our own perception of how they should be. That is just so contradictory.” Then Trisden asked a question that threw Thom for a loop: “So you talked about your experiences in these political science classes. But I’m interested to know have you ever had a professor of color?” Thom paused, looked astonished, thought about it for a while with a surprised look on his face, and finally said, “No! No, I haven’t! I…” He struggled for words, and Trisden offered other possibilities: “A teacher in high school, maybe? Or in elementary school …?”

After pausing to think for several seconds, Thom responded, “The whole extent of it was I did have a Latino professor in one of my Spanish classes.” Still fumbling with surprise and embarrassed about the fact that, not only had he never had a teacher of color, but he had also never noticed that fact until Trisden posed the question, Thom stammered, “So that is the extent of it! And it’s such a … that makes … that’s something I’ve never … it’s never dawned on me!” He laughed, and muttered, “Wow …” Thom was literally sitting there dumbfounded, looking astonished. Trisden urged him on: “So could you talk about how you feel about that?”

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“Yeah. The thing is, I’m kind of shocked that I haven’t perceived it until now. How is it that I took a Native American history class from a white historian, and took a gender identity in literature class from a white male, cis-gendered professor? I’m kind of astounded. And so I don’t … Like I think that hardens my perception of this as not only a problem, but it’s kind of shocking that I’ve looked right past it as I’ve gone into these classes. It’s such an oversight on my part that I’m thinking, ‘How did I go through all these classes, about -- especially American history, slavery, emancipation, all these things summed up to me by a … by a white historian, a white male historian? It baffles. I don’t know what more to say. I’m kind of speechless! I don’t know. Yeah.” Thom’s silence prompted Trisden to add his own story: “I’m taking a Racial Profiling class. But this is taught by a white man. He was a police officer. So he has a very unique perspective. But there’s a lot of things he says that I find problematic, because he’s not looking at it from a whole perspective. He’s looking from it from the perspective of a white male who was in a police academy. He has a lot of information. So he’s not just making blatant misstatements all the time. But when we discussed Ferguson … We were talking about the Ferguson riots. And he was talking about how he just doesn’t understand why these people are just ruining their own communities. And I said, ‘Well, these people are living in poverty. So they don’t have cars. So, how are they going to get to anywhere else in Missouri? Are they supposed to go to a white community and destroy that?’”

Thom and I laughed, but we knew Trisden was spot on. He continued his story: “He made this linear chart. And it was supposed to show how we go from sad to angry to hopeless and then violence. And he was saying that we now skip the hopeless stage. And I said, ‘I think you’re not viewing this correctly. The hopeless stage isn’t being skipped. You’re just putting it in the wrong place. It goes before the anger and the rage.’ “He was open to that. I think he definitely respected that opinion. But we have a lot of conservative people in that class, just taking it because fulfills a requirement. And they were spewing just a lot of out of context stats.” I suggested that Thom circle back and talk about being queer in the midst of this. “How does it relate to your perceptions of race or your perceptions of being an outsider? You described your childhood mostly as in

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a bubble, an insider. But at a certain point, you did feel alienated. So if you’re willing, I’d like to hear your thoughts about that transition. We’re talking about the experience of race in higher education and more specifically at Nevada. But this is not a singular institution. It’s reflective of American higher education at most public universities. It replicates the needs of the ruling class, it teaches the language of the ruling class to students who are willing to learn it, willing to learn how to behave, so that they can pass it on. There’s nothing disruptive going on in the academy, even in our approach to diversity.” Thom responded, “Yeah. I think that highlights just how idolatrous we’ve become of not only white thought but also white figures. The white male body. Like at Yale, they have two … I think it’s either dormitories or buildings … one named after John C. Calhoun and the other named after Woodrow Wilson. And so there’s this sense of just unflinching admiration for people who … [and his inflection became interrogative] … don’t warrant it ….?” By ending his statement in the tone of a question, Thom was signaling, “Of course Calhoun and Wilson have buildings named after them at one of the most prestigious universities in the world! But, really??? Why??? What does having a building at Yale named after you signify?” People, or perhaps more accurately, white people, rarely question the fact that the namesakes of important buildings may not be admirable men. But one can imagine that the students of color at Yale must experience the irony of having two buildings named after two southern defenders of slavery and segregation. Thom concluded with a sigh: “It just baffles.” I reminded him, “We’ve got all our white men standing around here too … Richard Bryant and John Mackay, both right outside this building. And we don’t even notice that they’re white men. Don’t recognize the idolatry, as you put it.” But Trisden and his friends have noticed, as he gently informed us: “I would say, speaking for like most of the black population, at least the ones that hang out in the [Diversity] Center, I feel like we kind of acknowledge it just a little bit. We actually refer to that part of the quad as ‘The Plantation.’” Thom said, “Oh Wow!” and Trisden suggested gently, “It kind of looks like a plantation …” Thom said, “Yeah, it does. It’s designed after the Jefferson design, right?” Trisden: “Oh, really?”

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“Yeah.” I added, “I taught at the University of South Carolina for five years. It has a beautiful quad. Plantation-style buildings all around and a lawn with these old beautiful shade trees. And that really was a plantation. Do you hang out on the quad here?” Trisden didn’t answer “No” directly, but instead told us, “Well, we hang out in the [Diversity] Center.” The Diversity Center is one room in the Student Union, which is located far away from the Quad. The Joe Crowley Student Union (named after a popular former president of the University … and yes, a white man) is in the newer part of campus. The Quad is the oldest part of campus with historic buildings and beautiful old shade trees surrounding the exquisitely maintained lawn. When Trisden mentioned that he and his friends do not hang out on the quad, it occurred to me for the first time that I have never seen students of color relaxing there throwing frisbees, playing touch-football, or lounging with the white students who are usually found there. Another aspect of self-segregation that escapes the notice of the majority population, including faculty who specialize in the study of diversity. The only reason that Trisden had ventured onto the quad for the first time was to participate in a march sponsored by the BSO (Black Student Organization) and several other student groups, in solidarity with students of color at the University of Missouri. Missouri students were striking in protest of the absence of administrators and faculty of color on that campus. The UNR (University of Nevada at Reno) march proceeded from the Diversity Center in “The Joe,” in the new part of campus, to the old Clark Administration Building on the quad. It was the only time Trisden had been on the Quad. “Two years ago we had a March for Mizzou, standing in solidarity with what was happening there. And we marched from the Student Union to right here by the Mackay statue. Before and after the march, and especially when we were down there and walking back, we were talking about how it was almost so fitting, because it just reminds us so much of a plantation.” I acknowledged, “I hadn’t really thought about the fact that all of the statues in the nation are of white men. I mean, the fact that they just got one up of Martin Luther King in Washington … They still don’t have a black woman up there … The only white woman with a name is Eleanor Roosevelt, and it’s really just a part of her husband’s memorial complex. There’s not one other one. Except the three anonymous Vietnam war

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nurses tending to the dying soldier across from the Vietnam memorial. That’s it. We’ve got four women (and three of them nameless), among all the statues in Washington, DC, and the only black man is Martin Luther King. And it’s like you say: you don’t even notice it. Not only do we not notice that they’re all white men, but we don’t recognize that it is, as you put it, idolatry of the white male body.” Trisden mused, “I think a lot of those symbols just still exist around us— like when I found out that on the back of the nickel is Jefferson’s plantation … Monticello.” Thom: “Oh …!” Trisden: “These are things we just don’t get rid of. And it’s almost a message. Their refusal to change these things seems like a message, to me, that it’s just not that important and that it is part of our history and that we [people of color] need to get over it.” Trisden circled back to Thom, “We didn’t quite ask the question: Was it always expected that you go to college?” “Yeah. My parents have always been insistent: you graduate high school and then you go to college. It’s almost a requirement. That’s why they never wished to celebrate my graduation from high school with any measure of ‘Let’s have a party for you,’ because it was just expected. That was just another milestone. So that’s always something that my parents have expected. My mom is a lawyer and my dad has his bachelor’s.” I asked, “Where did they go to school?” “My mom went to Loyola Marymount for her undergrad and Gonzaga for law school, and my dad went to Redlands for undergrad.” “And your brother?” “He’s two years older. He went to UNR and he’s in a master’s program in computer science.” “And you grew up feeling pretty safe?” “Yeah. I mean, my -- both my dad and my brother have had various problems with substance abuse and things along those lines. So, I mean, while the road wasn’t entirely stable, it was stable enough that we kept it together. And both my dad and brother are sober now. So we’ve maintained that nuclear family. And I think we’re stronger for it.” Trisden asked, “I’m wondering if you would feel okay talking a little bit about sexuality and whether, for example, you feel safe on this campus, which is pretty much an old-boy campus … But just, in general, if you maybe want to talk about that trajectory … coming of age.”

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“Yeah. In terms of how safe I feel on campus, I think I haven’t quite found my footing yet, in terms of groups. Of course, I have like a second family in my fellow tutors. And they’ve been more than accepting of me coming out, to the few people that I have. But it’s almost I’m being sheltered there because it’s so much more diverse than the rest of campus. Right? It’s not that I feel unsafe on the campus. It’s that I feel kind of aimless on the campus. I feel like I don’t really have as much of a firm footing, within one particular group or with one particular thing. Because I mean, as you said, it is an old-boy campus. You see that every day, just walking through campus and seeing just the slew of frat guys, [he laughed] who are just … are just like replicated on a manufacturing line, practically.” We all laughed, but Thom added that he thought he had an easier time hiding from them than did students of color: “I think I have the advantage of being able to conceal who I am more, in terms of … It’s not like I don’t give myself away. But I have the opportunity … I’m able to suppress. Whatever the hallmark signs are of who I am, I’ve been able to suppress those with enough effectiveness to not completely be outed all the time. But I still feel like I don’t have much of a footing within the campus, because it’s such an established system.” Trisden interjected, “I have a question.” “Yeah.” “Did you live in the dorms, when you came here?” “No. I lived off campus with my brother. And so I wasn’t super rooted into the campus. But when I would go into -- or when I would try to be … I’ve been involved in so many clubs on campus … I was with the Young Democrats, I was with the Secular Student Alliance, and things along those lines -- and so there was this sense of … I mean, I’m sort of there on campus but I’m not really there. So there’s this feeling of not being quite integrated into the broader whole, because you feel like you diverge from the campus’s own ideas of what is proper, what is normal.” Trisden: “Was there anything that discouraged you from going to QSU [Queer Student Union] or becoming an active part of it?” Thom: “I think it’s just the familiarity that everyone had with one another within the group. Coming in, you almost feel like an intruder. I am such a shy person, when it comes to like making first impressions and making my voice known, that I don’t … I am so … I’m just terr … utterly terrified of barging in on a group and saying, ‘Hey, guys. Another person that would like to be involved.’ So it’s both my social anxiety, but also my

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own feeling of ‘Well, they’re already … they’re already so well established … that, I don’t know, I don’t even know how I would get my foot in the door.’” Trisden responded, “I definitely can understand that. I sat in on two QSU meetings. My sister was on campus and we were just hanging out in the [Diversity] Center. I realized the QSU meeting was going to start. I’m like, ‘Hey, we’re going to stay here, just hang out.’ And I completely understand. It’s a community, for sure. They vibe off each other. I mean, there are little cliques within it. But, of course, everyone’s just so happy …” “They know each other by their first names.” “Exactly.” “And they’re so familiar with one another.” I asked, “How many people are in that core?” Thom: “Ooh …” Trisden: “It’s big. It is really big. It’s probably one of the bigger clubs on campus. It’s bigger than BSO. The two times I went last year, I would say maybe 30. But the time I went this year, it was about 40 students.” Thom: “Yeah, when I went there, it was just standing room only.” Trisden: “Mm-hmm. Yeah! There were people sitting on the floor.” I thought about how shy Thom was when I first met him in class. How I had to cajole him into asking questions in class, instead of asking me privately when class was over. I realized how intimidating it must have been for him to just walk into a QSU (Queer Student Union) meeting and feel comfortable. I checked in with Trisden to see if we were forgetting some of our interview questions, since time was running out. I was fine with letting Thom and Trisden lead the way, letting the interview format go by the wayside, but I wanted to make sure Trisden was taking our discussion where he thought it should go: “OK. So what have we got here, Trisden?”

He responded “We’re kind of all over the place. But I think everything’s kind of coming together.” The next topic on our interview template was about what might make the University a more inviting place for marginalized students. Trisden asked Thom for his thoughts about that: “So you have talked to people in a tutoring context about their experience of race, and whether they’re feeling uncomfortable? Have they

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expressed anything that you think would make University of Nevada a better experience for a person of color?” “Well, I do think that one of the things … there have been complaints about how there’s so much tokenizing within the classroom, that when there’s even the slightest conversation on race, it’s just that pressure of not only the professor turning to him but also the other students turning to him, as if he was the universal representative…” Trisden nodded in recognition, adding, “The ambassador.” “The spokesperson -- right -- of the entire community. I think that’s such a wrong way to look at it. Not only should we not be pressuring people to become involved in class on the subject that is most seemingly personal to them, but we shouldn’t be prying it out of them. That’s such a wrong way to go about doing it. Because not only should they be doing it of their own volition but why don’t we get more diverse voices in there, so that it’s not just one person being the go-to?” Trisden: “Yeah, I completely understand. Because I’ve felt that. And I’ve embraced the role, just because that’s my personality. But there have been plenty of times, whether it was at Boise or here, where I’ve sat in a class and we’ve talked about race and maybe I just didn’t feel like responding. Usually, it’s a question and I’m thinking, ‘Are we really asking this?’ So I’ll just sit back and be like ‘Somebody else can handle this.’ And then no one else will raise their hand! And then the teacher asks, ‘Well, Trisden, do you want to …?’” Thom agreed that the best way to avoid situations where white faculty depends on black students to provide a racial perspective is to hire more faculty of color. But he also emphasized that not all people of color think alike: “But why should we have to bring on professors who are of that identity, just to teach classes just on that identity? It’s all a, ‘You stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine’ sort of thing. Yes, of course, we need professors who represent. Say if you’re going to teach a Native American history class, you kind of need someone who has experienced those sorts of things and has the expertise to say, ‘I can give that context.’ Right? But why can’t the same Native American person also teach American history? Just American history, right? From 1700 to 1850 or whatever?” He continued, “So it seems to me like we can’t just have these strict archetypes of what X, Y, and Z person needs to be -- especially in the hiring process, and also in terms of the diverse cast of students that we bring onto campus. Because if we’re going to allow diverse thought and diverse

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people and diverse identities onto campus, we can’t just say, ‘OK, you have to write according to this strict structure, this known way in which you should speak and act and think.’ Instead, we should have an ability to be flexible with students and admit students of varying backgrounds and provide the resources to those students to make college a feasible sort of thing. That’s why I was such a big proponent of having -- for Bernie Sanders’s push for free public education. Because that is such a…that would be such a boon to the people who don’t have access to it.” Trisden: “Absolutely.” Thom continued, “The conservatives always claim, ‘You have access to education but you don’t have a right.’ Same with healthcare. ‘You have access to healthcare but you don’t have a right to it.’ It’s such a double standard. If you want to take care of the unborn, if you want to take care of the people who are about to become entities, you better follow through on that promise outside of the womb. You better follow through on taking care of all people.” Trisden agreed: “Absolutely. Absolutely. When I sit on these meetings [with the administration about hiring more faculty of color], the common theme that I’m hearing is that there’s too small pool to pull from: ‘It’s hard to get a black professor teaching American history or native professor teaching American history, because there’s not a big enough pool. So we can’t. One, it’s hard to recruit them and, two, why would they come here, because there’s so many other places they can go since there’s only a select few minority candidates for the jobs.’ But you hit the nail on the head: we’re not doing enough from the bottom up. We have to start by giving these students resources, helping them out. It has to be an even playing field, for it to trickle up and develop that pool of qualified faculty of color. It doesn’t work top-down.” Thom: “Exactly. The whole education system has become a racial caste system.” Trisden exhaled: “Ohhh! That’s what I told my professor, just yesterday! But I need you to go into it, because I couldn’t explain it as well.” Thom elaborated, “You know, students whose parents were students inherit that same educational status from their parents. And usually, the parents were allowed to be students because of the class or racial privilege they inherited. “So if the parents get an education at a young age and they’re afforded those things because they benefit from the legacy of white middle-class or upper-class privilege, then they’re going to confer that onto their children,

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who will then benefit. It’s a closed loop. Anyone outside of that family structure or that class or racial structure isn’t going to benefit, because you’re not afforded the chance.” I offered, “bell hooks talks about that in Where We Stand: Class Matters. She describes how alienated she was when she got into Stanford as an undergraduate, coming from a working class black family in Tennessee. First of all, her mom didn’t want her to go anywhere that was more than ten miles from home. But she was offered a full ride at Stanford. And she took it. And she got there and couldn’t afford to go home for her first Winter Break. All her classmates were going skiing in Europe or joining their families on expensive vacations. So the housekeeper from bell hooks’ dorm took her in for the holidays. I think we don’t notice that people who are really first-generation in higher education can’t take anything for granted. They have to learn everything.” Trisden added, “Yeah. I’m thinking the same exact thing. It’s just like you’re saying. My mom, she was a first-generation. So she broke through that struggle. She got into it. So I’m now in that loop. And I’m going to pass that on. Because she passed those ideals to me. And even though I might not have been as well-equipped as some people coming into college, I knew the ropes. But a lot of these first-generation students don’t. And I think that’s why it’s so important, like the thing I’m doing with Hug. [Trisden volunteers with Hug High School to familiarize promising students with the University of Nevada]. These are first-generation kids, that don’t know the ropes. And we’re at least just trying to show them an outline of it, before they get here.” I suggested, “We’re assuming that we’re surviving in college. But maybe we’re only surviving because we’re good at doing what we’ve been told to do. But for anything to happen besides replicating the system, different approaches to teaching and learning need to filter upward. For example, I got my doctorate at Berkeley in political science. You need to prepare in three different fields. And my fields were political philosophy, American politics, and political behavior. They didn’t have any race and gender. There were no races, in the 1970s! And so I’m qualified to teach American politics. But I don’t. At least not as it is prescribed as a requirement. Occasionally the chairman will say, ‘We have no one to teach the course this semester. Can you do it?’ And I always say, ‘I really don’t teach it as American political institutions.’ But I have recently realized, I do teach American politics: I teach ‘Race and Gender in American Politics.’ But because it has a different course number and title than just plain

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‘American Politics,’ it doesn’t fulfill the basic American politics requirement for the major. I teach American politics from the perspective of the outsiders or ‘others.’ From the standpoint of the university it doesn’t ‘count’ as the required course in American Politics. Learning about American politics from the standpoint of women and people of color is an elective. It’s not a requirement. When they ask me to teach American politics, they mean history and institutions, focused on the white men. But women and people of color were there all along. There never was a United States without women and people of color. I should say, ‘Yeah, sure I can teach that,’ and then just teach what I teach.” We all laughed and I added, “But then somebody would l say, ‘Wait a minute … what about the Founding Fathers?’ They can still offer that if they call it ‘White Male Institutions in American Politics.’” Trisden added his own experience with a course that is required for every student at the University of Nevada: Core Humanities 203, “The American Experience.” “There was a curriculum meeting. Blane Harding, at the center [Director of the UNR Diversity Center], usually goes to these meetings. So he always shoots me an invite. And he’s like, ‘I just need a few students who know what they’re talking about to come and …’ So I always show up if I can. And my friend Elsa was also there and she said, ‘We’re looking at these classes, like the American experience, CH 203. But this is not the American experience. This is your American experience.’” “We need to change this curriculum. And I think that’s going back to your point. You should be teaching American politics because you’re going to be teaching the real American politics, not the American politics that they want. We do have to break the curriculum. That’s the only way. It’s not it’s not that we need to create more classes. We need to make these classes real. We have to make these classes reality. If we’re talking about the American experience, we need to be talking about the American experience.” Thom: “Throw away the rose-tinted glasses, stop talking about this in terms of a narrative -- There needs to be a reversal, to reflect the students, and not the other way around. It can’t just be regurgitation of the material that is just some sort of false narrative that we’re taught to believe in, but should actually be a reflection of reality, as you said.” Trisden: “Absolutely.”

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Lucy “I can read and learn for my entire life, but I will never understand racism the way that a person of color will and I have to realize that.” Interview by Trisden Shaw, Jennifer Ring and Elsa Written by Reece Gibb and Jennifer Ring

Lucy attracted my attention when she was a student in my online Identity Politics. She held exceptionally sophisticated insights about race, class, and gender, and was an exquisitely precise writer. She and Elsa soon found each other in the online weekly discussions and had many lengthy exchanges. So insightful were Lucy’s comments on race, that neither Elsa nor I were certain how she identified. Lucy began her college career at Scripps, an elite private college in Southern California, and found the experience so suffocating and depressing that she ultimately withdrew and transferred to Nevada. She had first-hand insights about the difference between upper-class colleges and public universities, including the racial dynamics in both settings. I invited her to be a part of the Voices study, and she enthusiastically agreed. She was interviewed by Trisden with me and Elsa in the room, since Elsa had been her discussion partner in the online Identity Politics class and was eager to meet her in person. Childhood Trisden began our conversation by asking about the factors that Lucy regarded as most definitive in shaping her. “I’m a cis woman. I’m straight, middle-class. I would say probably one of the bigger things that I identify with is disability. Most of my life has been really, really shaped by my mental illnesses so that’s a big thing that I identify with.” Trisden asked, “Would you like to talk about that any further?” “Do you mean do you want the diagnoses?” “Whatever you’re comfortable sharing, but what we’re really trying to do is just build a context about who you are, what influenced you and got you to this point in your life?” “So I guess I struggled with different things at different points in time, but some of my earliest memories are of having really obsessive thoughts. I was eventually diagnosed with OCD, anxiety, depression at a certain point, and I’ve also had struggles with anorexia for the last ten years or so.

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It’s like different things come in waves and sometimes one thing is more intense than another and sometimes they’re happening at once and it’s horrible. But where I am right now, thanks to really, really good insurance and support from my family and everything I’m in a stable place right now.” Trisden continued, “Can you talk about your home life growing up? Your family, how many siblings you have, your parents’ occupation, things like that?” “My mom and my dad are still together. We grew up in a two-parent home. I have a twin sister.” “Identical or fraternal?” “We’re fraternal. It’s not quite as fancy … (laughter). My dad is a systems computing engineer up at the university. When I was growing up my mom worked part-time as a librarian and she’s still doing that, but she’s fulltime now. So that’s what my parents do. I’m trying to think of important things about my family …” On the surface, Lucy’s family seemed idyllic: financially stable, with two educated parents living together with their two daughters. But diving beneath the appearance of privilege and togetherness, Lucy identified mental health dynamics and a certain emotional dysfunction as an undercurrent that shaped their family life: “I come from a family of people who don’t deal with conflicts well. A characteristic of my childhood was people not knowing how to deal with their emotions and not being able to articulate them very well. So with my mom she would try to put on this face as the perfect mother, perfect wife. And this is not to say that she wasn’t an amazing mother, but I think what would happen is she would just repress all these frustrations and problems and then it would just explode at whoever was around and a lot of times that was me and my sister when we were kids. So that was pretty stressful. “And my dad is a very, very quiet, taciturn person. From my own perspective as a person who struggles with this illness, I think he has depression and he just refuses to get any help for it. Which is really frustrating. There’s always been some distance between us, but there’s nothing I can do and I can’t make him take medication or go to therapy or anything, so that’s just the way it is. His own father was also like that so maybe it’s part of that taciturn Scandinavian heritage or something, but he’s not a very emotionally open person and things come out passive-aggressively with him. “But my sister and I are super, super close. She’s my best friend and we’re living together right now. I’m really going to miss it when she’s not

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there anymore. I would say one of the things that I’m still struggling with on a number of levels is my sister is gay and growing up that was a huge source of tension in our family because my dad is really, really homophobic. “It’s a weird situation because my mom is just your average classic liberal woman and my dad is a lot more conservative and so there was this unspoken tension for everybody growing up that no one talked about. But everyone knew what was going on. And I think it caused a lot of damage to my sister. I can only speak for myself, but it was a huge source of resentment for me that my dad refused to accept who my sister was.” She paused, and then facetiously asked, “Anything else that you want to hear about?” We all laughed and I assured her, “That’s a really good start!” Trisden agreed: “Amazing Start!” Trisden then asked whether witnessing her father’s homophobia taught her to be an ally toward her sister, and whether that tension drew them closer to one another as they navigated the family conflict. “I think it was something unspoken between us for a long time. I don’t have any other siblings so I don’t know, but when you’re a twin you just know things about each other, at least that’s the way it is with us because we’re pretty close. So it was something I knew about her before she decided to come out to me. But I definitely tried to be there for her when she wanted to talk about it. And I think she has inherited the taciturn side of things. She’s very, very stoic. And so it’s not like she is a person who will just be constantly pouring her heart out about things, but when she did want to do that I would be there for that.” She continued, “But a lot of the time [in our family] it was just people not dealing with things up front. It was more conflicts and anger and hurt coming out sideways. So there was a ton of conflict between my sister and my dad while we were growing up. And I’m not going to say that it’s all because she was gay and he was homophobic, but I think that was a huge unspoken thing that was kind of looming over the relationship. You can’t just ignore that and say that had no effect on how they interacted. So there was a ton of constant arguing between them. I guess coming from the psychology perspective when you have a system of dysfunction, there are always people who play certain roles in it. My mom was the peacekeeper and she would be the one who was constantly trying to mediate and smooth things over and put everyone else’s needs ahead of hers. I think mostly what it taught me was that the way my dad saw the world was petty and hateful. It’s hard because it doesn’t compute with a lot of my

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understanding of who he is. In many other ways he’s a very gentle, loving person. And I don’t want to paint him like the villain of the story or anything, but it remains the case that in spite of his other good qualities there’s this one huge sort of oversight that he had.” Trisden: “Do you think your dad has come around more since your childhood? At least with his opinions has he become more open-minded?” “I think things have gotten easier now that we’re not living at home anymore. Conflict is always worse when you’re constantly around the people that you’re fighting with, so having a bit of space has helped all of our relationships a lot. And I think that Rosemary -- my sister’s name is Rosemary -- she’s officially out now and I think …” Lucy paused for a few moments, taking stock, and then said, “Sorry, I’m just thinking: No one has been disowned, there haven’t been any horrible fights about anything, so I think that there’s kind of like an unspoken peace about it now.” Elsa now joined in with a question for Lucy: “Has it ever been acknowledged by your father? It seems like it’s a looming resentment, but has it become more articulated?” “It hasn’t ever really been fully acknowledged.” Trisden suggested that it sounded like the family had a “don’t ask/ don’t tell” code of silence. Lucy agreed and said that her sister’s girlfriend was often invited over for family dinners, which were very civil and polite, but the relationship between Rosemary and her girlfriend was never acknowledged. Family Strife Trisden asked if Lucy had grown up in Reno. “Yeah. Out in Spanish Springs.” “Could you describe the neighborhood a little bit, the kids that you played with, and your elementary school experiences?” “The neighborhood itself is like a horse-riding neighborhood so there are horse trails everywhere. But there were basically no other kids while we were growing up there. The demographic of the neighborhood is mostly older white conservative people.” Lacking neighborhood children to play with, Lucy and Rosemary had each other and horses for company. In elementary school, Lucy began to struggle with feelings she later understood were mental health issues:

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“I went to Spanish Springs Elementary and I think I’ve always been, I don’t know, looking back I was really shy, kind of weird and awkward and mostly just friends with my sister. That was my experience of elementary school. I think there’s sort of been this thread, like I mentioned in the beginning, this sort of thread of mental illness throughout my life. I think I was just so stuck in my head so much of the time … it felt like there was this whole other world that I was existing in. It was inside of me and I didn’t have the words to articulate what was going on. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I knew that there was something wrong, but I didn’t know how to articulate it and I didn’t have knowledge of ‘This is what a mental illness is, this is the help that you can get for it,’ that kind of thing. So a lot of the time I was just really, really stuck in my head and had this undercurrent of insecurity and self-hatred lying beneath everything for a really long time, even when I was really young.” Trisden: “And it continued through middle school and high school?” Lucy: “Yeah.” I asked whether her sister experienced similar struggles with mental health. “She also struggled with anorexia and she’s bipolar too, so a lot of mental illness in the family. And her struggles definitely intersected with mine. She kind of gave me the idea to be anorexic in the first place. Almost as though her anorexia gave me permission to do it too. Her own pathway led to recovery a lot faster than mine did and I experienced a lot of relapses that she didn’t, but we both struggled. I would say when we were probably 13 or 14 we started struggling with that.” I asked, “Are you OK now?” “Yeah.” I offered, “It’s hard. That stuff creeps back on you.” “It does. It will always be a part of my life and that struggle will never go away, but I’m in a place now where I’m healthy physically. It’s not the number one thing that’s dominating my life anymore. But even in elementary school I was incredibly driven and one of those obsessive overachievers. That’s how I felt like I had control over things because a lot of stuff did really feel out of control.” I wondered, “You said that your mom puts on a show of everything being all right and then at some point or another explodes at whoever’s around?” “Yeah.” “Is that a bipolar thing too, do you think?”

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“No, I don’t think she’s bipolar. I think that she deals with a lot of anxiety. And for whatever reason her way of dealing with it is just pretending that everything is OK and just subsuming her needs and her frustrations until it just gets so pent up that it explodes outward.” “Is it verbal? She’s not physical?” “Yeah, just verbal.” “Does she insult you and your sister?” “Yeah.” Lucy described these as exceptionally tough experiences and she’d only started to appreciate how abusive it was when she began regular therapy. “There’s still a lot of weirdness around it that I’m trying to figure out because I’ve had a couple of therapists over the years who have said, ‘Lucy, that was abusive.’ And then when I’ve tried … there was one time when I was in treatment for anorexia, they have this thing that you do where you write each other letters and they have you read them to each other and you try to tell people things that you wish you could have told them before basically. And so my mom told me, ‘I’m sorry and I know that what I did was abusive’ and then we never talked about it again. When I’ve tried to talk with her about it again she’ll say, ‘That’s not true. Your therapists are making that up.’ And I think that my sister -- I also tried to have conversations with my sister about it and her response is, ‘Look at our childhood and how much we had and how lucky we were and how much our parents loved us and provided for us, how can you say that our situation was abusive?’ And just basically saying that my therapists are making shit up and that I’m crazy for believing what they say.” “So I don’t know what to think. It’s really hard when you have someone who’s qualified to identify these things tell you, ‘This is my analysis of your experience’ and then to have the people who actually lived it with you say the opposite. I feel like either side could be gaslighting me in a way!” (She laughed.) “We reflected on the ways in which we can have a physically privileged life -- a house, food, stable parental units, and siblings -- but something seems emotionally awry. When therapists call into question that instability, abuse, or neglect, our gut reaction is often to deny that it was actually abuse, and to protect the abuser because they are our parents: “Are you kidding? No, they loved me!” Lucy then noted something profound about common misconceptions of struggle and hardship: the tendency to minimize trauma if it doesn’t meet a threshold of being horrific enough:

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“I think part of the problem is that we have such a black and white, dichotomous understanding of abuse and trauma that, unless you experience the most horrific thing in the world it shouldn’t be defined as abuse. But I think the truth is often a lot more complicated and people who love each other can still hurt each other. To say otherwise is to do a disservice to a lot of people’s experiences.” Trisden agreed: “Absolutely. It’s not just black and white. Abuse might just be one aspect of a relationship. It doesn’t mean the whole relationship through and through was abusive.” Lucy: “Yeah, exactly.” I suggested, “We tend to think that material safety or material privilege means that emotional pain is less important. We believe that what we can see is more credible than what we can’t see.” Trisden compared the way we define emotional abuse with resistance to recognizing and identifying racism: “I think that’s where a lot of these arguments and debates about psychological abuse also apply to discussions of race. When people can’t see racial violence physically, they think it’s not a problem. If we assume that abuse is only physical, when the physical component is lacking, we say the harm is ‘just’ emotional, and assume that it isn’t as truly detrimental. But psychological factors are violent on their own and can also create physical violence.” Lucy added, “I think we need to expand the definition of what violence is and expand the definition of what harm is. There are so many ways you can understand what that means besides just the physical effects. Beyond the physical effects of say an abusive situation, sometimes the emotional side of things lasts a lot longer. It’s definitely a lot more complicated than people want it to be, but it’s easy to focus on what’s material, I guess.” High School Trisden asked Lucy about her experiences in high school, the demographic composition, class makeup, quality of education, and opportunities for advancement after high school that she received. Lucy attended Wooster High School in Reno, in their International Baccalaureate Program, and described the school environment as one segregated by class, race, and curriculum: “I went to Wooster and I was in the International Baccalaureate program there, which is sort of like a full AP curriculum type thing. But looking back at it, it was a really segregated high school because most of the

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population zoned for Wooster is Latinx and then you had this sort of bubble, this little concentrated bubble, of mostly middle class or affluent white kids who were there for the International Baccalaureate program. The white kids in IB kept to themselves and the rest of the kids kept to themselves and there was no interaction between the two groups of people. It’s a really weird dynamic because you had this incredibly rigorous, academically elite environment at this school that was otherwise a pretty poor school and struggling in a lot of ways. “I remember my freshman year there was a kid in IB who wrote an editorial piece in the school newspaper about it and how there was a really toxic attitude of elitism that ran through IB and affected the way that the IB kids interacted with the rest of the school. There was one teacher who was talking to us about the article and making fun of it, saying this kid didn’t know what he was talking about. And the other kids in the class were eager to jump on board and make fun of the kid’s analysis. There’s a really aggressive emphasis on academics above everything else in the IB Program. Even above connection with other people and trying to understand other people’s experiences. That defines a lot of what IB was like for me, I think.” Trisden asked, “Was there any type of intermingling? Like lunch? Was the curriculum strictly IB? Were there other classes that you would take?” “The only class I took that was a mixture of IB and non-IB kids was music. I’m a flutist and have done music all throughout school. Music was the one place where it was a mixture of kids who were in IB and who were not IB.” Elsa asked, “Were there any intermediate levels like Honors or accelerated? Or was it just IB or regular? Because that’s pretty stark.” “I believe there were also honors and AP classes without being in the IB Program. But those kids were still looked down on by the full-time IB students.” Trisden asked about students of color in AP classes: “Did they feel comfortable? From your perception of course.” Reflecting for a moment, Lucy responded, “I would say that that wasn’t even a part of the vocabulary that I was aware of at the time. I don’t know. I think I wasn’t even aware of it. I hate to say that but …” From what Lucy could remember, the IB (International Baccalaureate) program was mostly white, with about one quarter of the students comprised other races. In contrast to the Latinx demographics of the area around Wooster, the white composition of the IB program was the result

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of recruiting and attracting students from predominantly white, more affluent areas of town. Lucy, for instance, lived with her family in Spanish Springs, over 12 miles northwest of Reno. Her sister attended Spanish Springs High School, the school they were zoned for, but Lucy elected to attend Wooster as part of the IB program. Even the small percentage of students of color in the IB program at Wooster were, to Lucy’s memory, also transplants from adjacent districts or schools. Trisden’s own experiences at a magnet school were similar: only 10 of 60 students that participated in his school’s magnet program were actually from the neighborhood. There is a backward sort of logic to placing high-powered academic magnet programs in low-income schools. Programs like the International Baccalaureate are placed in low-income areas ostensibly to strengthen the resources at those less privileged schools. But instead they amplify the bubbles of class, race, and related inequities by bringing in students who are not residents of the area. While Lucy was attending the IB program at Wooster, she was in the throes of anorexia, using a variety of resources—primarily dieticians and therapy—to start the recovery process: “I was at Wooster when I was in the process of recovery from anorexia for the first time. I was fully in my symptoms probably for about a year when I was 12, 13, or 14, and then my parents finally insisted, ‘You need to do something about this’ but they didn’t really know that therapy was a useful response to this problem. So they just took me to see a dietician who, looking back, was a very bad dietician and I’m surprised that I recovered as much as I did. But she and I came to the idea that the really rigorous academic environment was contributing to the stress that was causing my anorexia. It was just aggravating my perfectionism and I was working too hard. She suggested that I transfer to Spanish Springs to help lower my levels of stress and make my recovery easier. So I did transfer to Spanish Springs for one semester and I was really miserable there. I was super, super bored in the classes and just felt like a complete outsider. It bothered me being in classes where people didn’t care. So then I transferred back to Wooster.” (She laughed.) Racial Awareness Trisden took the moment to return the conversation to race: “So was it at Wooster, that you first started to think about race? Maybe through that

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dynamic of the elitism of the IB students and the neglect of the zoned kids? Or had you ever thought about it before that?” After some thought, Lucy replied, “Well, it was my mom who did most of the parenting. My dad was more financially supportive and less of a moral influence on us. But my mom is a very classically liberal woman who influenced my early understanding of race. And that was very much the colorblind attitude that we discussed in Identity Politics [the class they had taken together]. It was the belief that ‘We’ve come so far and there are still problems, but let’s not focus on those. Diversity is an important thing but let’s not actually look at what that means as far as the distribution of power in our society.’ That was my exposure to race growing up. And then in high school I started to learn more through social media. I don’t think it was as much my own experiences in real life, but I started to follow a lot of feminists on social media and I started building up a much broader understanding of how power works. It was probably in my junior and senior years when I really started to dismantle the ideas I had grown up with. I realized that there were ways to view the world that kept you comfortable, and then there’s the way things really are. There’s a lot that a person with my experience of the world has to unpack and look at in themselves start really seeing things for what they are.” Choosing a College Trisden asked Lucy to describe her process of choosing a college. Her parents were both college-educated and met while students at UNR (indeed, her maternal grandfather had been a geography professor at UNR), so it was expected that she would go to college: “If I had had any doubts they would have been just drilled out of me at Wooster because all everyone talked about was preparing for college and what college are you going to go to and your SAT scores and letters of recommendation. The fabric of the IB program was that college prep. I never had any doubts or insecurities about going to college. It was just like that’s what’s going to happen next.” Trisden: “So is the elitism from the IB program what prompted you to go to Scripps?” Lucy responded, “Yeah, I would say so. I think it was an extension of that attitude that academia is the number one thing and you are really, really smart and you have earned this through nothing but your own brain and your hard work and that’s the only thing that matters. That’s the

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attitude I had when I was applying for college. Elite schools were just naturally the schools I was drawn to and those were the schools that I thought would give me the best education. I never thought about it otherwise and I never thought about ‘What are the factors making this school accessible to me as opposed to other people?’ I never thought ‘What are they looking for in the people that they’re accepting to their school? And what are they looking at in the people that they’re rejecting? And are these things really about my innate worth or are they things that have been given to me?’” Being a flutist, Lucy applied to several programs with more musical prestige: Saint Olaf in Minnesota, in addition to Scripps and UC Berkeley, all programs to which she was accepted. “Ultimately Scripps ended up giving me a really, really huge scholarship package. I think that was what tipped it over the edge as opposed to one of the UCs. I ended up getting the biggest scholarship that they give anyone. The James E. Scripps Scholarship and it was the ultimate package you could ask for. That’s not to say that it was a cheap experience though and I ended up eventually having to leave because we just couldn’t afford it anymore.” “Scripps is located in a really beautiful, affluent area of Southern California, just outside Los Angeles. It is part of the Claremont Consortium so there’s Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps. They are basically their own schools but they’re right next to each other and you can take classes at any of them. It’s a pretty interesting setup.” Trisden asked about cost being the reason she left Scripps. “That is a complicated story. I finished my first semester there and unfortunately being set loose from my parents and with the new the structure of college, I immediately started spiraling in mental illness again. It got really, really, really bad. I was back to being anorexic and the depression and anxiety and OCD were just off the charts. So I ended up going to an inpatient residential treatment facility during the time that would have been my second semester at Scripps.” At two separate points in the second semester of her freshman year, Lucy took medical leave to attend a treatment center. After the first time, she returned to Scripps and found herself in the same emotional difficulty, working too hard, not eating, succumbing to depression. She returned to the treatment facility and, after that second round, learned from her parents that they could no longer afford Scripps.

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“Before I finished that second semester I decided I have to go back to treatment or else I’m not going to make it. And so I went back to treatment a second time and that was when my parents told me that we didn’t have enough money for Scripps anymore so I never went back. “I’m not sure exactly what caused it. I think the thing about mental illness is sometimes it’s affected by the environment and sometimes it just happens. I think it was probably some of both. I think the food issue was caused by the fact that I didn’t have the structure of my parents watching over me making sure that I was eating. You don’t have to go to the dining hall if you don’t want to and you don’t have to take a lot of food when you’re there if you don’t want to. It’s like ‘Who’s going to stop me? I can do whatever I want.’ So definitely the anorexia came back because I was no longer with my parents. And the other problems: I guess moving away for college is kind of a stressful experience so it makes sense that it would trigger these latent things in me.” After her second round in treatment, Lucy knew she wasn’t going to return to Scripps because it was too expensive. She returned home and took fall semester off before enrolling at the University of Nevada in Spring of 2017. As she recounts, attending Scripps—much like attending the IB program—ingrained in her a sense of elitism and privilege that she had to come to grips with: “I think what I was blind to at the time … I think I still had the sort of elitist attitude that had been drilled into me when I was in the IB program … was like ‘You’re here because you’re smart. You’re here because you’re a high achiever. You’re here because you earned it.’ And that’s all that matters. Without looking at, ‘Okay, so what are the other reasons that you’re able to achieve the way that you do? What are the other reasons you’re able to afford what you’re doing? You know, not everyone can afford violin lessons and all of the fancy extracurricular stuff that gets you into a school like that. And not everyone is able to go to a school that has really rigorous AP and SAT prep classes. That just doesn’t happen for everybody. I never thought about the ingrained institutional reasons that I’m doing better, or doing ‘better’ in quotes, or that I’m more prepared for this kind of environment than other people are.” “Scripps had a reputation in the Claremont colleges as the left-wing feminist school. They would say all the right things and the classes would be pretty radical in their teachings, at least compared to what I had learned before. But then the actual experience of being there … it was a predominantly white school and it was incredibly expensive. My parents were

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paying I don’t even know how many thousands of dollars a semester, and that was with the highest scholarship package that they offered. When I would talk to people of color on the campus about their experience it was clear it was a very alienating environment for them.” “There was a lot of ‘imposter syndrome’ -- the idea that you’re not there because you actually deserve it, you’re there because it’s been given to you because of affirmative action. That was a conversation that I had with a friend of mine. She just had this lingering doubt that she couldn’t get rid of, that she wasn’t at Scripps because of her own merit, she was here because …” Trisden interjected, “She filled a quota?” “Right, exactly. So there were a lot of hostilities and tensions on campus that permeated this incredibly elite environment and I don’t think the school did a very good job of addressing that problem. It’s ironic: I attribute a lot of the values that I currently have to the education I received there, but it’s sort of a hypocritical environment when I think about it. I did learn a lot while I was there, but in a lot of ways it’s not accessible to and it’s not that welcoming of an environment for the people they’re teaching these courses about. You know, the people who are actually living those experiences either aren’t at the school, or think they’re only there because of affirmative action and don’t really deserve to be there …” Trisden summed it up: “So on the surface it’s very left-leaning, feminist, into diversity, hooray, but in practice it’s not really inclusive?” Lucy: “Yeah, that was my impression.” “I don’t know if that was directly conveyed by the school or just a sense of doubt that my friend had internalized because that’s the message that is widespread in our society: any time a person of color or a marginalized person accomplishes something it’s not because of their own merit, it’s because of a cushy system that’s let them do it.” Trisden was moved to add, “It’s similar to here. People simply feel like they don’t belong… for various reasons. Even though Nevada isn’t a super elite institution people still have this imposter syndrome like ‘I don’t know if I belong here.’ [My friend] Julius tells me all the time that he feels like he’s not smart enough and I tell him, ‘You’re one of the most brilliant people I know!’ It’s not explicit. I know it’s not the school saying, ‘You don’t belong.’ It’s internal. It’s naturally built into this environment.” A persistent structural contradiction of many academic institutions, whether private or public, is their desire to espouse ideals of inclusivity and racial diversity, along with conveying a sense of elitism that makes

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minorities (and many other students) feel excluded. This is a conflict Lucy saw in her professors at Scripps. “One of my professors in particular who I grew pretty close to would talk about that a lot. She had this very complex understanding of her own politics because she felt like ‘Here I am, I have these feminist beliefs, I’m from my background …’ She grew up with caste privilege in India, and so she was trying to make sense of her own experience as this elite person in her own society who was then a marginalized person in the US because of her race and religion, and then was elite again because she was an academic at an exclusive college. But it was very complicated because she felt like ‘I have these beliefs, this is the way that I want to see the world and I’m just so lucky to have this job in academia.’ But at the same time there’s a sort of divide between academia and praxis. “Scripps is a really complex environment. Only since I’ve been away from it have I been able to get any perspective. The education side of things was excellent. And I think that the education side of things is really important, of course it is, but there’s an entire other side that never encourages you to ask, ‘What am I doing to play into these systems that privilege the economically stable and make certain people feel like they’re welcome in a space, and others feel like they are not?’ There’s another side of things besides the discourse you promote.” Trisden: “Absolutely. When you said they’re liberal but there’s a contradiction between what they’re saying and what they’re doing, I’ve just been reading the Assata Shakur autobiography. She says that liberal is the most useless word in the dictionary. She says people are only liberal until they lose the comfort of what puts them in the elite. They’re liberal when they’re comfortable, when they can send their kids to the school that they want, when they get all of the things they want. Then they’ll fight for other people. She argues that once they lose that comfort the liberal mask comes off.” Lucy described her understanding of being liberal: “It’s about ascension through the structures that are already in place for an individual group of people. Like liberal feminism to me, that’s not fundamentally questioning the structures of power we have in our society. It’s about saying these structures that we have are fine and that the goal of feminism is for me to rise through the ranks as much as I can without admitting there are women beneath me who aren’t going to be able to rise because of

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the structures that are allowing me to succeed. It’s about what I get out of it.”

The Crucible: Hitting Rock Bottom and Questioning Academic Elitism Her experience at Scripps made Lucy even more aware of academic elitism that she had been. While she admitted that she valued the essential educational experience of attending Scripps, she became far more critical of the gatekeeping of knowledge and information. “The more I’ve thought about it the more I realize [an elite degree] doesn’t really matter. There’s this idea that you can’t be an effective person in your field unless you have all of this fancy knowledge. And I feel like that’s kind of bullshit in a way. It’s not that complicated when you come down to it. Not to say that I don’t really value the time that I spent at Scripps because there were some things that were wonderful about it. But my awakening wasn’t through my fancy elite experience at Scripps. It was just I was on Twitter. “I feel that academic knowledge is valued more than lived experience as a form of education, as a form of knowledge. And that’s nonsense. I can read and learn for my entire life, but I will never understand racism the way a person of color will, and I have to realize that. And I can’t go around swaggering, thinking I’ve been to a fancy college and I took XYZ classes. That doesn’t make me an expert. I feel like it’s almost dangerous in a way to say that this rigorous academic environment makes you more qualified than people who live these things are.” Trisden agreed that the value placed on “formal knowledge” while informal knowledge and lived experience are disparaged and undervalued. “We put so much emphasis on formal knowledge, but it doesn’t really mean too much. I know people going to great schools that aren’t really that smart, but I know people who haven’t gone to school that are brilliant. I think it boils down to status, at least for me that’s what it is. I felt invalidated without a degree. Like you won’t really listen to me unless I have a degree from one of a few elite institutions. And that’s, I guess, why people really demean UNR compared to places like a Scripps. Or even like a community college, a JC compared to a UNR. It’s all the same hierarchy.” Lucy knew well the allure of the prestigious degree, but she wondered, “‘What is the cost of jumping through those sorts of hoops?’ The question is what part of yourself do you have to change in order to jump through

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those hoops? Because if you go in with the idea that you want to change these institutions … what if they change you instead? I don’t know.” Trisden: “Oh, that’s brilliant.” Trisden described his decision-making process and apprehensions behind deciding to attend UCLA for graduate school: “UCLA is a great school. But it’s also a great brand. That’s what it is, it’s a brand. It’s not going to make me who I am. But to everyone else it is. And for me going for these degrees, MA, maybe a PhD later on, I’m just trying to get as much knowledge as possible out of it. But I’m also going because of that shiny degree. Because it’s my microphone really.”

Lucy: “And you just have to get through it.” Trisden: “You have to know who you are the whole time. It can’t change you.” In transitioning from Scripps to UNR, Lucy experienced a different sort of validation. While she certainly felt some bitterness, having to give up what Trisden termed “that shiny degree” from prestigious Scripps, going to a different school allowed her to reorient herself, and focus on her own needs and self-worth: “Honestly what happened was that last bout, that second time around at Scripps, when I had returned from the treatment center and plunged right back into my second semester, was just the most miserable harrowing experience I can imagine ever having. I was just a complete wreck of a person in every single way possible. I could barely function. And I think that it was so, so horrible and so intense that when I finally got out of it, when I was in treatment that second time around, it just didn’t seem to matter as much as it did before. My priorities got readjusted and I was like you know what, I’m alive, I’m healthy, I can deal with whatever else comes. I think it’s still taken some time to get over the bitterness because there is still that bitterness that I’m not in this place that I worked so hard to get to. But I’ve pretty much gotten over that and the main thing is that I’m actually pursuing a goal that I want to follow and I’m happy and I’m healthy and I’m eating. The other things don’t seem to matter as much as they used to. “For a long time academic achievement and musical achievement and all those sorts of things are what kept my sense of self together because I had nothing else. Everything else was just this panic and self-loathing and this incredible darkness. And when that darkness would take over, I could

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think, ‘But I’m really good at X, Y, or Z’. That was the thing that kept me going. So I feel like everything got taken away and I was stripped down. And when I built myself back up the priorities weren’t the same. I still care about getting A’s but …” Trisden: “Of course. But it doesn’t make you you. It doesn’t make you valuable. You’re a person and you have value already so you didn’t need those things to make you feel like …” Lucy: “Exactly. And that is a process that … my God … it was so, so hard to get there. Ridiculously hard to get there. And just the amount of time that it took. If you think about the fact that I was -- basically I was doing nothing but intensive therapy for a year total in order to get to where I am right now.” “And I’m very, very, very aware of the fact that the only reason that I am where I am right now is because my mom happened to have really good insurance through Washoe County, because she worked for the library. The thing about eating disorder treatment is that insurance companies will not let people stay for as long as they need to It takes an incredible amount of work and time to get over an eating disorder, but insurance companies almost never ever pay for the amount of time that people need. So you’ll have someone who’s in a wheelchair and is completely non-­ functioning as a human being and then they will be in residential for like a week and then they’ll get dropped down to partial hospitalization and internal outpatient. And then they’re just shuffled back out into the world and they’re going to relapse immediately because they haven’t received the intensive care that they need. “When I think about it I was there for six months the first time, a solid six months where I did nothing but therapy and I still relapsed immediately and that was just because I was that messed up and there were so many layers to what I was experiencing that I had peeled some of them back but there were other ones that were still completely in place and I hadn’t found the right medications yet. These things just take time and I just think about the fact that I had this amazing insurance that basically said, ‘She can stay as long as the therapist thinks she needs to.’ And I stayed as long as I thought I needed to and I still relapsed right away. I’m very, very conscious that the only reason that I am where I am is because I was lucky enough to have access to the amount of therapy that I needed.” Trisden asked, “So when you got to Nevada did you feel comfortable at UNR on this campus?”

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“Not at first. Definitely not at first. One of the first classes I took was Advanced Topics in Race and Racism taught by a professor in the English Department. She wasn’t one of the people who regularly taught it. I don’t remember what her name was. But it was a really frustrating experience because the level of dialogue was a lot lower than it was at Scripps and I was thinking ‘Oh my God, I’m not going to learn anything when I’m at this university.’ And I was super bitter and petty about it. And then I realized ‘Okay, one bad class doesn’t make up your entire experience at the school. I realized you can’t have this attitude. If you go through this experience being as jaded and bitter as possible about it of course you’re not going to learn anything. You’re just not going to.’ It really helped once I started taking the psychology classes. I’ve had a really good experience with those here and I’ve learned a ton. It just took a while to find my rhythm and once I did it’s been really good.” Trisden: “Was it a similar feeling to when you went to Spanish Springs from Wooster?” “Yeah. That first semester or so felt similar and I was similarly dissatisfied, but I didn’t have anywhere I could transfer back to. It was like ‘This is where you are, this is what you can afford, and you just have to figure out how to make it work for you. And my choice is to be bitter about it or to realize that there are people who don’t even get this far or who have all kinds of things in place that make it hard for them to feel like they belong here. And what am I complaining about? Here I am, I have this opportunity, and I’m just going to do what I can with it.’ You know? I feel like I just sort of told yourself ‘You need to get over it.’” Lessons About Racism Trisden asked, “Right now do you enjoy this environment more than your Scripps environment?” “It’s really hard to compare actually because whenever I was at Scripps I was just so deep in my own personal suffering that it’s hard for me to see my experience at Scripps disentangled from my own suffering that had nothing to do with being there. So I can’t say for sure. I mean I’m definitely happier as a person right now, but that’s for a lot of other reasons than just the school environment.” When we asked her to explain further her dissatisfaction with her first course on racism, her issues with UNR came into starker relief. Her course “was predominantly white. It was a course offered through the Gender,

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Race and Identity program, but it was being taught by a professor who didn’t normally teach in that department. And so I just felt like she didn’t have the level of vocabulary that was necessary to guide people in the right direction. It’s okay if students come into a class not having familiarity with the current rhetoric about race, but it’s your job as a professor to help provide that for them and I felt like she didn’t really do that.” Instead of facilitating a dialogue, the professor shied away from sensitive or problematic topics, in a course on race and racism. Lucy described her frustration: “If someone says something vastly problematic in class, you don’t just say, ‘Yeah, okay’ and then move on. You say, ‘Let’s interrogate this.’ The classroom environment became one in which all opinions were treated equally, if they were addressed at all.” Trisden suggested that the economics of public higher education impact the availability of qualified faculty to teach certain subjects, such as race and identity, that may not be prioritized at the university: “I think that’s where the difference comes in from the private and the public schools. I think it’s about resources. It’s not that the faculty at private colleges are so much better or smarter, but that they have more people in positions to teach these students. They have the resources to hire professors qualified to teach these classes instead of kind of stretching people and asking them to teach a course in a field they don’t know enough about.”

The professor at Scripps knew how to push students to expand their understanding of race without making them defensive, and without simply saying “Okay” to every opinion voiced: “What I had seen happen before, especially with the professor I was telling you about at Scripps is that there are really graceful thoughtful ways that you can help someone unpack a racially problematic belief that they have internalized. You can find ways to unpack that in a way that helps the student to examine their beliefs and benefits the whole class. But I just think if you’re an English professor maybe that’s not where your strength is. Why have someone who is unqualified teach a class like that? It made no sense to me.” The incompetence that results when an instructor is required to teach something outside of their wheelhouse is symptomatic of the current fiscal crisis facing public universities. Public universities are pushed to expand in ways that increase enrollment and increase tuition to meet budgetary shortfalls created by strained state budgets. What results is a system in

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which adjunct and temporary faculty fill roles regardless of whether they have any formal or informal knowledge of the issues being taught. Scripps and other private universities are flush with the resources to house faculty with that expertise. But they are out of financial reach for most middleand working-class students. Those wealthy students who can attend have the benefits of smaller class sizes and a faculty that is qualified to teach the courses they are hired to teach. No matter how brilliant and committed the faculty at public institutions may be, they will run into the fiscal constraints that overburden them with class size and the occasional need to teach courses they are not comfortable teaching. Trisden asked Lucy, “Do you believe there are racial tensions on this campus?” Lucy nodded vigorously and said, “Yes.” She described what she had seen since she arrived on campus in 2017. That was the year that the wheels seemed to come off racially, both at UNR and throughout the nation. “I’ve heard a lot of secondhand experiences with the campus police that have indicated to me that there are a lot of problems here. I think a lot of the dialogue around diversity is sort of everything but the actual inclusion. It’s putting on a show without actually walking the walk that is required to make people of color and other disadvantaged people actually feel safe and welcome and equal in the environment. I was just arriving at UNR when there was the protest in Charlottesville and the UNR student who was there [Peter Cvetjanvich]. I felt like the response of President Johnson [Marc Johnson, President of UNR]was just ridiculous. That we ‘respect all students and their beliefs.’ OK, so do you respect neo Nazis and their beliefs?” Dissatisfied with the inaction of UNR’s administration in response to neo-Nazism and white supremacy, Lucy saw a clear contrast with Scripps, where the needs and safety of the most disadvantaged students would be prioritized. “It feels like it’s done in a different way at Scripps because Scripps is so tiny. It felt very different. But the way that it feels here is it’s just such a big place that there are certain groups whose needs rise to the top and disadvantaged students are not one of those groups.” I asked how Scripps would have handled the presence of a white nationalist student who had participated in a protest that was public and involved lethal violence. Lucy: “I think they would have denounced it. I think that they probably would have called for a discussion group or something like that. That’s

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the way that they responded to a lot of things, was having counselors or professors lead discussion groups about events that were currently happening. There would definitely have been protests, and I know there were protests here, but I think it would have been probably a more overt public denouncement of that student and what he did.” There are, of course, also students who are not racist extremists, but who simply disengage themselves when race is discussed in a classroom. Lucy encountered this type of student in one of her first classes at UNR: “There was one student in that Advanced Topics in Race and Racism who kept insisting, ‘There might be some small problems, but I personally don’t see that there’s a lot of problems.’ Just because you don’t see these positions as a white man, you can’t understand the possibility that other people have different experiences of the world? But there were fortunately a lot of students who were willing to sort of take him on and talk him through it. So that was okay.”

Elsa, who had been quietly listening throughout the interview, was moved to add, “That’s part of the issue, that as people of color and women and LGBT people, you have to teach people that it’s inappropriate for a white man to come to the table and say it just doesn’t happen. When they do that, we all have to stop our dialogue, and regress and bring him through this, hold his hand through this process and make him feel OK with it also.” “Right, everybody tries not make them defensive and feel like they’re bad people. But I think feeling discomfort is part of the process. Honestly, I think for a lot of people you have to realize it’s being able to sit in that discomfort and realize oh, shit, wow, I am racist.” Elsa: “It’s a necessity.” Lucy: “I don’t think that there’s a single white person in the world who is not racist to some degree. You just have to realize that and so, OK, this didn’t happen to me, I am not this way because I’m inherently a bad person, I am this way because there are systems that have made me this way. So how do I do what I can to get rid of it? Otherwise, you’re tacitly saying, ‘This makes me feel uncomfortable so it’s not real and I’m just going to close my eyes.’” At some point we floated the idea of there being remedial classes teaching about racism. If racists can undo the dynamics of a classroom, could a

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specifically catered classroom (Racism 101?) also undo the dynamics of racism? Trisden asked Lucy if most of the students in that class were white and whether the efforts of the class “worked” in terms of getting through to the student. “It was a mixture of white students and students of color. I think he was sort of the standout example of a person who just had no idea what was going on, like ‘How did you get into this class?’ But part of the problem was that there were also a lot of white students who just couldn’t understand what’s wrong with the ‘color-blind’ stance: that you’re not solving anything by saying, ‘I can’t see race.’ When you say, ‘I can’t see race’ you’re saying, ‘I can’t see an important part of your identity as well as a huge way that you’re affected in how you experience the world.’ And that was a struggle, that conversation was a struggle. It felt like a couple of white students and maybe a handful of students of color were fighting against this entire tide of people who just didn’t get it. That one instance was the only time we really banded together. For the most part there was a pretty big divide between the students of color and the majority of the white students in that class. “The way that I see it, they’re not holding racist views out of a malicious intent and they’re not doing it willfully. It’s just ignorance, but then they get stuck in that ignorance and build their identity around that ignorance. How do you disentangle it, how do you dismantle it? If you don’t have to directly face it in your own life what’s going to get you to care about it?”

CHAPTER 5

The Group Meetings: The Room Where it Happens

Trying to sort these young people by race or ethnicity gets us nowhere. But is there a common thread that actually illuminates their identity? Thom put it well when he described their “unbridled humanity.” Thinking back on all of the conversations we’d had with all of the “Voices” both individually and in the group meetings, we found it noteworthy that there was no discussion of money, except occasional mentions of the lack of it. They had come to the university partly to escape the poverty many had experienced growing up—but all the students were much more focused on moving the campus culture (and American culture in general) beyond racism and classism, beyond inequality and injustice. All had struggled with their own sense of isolation, their outrage at the injustices they witnessed, and their frustration with their political and social impotence while at college. When they joined groups on campus they believed would help them fight for justice and equality, many felt at odds even with the other members of those groups. But ideas about how to achieve their important, challenging goals began to coalesce once they met together. We will see the results of that collaboration in the chapter on the group meetings.

The original version of the chapter has been revised. A correction to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_8 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2023 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_5

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Finding Our Voices Together In 2017, three years before the coronavirus pandemic closed down the world, and before the murder of George Floyd convulsed the nation in protests for equal justice for Black Americans, the participants in Voices from the Wasteland greeted each other for the first time and met to discuss how their university should respond to escalating incidents of racism on campus. That seemed enough of an agenda without anticipating the horrors that 2020 held in store. Little did we know that the ideas we discussed about dealing with racism in 2017 would become even more urgent in 2020. We invited all of the “voices” to join us for a catered lunch in the Graduate Lounge of the Joe Crowley Student Union. All the students who were in town and available attended the first meeting on October 14, 2017, and then urged for a second meeting, which was arranged for several weeks later. We were joined in the first meeting by R.A. Drew, one of several people interviewed, but ultimately not included in the book. Drew (she goes by her last name only) is a part-time student at Nevada and a homeless woman in her sixties. She became familiar with Trisden when he was assistant manager at the Student Union and she was spending a lot of time there. She asked him if she could attend this group meeting when she learned of it, and we welcomed her as someone who definitely added diversity to our pool of voices. She defines herself as: “African American, black or whatever. Or ‘other’ because they didn’t put anything in there that says, ‘I do not like this BS, and don’t ask me again.’” She brought that challenging attitude to the two group meetings and raised important questions that the rest of us would undoubtedly have left unaddressed. When the students first met together began to see that they might actually be heard. Each had been carrying those insights individually, feeling isolated and ignored. Trisden and I knew from the individual interviews that their ideas were compatible, and now they could see that no matter how they identified themselves —whether immigrant or American-born, born in poverty or to relative comfort—all had noticed the similar issues, and all shared a desire to make the university and the nation a better place. The trust generated by that collective recognition made them willing to follow the conversation where it took them. Trust and courage are the raw materials from which healthy political alliances can be built.

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Group Meeting, Session 1: October 14, 2017 Introducing the Voices The first meeting was held at noon on a Saturday in the Graduate Student Lounge of the Student Union. Trays of sandwiches, drinks, and chips were provided by the Sub Shop in the food pavilion. After all had settled in with their lunch, Jennifer invited the students to introduce themselves. Paterno was enthusiastic about starting the introductions. He has a big personality, a willingness to take charge, and a contagious, upbeat sense of humor. He stepped in before anybody said a word and asked, “Can we cross interrogate each other?” “Of course!” Jennifer responded. “It’s your meeting… do whatever you want.” The introductions, with many “cross interrogations,” lasted a full hour, as the students took their time getting to know each other. Elsa began: “My name is Elsa. I’m a senior and I’m from Las Vegas. I study Public Health.” Trisden prompted: “Your ethnic or racial background?” Elsa: “I’m Ethiopian. That and something else.” Paterno: “But you grew up in Vegas? Born in Vegas?” Elsa: “Yeah. Born and bred. Only left to come up here.” Paterno: “What high school did you go to in Vegas?” Elsa: “LVA. The Arts Academy.” Paterno: “So you play instruments?” Elsa: “I do. I play the trumpet.” Elsa completed her brief introduction by adding that she works in the Intramural Athletics Department at the Fitness Center at UNR, to support herself while pursuing her degree. Reece took his turn next: “Hi, my name is Reece. I’m a second year Master’s student in Political Science with an emphasis in electoral politics.” Soft-spoken Reece and boisterous Paterno have been friends for a long time, so Paterno took on the task of eliciting more details from Reece, mimicking the tone of a television news reporter: Paterno: “And where do you work, Reece?” Reece: “The Writing Center.” Paterno: “And what are your hobbies?” Reece: “Just having an unhealthy obsession with politics.”

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Paterno: “I’ve known Reece for a very long time, but I don’t know where you were born.” Reece: “Spokane, Washington. Then we moved to San Luis Obispo and then to Carson City, when I was five.” Paterno: “So would you identify as…?” Reece: “Probably a Nevadan, because of how long I’ve lived in Nevada.”

Paterno continued to gently torment Reece: “Now since we get to interrogate you, Reece, can you please explain the thesis that you’re writing for your Master’s degree?” Reece responded with mock exasperation: “Oh Good Lord, what are we doing?” His thesis was complicated and technical, and Reece was not sure it would be of general interest to the students at the meeting. But he explained, “It’s about how voters’ views towards classical gender norms affect their vote outcome and the vote choice in the 2016 elections. I’m also investigating selective survey data on how people identify as feminists. Because feminism is such a multi-dimensional kind of concept, especially by region and locale, I’m trying to figure out how to better improve survey questions to get everyone’s personal definition of what feminism is, rather than just using a generalized definition.” Paterno: “Thank you! Okay, Kristen?” (Paterno had obviously taken charge of running the meeting. Trisden and Jennifer sat back and enjoyed it.) Kristen: “Hello everyone! My name is Kristen. I’m a junior here at the university. I was born in Las Vegas. My mother is from Liberia and my dad is from Jamaica. So it’s a pretty good revolutionary mix there, and I’m a Political Science and International Affairs major.” Paterno: “What made you choose political science? Is there anything in particular that you like?” Kristen: “The way people’s political views change interests me. We often see them shift away from their parents’ views when they come to college. They become more open. Campaigns are also something that interest me, although I don’t think I will do them again for awhile.” [Laughter all around acknowledging the stress of the 2016 presidential campaign.] Paterno was seated next to Kristen and Jennifer prompted him to introduce himself. “My name is Paterno. I’m a Master’s student in economics. I was born in Bakersfield, California. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, but the

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majority of my life was in Houston, Texas. I came here as a social conservative when I was a freshman. But I had a class with Professor Ring and I got radicalized. Radicalized by Jennifer Ring, right over here! [laughter] My dad’s Filipino and my mom’s Bolivian but I grew up in a very affluent community in Houston. All my friends were white. And yeah, I was always the kid that could never be Superman on Halloween because Superman is white you know, or so my white friends in Texas told me. I could never be Batman or any superhero, right? So that’s me.” He went on to describe his job: “I work for the Center for Economic Development. I look at inequality trends in Nevada on a county level and look for spatial relationships and spillover between counties, how inequality moves around in the state. I do other stuff, like people’s behaviors towards fire risk.” Elsa: “Can you define social conservative a bit more?” Paterno: “Okay. I wasn’t a radical conservative. My parents are Catholic. We went to church every Sunday. I grew up with Christian values and I was put in private school for a little bit. I wasn’t very open towards gays at all. Homosexuality wasn’t something that was in my worldview. I just wasn’t around gay people very often. That was something I just considered taboo. I thought ‘Oh, yeah, you can just change out of it.’ It was just how we were raised… we were told it was wrong.” Paterno continued, giving us all a lesson in Lone Star-style education. “Also, in Texas, the Civil War was taught to me as the War of Northern Aggression. It was all about States’ Rights. “There are a lot of community mannerisms in the South, you know? I would call girls my age ‘Ma’am.’ I was brought up to think there is an order to life and the men are the breadwinners. That’s just how the picture was painted for me and that in turn affected my general consciousness, you know, my political consciousness. It wasn’t like I was out campaigning for Republicans or even politically active. It was just the values I was raised with. I don’t know if social conservative is the right term to use there, but I was raised with conservative values. Also, my parents were not very open to certain ideas… like art was not something you pursued. I wanted to be a writer. I used to draw comic books and then my dad told me, ‘You’re never going to make any money that way,’ so I stopped drawing and I started working on Excel sheets, and now homeboy can make a pivot table like no one’s business! [Everybody laughed.] So that’s me in a nutshell.” Drew asked Paterno: “How has your family and your community responded to you as you have developed?”

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Paterno: “I only go to Texas once a year. It’s a rule! [Everybody laughed.] Actually I really like Houston. I think it’s an incredible city. It’s just that some Texas values, you know, get to me. I’m the crazy liberal uncle when I go back. It’s cordial between me and my Houston family and friends. I don’t see my Texas friends as malicious people. I see them as people who just don’t know about a lot of stuff. Like the way I didn’t know anything about homosexuality and I held preconceived opinions about it. And so I approach them… combatively and jokingly, ‘cause that’s my personality. But I try to find common ground when I speak with them. The objective is to build something, and not just shut them out.” Drew: “Do you speak the language of either of your parents?” Paterno: “Yeah. Spanish was actually my first language, but I stopped speaking it because my dad didn’t speak Spanish as much as my mom. I can talk to my grandparents in Spanish. I’m conversational, though not really fluent.” Drew: “What box do you mark?” Paterno: “Ethnically? Oh, I don’t know. I kind of go with Pacific Islander, mostly. I think if anything I’m culturally more Hispanic. People look at me and think ‘I don’t know what you are.’ It always changes. Sometimes I check Hispanic, sometimes I check Pacific Islander.” Laughing, he said, “If I ever apply for a government job there’s going to be a lot of inconsistencies!” Jennifer prompted Yesenia to take her turn. “My name is Yesenia. I grew up in Reno and was born in Reno. My race or ethnicity is Mexican. I’m a Mexican-American, first generation, so I consider myself Chicana. I have a large family who I love and adore and they’re my everything. Everything I do is based off of that. “I graduated in May. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and emphasis in Marketing. So now I’m a marketing director in the textbook department at the Nevada Wolf Shop. I’m trying to get my Masters’ degree in Social Work.” Elsa: “Do you speak Spanish?” Yesenia: “Yes. Yes, I’m fluent, though.” Yesenia’s eyes twinkled as she said this, teasingly directing her response to Paterno. Everybody laughed and said “Whoaahhh,” knowing it was a jab aimed at Paterno, who had confessed never attaining fluency in Spanish. “Spanish was my first language,” she continued. “My parents spoke Spanish to me at home. My sisters and I all spoke Spanish. It wasn’t until

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I got to kindergarten that I started speaking English. I didn’t go to preschool. I knew English because my sisters would talk to me, but it was Spanglish. Half of our sentences were in English and half of our sentences in Spanish, and I didn’t really understand the difference until I got into school because I always thought it was one language. I didn’t actually really know what language was until that point.” Jennifer: “Do you still speak mostly Spanish with your family?” Yesenia: “I speak more Spanish with them now. For a time in my life, I didn’t want to speak any Spanish and when my parents would speak to me in Spanish I would respond in English and I would tell my parents, ‘You guys need to learn better English because you are in the United States now.’ You know, I was one of those people.” Paterno: “So was I.” Yesenia: “I only started embracing my cultural heritage when I got to college. It wasn’t a big thing until I got here. I went to the schools that were known as the ghetto schools in Reno. So it was normal to be of color... I didn’t even notice it until I got to UNR. Then I was like, ‘So this is where they’re keeping all the white people!!’” [This elicited laughter from everybody.] Paterno: “I have a question for you about speaking English in response to your parents’ Spanish. Did you do that at school too? Did you speak English with your friends too?” Yesenia: “With my friends it was Spanglish and sometimes when I was speaking English to a teacher, a word or two would come out in Spanish and I would have to correct myself. But yeah, for the most part I always keep trying to speak better English.” Paterno: “I asked because I definitely denied speaking Spanish to all my Mexican friends in school in Houston out of wanting to fit in with ‘American’ culture.” Yesenia: “Definitely that was me too. But the thing is, the English language just wasn’t as connected to me. I didn’t recognize at the time that if I spoke Spanish, I was more connected to my culture. I mean… I look Mexican. I couldn’t stray from the culture even though I was trying to. And if you see my pictures in middle school, I was constantly trying to change my appearance so that I fit in more with what I thought white people looked like, even though I was in a predominantly minority school. Now I enjoy the fact that I am bilingual. It’s natural. Being bilingual was something that I had to do to get by, both outside my house and in my house.”

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“Now I try to perfect my Spanish more instead of focusing on my English because I never really learned how to write in Spanish: I was just fluent speaking it from when I first began to speak at all.” Drew had been active in questioning the other students who had introduced themselves. She often mingled her observations about current campus politics with a focus on her own unique status on campus. It was not easy to distinguish her personal story from her proclamations about the world, which sometimes seemed hyperbolic, and were often abrasive... intended to provoke. Her worldview was very different from that of the twenty-year-old students, and she shared no specifics about her younger years, where she was from or how she arrived in Nevada. The students were fresh-faced, hopeful, and at the beginning of their battle for justice and equality. Drew was a seasoned veteran with few illusions left. But the generational difference itself was a lesson for everybody. There was no way to keep the conversation neat and tidy with Drew in the mix. Her anger at the injustices of the world was palpable. Her perspective was sometimes politically moderate, sometimes revolutionary… and always required patience on the part of the students, to disentangle her personal stories from her political pronouncements. Reece noted that Drew’s remarks were so full of outrage at the system that she seemed not to want to bother to explain herself. This provided a vivid contrast with the other students, clearly at an earlier stage in their journeys and eager to be understood. Jennifer, Trisden, and Reece considered omitting Drew’s comments from the book, as they often seemed to throw the discussion off track. But they realized that there will always be a disruptive voice in a serious conversation about race. Indeed, there is always a disruptive voice in every classroom. No productive discussion is ever smooth going. The challenge is not to silence disrupters who have something to say that is not being said by others. Disruption can be productive, as long as the disrupter’s goal is not to simply end the discussion. Drew’s remarks rarely fit neatly with what the other students were saying, but they always added a perspective, and the students responded respectfully to her, and often agreed, re-stating her ideas in a somewhat less incendiary manner. Jennifer asked Drew to introduce herself. Drew: “I’ve been here since 2012 as a student. Three times the police came here because somebody called them because I was lying on the couch sleeping! It was in a different building each time. I was ‘sleeping while black.’ I am not welcome here. So when UNR hangs out a banner that says ‘Everybody is Welcome Here’ [referring to the enormous banner

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the administration hung over the lawn in front of the student union as a response the Charlottesville incident], I can tell you how UNR has proved to me that I am not welcome here.” She mocked what she saw as the false friendliness and concern of students and staff in the Student Union, whom she believed put on an exaggerated polite concern when they saw her and then turned around and complained to the police that she shouldn’t be there. She was a regular presence in the student union, and as she mentioned, often used the comfortable couches as a safe place for a homeless woman to sleep. Drew was an outlier among the student voices gathered, and yet her disruptiveness helped us to define what we were all grappling with. She was rarely able to separate herself from the political issues, racial issues, power dynamics, and economics that defined her existence. In that sense, she spoke for people who were not in the room with us: homeless people, poor people, incarcertated people, and people truly without voices in American society. The other students had all been through hard times, but they shared a common generational experience and vocabulary in higher education, knew how to bring a scholarly and rational approach to a political discussion, and knew how to engage in dialogue that left the door open to disagreements. Drew’s contributions, as one student observed, always felt as though a meteor had landed in the middle of the discussion. Her intention seemed to be to throw a final, explosive statement into the conversation. Drew represented the most marginalized people in American society in a way that the rest of us could not. Here came Drew, living on the streets and on campus, the very voice of exclusion, refusing to be silenced. We could not ignore her voice and she forced us to confront the relative privilege that the rest of us—including the marginalized students—enjoyed. Drew was enrolled as a student, she claimed. She said she was a math major, although she indicated that she had had other majors before that. She received some sort of financial aid but remarked, without elaborating, “Financial aid is the new plantation. You have a chain around your ankle.” It sounded like a radical new way of looking at financial aid, but it was hard to understand what she meant: Was it that financial aid came with strings attached, and obligations (some of them distasteful) that had to be fulfilled? Did that constitute slavery in her mind? No one pressed her on the point. All she could see was hypocrisy and injustice, and of course, she wasn’t completely wrong about that. Drew’s anger disrupted our intention to

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have a tidy, coherent discussion about racism and campus politics. But in a sense, that disruption kept us all honest. After Drew spoke, it was Trisden’s turn. “My name is Trisden. I’ve spoken to you all for hours in your individual interviews, so you already know a bit about me. I am from Las Vegas. Went to Canyon Springs High School. It’s in a predominantly black and brown area, in North Las Vegas. I’m originally from Cleveland, Ohio, and moved to Las Vegas when I was about nine and a half. Here at UNR I’m a political science major and a journalism minor. I went to Boise State before I came here. My time at Boise is what has inspired this study for me. Being at Boise inspired my awareness of racial identity, racial politics. I’m graduating in December. December 9th, if you all would like to come!” Next Jennifer introduced herself, although she had met all of the students before, in classes or in the interviews with Trisden: “So, you know me. I’m Jenny Ring.” This project grew from conversations with Trisden and a couple of other students and it represents an effort to use Paulo Freire’s pedagogy, disrupting the power dynamic between teachers and students. At a certain point I got tired of hearing myself give the same lectures for decades and I began to realize, especially listening to student presentations in my classes, that I have a lot to learn from my students. Listening to you revived my ability to learn, which had become stalled. I began learning again, this time from you. My perspective on the materials I had taught for my entire professional life was refreshed and in turn became more relevant to a new generation of learners. “I think this change began to take shape in as I was listening to the research presentations students were making in my classes and I realized how little I knew about my students. You are having life experiences I don’t have, and my academic experience does not eclipse the legitimacy of your knowledge. I had outgrown conventional top-down learning, which was how I was taught when I was an undergraduate and graduate student. It was time to move on. So this collaborative project with students is revitalizing for me, incredibly educational, and gratifying.” How to Be an Ally: Working Together, Building Alliances, Activism With the introductions wrapping up in a leisurely fashion, it was time to address the issues we had gathered to discuss: how to change things, how to end racism on campus and in the nation in this challenging era.

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Most of the students were politically active. Those who were involved in progressive politics agreed on two major obstacles to organizing students at Nevada: it was difficult to get students to act collectively, and it was a challenge to get various groups to form coalitions and alliances, and to use the power of intersectionality—black students and Latinx students working together, for example. The consensus was that there were many progressive students at Nevada, but it was hard to get them to do more than tweet their outrage at recent events on campus. Trisden noted that he had been frustrated trying to organize students to “Sit for Kap” during the national anthem at the start of football games. In solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco Forty-Niners quarterback and Nevada alum, Trisden had remained seated during the national anthem at the start of a Nevada football game. But nobody showed up to sit with him, and he was alone, enduring obscene and racist tweets from white students on campus. Trisden has a generally positive, optimistic disposition. He’s upbeat, and his energy inspires students to follow him. When he planned the protest, he believed he had plenty of support from the black students who frequented the Diversity Center on campus. But these presumed allies didn’t show up at the football game, preferring to tweet their outrage rather than publicly demonstrate. “I organized Sit for Kap on campus. We have a lot of students that come into the [Diversity] Center and talk about ‘this Kaepernick thing.’ But they never can take it to the next step: that he’s doing this great thing, and bringing awareness, and there’s an opportunity for us to do this great thing as well and become a part of it. I understand why a lot of people aren’t comfortable. But that’s not enough of an excuse if you agree with Kap. There are people that I constantly speak with, have the same conversations with, who are quite passionate about it. Tweeting about it as much as they do. They won’t do something publicly when it puts pressure on them.” Drew raised a question about alliances, and intersectional participation at campus political events: “I don’t see Black students at intersectionality-­ type events. Have you noticed that too, Trisden?” Trisden: “Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s how I got close with Yesenia. We used to talk about these things either at work or just when we were off. I would go to the LSAB meetings, the Latino Student Advisory Board with her. That’s why I started United Nevada, just to develop a sense of solidarity on this campus. Get people on the same page, start talking about the same things, because I understand my problems but I don’t

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understand Yesenia’s problems. And if we’re on the same page, we can have a more unified voice and people will actually hear us. But people are just focused on themselves. At some point you have to invoke this solidarity because that’s where we can take bigger steps together. Having these discussions, whether formal or informal, is really nice.” But Paterno took issue with Trisden’s “United Nevada” approach. He felt uncomfortable at meetings of “identity groups” that were not his own. He felt as though he would be regarded as an interloper. Paterno: “I am 100% supportive of this unified approach, the solidarity approach. But there are topics that I don’t like talking about or getting into discussions about because I feel like I am in an inappropriate position to have a voice on that topic. I don’t talk about feminism to my friends because I mean I’m a guy. What do I know about feminism, you know? I can only speak for myself. That’s an attitude that prevents me from going out to these other events, because I don’t want to seem like an outsider horning in.” Many of us have experienced hesitancy to get involved with or even have an opinion about “other” groups’ issues, even if we ourselves identify as a minority. How can white people do more than look on from the sidelines in the fight against racism? How can black Americans and Latinx people avoid a false competition with each other over rights and equality in the U.S.? How can men play an active role as feminist allies? Trisden seized the opportunity to address these difficult questions: “I would like to challenge Paterno by saying I personally think that showing up is the first step. For me, going to events where it’s not necessarily my issue, but it’s an issue facing Americans or racial minorities, or feminism, is an opportunity for me to learn. But also, you’re appreciated for showing up because a lot of people don’t or won’t. I do feel awkward at first. I can speak from my own experience, but I’m really just there to sit and learn and just kind of amplify their voices.” Trisden was urging Paterno not to hold back, but to join and learn from others. It’s important not to think you can “own” or take over another group’s movement, but that doesn’t mean your presence isn’t helpful and appreciated. Kristen agreed. “Just to add to that, it gets so tiring to speak to the same crowd, to speak to the same people who already are conscious about what they’re talking about. It’s good to have the presence of people of different views and people who don’t necessarily know about that topic and actually want to go learn more. It’s meaningful. Still, I can totally

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understand that some people feel nervous about going to, you know, an all-black event or an all-Asian event, or an all-Latin event, that they just might feel like they’re taking up space. But it’s okay to just absorb everything and listen and carry it back and take it back to your families and your friends who might not be as conscious as you.” Paterno: “I think that’s a good way to look at it. To not be a voice at somebody else’s meeting, but rather just to learn and listen. That’s something I should apply to myself. I wish Henry was here but his phone’s dead… But Henry likes to tell me there’s a big difference between mobilizing and organizing. People claim to be allies or social justice warriors on Facebook, but they’re strictly on Facebook, right? They’re great at mobilizing attention, but then when it comes to organizing, they find it difficult. I think online mobilizing actually detracts attention and energy from the actual work of organizing. When Black Lives Matter first started, it was great at mobilizing, but it was not organizing by any means. I think that that’s a very important distinction to make there.” Jennifer: “Do you all consider yourselves activists on campus?” Paterno: “I put together a few environmental events. I’m helping the Nevada Conservation League put together a panel on campus: ‘Women, Communities of Color, and the Environment.’ About how environmental degradation affects minority groups more. I think students tend to be a little more niche about what they do. They pick a topic and they stick with that topic. It’s rare that there’s much collaboration between them. I mean I have communities of color on this panel and you know, it didn’t even occur to me until right now that I probably should have reached out to Reno Justice Coalition, the Gender, Race and Identity Program and the Political Science department. Sometimes we put blinders on.” Paterno continued, “I also have an issue with the term activism. You can’t just be shouting and call yourself an activist. I have an issue with people like Naomi Klein and Shaun King, who came to campus for a lot of money, and I don’t trust people who become these huge celebrity activists and use that to their own financial advantage. Naomi Klein sold a lot of books. She lives a ritzy lifestyle. I mean, does she really relate to everyone? I just don’t like the term activist used in that sense.” Kristen: “I really relate to that. I’m a part of BSO (Black Student Organization) and I’m on the Executive Board. To be honest with you guys, I don’t know what’s going on. There’s no actual organizing, there is an attempt to mobilize and then it dissolves. Sometimes I feel like there’s a certain way people like to organize and they just stick with it. And it

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doesn’t matter how many times it’s failed, how many times somebody has said, ‘Hey, this doesn’t really work’ or ‘I would do something different.’ People just aren’t open to suggestion or listening. That’s my frustration with a lot of liberal organizations. It just seems like it’s done for the people in charge, for the people higher up to get brownie points. It’s not really for the community. That is something that I found with the last political organization I was working with before the election [NextGen America]. It was all about pledge cards. They didn’t check on students, help students with DACA paperwork, do work that had to be done instead of blindly sticking to their way of organizing.” Freedom of Speech: First Amendment Rights and White Supremacy in the Classroom Jennifer: “Trisden and I thought of a couple of current issues that we wanted to bring up. One is the question provoked by Peter Cvjetanovic, an outspoken white supremacist, on our campus. Can someone who has publicly declared and acted on his belief in white supremacy be a productive member of a classroom? Does “free speech” and “academic freedom” apply to people who have professed their own racial superiority? Are beliefs about racial supremacy a part of a conversation about free speech? Should an argument for racial superiority be taken seriously in an academic classroom? I have to confess, when I became aware of Peter’s presence on campus, my first reaction was “I don’t want him in my classroom. I’ve worked too long and hard to try to create a safe atmosphere where students feel free to discuss uncomfortable feelings about race with each other, and I don’t want discussions hijacked by a person who believes he is superior to others and who was willing to scream about it at a public rally that turned deadly. Of course, there are First Amendment rights, and as a teacher I am supposed to be able to make a place for all views in my classroom. But the idea of having to deal with extreme racist views in my classroom is chilling.” Trisden: “I can also throw a few questions in there to guide us. Do you think a white supremacist should be on campus? Were you surprised at the presence of white supremacy on campus? And then how did you feel about the responses from the university administration to this scenario of Peter returning to campus under UNR police guard?” Yesenia: “I don’t think white supremacy should even be a thing. But the fact is that people think like that and we are a public university. They

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have the right to think whatever they want, right? They can be white supremacist because that’s their constitutional right. Do I agree with that? Obviously not. But when that whole thing happened, at first I was like, ‘Well, he needs to get kicked off the campus… He needs to be out of my face.’ But then, you know, I kind of sat back and was thinking, ‘There’s a difference: he was open about it. There are white supremacists who aren’t open about it. So, how are we going to be able to tell them apart from people who want to help the cause of equality? You know what I mean? You could kick one person off but that doesn’t solve the issue. It’s not going to stop it. So initially I had that dialogue with myself and decided he should be allowed to stay. “But then, when I saw the university’s response, I got pissed off. My anger reached back to when Trump was elected. When Trump became president a lot of students in my business classes said to me, ‘So when are you going to go back to Mexico?’ They would say this stuff in the classroom, and one time before class started, I knew the professor heard it. And he said nothing. I responded, ‘Well if you knew me a little bit better, you would know I’m not from Mexico and I wasn’t born in Mexico. And on top of that, if you really want to make claims about who belongs here, Nevada was part of Mexico, so if you want to start talking shit, let’s go!’ And even before the Mexicans were here… (and they were here before the Europeans came)… there were Native Americans. I did an ancestry test, the 23 chromosomes, and I have 63% Native American in me. So my ancestors owned this land way before any of the Europeans came here and stole it. “It made me mad that people felt free to talk this way to me and what did the administration do? Nothing. They gave out a phone number…a ‘hot line’ to call if anybody said anything racist to you. You could call their racism phone line. And then what? Meanwhile here they are protecting this white supremacist kid, giving him police escorts. Where’s that safety for me? And I was thinking, ‘How does that make sense?’ The president of the university, and the university administration say, ‘We want to learn more about diversity,’ ‘We want to be more involved in diversity,’ and they’re protecting this kid who doesn’t want any diversity at all. I found myself wondering, ‘Why would I want to be part of this university?’ “I’m glad that Peter was caught on camera. I’m glad Peter was seen because instead of, you know, little racists here and there, we have a face to put with it. Now the university has to talk about it. They were trying so hard to run around it. But now they couldn’t. One of their own students

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got caught so they’re like, ‘Shit!’ And they’re still trying to fix it with the ‘I Am the Real Nevada’ tee shirt campaign. They were like, ‘Show that you’re not like that.’ But they’re still running away from the issue.” Jennifer wasn’t sure what Yesenia was referring to. “What tee shirts? Who wears the tee shirts?” Trisden: “They purchased these tee shirts in bulk that say “I am the Real Nevada” to show that Peter is not a representation of Nevada. So they want everybody to wear these shirts because ‘You are the real Nevada.’” The administration ordered free tee shirts to deal with white supremacists on campus? Did they want white students to wear them, too, or would that have confused the message? Peter had already proclaimed that white students were the “real” Nevada, and the “real” Americans. Who exactly was supposed to see the tee shirts and learn from them? It was a case of trying to solve a traumatic, centuries-old problem with a marketing gimmick: a public relations solution rather than an aggressive response to white supremacy on campus. Yesenia: “It’s just that the university had a chance to face racism on campus and they didn’t. There’s a difference between protecting somebody who thinks white people are the superior race and protecting people who just want to be treated equally. Black Lives Matter and DACA are not trying to push out a group of people. We’re trying to lift ourselves up to full equality. We’re trying to dismantle white privilege so that we have the same privilege as any person in this room or any person outside of this room. As for the Charlottesville rally, it was white people pushing themselves up to make everybody else ‘less than.’ We’re not trying to be superior. We’re arguing for equality.” Jennifer kept struggling with the thought of having an avowed white supremacist in her classroom: “I’m conflicted about that because my profession is enabling people to speak, helping them to find their voices. I should be able to handle one white nationalist in my classroom. But I know what happens, which is that the whole class then goes down the rabbit hole responding to the hate of one outspoken racist. He may only be twenty years old, but I think he’s unteachable. I understand that you can’t just expel him but if I have 30 or 40 students in a class, they have a right to learn a subject without having to argue with somebody who supports Hitler. The rights of those 39 students are also in need of protection. They are Nevada taxpayers… or their parents are… and this is their university. They shouldn’t have to pay for police protection for somebody who

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believes they are less than fully human. But I guess racists also have a right to speak…?” Trisden responded that he did not believe there was an equivalency between the right to speak out for white supremacy and the right to speak up for equality. To declare entire groups of people inferior is not a First Amendment right: “Personally that’s where I disagree with you. It’s just hard to equate those two movements. I think it’s problematic to say that in order to have my rights protected we need to protect these white supremacist rights. I think if we’re protecting their rights, we are oppressing our own rights. I think we need to set a precedent that if any speech should not be allowed, it’s speech that limits other people’s rights. Rights should be used to amplify all rights. That’s what we’re going for. So how can we be protecting their right to limit other people’s rights?”

He continued to respond to the dilemma Jennifer had described: not wanting to exclude any student because of their beliefs, yet not wanting them to disrupt the classroom. “Also, in terms of academic freedom, I think it makes the classroom inefficient. I have other classes like that in political science. I was in a class on racial profiling, where someone would say something just so off-hand, so off-the-cuff, that we didn’t get anything else productive done for the rest of the class just because it’s just like ‘Damn, did you really say that??!!’ So then everybody has to respond to the unbelievably racist thing they said that they don’t think is racist. And then some people chime in on his side. So the discussion of the issue goes way longer than it should have and we’re not touching the fabric of what we’re supposed to be learning. “So to me, the university is handling it completely wrong. When they say it’s a free speech issue to be able to defend swastikas and white nationalism in class, they’re giving it a platform. I think that we have to set a new precedent at some point to start moving forward. Reece, did you have something to say?” Reece: “Yeah. I think there’s a degree of limitations that can be placed on the First Amendment when it comes to how much the safety of marginalized groups is being jeopardized. It’s similar to yelling fire in a crowded theater. You can’t do that because you’ll cause a panic and people will get hurt. I think if you are actively putting the most vulnerable people in jeopardy by saying what you’re saying and by espousing beliefs that are

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the most toxic vile things you could possibly say, then there’s no place at a public university for you. There is no gray area in Nazi or white supremacist ideology. There’s no hidden meaning behind it. It’s purpose is simply to oppress and exterminate people who are not of your own white supremacist identity. Just as UC Berkeley can disinvite Milo Yiannopoulos or Ann Coulter for the vile things that they say, we should be able to expel Peter for the things that he’s done and that he said, because that’s actively stifling the voices in marginalized communities.” There was a moment of thoughtful silence when Reece finished speaking, and Paterno added, “I met Reece in a history class and he would never talk… he was real quiet… and then whenever he would speak it’d be very quiet and then everyone’s just like… ‘Whoahhh!’” Kristen responded to Reece: “Thank you for saying that. I was a student worker at Admissions and Records. I was there for a year and a half and when Peter came back to campus in August I was so frustrated that I didn’t want to come into work that entire week. Admissions and Records is a division of Student Services and our office has a duty to protect all student records. That’s just state law. At the office, we have student workers, who are all students of color, in the front counter, and the administrative staff is in the back and predominantly white. That’s how it is. All the student workers are people of color and then everybody else who has power is white. There are some wonderful people in there. But that’s just…that’s an issue. “But after the Charlottesville situation we were getting emails and calls from all across the country, from over all over the world and we had to create a separate email response to the queries. Parents and prospective students wanted to know if it was safe to come to UNR after Peter was allowed back on campus. An overwhelming number of incoming freshmen students were withdrawing their decision to attend the University— and I don’t care if it’s against the rules to reveal that. I think if I had a daughter or a son who was about to go to this school and they are a student of color, and I see this incident happening with a white supremacist all over the internet being allowed to come back to campus and being protected, I’m not sending my kid here. I’d be telling them, ‘You’re going to UNLV.’ This is ridiculous. It’s out of line. It’s not something that should happen in an institution.” “But staff and faculty above me at Admissions and Records were telling the students working the front desk not to respond individually to the parents’ concerns, but to ‘deal with it’ by writing a general email that

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brushed off all the worry. Basically the email just said, ‘Refer to the president’s message, contact Student Conduct, the Title IX office.’ “The automatic email was so useless that the parents kept calling anyway. And it was the student workers, who were all students of color, who had to answer parents of color worried about sending their students to UNR. We had to try to tell them it was safe. It wasn’t the administrative staff that had to deal with all the angry phone calls from parents. A colleague of mine, also a student worker, was getting berated by angry parents calling the office. And they have a right to do that. I would be pissed off too if I heard that this was going on and I was a parent and I wanted to call up here to ask if it was safe for my child and all I got was a generic email saying everything was fine. “But a lot of the directed anger was being fielded by students who are answering the phones, support staff who have no power. A lot of the stress and anxiety was forced on the students who were there working during the summer, and who don’t get paid as much as everybody else. And the response from our supervisors was just ‘You have to deal with this. You have to create an automatic email to respond to the questions and anger.’ There was no thought that maybe the anger and the worry from the parents was appropriate and deserved a personal response. “You know, nobody paid attention to the environment that we’ve created at UNR to harbor this mentality and this type of administrative response, which was basically not to respond at all. It was emotionally exhausting. I was just sick of everyone talking about it. And of course we had the big ‘Everybody is Welcome’ banner at Admissions and Records, while they’re avoiding responding to parents who are screaming at the student workers about whether there is racism on campus. “And the administrators were debating whether what Peter did was right or wrong, and they were really more worried about whether kicking him out of school would have an impact on donors to the university.” Paterno: “I think that’s the elephant in the room: donors and development. Fundraising. Alumni.” Drew spoke up then, making a point that had not yet been expressed: any administrative response that would have limited Peter’s First Amendment rights to demonstrate about anything he believed in would set a dangerous precedent… to the First Amendment and to herself. While she supported the administration’s willingness to allow Peter back on campus, she emphasized adamantly at the same time that UNR was not handling the situation properly. As usual, Drew’s comments mixed the

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personal and the political and were unclear about which parts of the administration’s response she regarded as correct or “totally wrong.” But they served to clarify the polarized perspectives of the students in the room. She began by discussing her personal feelings about the crisis on campus: “Free Speech is so important to me it could probably be considered a religious belief on my part. I go to BLM rallies and anti-Trump marches and I can’t even remember what else I’ve gone to. I go feeling entitled here in my country. I can have any opinion I have. And the only thing that protects that right is if the most terrible hateful speech is also protected. So if Peter has to fear being expelled… and he is a white male… if he doesn’t have the right to go to a protest of his choice, then I am really terrified for myself. “But everything else they did was so wrong I was devastated. That banner, ‘UNR Welcomes You…’ I personally know what a lie that is. That banner was so offensive to me, I had to divert my eyes.” Elsa picked up on Drew’s point about protecting all speech, whether egalitarian or supremacist. “I agree with Drew. I’m very much behind protecting free speech. You can argue about white nationalism creating an unsafe classroom environment for students of color, but I think to reduce Peter’s views to ‘other races are inferior’ is unfair. If we say ‘Black Lives Matter’ they think we’re saying that only black people matter. So they could say that people at a Black Lives Matter protest should be expelled because they’re privileging black lives only. I think it sets a dangerous precedent to expel him.” She continued: “I definitely am backing the free speech stance that the university took and I think it was appropriate. I do understand that his views compromise the safety of others, but I don’t really know what everyone wants the university to do. I’m hearing a lot of people criticize what they believe the university did incorrectly or the lapses in judgment that the president and administration might have had, but what were they supposed to do? I agree that it was asinine to use the UNR police to protect him when someone can yell Nigger to Trisden on the street, and he doesn’t get any protection, or that women are assaulted on this campus more than what’s reported. No one talks about that and they don’t get any protection.” Trisden: “What would happen if it was the flip side? Say it was a black militant protest where someone was injured. I believe if the races were flipped we wouldn’t be having this same discussion. Everyone from the donors down to students on campus would have been calling for that

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person’s head. They would have expelled him and there wouldn’t have been a question about it. So I think, Elsa and Drew, you said you are behind the free speech in the hope that it would also be honored if it were a left-wing protest or a Black Lives Matter protest that had gotten violent. I just don’t see it happening.” Paterno: “I think what Elsa’s saying is that it sets a bad precedent to expel him for protesting. If we’re going to expel Peter then…” Trisden: “I understand that the precedent could be dangerous, but the interpretation must be very thorough and careful.” Reece agreed with Trisden that Peter was being given a pass by the administration because he had supported a right-wing cause: “I think there’s a clear divide in terms of the sort of hand-wringing that went on after Charlottesville when the administration was saying, ‘Well, we shouldn’t really target people for their use of free speech or their exercising their rights.’ And I agree with what Yesenia and Trisden have been saying, that if a Black Lives Matter protest got violent and somebody was killed, then nobody would have been talking about ‘protecting the free speech’ of the black protestors. We’ve seen the outsized reaction to Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protests where you’re essentially seeing something that is absolutely non-violent but there is such a stronger condemnation on the part of White America to put people of color in check for doing nothing out of the ordinary and nothing illegal at all.”

Kristen noted, “Our vice president of student services asked us to not have any stickers on our cubicles in the Student Services office. Like we couldn’t have Human Rights Campaign stickers, or anything basically just like a political affiliation posted where the public could see it.” Elsa: “Human rights is a political affiliation?” [Laughter] Jennifer: “Well my personal preferences of who’s in my classroom aside, I guess we can agree that there was no legal basis for throwing Peter out of school. So what should we do next time? Because there’s gonna be another incident. We all understand that UNR is not handling these things as well as they might. So what should be done the next time?” Trisden: “And don’t forget that ‘next time’ is not necessarily going to be as extreme as what Peter did, but just the atmosphere around here that we’re seeing regularly: swastikas sprayed all over, someone getting their hijab pulled off, a white supremacist rally, just these symbols of white supremacy and oppression that are continually visible on our campus. How should the university respond?”

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And then, almost as an aside, Reece mentioned the Oath. “I think these incidents are symptomatic of the toxic foundation the university is built on. In the History Department Forum to discuss the response to Charlottesville, which some of us attended, a professor stood up in the discussion part of the meeting and told us that there was an early vow that students took to uphold the white race.” Paterno: “Whoa! Whoa! Here?! They don’t advertise that!” [Laughter] Reece: “The ‘Oath’ that professor referred to with the names of all the students who signed it, way back from the 1920’s, is in the Knowledge Center, archived in Primary Source Documents.” Possible Solutions: Teach-in on Race; Diversity Courses; Cooperation Between Students and Administration Paterno: “If we’re thinking about what can be done, I think the first step is to analyze the different kind of power systems in the university. There’s the president’s office of course. But the president’s office is never going to take a stand. They actually don’t like participating in events until they know that the event is a successful one. I put on a climate change summit here. I invited President Johnson multiple times. Afterwards, he sent us an email saying ‘Hey, I wish we got an invite.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, I got the emails right here.’ So, I think there has to be a way to get the university to make a statement about something without going through the president’s office itself. ASUN [Associated Students, University of Nevada, the student government] has its problems for sure, without a doubt, multiple times over, but I think that sometimes they can do something that’s good. And you know, there’s a lot more power that comes out of it when it has the university logo on it. Reno Justice Coalition has been doing incredible work for years now, right, but it doesn’t have the same effect without having that blue Nevada N right there.” Jennifer: “It seems to me there needs to be an acknowledgement that these are not isolated events and you can’t deal with the underlying problem of racism on campus by putting out little fires, like ‘Oh, we’ve got a Nazi here and swastikas there, and we’ve got someone yelling Nigger over here and telling you shut up with that Spanish over there. It’s all part of the same institution.’” Trisden: “And that gets back to what Reece was saying about the Oath and the toxic foundation…”

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Kristen: “It has to be a community effort. And honestly that’s not going to happen in this community. I think the type of political mindset that people have here keeps people who could be allies, who could be part of an engaged community, from getting involved with race issues. Environmental issues? Yeah, gung-ho for that, you know, and other progressive issues. Like the Women’s March, how many people were there? I’ve never seen that many people come out. There were an insane amount of people.” Elsa: “The Women’s March irritated the crap out of me.” Kristen: “I was one of only five girls there that had signs about intersectionality.” Trisden: “So what’s the first step? Actually, can we go around and get a first step from everyone?” Paterno: “Who’s going first?” Kristen: “I think that we need to try and get some ASUN representatives, because they do have ties with the community, to go down to city council or to go down and have actual community forums where people from the community come out and are a voice for students that have tried to speak up for so long and are not being listened to. Because ASUN are the ones in positions of power.” Jennifer: “I have an idea of what might be done from a faculty standpoint. I think we need to stop classes for an entire week and have every professor dedicate their class periods to talking about this, to talking about race, to talking about diversity, to talking about LGBT rights, to talk about DACA, to talk about what the impact the current political climate is having on this campus. Have the administration declare a “teach-in”—a week of discussing race and equality on campus. Every professor can do it in their own way... or professors could combine their classes with other colleagues to discuss the issues. Each faculty member could approach this in their own way, so long as they opened the discussion to students. There has to be a way to get the entire campus community talking to each other from a variety of perspectives. As a kind of pause before proceeding with classroom business as usual. A Socratic ‘Stop and Think’ moment. Even if you’re in a physics or engineering class, there are race, class, and gender equity issues. If you look around the classroom and there’s a white male professor and the vast majority of students are white males, you have race and gender issues to talk about. You can’t just hand off discussion of those issues to social science and humanities classes and say ‘let them figure out

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why there are so few Blacks or women in engineering, math and the sciences.’” Paterno: “I think that’s a brilliant idea. But the only thing is I think the messaging for that has to be very careful. Because we are a land grant institution and unfortunately race is a political thing. It’s politicized and the College of Agriculture gets 80% of its funding from federal money because it’s Cooperative Extension. I’m just saying like the feasibility of it is difficult because it will look like we have a particular political agenda that is not shared by the people who fund the university.” Jennifer: “I was just trying figure out a way to get the entire community, from the top down, to acknowledge that it’s not okay to have two or three racist incidents a week. To acknowledge that this is a crisis we all have to deal with. There isn’t a single academic discipline that is immune to politics and race… not even the most abstract math and hardcore science. The idea that people on campus are willfully and regularly committing acts of racial terrorism is an assault on the mission and spirit of the academy, a place of advanced learning. Although I guess if you want to consider the university a corporation instead of a place of learning, it’s a different story.” Paterno: “It’s always about the donors.” Paterno was referring to the private alumni donors, who tend to be conservative in Nevada, and have plenty of influence over the state legislature, upon which the university is dependent for its funding. They would likely not look favorably upon a plan to halt the regular business of teaching for any reason, and particularly not for anything regarded as a “left-­ wing” political cause. Trisden: “For me, I think it definitely goes back to what Reece was saying. Changing the culture behind this institution rather than just the symptoms that pop up, putting out these little fires. I think we need a bottom-up approach because that is where the numbers are. The students have to have enough of a voice to pressure the faculty to pressure the administration to make real changes. Nobody in the administration is willing to risk anything. We need someone with power to back these things.” Paterno: “You’re 100% right. I fully agree. A bottom-up approach using the power of students is the way to go. But if you look, what student organization is the most powerful? Greek life. If you want to do a bottom­up approach, you have to team up with the fraternities. And the students in the Greek system are not on your side.”

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Reece: “Also how many people in fraternity life have been actively supporting white supremacist ideology? Greek culture is openly misogynist and homophobic and racist.” Paterno: “That’s what I’m saying, right? You’re literally teaming up with the enemy. It won’t work.” Trisden asked Elsa for her thoughts about how to change the campus culture on race. She responded to the group: “Tris and I talk a lot about how the point of going to a university is a little bit about getting a degree; a little bit getting a little smarter; but mostly becoming more worldly and cultured and open-minded and understanding and evolving as a person. It’s not all about learning your area of expertise, even though that’s important. But I think that the university has to be more intentional with the core curriculum and especially with their diversity credit. We all know that you can get your diversity credit by taking a nutrition class or music appreciation. Just really silly stuff that has nothing to do with contemporary diversity or its issues or the basis for the issues we face, and I think maybe a required freshman seminar that directly addresses issues specific to this community or this geographic location or its history would be really a good idea.”

Kristen: “That’s a really good point because registering students for classes whenever they come to the front counter, I’ve had students drop Women’s Studies 101, you know, it’s not even that radical of a class in the first place, but their parents tell them to drop diversity classes and switch them with whatever is an easier class and doesn’t challenge the parents’ political beliefs. Like fulfilling the diversity requirement with music appreciation, right?” Elsa: “And it shouldn’t be a cop-out, and that diversity credit is a cop-­ out for a lot of people. Like, ‘Take this class. It’s really easy. You’ll get an A.” But you’re not learning anything and you’re not becoming more open-minded to people who are different from you. Especially when you come from a place where people don’t look different than you and you’ve never known anybody who isn’t the same race as you.” Jennifer: “I think that is a great idea. Make it a requirement—a class there’s no way to avoid. There needs to be a serious course on race and diversity required of all students. Just like we require Core Humanities, which is essentially white man’s history.” Trisden: “I’d push it even further. I’ve had this conversation with Elsa and Yesenia and we talked about this with the Core Curriculum faculty.

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They invited me, Elsa, and a few other students. We need to have as many different required diversity courses as we can, because we’re dealing with those problems in the world. We need to have an African American history course, Chicano history course, Asian-American History course, and not just all in one catch-all Identity Politics course. We need to have a queer politics course for everyone. We need to have a disability course for everyone, because these are skills that people need in the world. I was talking to my friend last night, and she’s in this disability course and there’s a practicum where they have to work with people with disabilities. They have to sign up and do about 12 hours. That is putting this knowledge to practical use and I see growth in that and if everyone was required to do this, I think the world would be a better place.” Paterno: “But you hear from science majors and math majors as well: ‘I don’t have time for that. Like I got shit to do,’ and they always say that about Core Humanities. ‘I’m gonna be a doctor. I don’t need to take Core Humanities.’” Reece: “I don’t need to write.” Elsa: “Or speak like an adult.” Paterno: “Or structure a sentence.” Trisden: “Or back my claim with empirical evidence.” Paterno: “I think that all of this really should be shoved into the K-12 system. And historiography needs to be the method in teaching history. You need to have oral histories, ethno-history, you know, all these other backgrounds starting at an early age. You need a truthful basis of history taught to schoolkids.” Elsa: “They teach you the same history every year, they just tell you more bad secrets about it. They’re like, ‘Columbus, he talked to Indians a little bit, but we don’t call them Indians anymore. And Columbus killed some of them.’” Yesenia: “The other day, when Columbus Day happened, my nephews who are 10 and 11, were in the car with me and they were like, ‘Hey, do you know if we get tomorrow off for Columbus Day?’ And I said ‘No, you guys don’t get it off.’ And one of my nephews was like ‘Why not?’ and I said ‘Why would you get Columbus Day off?’ And my 11-year old nephew answered, ‘Because we need time to just understand the situation as to what Columbus did!’ And then my other nephew who is only 10, said ‘Yeah ‘cause Columbus raped women.’” Elsa was incredulous: “He did not say that Columbus raped women?!” Jennifer: “‘Where’d they learn that?!’”

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Yesenia: “I looked at them and asked, ‘Aren’t you guys supposed to still be learning about how Columbus is great?’ They watch so many things on YouTube and stuff like that, and they were like ‘No, Columbus is the worst.’ Here I am just talking to my nephews—they’re 10 and 11—and we just got more into talking about those kinds of things and I finally said ‘Well, you’re not wrong!’” “Obviously they’re first generation Mexican-Americans because my sister was born in Mexico and her husband was also born in Mexico and then one of my nephews said, ‘You know one of us might have a little bit of Columbus in us because he raped one of our ancestors.’” We marveled at their precocity and laughed, as Elsa hooted: “Rein it in!” Yesenia: “I was just listening to them and thinking, ‘Dang these kids!’ I swear I was gonna hit a car because I was so startled. And my nephew was literally like flat-out pissed and he insisted, ‘He raped women!’ and I was just like, ‘How do you know what rape is?’” We had talked for three hours…and we had just begun to get substantive in our quest for changes that would make a difference on campus. The next student group that had reserved the lounge—the Nevada Pacific Islanders Organization—were waiting at the door, and graciously helped us gather our belongings and clean up the remnants of lunch. The students in our group were reluctant to leave without setting a date for a follow-up meeting. Paterno remarked, “This should be a seminar! We should be meeting every week!” But we settled for one more meeting at a time to be arranged. We hadn’t solved any problems, but the conversation seemed “real,” and promising. Even Drew remarked, as she prepared to leave, “Of all the meetings I’ve been to about race on campus this is the only one…” she left it at that, but I believe she meant it as high praise.

Group Meeting, Session 2: November 11, 2017 We met again a month later. Yesenia was unable to attend this meeting: her sister needed her to babysit her two precocious nephews. We were able to pick up the thread of the conversation where we had left off a month earlier, with racial inequality at the University and the need to exhume and acknowledge relics of a racist past in order to move forward. At the November meeting, we focused on how dialogues might be facilitated on campus. How can white people and people of different

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ethnicities and races approach each other and learn to talk without suspicion and defensiveness? Our second group conversation was defined by two issues: . Seeing race as a spectrum rather than a binary, and 1 2. Imagining who should be “in the room” when we talk about race. What is accomplished when people of a given race talk among themselves, as compared to talking to members of other races? The Identity Spectrum: The Racist Devil on Everybody’s Shoulder Elsa began: “I think fundamentally we view racism in a very black and white sense, and we don’t identify it as more of a gradient, where you can have implicit bias, unconscious bias toward people who don’t look like you. Even in the simplest ways. You may never even act on it, but if you’re honest with yourself, it’s there. Like for me personally, my implicit bias is with Asian tourists. When I see Asian people in really big numbers I grow very frustrated for no reason. I don’t know why, but it’s a weird bias that I have, a weird resentment that I have toward Asian visitors to the US on tourist events. I’m like, ‘You’re too close to me,’ and something in my brain switches and I can feel this racist devil on my shoulder. “And that racism in me is different from the usual stereotype of a racist: the back-country hick, Confederate flag-in-my-trunk type racist. People think that’s the only type of racism: you’re either a racist or you’re not, you have none of it or you have all of it. And everyone wants to be on the ‘none of it’ side, so they deny that they have the subtlest types of racist beliefs.” Jennifer prompted “Will you say more about the none-of-it and all-of-it?” Elsa: “I think people want to identify as having no racism, no implicit bias, I love everyone, kumbaya. We think the only alternative to not being racist is being a back-country hick, very explicit racist, hooded KKK, White Power person. We acknowledge one or the other, but neither really describes the U.S. now. We still have some of those extreme white supremacist racists—they’re very noisy these days—but that’s dying. Most people know that’s not right. But even without white power extremists in the mix, most people are racist in some way—including people of color. But nobody wants to talk about it. So they say the only real racists are those white power people, and everybody else is not a racist. But in fact, we

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should be looking at how all of us are racists in some way, and that we all have that in common, precisely because nobody wants to admit it or look at it.” Jennifer: “That is really important, Elsa. What you’re saying is, the ‘implicit bias’ discussions we need to have, instead of being focused on white peoples’ implicit biases towards people of color, as they usually are, should encourage everybody to become aware of their implicit biases, to put them on the table and say, ‘Here’s what makes me uncomfortable.’ It’s scary, because white people would be saying out loud, ‘Here’s how I’m a racist.’ And people of color would also be saying, ‘Well, I’m a woman of color but I’m still racist. Here’s how.’ Maybe it’s harder for the white people to say, ‘Okay, here’s what I’m afraid of.’” Elsa: “Yes. Because white people are so much closer to the assumption that they’re going to be racist. Whereas, you don’t even have to be close to that white supremacist type to produce harmful effects for people without even knowing that you’re doing that. So I think white people fear a close proximity to their hooded brothers and sisters, and they’re afraid that if they admit to any racism, they’re no better than the KKK. But they don’t have to be so afraid, because we’re all on the spectrum and we all need to process that guilt and that prejudice that we all harbor implicitly. But the first step is recognizing that you have it. You also have to recognize that I have it. Where is this from? Did I get it from my parents? From my community?” Trisden: “So, like, if you’re white and you acknowledge that you have prejudice, there’s that assumption that you’re a racist more than if you’re black and have prejudices. Like Elsa is saying, we treat prejudice as a binary thing but it’s really a spectrum. I think when you’re black or of color, if you have experienced some type of oppression, you think you have more of a right to be prejudiced. Or sometimes they think they’re allowed to have prejudice. “But when you’re white, you know that racism goes along with white supremacist ideology. So if you acknowledge that you have that prejudice, you’re afraid it can be linked to racism directly. And if we’re talking technical definitions of racism, you think that only white people can be racist because racism is a power structure that protects whiteness. So if you’re white, when you acknowledge that your prejudice can be linked to that institutional power to harm, you think that makes you a bad person, and you don’t want to admit that you have any prejudice at all. But really it’s just that we have locked ourselves in two boxes: white racists and people

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of color who can’t be racists. But individual prejudice can be just as harmful.” Kristen: “I want to jump in on that because so many people of color think that they get a pass by saying, ‘Oh well, it’s only a prejudice, it’s not racism.’ But racism is a whole lot of things. It definitely is a construct of power. But it’s also wrong to say ‘Because Black people don’t have power it’s not as bad, we can’t harm anybody by saying that we don’t like Hispanic immigrants.’ Those type of things are harmful because it’s still going to influence the way that you vote, the way that you aid and help in your community. It’s still going to harm somebody. That prejudice… what very little power you have, plus your prejudice… can still hurt somebody.” Elsa: “What I think of, Kristen, when you talk about bias in your own community, is colorism, and how colorism is so detrimental to the black community and always has been. It takes a lot of work to recognize that racism is a spectrum and not a binary. It takes a laborious process of working out your issues and understanding where they come from. You know, my entire family is just ridiculous with colorism. It’s like, you know, ‘You’re pretty because you’re light,’ and ‘Your hair is too coiled and it’s not pretty,’ and ‘Don’t spend too much time out in the sun,’ or ‘Your nose is this way...’ It’s in our own communities, in our own families, in our homes, and if we think we’re above it and that we’re immune to this prejudice and that we have nothing to fix, then we’re backtracking our own community and we’re not moving forward together.” Reece: “There was a recent Pew poll that showed that 56% of white people believe that they’ve experienced discrimination of some sort. I think that the white community has been, especially in conservative corners, made to think… there’s this victimization complex, right? This notion that when someone opens up that dialogue about implicit racial bias that it’s targeting them. So rather than being open to the possibility that we all have some biases, they get defensive and go the extreme of saying, ‘Well, I don’t have a racist bone in my body. Everyone has it out for me, especially minority communities.’” The Room Where It Happens: Open Admission Trisden: “How do we change that outlook, that mindset? Or at least what’s the first step? I know it’s a big question”

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Reece: “I think it’s about exposing people to discourses on race, where people can openly discuss their own racial biases. And letting them know that there’s a safe place where people don’t feel like they need to be walking on eggshells. Part of that is also knowing that people of color also have intra-community biases that they may not themselves be able to explain. Just like you said, Elsa, it was this feeling of having the devil on your shoulder, right? But once that’s exposed, once we finally know, ‘Okay people on the other side that I’ve so often otherized can have the same feelings that I have,’ then the discussion opens up and people see, Okay, we’re really not that different. We’re really not that polarized. Once we understand that we all have biases that make us uncomfortable, then things become a little more open and people can be more transparent about the sort of things that they’re working through. I think that is the first step of curing racism: just being aware of your implicit bias. As white people, we’re inheritors of the legacy of the institutions that we come from. We are not only backed up by those institutions, but we’re beneficiaries of jobs and money and positions of power and all that, and part of solving the problem is recognizing that it exists to begin with.” Elsa: “Reece, do you think that honest discourse… those conversations… can only happen in the presence of white people or even perhaps in the presence of white men only speaking with other white men? A lot of times when we talk about safe spaces for like people of color, it’s like, ‘No white people allowed because you guys make me uncomfortable.’ Do you think that those safe spaces should only have white people in them?” Reece: “No, because then the filters completely come off, right? If you have the people in your presence against whom you may have active prejudices or biases, you’re more likely to be more conscious of the biases that you hold and how you express those biases in a more filtered, thoughtful way. I think it’s important to recognize that the people who you hold biases against are also human beings and should be incorporated into these discussions. How is it possible to come to terms with your own biases if you don’t know the people you’re biased against? I guess that’s where I’m coming from after that long-winded explanation. I don’t know if any of that made sense.” Trisden: “It did. Do you think there’s the possibility of comfort and honesty when diverse people are in the room together? If it’s a white man’s group conversation and Elsa enters the room, or I enter the room, do you think those white biases will still be openly admitted? Will the white men feel comfortable admitting their prejudices?”

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Reece: “I think certainly the guard starts to come up, so people are going to be less willing to say, ‘Okay, here’s what I think.’” Elsa: “Right. I think that introducing that dynamic when people are just beginning to realize their own biases leads to the reaction, ‘Whoa, too much! Way too much! You want to put a black lady in here? What?!’” Reece: “That’s a really good point. I do think people start to put up that barrier as soon as they have the person who is the source of their bias come in and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t admit any of my…’” Jennifer: “So what shall we do about that dilemma? You can’t make any progress without talking to the people you’re biased against, but if you are in a conversation with them, you’re too afraid to offend them with honesty about your biases.” Elsa: “I think what’s really important is that people realize that people they have bias against also have bias against other people. You’re racist to black people but black people are racist to Hispanics, and Hispanics are racist to white people too, and we’re all racist to each other. We all hate each other, so let’s all fix it. How about we all talk about it and then we all fix it?” Reece: “Yeah, once we actually admit that everyone holds some amount of racial prejudice, you realize that we all have a vested interest having those discussions. But like you said, how do you create a space that feels safe and feels inclusive but at the same time allows people to be honest and forthright?” We sat in silence briefly, thinking about racism as a spectrum, thinking that nobody is immune from some sort of prejudice or “fear of the other,” thinking about how to dismantle the misconception of race and racism as simple binaries, and how to talk to each other about race without getting defensive and shutting down. In that moment of thoughtful silence, Drew brought our optimism about “letting everybody in the room” and “seeing race as a spectrum rather than a binary crashing down to earth. Her remarks, and the explicitness of her anger reminded us of how difficult it would be to move beyond the traditional dichotomizing paradigms about race. Lest we get too carried away with hope of interracial dialogues about prejudice, Drew reminded us that dichotomous thinking is the norm. While the group had been struggling to escape simple binary thinking, Drew had been privately

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thinking her own dichotomous thoughts about race. At the start of the meeting, Trisden had asked people to think of a question you would want to ask a white person. Drew had been thinking about it, and now she shared the results of her hour-long silent meditation. “I like the question Trisden asked—‘What would you say to white people?’ I would have two different conversations because there’s two different white people that I would talk to. The ruling class that I really have a problem with is the liberal ruling class, the leftist ruling class, the feminist ruling class. And so I’m going to have a more extended conversation with them, and I’m gonna say, ‘I trusted you too much and I don’t anymore and I’m not on board with whatever it is that you’re doing. And I don’t believe you one minute, one second.’” Drew’s outburst came in response to a question from which we had moved on two hours before. However, as we had come to expect of Drew, once she spoke up there was a valuable insight hidden beneath the belligerence. Jennifer, sensing that Drew included her in the categories of “liberal/ leftist feminist ruling class,” asked, “Could you be a little more specific?” Drew: “I thought I was going to have one conversation with the ruling class. And now I realize there’s two different ruling class conversations I have to have, and one is with the people that I am very angry with, which is the Left, and one is with the Right, who I have dismissed and I’m done with them.” Kristen managed to pick up Drew’s angry taunt and run with it: “I think that’s a good point to bring up. The issue is not only not with conservative groups. The other problem is a lot of people who want to be so self-righteous and woke that they’re out of touch with what people are like in reality. How do we work with them? It’s not day and night. So I really like that you brought that up, Drew, because I do have frustration with the way some groups and individuals present themselves as all-knowing, like, ‘Well, I’m a non-binary POC this, that, and the other.’ And they’re still not willing to work with people who are part of ‘the other Left’— everyday people who aren’t racist or who don’t have hate towards marginalized people or people in general. Some organizations and individuals just don’t want to work with others.” Trisden: “We see these groups that are talking about how they’re leftists, they have these ideals, but they’re not in the room with anybody else.

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They’re talking about the people they think they support, they’re talking around them, but they’re not including them in the conversations. And they’re certainly not asking them what they think. Getting these people in the room is the goal of integration but we never did it right. Instead, what we have is conditional diversity. It’s conditional in the sense that, okay, we’ll bring some students of color into the conversation, into the room, but we’re not going to really work to include them. Just inviting them is enough diversity and inclusion. “‘It seems like we always do “just not enough.’ I want to say we do ‘just enough’ but really it’s not enough. It’s always just a little less than the bare minimum. It’s always conditional. It appears to be leftist on the surface but it’s not really. It’s fear of not being ‘respectable’ that’s keeping us in the same spot. It looks like we’re doing something and people get content and then we’re done.” Thinking Without a Banister The group discussions generated collective insights and an agenda for action that arose spontaneously among the participants. The willingness to “let things happen” rather than setting an agenda at the outset invited an exchange of ideas more action-oriented than those the students had articulated individually. Tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty—indeed, tolerating chaos—led to original thinking. This is a collective example of what the political theorist Hannah Arendt referred to as “thinking without a banister.” The process is risky and the outcome is not guaranteed. You must be willing to let go of the traditional authorities, and the traditional academic authority structure. You can’t fall back on accepted authorities and say, “Well Marx would think this about that!” Or, “As Aristotle would argue…” There is no conventional leader, authority figure, teacher, professor, or specific agenda. There is literally no handrail. Just the courage to trust yourself to be honest with the people you are talking to. This is about letting the discussion lead the participants wherever it goes, without reaching for an external support structure. It takes alertness and a commitment to work together with strangers. In the midst of the discussion, participants may feel as though “This conversation is going nowhere and it’s making me nervous.” Sometimes it doesn’t work. But sometimes it does, and that is worth the risk and discomfort.

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In the Voices’ group meetings, the whole really was greater than the sum of its parts. It takes courage to jump into a discussion with no pre-­ determined path, and that courage is generally discouraged in higher education. The discussion we are urging is a model of “thinking outside the box,” to use yet another structural metaphor. It is riskier than walking while holding a handrail and clinging to a preset agenda and established authorities and leaders. The usual approach in higher education has been to teach students from inside the box. By definition that limits us to insider “truths.”

CHAPTER 6

Grassroots Pedagogy: Rules of Engagement

Voices from the Wasteland is intended to provide guidance, a model of best practices, for talking honestly about what divides us. The students who speak in this book are achievers, but they have not lost sight of where they came from or the families they love. They want their success to lift up others, too. Their journeys were lonely until they had the occasion to talk to each other and learn that the reasons they felt marginalized are bigger than themselves and are best addressed in collaboration with kindred souls. That kinship has very little to do with “identity” categories. While race and ethnic heritage are important influences on who a person is, the tropes and stereotypes associated with identity don’t truly define a person. This book is about leaving those tropes behind. Changing the system requires making allies of people who don’t seem at first glance to resemble you. The group discussions presented here are meant to model alliance-­building for social change. The group meetings carried this project beyond its initial purpose. Rather than simply giving voice to those who are often ignored, the discussions became a model for future problem-solving: a process for alleviating the entrenched racism on campus, which all had been experiencing in isolation. One way of countering racism, and developing anti-racist policies, is to replicate our process of sharing and listening. Working together this way alleviated the sense of isolation and fostered creative, constructive new thinking. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_6

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The student Voices in this book are besieged by all manner of trauma and stress. The more fortunate among them have family and community to moor them. As they endure calamitous events in their personal lives— ICE encounters, loss of loved ones, racist terrorism, challenges to identity from all sides when they try to get an education—they search the wasteland for tools with which to create change. Unlike those who exist in the corridors of power at elite universities with access to staggering amounts of wealth and power, these students are accustomed to subsisting with so little power and recognition that making any sort of demand rarely occurs to them. They rarely put themselves first or quest after luxury. Instead, as they began to sense their own potential power, they intuitively seek ways to deploy it for a communitarian purpose: achieving social justice. We believe that offering other denizens of the Wasteland similar chances to find their voices and speak on behalf of the marginalized would go a long way toward undermining the alienation they experienced. Certainly, not everyone who carries the burdens of racism and poverty will become a selfless advocate for social justice. But camaraderie is a powerful thing and can inspire growth in surprising ways. By sharing their experiences, students can develop empathy, and fluency in understanding and explaining their own stresses. They can make others understand what it’s like to be thrown off balance by oppression and repeated indignities—experiences from which the privileged are insulated. Our group discussions might inspire other universities to try the same approach precisely because they were so rough and unpredictable. They were productive precisely because nobody had a rule book…yet they worked anyway. Our willingness not to anticipate a particular outcome made the conversations open-ended and a little risky. Yet they proved to be surprisingly productive. It might not always work that way, but the alternative is not talking at all. They demonstrate how friction and disagreement, when joined with empathy and the desire to serve the common good, can lead to the formation of an elevated collective consciousness. For example, if Drew had not been present, there would have been no pushback to the younger students’ willingness to see race as a spectrum rather than a binary. Nor would we have heard her explanation of free speech’s significance to different cohorts. While the younger voices worked at deconstructing binaries, Drew spoke as a black voice from a different era, who assumed that there are victims and oppressors who should be viewed in terms of binaries. Her perspective lent an added dimension to the discussion. By refusing to shut out voices that clash with our

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own—by training ourselves to consider, rather than recoil from, radically different worldviews—we can turn other people’s grievances into deeper insights. Every activist group faces the challenge of what to do with those who seem determined not to go along with the majority’s point of view. We’re proud of the way our group incorporated disparate voices into a broader coalition. We dug deep into each person’s biases, prejudices, preferences, and interests, and found unexpected commonalities. The conversation about the “devil on the shoulder,” that is, racist attitudes that lurk even among the most progressive, is a perfect example. Our conversation on this topic was grounded in vulnerability. The students acknowledged that they haven’t purged themselves of the noxious attitudes that pervade our society. They admitted that they don’t know everything. By asking questions and listening to the answers, they learned a lot. This “comfort with discomfort” is rare among people whose entitlement goes unchallenged. Our 11 student Voices, who have been told repeatedly that their opinions don’t count as much as those of higher-status peers, have developed the inner strength to trust their opinions do matter and have an important contribution to make in solving America’s long-standing problems. The process we followed in our two group meetings can be adopted in any university setting, and by extension, in any symposium setting. It is intended to facilitate discovery and focus on what is unique to each university’s history and demographics. Following are key insights and best practices: 1. Everybody should be in the room Our discussion about whether a white nationalist should be welcomed in the classroom led to a surprising insight about group discussions in general. Should anti-racist leaders control who takes part? Or should anyone who is interested be welcomed? Let’s recap what happened in our discussions before reaching a conclusion. The first group discussion included intense but respectful debate about whether excluding anybody—including white supremacists who advocate against inclusivity—is appropriate in a university setting. Using a university classroom as a model of free speech, some argued that excluding, for example, Peter Cvjetvanovic (“the face of Charlottesville”) would be a violation of his First Amendment rights. Others argued that certain extreme ideologies, including white supremacy, can disrupt a classroom

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and violate the rights of the majority of students who came to learn. This position was taken by Jennifer, who had tried to teach classes that were disrupted by extreme right-wing views, and by Trisden, who had taken part in classes that were being driven off the rails by intolerant classmates. Reece agreed with Jennifer and Trisden. But Elsa took a strong stand against this point of view. She advocated including everyone in the dialogue. So did Drew, who vociferously argued that, if a white supremacist could be excluded from a classroom, then a black homeless woman could certainly also be excluded. Her defense of allowing everyone into the discussion was a defense of her own First Amendment rights. Yesenia wished that white supremacism did not exist, but argued, with Elsa and Drew, that it’s better to have it out in the open in a classroom. We reached a tentative agreement that everyone did, indeed, need to be allowed to speak in the classroom. And Drew’s powerful but somewhat disruptive presence in the discussion dramatically proved the importance of allowing everybody to speak. She was coming at the issue from a personal standpoint, and that perspective did not neatly fit the rest of the views expressed, but it allowed the rest of us to recognize the importance of accepting some disruption in a controlled academic environment. When all voices are allowed in the room, the discussion will likely be chaotic but that chaos can be productive. If you’re willing to relinquish control in a discussion, the unexpected outcomes may lead to new perspectives. Imagine the 11 disciplined, rational student voices in the same room talking about race in the United States with Drew, a less academically disciplined but no less intelligent voice, and Peter, who was filmed screaming “Jews will not replace us!” If he respects the rules of engagement, then he must be allowed in. Peter, Drew, Elsa, and Yesenia agree that the First Amendment gives each of them the right to speak in a university classroom and elsewhere. Trisden, Reece, Jennifer, and Christen would probably be gnashing their teeth while listening to this expansive interpretation of First Amendment rights: How, they were thinking, can including those who seek to limit open dialogue by supporting authoritarian views and racial superiority possibly lead to a productive outcome? Equality is not compatible with superiority. If the conversation were truly open to all, members of the faculty and administration, who are willing to suspend their authority to join the discussion with students, are also welcome. If teachers, administrators, students, and participants from across the political spectrum were willing to listen to each other even for a short while, the discussion would be sloppy,

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unpredictable, no doubt have moments of severe discomfort. But it might also be fruitful, as the participants made progress toward understanding each other, and even toward reaching some sort of provisional consensus. An important caveat: There must be ground rules of civil discourse. The University of Nevada and every other university have a Student Code of Conduct and policies on “Rules of Civility,” both in classrooms and in online classes. They include cautions, such as “All students are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that is respectful and upholds a supportive, mutually beneficial learning environment”—and “It is the student’s responsibility to contribute to the maintenance of a campus environment that fosters intellectual curiosity and diversity. Students are expected to conduct themselves in a civil manner that contributes to a positive learning environment for all.” These guidelines were followed instinctively by the students in the group meeting, because they are modest, respectful people, willing to learn from each other. In a more contentious group, it would be wise to make these “rules of engagement” explicit before beginning any discussion. Even better: ideally, each group would establish its own ground rules before embarking on a difficult discussion. Perhaps one participant—such as Paterno, who stepped up and took a leadership role at the beginning of our meeting—can call the group to order and lead a discussion of what they think the rules should be. What do the participants want to gain from the discussion, and what are their expectations for comportment? This is entirely in keeping with our philosophy that more is accomplished when it is organized from the bottom up, than the top down. 2. Race is a spectrum An important breakthrough occurred in our second group meeting, when we discussed race as a spectrum. Recognizing that race and racism are not simple binaries (“You’re either Black or not Black”; “You’re either a racist or you’re not”; “A Black person cannot possibly be racist”) opens the possibility of talking about these sensitive issues without hiding behind defensive armor. We reached the conclusion that “Implicit Bias Training,” which has been used at UNR and most other workplaces in the United States, must be reimagined. It cannot be a one-way street where only white people are trained to recognize their biases, that is, toward people of color. Indeed, if racism is seen as a spectrum, the door is opened for everyone in the room to come to terms with their own biases as well as the biases of others.

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From this perspective, Implicit Bias Training urgently needs to go beyond “implicit biases.” All of the white people in the room know they are supposed to use the techniques taught at the training session to recognize their biases against people of color. But when white people believe they are being cast as the only biased people, that amplifies white defensiveness about racism. People of color need to acknowledge their biases, too. Most already are aware but seldom voice those biases in a mixed-race setting. In addition to implicit (unrecognized) biases, we can begin to discuss our explicit biases with one another. This aligns well with letting everybody into the room, and also with “bottom up” training. We shouldn’t presume that anyone, even the facilitator, is so enlightened that they have come to terms with all of their biases and are thus entitled to teach others. A facilitator may be useful in steering the discussion, but bias training should be a group effort, conducted by people willing to bravely engage each other and follow where the discussion leads. 3. Confront institutional history, and exorcise ghosts of the past Our third recommendation is to confront institutional history. In the case of Nevada, that history is the state’s historical reputation for racism, which must be acknowledged before it can be dismantled. “The Mississippi of the West” was one nickname given to Nevada by black Americans, and that remained the state’s reputation throughout the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth. The state was extremely segregated and violently racist, and as we saw, the KKK was active at the university, inviting students to attend rallies on campus. Nevada’s state slogan is “Battle Born.” Nevada became a state on October 31, 1864, during the Civil War, when Lincoln sought an additional state for the Union to boost congressional votes for the Emancipation Proclamation. Its Civil War legacy remains an essential element in the culture of the state. Until very recently UNLV’s mascot was a cartoonish Confederate General, and the school calls itself the “Rebels.” A Civil War cannon, the Fremont Cannon, is the prize in the football rivalry between the university’s two campuses, Reno and Las Vegas. It resides on the campus of the winner of “The Big Game” each year. The Nevada Oath reflected the national movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to erect monuments to the Confederacy: the “Lost Cause.”

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UNLV decided to scrap the mascot in 2021, in keeping with decisions made at universities and sports franchises throughout the nation. Both campuses of the University of Nevada have racist roots hidden in plain sight. At UNLV, students and faculty are finally discussing the Confederate General mascot in the context of the current movement to remove celebrations of the Confederacy from public places. UNR’s Book of the Oath, dating from 1920, holds the signatures of graduates who year after year pledged their loyalty to “the race.” This Oath was instituted at the same historical moment that monuments to white supremacy were being erected throughout the South, part of a massive effort to redefine the Confederate cause in terms of Southern heritage, States’ Rights, and loyalty to a romanticized way of life. These monuments were intended to obscure the South’s rebellion as a fight to preserve slavery. At exactly the time that Black Codes and Jim Crow laws were on the rise in the South, the Confederacy was being rebranded as cultural history, its systemic brutality denied. Like Jim Crow, and bedrock racism, students need to understand “The Book of the Oath” as part of a dark chapter in the university’s history, and the nation’s history as well. What is the best way to do that? We believe that students themselves should decide. Should the Book be temporarily displayed in a prominent place on campus—perhaps the lobby of the Knowledge Center, or the Art Museum, or the Administration building— along with historical background and educational materials about the toxic racism that prevailed in the state and the nation throughout the twentieth century? And then perhaps be donated to the Nevada Historical Society, or the Nevada Museum of Art? Should it be physically buried in a public ceremony? The toxic racism that keeps bubbling up from deep within the university will never be drained until its origins are publicly acknowledged. Nevada is not alone. Most universities have a “dirty little secret” that needs to be acknowledged and purged from the culture of the place.

Suggestions for Teaching Anti-racism on Campus The ghosts of the past can be exorcised in different ways. One possibility, which we favor, is a campus-wide week-long moratorium on business as usual, during which all classrooms would be devoted to discussing race on campus and race in the United States. Political science, history, and literature classes would have different discussions than math, science, and

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engineering classes, but no subject taught at the university is immune from racial (and gender) biases. Is your engineering class taught by a white male professor and are 95% of the students white men? There is your issue, race, and gender in one. Are students from lower income public high schools sufficiently prepared to take engineering and science classes? Are the students in the classroom mostly economically privileged? There is your economic class issue, which flows into race issues. To the anticipated objection that a “whole week” is too much time away from the prescribed curriculum of a class in engineering or science, it should be remembered that a “whole week” of lectures is three to four hours for each class. That hardly seems like too much time away from the curriculum to enable discussion of an issue that is tearing the nation and the university apart. Students would be exposed to perspectives on race and economic class from the standpoint of various disciplines, as the dialogue is pursued in their different classes. One approach might be to construct a special curriculum for that week, covering issues and permutations that seem important, and have all students and faculty participate as learners together. Racism and economic inequality have an impact on every subject taught at the university. Locating it even in subject areas whose professors see little or no connection to social issues is precisely what the exercise should be about. The university’s administration would have to be on board for this to succeed. If the administration supported a campus-wide teach-in on race, faculty and students would have to take the content seriously. And what about those who are inclined to dismiss all of this as political correctness and a waste of time? They may be the most important target of this initiative. Organizers should invest considerable thought and time in considering ways to penetrate the wall of denial. A teach-in like this would be uncomfortable for many, threatening to some, and infuriating to a few. But the alternative is leaving the subject undiscussed—in which case the ghosts of the past will continue to haunt our halls. Another important path toward dismantling campus racism is to require serious diversity courses as a campus-wide requirement. Participants at the group meetings were in consensus that the university needs to redesign and expand its required courses on diversity. Students should not be able to fulfill the diversity requirement with a course in Latin American dance or Chinese cuisine as a substitute for courses on the

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history and politics of race and immigration in the United States. One of our Voices suggested that students should be required to take courses about all of the major ethnic and racial groups in the United States: Black Studies, Latinx Studies, Asian-Pacific Island Studies, LGBTQ Studies, and Disability Studies. These courses could include weekly inter-class dialogues to help students share the realities they themselves have encountered and to extend the learning space beyond the traditional classroom. This is not a pipe dream: such courses and requirements exist at bigger, better-endowed universities. These are our recommendations for improving individual campus cultures concerning race and identity. Each campus must look to its own history and culture to design a plan that is tailor-made to address its own issues. This is a micro-view of dealing with racism, university by university. Remaining for consideration is the macro view of institutional change at public universities across the nation.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Saving Public Higher Education

The individual and collective voices of the students in this volume demonstrate the brilliance and resilience of a group of public university students in the United States. They are not exceptional…they were chosen randomly, or perhaps more correctly, haphazardly. But as a group that accidentally came together for this project, they are as intelligent and insightful as any other group of American undergraduates. Certainly, they are as qualified as any to express expertise on race, class, and public education. Two theoretical perspectives emerged from the group meetings that may be used to guide similar conversations on any other campus: (1) race must be viewed as a spectrum, not a binary, and (2) the “room where it happens”—where those hard dialogues without safety nets or banisters take place—must include everybody who wants to join. Nothing will happen without courage and a willingness of all to take risks. However, the practical suggestions for implementing the ideas proposed in the group meetings require institutional reforms that students on their own cannot accomplish. They need support from the structure of higher education, both nationally and in their own institutions. The idea of a week-long campus “teach-in” about race and class before the first regular week of teaching each fall cannot happen without administrative support and sponsorship, and that of course means funding. Likewise, the call for required serious diversity courses…more than a one-semester “diversity requirement” that can be fulfilled with classes in “foreign” dance or © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_7

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cookery…also requires funding for curriculum development and faculty, and a willingness to teach students that some required courses may not be directly career-oriented and may not have an obvious transactional value. The eleven voices suggested that learning about diversity and race in American history needs to start in elementary school. Teaching real history, instead of an origins myth about liberty and equality professed by “founding fathers” (some of whom owned slaves, all of whom agreed to protect slavery in the Constitution), requires a public will and commitment to fund such an education.1 Instead, teaching about diversity in schools and colleges is being attacked by conservative censorship and the banning of books.2 Young Americans should not be shocked by “real” American history when they first encounter it in college, if at all. Our education system has participated in the near-total erasure of the injustices in the nation’s history, under the pretext that children aren’t ready for, or need to be protected from the truth. Kids want to know the truth: they don’t need pretty stories that are then revealed to be lies later on. They are ready for the truth about their country whenever they usually learn American history. Learning from respected adults that the nation has solved problems in the past, but still has problems that need attention, should inspire pride, a respect for truth, and a motivation to participate in solving the problems. These goals could be accomplished in the wealthiest private schools and universities in the country today. They possess the funds for it. But they don’t have the will and commitment: why should they? Their place at the top of the American class structure depends not upon equality, but upon amassing more money, more prestige, and more access to power than the public schools they believe aren’t good enough for themselves and their children. The resuscitation of public education in the United States comes down to a question of economics, which should surprise no one. That will require a fairer distribution of wealth and resources to public schools and universities… a reach in our hyper-gilded age, in which many are ready to see socialism wherever the slightest reduction in inequality shows its face. Still, if Americans really do value universal education, how might it be achieved? A few public leaders have given voice to the need to “level the playing field”: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Abrams, Pramila Jayapal, Jamie Raskin, Cory Booker, Barbara Lee, Ilhan Omar, and other progressives. However, most of those committed

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progressive thinkers, like the vast majority in our governing class, attended elite universities. Throughout American history, very few men have made it to the presidency without an Ivy League degree, and the men and women of the Supreme Court are even more uniformly credentialed from the same handful of institutions. But isn’t it a good thing for our leaders to be educated at “the best” institutions of higher education? Doesn’t that mean they are smarter than the rest of us? We argue that it doesn’t: that the current system is neither healthy nor productive, for the elites or the rest of us. Wealth and prestige breed complacency and unearned privilege. That assumed superiority inhibits groundbreaking thinking because there is no impetus to challenge assumptions about the way things have been done. Paulo Freire referred to that as “fear of freedom.”3 Equality is an abstraction to the elite: they don’t think they need it or benefit from it.

The Playing Field Belief in a supposed “meritocracy” distorts awareness that the children of the privileged enjoy countless advantages that propel them, as their parents were propelled, to the top of our society. Is it inevitable that the “best” work can only be done at those few prestigious universities, by those few people who have been nurtured there?4 A few statistics will help make clear what public universities are up against, if they are to compete for resources and recognition: As of 2020, there were 19.7 million undergraduate and graduate students in the United States. Of those, 14.6 million attended public institutions, and 5.1 million attended private institutions. 16.7 million were undergraduates at both two-and four-year institutions, and 3 million were graduate students.5 The average undergraduate enrollment at the ten most elite universities in the nation (the eight Ivy League colleges plus the University of Chicago and Stanford) is approximately 7000. Harvard has about 6800 undergraduates, Yale just under 6000, Stanford 7000, Princeton 5400, Columbia 6200, and Chicago 6500. Of the 16.7 million undergraduate students in the United States, then, only about 70,000 attend the ten most selective universities. The students who attend those highly ranked schools constitute 0.36% of American undergraduates. That’s a little over one-third of 1%, a fraction of “the 1%”

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commonly used to express the wealth gap in the United States. Undergraduates in the United States who do not gain admission to these “top ten” universities constitute 99.6% of the American college population. The dichotomy between Wall Street wealth and main street poverty is clearly replicated, indeed exaggerated in American higher education.6 Put another way, a high school baseball player has a better chance of being drafted by a Major League team (0.5%) than a high school senior has of gaining admission to one of the top ten universities in the nation (0.36%). We caution our high school athletes not to set their sights solely on making it to the pros, but we encourage our best high school students to believe that anything short of admission to “the best” schools represents a failure that will have lifelong consequences. Well-off, loving parents will do almost anything to help their children win a spot at one of these elite universities. Daniel Markovits, in The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite, cites what has become a familiar statistic: at Harvard and Yale, more students come from households in the top 1% of the income distribution than from the entire bottom half. These students have been groomed for admission to the Ivy League their entire lives, at elite private schools that draw 80% of their enrollment from the top 4% of the income distribution. Because the children of elites are educated in a manner that no middle-­ class family can afford, the achievement gap between rich and middle-class students is greater than between middle-class and poor students.7 “By the time children apply to college, the differences are greater still and focus more specifically on the exceptional performance of elites. Rich children now outscore middle-class children on the SAT by twice as much as middle-class children outscore children raised in poverty. The elite out-­ train the middle class by so much that depressingly few children from non-­ elite households overcome caste to perform at elite levels. Only about one in two hundred children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s mean.”8 According to Markovits, students and faculty at elite private institutions believe they are there because they deserve to be, that their abilities have earned them a seat at the most exclusive table. But a glance at where they come from complicates that claim of earned privilege. They enjoy their position at the top of the hierarchy because that’s where most of them began their lives. Money and legacy, along with athletics, buy a disproportionate number of admissions slots.9

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What do the privileged students in that fraction of a percent enjoy? A diploma from an Ivy League university gives one an undisputed boost in career opportunities and lifelong earnings. A hefty percentage of the wealth accumulated by the graduates of these institutions goes right back to their alma maters, in the form of private donations that create bloated endowments and enhance the admission chances of the children of the alumni when their turn comes. The top seven university endowments belong to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. Columbia University is tenth. Numbers 8 and 9 are Texas A&M and the University of Michigan. The University of California system (all nine campuses combined) has the eleventh largest endowment. This wealth discrepancy between public and private institutions of higher learning extends far beyond the surface of the college experience. The country-club beauty of a private campus is certainly enviable, but students at public universities might be more interested in the allure of classes that don’t take place in huge lecture halls, and of exposure to celebrity academics, regarded as the most respected experts in their fields, and possessing the professional clout to open doors for their students. The “top ten” universities are also able to hire whomever they want as faculty. Any academic fortunate enough to snag one of those posts enjoys advantages that others can only dream of. The elite affiliation of the chosen few means that their research and expertise are never questioned. No one doubts that their work is superior, until perhaps some scandal emerges about false data in the rush to publication. The majority of elite academics can count on publishing in the highest profile journals and periodicals. The circle is hermetically sealed: those who become professors at elite schools tend to be those who attended these schools. They enjoy the highest salaries, the most generous research funding, and the most recognition and respect. Others must fight for scraps of attention even if they’re doing important, path-breaking work. And the cycle repeats from one academic generation to the next.10 By relying on their wealth to attract top talent and preserve their own prestige, “top ten” private universities are perpetuating a system that hoards the best of everything and lets the rest languish, struggling for funding. The argument might be made that the results of highly funded research “trickle down” and benefit the world, including the lesser funded universities. However, it is not self-evident that enabling a few places to have the most of everything pays for itself and justifies depriving the rest of academia. We know that trickle-down economics has never worked, and

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basically serves as an excuse for the upper class to avoid paying taxes. When the bulk of funding is concentrated at the top, our country doesn’t benefit from original research that might have been done in the provinces, from a perspective that may be original precisely because it is removed from academic orthodoxy. The faculty at elite universities are educated at elite institutions. There are just enough admissions from less prestigious schools to maintain the myth of meritocracy. The percentage of poor and “minority” students admitted to a freshman Ivy League class is minuscule in relation to the total number of students applying to college each year: a small percentage admitted of an even smaller percentage applying. These admissions deflect criticism but they don’t begin to make a dent in the number of bright and overlooked students who won’t be admitted…whatever their race. As one student in Voices noted, “Claiming that admission is based on merit is the ultimate case of gaslighting.” The brightest kids from the poorest households, and from middle-class families as well, generally attend public universities. They believe that a degree from a private university would be more valuable, that they would receive more financial aid from scholarships and probably a better education, had they been able to attend one of the prestigious private universities. They know that their state university does not have comparable resources, and that the quality of their education will be less than it could have been. When they aren’t admitted to the Ivy League or Stanford, most students assume the decision was based on merit: that someone else, better qualified, got that slot. They have no idea how many slots are reserved for the wealthy, the famous, legacy students, and athletes. They believe in our meritocracy. And so they struggle with doubt about their own abilities, no matter how accomplished they are. The reality is that they barely had a chance to be admitted to one of the elite schools. Jeffrey Selingo, in Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions (2020, Scribner) notes, “In the Class of 2019, Harvard tagged 1,378 applicants special circumstances. Those included athletes, legacies, and the “Dean’s Interest List,” a confidential group of applicants mostly related to top donors. Their acceptance rate was 41 percent. That compared to a 4.2 percent acceptance rate for everyone else.”11 In his critical review of Daniel Golden’s influential book, The Price of Admission (2005), in Harvard Magazine, November–December 2006, John S. Rosenberg argues to his audience of Harvard readers that it is wise to make plenty of room for legacy students: wealthy alumni make the

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wealthiest universities wealthier, and the academic output enabled by that wealth justifies the practice. Besides, the children of Harvard alumni are better prepared for the rigors of an elite institution. “Wealth blind” institutions simply cannot keep up. Rosenberg writes: Golden cites as examples of purely meritocratic, “wealth-blind” institutions: Caltech, Cooper Union, and Berea College. But none of those institutions spends, say, $100 million per year on acquisitions and staffing for its library system, nor offers dozens of languages modern and archaic: the vital cultural functions performed by some research universities. In recent years, presidents including Yale’s Richard Levin and Princeton’s Shirley Tilghman have defended legacy preferences precisely because of these larger functions supported by donors, some of whose ties are strengthened by legacies. “Legacy” children are often excellent college candidates because they come from families who have already benefited from excellent higher education—and who have the means to provide enriching college-preparatory experiences… Abolishing legacy preference will fill the pipeline with future applicants whose elementary and secondary schooling leaves them ill-­ equipped for a demanding higher education.12

Rosenberg, criticizing Golden, argues that wealthy legacy students, admitted because their parents are alumni who make huge contributions to their alma mater in exchange for an admission of their children, are worthy of admission because they are better prepared to succeed, and they pay for themselves in the long run, when they too become wealthy donors. From this, we might conclude that Ivy League schools’ primary mission is to retain and confer power. By bestowing social and economic capital on those who can give the most money, universities can expand their endowments virtually to infinity. Trisden Shaw noted that the ranking system that elevates universities on the basis of the percentage of rejected applications is pure elitism. “That’s the hustle of it,” he remarked. “Elite universities are ‘performing education’ while in fact the only things they promise to deliver are power and prestige.” Matthew Stewart concurs, in The Atlantic: “The colleges seem to think that piling up rejections makes them special. In fact, it just means that they have collectively opted to deploy their massive, tax-subsidized endowments to replicate privilege rather than fulfill their duty to produce an educated public.”13 The hierarchical mindset of private elite universities has trickled down to public universities. Along with all other public universities, the University of Nevada has become preoccupied with prestige and its

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ranking in US News and World Report. This hierarchy, with the elite private universities on top, reflects the core culture of higher education in America. Real education—which seeks to broaden minds, impart knowledge, and prepare young people to think critically, rather than functioning as transactional power—is one casualty of the current educational culture in the United States. In public as well as private universities, students and faculty believe that their education will unlock the door to success. Even if they were not born into the upper class, they are invited to think of themselves as superior to the uneducated—although they will never be as accomplished as the tiny minority at the “best” universities. In other words, poor and middle-class students who take their place in the educational hierarchy are grateful to have advanced somewhat. They are taught that they are not there to challenge the hierarchy, but to use its privileges for their own advantage. Americans have been willing to live with hierarchies and inequality because they have accepted the myth of meritocracy. We go along with the story that the most “successful” people (by which we usually and uncritically mean the wealthy, powerful, and famous) have earned their places at the top of society with superior talent and intelligence. And there certainly are stories of remarkable individuals who climbed from the bottom to the top. But we overlook how the aristocracy tends to replicate itself, feeding off the rest of the system, allowing a token few achievers from the hinterlands into the club, indoctrinating those recruits with an ideology of earned privilege, and leaving behind an under-resourced wasteland. Like other paternalistic powers, past and present, those in charge of elite schools believe that taking talent and resources from the rest of the country benefits all of us. But the reality is that the majority of the nation is left with “lackluster schools and dead-end jobs…Even where material conditions remain tolerable, meritocratic inequality consigns the spiritual life of the middle class to an unbeatable, slow, devastating decline.”14 This is a description of malaise: a smug aristocracy with no motivation to change, and depressed middle and working classes that lack the energy and resources to lift themselves out of mediocrity or poverty. However, for the students in this volume, and presumably for many other undergraduates like them, even the thinly stretched resources of a state university are a path out of hopeless poverty. They used public higher education to save themselves from spiritual despair and material devastation, and their insights can help the rest of us understand the obstacles that so many Americans face, as well as emboldening others from similar

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backgrounds to follow in their footsteps. Exceptional resilience shouldn’t be required to survive, but, for now, it is. We should make things easier for students like the 11 in this volume—and we should start by listening as they tell us how. To understand how elite higher education limits input from the hinterlands while appropriating research and teaching, consider the history of Black Studies and Ethnic Studies in the United States over the past half-­ century.15 It began at a few public universities [SFSU, UCLA, UC Berkeley] in the late 1960s as radical pedagogy: teaching the history of people whose stories had been left out of academic curricula. It was originally an unorthodox, challenging approach to the accepted canon of liberal arts education, explicitly intended to be socially and politically disruptive, energized by the involvement of students and faculty of color, and of women, all of whom had been ignored by accepted scholarship. It was born with a commitment to reaching across the border between the academy and the surrounding community, and teaching how racism and sexism operated in American history. Education and power-sharing were the intended paths to rectifying exclusion and inequality. Its standpoint was definitely outside “the canon.” This innovation was pilloried by conservative academics who believed that the Western, Anglo-Saxon culture they valued should remain the basis of all education. Universities with programs in Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women’s Studies were said to be pandering to radicals who lacked the discipline and brainpower to understand the intellectual foundations of Western civilization.16 But the new fields had vitality and passion on their side, and soon attracted the attention of prestigious universities. Harvard began its own African American Studies programs in 1969, soon after students at San Francisco State University went on a five-month strike to demand Black Studies on campus. Public intellectuals in the Ivy Leagues became celebrity spokesmen for the new academic field. It seemed like a promising development when the power of the elites elevated a grassroots movement into academic legitimacy. However, the new legitimacy did not so much validate the original movement as appropriate it. Soon the most respected intellectuals of color were at the Ivy Leagues, and while that provided legitimacy for a discipline recently considered radical, as well as a high-profile platform for important work, it also acted as a gatekeeper to the discipline. Most of the intellectual resources stayed in those few elite locations, drawing black scholars and students from everywhere else in the nation and the world.

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While the new academic fields were legitimized by the Ivy League’s appropriation, it meant that students who were unable to attend Harvard or Princeton were left out in the cold again. It also meant that Black and Ethnic Studies stayed in the academy and were validated as academic fields, while the original intent of those fields—of bridging the gap between the academy and surrounding communities—was lost. The “master narrative” (that elite higher education possesses unparalleled legitimacy) was replicated in the new fields, which had begun as radical alternatives to mainstream academia and a challenge to the exclusivity of the Ivy League. Appropriation by elite academic institutions validated Black Studies and Ethnic Studies but also altered the original vision of those fields. The new disciplines had been conceived in life circumstances of which the elite had no experience. Once those “street” disciplines entered the Ivory Tower, they switched codes. They were translated into the language of academia, absorbed and domesticated. They were robbed of their ability to challenge the academic hierarchy because they were now a part of that hierarchy, no longer being led from the trenches from which they came.

Leveling the Playing Field Funding Public Higher Education The voices who share their stories here have some well-articulated ideas about what ails public higher education, and what needs to be done to remedy it. But their universities are cash-strapped. Where could they find funding to implement their ideas—for example, to institute a week-long university-wide conversation on race, and to revamp required diversity courses so that they actually have an impact on undergraduates? What if there were an “endowment cap” on the wealthiest universities? Harvard’s current endowment is $53.2 billion. Do they need it all? What if, after reaching a certain level, additional funds were taxed, and deposited in a federal fund that would be distributed to public universities? For example, consider a 2% tax on funds raised after a single university endowment reaches $25 billion. This resembles the wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren to address the extreme inequity between “Wall Street” and “Main Street.” If universities with the largest endowments and the wealthiest alumni donors felt the need to continue to fundraise to grow

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their endowments endlessly, they could continue to do that. But there would be a “luxury tax” on funds raised above a certain level. Education is not a zero-sum game. Protecting public university budgets from the vagaries of state politics would not impoverish the wealthier institutions. It’s hard to make the argument that a better public education actually deprives private institutions of their excellence. Rather, collaboration between public and private scholars and students may reap rewards from sharing research models that weren’t previously considered by elite institutions. There are no guarantees…but if public higher education (not to mention public primary and secondary education) were adequately funded, it seems obvious that the benefits would be shared in unexpected ways. Another possible model for sharing resources is the salary cap used in the NFL, NHL, and NBA. Salary caps prevent a single wealthy franchise or two from hoarding the best talent in their sport. Resources—players’ salaries—are capped (with some flexibility built in for superstars) and distributed throughout the league, to ensure that the entire league remains competitive. Chronically unequal competition drives away the fan base; more competitive leagues attract more fans and money. The NFL, NHL, and NBA may be surprising models for leveling the playing field for higher education in the United States, but nobody can accuse those franchises of being communist. They exist to make money. Distributing resources upfront benefits the bottom line of the entire sport. It may be argued that professional sports leagues exist solely to make enormous profits, where higher education’s mission is very different. But it became apparent to the owners of sports franchises that concentrating all the talent on one team was detracting from overall fan interest in the sport. Owners didn’t know exactly how the new system would play out, but they knew they had a problem. Distributing resources helped the sport, and the league. Sharing talent turned out to benefit the bottom line and the quality of play. The goal of higher education is not profit as it is for professional sports. There is no apparent bottom line in non-profit higher education: the rewards of education are not finite. The enhancement of one institution does not detract from another (unless winning the annual “Big Game” with a football rival is the ultimate goal.) If public universities become more competitive, higher education as a whole will benefit, as will the nation for having an educated citizenry. The outcome is not predictable, but the goal of leveling the playing field, of dispersing talent and expertise, seems worth the risk.

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It will take a major shift in consciousness to reclaim respect for public universities, and to endow them with the resources they need to be players in the game. But the endowment tax proposed is no more “socialist” than the redistribution model professional athletic leagues have found beneficial to their sports. Diversifying Research Models Reallocating resources to public universities could enable innovative approaches, such as designing academic disciplines intended to bridge the gap between the academy and surrounding communities. Elite private universities could continue to offer traditional academic approaches to their fields. But new programs in well-funded and well-supported public universities could develop academic alternatives to the most orthodox approaches. Some of the bright “Harvard bound” students from modest backgrounds might decide that they preferred the alternative approach of their state universities, which would be committed to bridging the gap between academic and community-based knowledge. The “top ten” brand would still have the best endowed research, engaged in by faculty and students who believe their work is the template for excellence; but there would be an alternative model of excellence in research. With renewed funding, attention, and respect, public universities could fulfill the mission of educating the “average” people in the United States, challenging the assumption that the most wealth leads to the best education and the “best” research. There would be motivation for academics to remain on those campuses with adequate pay, recognition, and resources, enabling them to work with the sort of students they truly want to teach. The nation would have parallel paths to knowledge and expertise: neither definition of excellence would diminish the power of the other model. Higher education made available to whoever wants it is essential to support a society capable of governing itself. Certainly, we need experts and specialists. But our current system of higher education is designed to perpetuate the elite, rather than to empower the many with the quality education required to be able to govern themselves. The stories in this book are focused on saving public higher education by restoring resources, vitality, excellent teaching, and excellent research to public institutions, while simultaneously addressing the racism that is endemic at American universities. These changes will require systemic reforms on the macro as well as the micro level. On a micro level, every university and college is capable of

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doing its own work in disrupting institutional racism and elitism by examining its own history. The macro-level reforms will involve a shift in priorities for the nation as a whole.

Micro-Level Reforms Here are some reflections on what institutional change might look like at public universities: • Provide improved wages and benefits to adjunct faculty, in addition to allocating more tenure opportunities to diverse faculty. • Shift tenure requirements away from publication and toward pedagogical engagement. Encourage novel learning models. • As a part of faculty orientation, provide training in identifying and defusing white supremacy in the classroom. • Provide opportunities for diverse faculty to teach capstone and upper division major-required courses. • Broaden the curriculum in conventional courses to include the histories and experiences of marginalized peoples. • Integrate race and identity issues as they impact disciplines across the entire campus. • Create “The Room Where it Happens”: a designated space for intergroup dialogues on campus.

Macro-Level Reforms And here are reflections on what would have to happen nationwide in order to provide public colleges and universities with the resources they need, and to create a national culture that not only believes in democracy and equality, but acts on that belief. • More robust estate, capital gains, and income taxes, to properly fund education and other priorities • Federal legislation mandating minimum funding for state schools (so no state can starve its colleges) • A 2% wealth tax on endowments of private universities once they exceed $25 billion, to be administered by a federal public higher education fund, dedicated to leveling the playing field between private and public universities • Free undergraduate and trade school public education.

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• Delayed payment of student loans for graduates making $75,000 a year or less, and forgiveness of loans that remain unpaid after ten years, in cases where the borrower never surpassed that earning threshold. • A renewed commitment to teach civics at all levels, K-12, stressing the core ideas of democracy and equality. These points emerged from our group meetings and individual conversations, and are intended as ideas to be debated, refined, and expanded upon. They are not offered as a top-down mandate for change, but as an invitation to dialogue. The ideas developed at the group meetings in Nevada were spontaneous and did not emerge neatly formulated: they did not spring fully formed from the head of Zeus but were as messy as any human birth. The students themselves asked for a second meeting, because they weren’t satisfied with the conclusions they were able to reach during the first three hours. As valuable as the eleven narratives are on their own, it was only when the students came together at our group meetings that they began to generate ideas for addressing problems on the macro level. Once they discovered that they weren’t alone, they found their collective voice and power.

Engaged Pedagogy17 The willingness to take educational risks in the pursuit of understanding is more vital than ever in the face of curriculum censorship, book banning, and repression of uncomfortable history. Energized by Donald Trump, extremist conservatives have been pushing their way into the nation’s classrooms (and bedrooms) in efforts to shut down thinking about race, about gender, about sexual relations, about the freedom of women, and about the right of people of color to live in peace. This book offers a model of collaborative, engaged pedagogy that has the potential to act as a firewall against the assault on both secondary and higher education. It anticipates and attempts to respond to arguments against “liberal education.” Identity categories are not assumed: race is seen as a dynamic continuum, rather than fixed categories. The pedagogical method requires risk-taking and a dedication to listening to others. These are skills that this country desperately needs to acquire if we are to avoid the decline of democracy and the advent of tyrants who work to crush the freedom of those who are different and dare to dissent.

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As we discovered at the group meetings, truly productive thinking requires a conversation, and tolerance of the tension that arises when people disagree. We need to learn to live with that discomfort. The outcome, the “final product”—in this case, this book—is greater than the sum of its parts. The individual narratives, voices telling their unexpected stories, are powerful enough to open readers’ minds. But when those individual voices become a chorus of different voices working on the same problem, they have the power to change the world. The three authors of this book embodied differences in age, gender, race, and sexual orientation, each bringing different life experiences, talents, and styles to the project. We needed to accept the differences in our distinct voices and styles of working. We needed to let go of the safety of “the banister”—or the impulse to control—and allow the work to grow organically. When conflicting viewpoints arose, we talked. One memorable private conversation took place as the interviews were nearing completion. Jennifer and Trisden set aside some time to reflect upon their process, to touch base with how the collaboration was going, and consider the challenges of working together. What were our fears and hesitancies at the beginning of the project, and had they changed? We asked each other what had scared us most about the idea of collaborating with each other. A Jewish woman baby boomer and a young black man could have allowed any number of fears and stereotypes to disrupt their work together. We talked for several hours about our journey together and recorded our dialogue. Our conversation ranged from HipHop lyrics which Jennifer found violent and misogynistic, although she knows Trisden loves HipHop; to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which Trisden feared might be something Jennifer approved and identified with. We pushed past the scary stereotypes of a violent black man and a Jew who supports whatever Israel does and found behind the fears, the person we knew all along: Trisden was still recognizably Trisden and Jennifer was still recognizably herself, both seen more clearly for having been honest about how they felt about HipHop and Zionism. We chose to reveal our fears to each other, to bring them to the surface, and to trust each other with them. It took some courage to begin, but as we became immersed in conversation, we realized it wasn’t that difficult at all.

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Notes 1. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein. New York: One World Press and The New York Times Company, 2021. “White sons of Virginia initiated the drafting of the Declaration of Independence the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The primary authors were al enslavers….No place shaped the Revolution and the country it birthed more than Virginia. And no place in the thirteen colonies was as strongly shaped by slavery” (17). 2. https://www.the74million.org/article/these-­a re-­t he-­s tates-­t hat­passed-­laws-­restricting-­the-­teaching-­of-­racial-­history/ “FutureEd has identified 47 bills introduced or prefiled this year in 23 state legislatures that limit teaching on these topics. Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have enacted 11 of these bills, signed into law by their Republican governors. And another bill is awaiting signature from Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey. Some of the bills, like Arkansas House Bill 1218, explicitly preclude the teaching of The New York Times’ 1619 project, which frames American history in the context of slavery, or critical race theory, including South Carolina House Bill 4325. Others, like West Virginia Senate Bill 558, prohibit teaching ‘divisive concepts,’ including racism and sexism, those that make students feel guilty because of their race, or those that make a student feel inherently racist because of their race. And two Wisconsin bills limit training on racism and sexism for K-­12 and higher education educators.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/arts/critical-­race-­theory-­ scholars.html “A coalition of more than six dozen scholarly and educational groups has signed onto a statement decrying the spread of proposed legislation limiting classroom discussion of race, racism and other so-called ‘divisive concepts,’ calling such laws an infringement on ‘the right of faculty to teach and of students to learn’ and a broader threat to civic life.” “The clear goal of these efforts is to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States,” says the statement, whose signatories include the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. “The ideal of informed citizenship necessitates an educated public,” the statement continues. “Educators must provide an accurate view of the past in order to better prepare students for community participation and robust civic engagement.”

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3. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition. Translated, Myra Bergman Ramos. Introduction, Donaldo Macedo. 2000, 2011, 2012. Bloomsbury Academic: New  York and London. “The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility” (p. 47). “This fear of freedom is also to be found in the oppressors, though, obviously, in a different form. The oppressed are afraid to embrace freedom; the oppressors are afraid of losing the ‘freedom’ to oppress” (p. 46 n. 3). 4. See Jeffrey Selingo, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, 2020. New  York: Scribner. Especially Chap. 10, “Making the Final Decision, pp. 237-252,” “If you read through the volumes of economic studies about the benefits of going to a selective school, they largely focus on one outcome: money…” (248) 5. https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2021/03/22/how­many-­college-­students-­in-­the-­us/ 6. The following are a few resources providing data on the endowments of the wealthiest universities in the United States. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73#:~:text=The%20five%20institutions%20with%20 the,Princeton%20University%20(%2423%20billion). https://www.usnews.com/education/best-­c olleges/the-­short-­l ist-­ college/articles/10-­universities-­with-­the-­biggest-­endowments 7. Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite, 2019. New York: Penguin Press “Meritocracy has become the single greatest obstacle to equal opportunity in America today” (p. 27). “At Harvard and Yale, more students come from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from the entire bottom half…Meritocrats…cannot resist investing their massive incomes in giving their children elite educations unlike anything that middle-class parents can possibly afford…intense education, provided to children while their parents are still alive, becomes the essential mechanism for the dynastic transmission of caste” (p. 25). “Elite private schools, which typically draw 80 percent of their students from the top 4 percent of the income distribution…spend as much as six times the national public-school average per student. These schools possess truly astonishing facilities, with campuses that look, feel, and function like universities rather than schools. Elite private schools also employ more than twice as many teachers per student as public schools do. These teachers are themselves elite and extensively educated…” (p.  26). “The academic achievement gap between rich and middle-class schoolchildren, for example, is now markedly greater than the achievement gap between middle-class and poor children. By the time children apply to

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college the differences are greater still and focus more specifically on the exceptional performance of elites” (p. 26). 8. Markovits p.  26. See Sean F.  Reardon, “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible explanations,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality and the Uncertain Life Chances of Low-Income Children, ed. Richard Murnane and Greg Duncan (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011) and Robert Reich, “Back to School, and to Widening Inequality,” Robert Reich, August 25, 2014, http://roertreich.org/post/9574931970. 9. The following articles and studies document the elite college admissions advantage for students from “ALDC” backgrounds: recruited because they are Athletes, children of alumni (“Legacy” students), students on the Deans Special Interest list, which can mean celebrities, and students whose parents have donated substantial sums to the university, and Children of Faculty and Staff. After those “buckets” have been filled, the remaining 57% of white students admitted are “meritocratic,” which may mean that they have been prepped for college admissions as so many privileged white children are, again challenging the very notion of a level playing field. LEGACY AND ATHLETE PREFERENCES AT HARVARD, a study conducted by Peter Arcidiacono Josh Kinsler Tyler Ransom for the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2019, states that an estimated 75% of white students admitted from those four categories “would have been rejected” if it weren’t for falling into one of the four categories (ALDCs). Nearly 70% of all legacy applicants are white, yet the study stated that a white person’s chances of being admitted increased seven times if they have family who donated to Harvard. Harvard’s acceptance rate for its class of 2023 was 4.5%. “We show that removing legacy and athlete preferences results in shifts in admissions away from white applicants with each of the other groups either increasing or staying the same,” the authors state. “At the same time, fewer high-income applicants would be admitted.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2019/jan/23/elite-­schools-­ivy­league-­legacy-­admissions-­harvard-­wealthier-­whiter https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/ college-­sports-­benefits-­white-­students/573688/ https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy-­admissions­offer-­an-­advantage-­and-­not-­just-­at-­schools-­like-­harvard https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-­ colleges-­h ave-­m ore-­s tudents-­f rom-­t he-­t op-­1 -­p ercent-­t han-­t he-­ bottom-­60.html https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/ w26316.pdf

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https://www.salon.com/2019/10/06/harvards-­systemic-­nepotism­revealed-­43-­percent-­of-­admitted-­white-­students-­were-­legacies/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/10/23/nber-­admissions­data/ 10. Matthew Stewart, “The Birth of a New American Aristocracy,” The Atlantic Magazine, June 2018. 54. “All of this comes before considering the all-consuming difference between ‘good’ schools and the rest. Ten years after starting college, according to data from the Department of Education, the top decile of earners from all schools had a median salary of $68,000. But the top decile from the 10 highest-earning colleges raked in $220,000 – make that $250,000 for No.1, Harvard – and the top decile at the next 30 colleges took home $157,000. (Not surprisingly, the top 10 had an average acceptance rate of 9 percent, and the next 30 were at 19 percent.)” 11. For a complex and nuanced reading of the admissions process at public and private universities, see Jeffrey Selingo, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, 2020. New York: Scribner. For example, Chap. 5, “Finding an Edge: Athletes and Legacies”: “In the Class of 2019, Harvard tagged 1,378 special circumstances. Those included athletes, legacies, and the ‘Dean’s Interest List,’ a confidential group of applicants mostly related to top donors. Their acceptance rate was 41 percent. That compared to a 4.2 percent acceptance rate for everyone else.” “Harvard sent out only 1,781 acceptances to the 30,000 domestic students who applied for the Class of 2019. One-third of them, 567 to be exact, went to students with special circumstances” (p. 160). 12. John S. Rosenberg, Harvard Magazine, November–December 2006. 13. Matthew Stewart, 49-63. “The Birth of a New American Aristocracy,” The Atlantic Magazine, June 2018. “The skin colors of the nation’s elite student bodies are more varied now, as are their genders, but their financial bones have calcified over the past 30 years. In 1985 54% of students at the 250 most selective colleges came from families in the bottom three quarters of the income distribution. A similar review of the class of 2010 put that figure at just 33%. According to a 2017 study, 38 elite colleges  – among them five of the Ivies – had more students from the top 1% than the bottom 60%” (p.  54); Daniel Golden, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges, and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, New York: Broadway Books, 2007. 14. Markovitz, xiv. 15. Martin Biondi, Black Revolution on Campus; Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies; White Money, Black Power, Noliwe M. Rooks. 16. Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. 1994. New  York: Harcourt. National Review Online editor John Derbyshire

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stated, “Like most nonblacks, I guess, I have always thought that ‘Afro-­ American Studies’ is a pseudo-discipline, invented by guilty white liberals as a way of keeping black intellectuals out of trouble and giving them a shot at holding professorships at elite institutions without having to prove themselves in anything really difficult, like math” www.nationalreview. com, January 11, 2002. Permanent URL link: www.nationalreview.com/ derbyshire011102.shtml. Quoted in Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline, 207. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press) 238 n.5. 17. bell hooks, Teaching to  Transgress: Education as  the  Practice of  Freedom, 1994. New York: Routledge. “When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a  holistic model of  learning will also be  a  place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks” (p. 21).

Correction to: Saving Public Higher Education

Correction to: J. Ring et al., (eds.), Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­05646-­8

On page 290, “Charlottesville” was initially written as “Lucysville.” This has been changed online and in print.

The updated versions of the chapters can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­05646-­8_4 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­05646-­8_5

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8_8

C1

Appendix: Saving Public Higher Education: Voices from the Wasteland Jennifer Ring and Trisden Shaw Principle Investigators

List of possible questions: 1. How do you identify? 2. Background: What made them?

a. Describe home: tell me about your family. How many siblings do you have? What is your parent’s occupation? b. Where did you grow up? Describe your neighborhood. c. Would you describe families’ financial status as working class, middle class, or upper class? 3. Describe your schooling experience, especially high school.



a. Did many students at your school qualify for free or reduced lunch? Were there a number of AP courses available? ***Side note: public schools are more segregated today than they were before Brown vs. Board* 4. When did you realize you were black & because you were black were you treated different? Was there a particular moment that made you aware?

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5. Are you a first-generation college student? Was there an expectation [from parents, teachers, and mentors] for you to pursue higher education, and were there resources accessible to you? 6. Being black @ Nevada:

a. Do you feel comfortable here? b. How does environment differ from the place you call home? c. Does racial tension exist on campus? d. Have you ever directly experience overt/blatant racism on the UNR campus/Reno? If so, please describe. e. How have your experiences in classroom been? [with staff, faculty, or students] Have you had black professor at the University of Nevada? f. What would make the University of Nevada a better experience as a person of color? 7. How do you feel about racial relations on campus moving forward? 8. What positive racial experiences have you had on campus? 9. “Post-Racial America”:



a. Do we live in a post-racial society? b. Do you agree with the movement Black Lives Matter? c. What are your thoughts on system of policing in America? Have you always felt that way? d. Have you ever had an encounter with a police officer? Was it positive or negative? How has that shaped your experience moving forward? e. Do you watch the videos of unarmed black people being killed by police? Does it take a toll on you psychologically? How do you feel after? f. Has there been a rise in overt racism & bigotry toward black and brown people? g. What are your thought on the election of Donald Trump? h. Does the election of Donald Trump change or shift your perspective of the United States? i. What does the election of Donald Trump mean for race relations moving forward? What does it mean to black & brown communities?

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0. How can we eventually cure racism? 1 11. Imagine as if white America were listening, what would you ask them?

a. What would you say? b. What do you they need to know? c. What steps do they need to take to bridge this divide?

Index1

A Abrams, Stacey, 342 Abuse, 250, 252, 264, 276, 277 Activism, 303–307 Admissions and Records, 94 Advanced Placement (AP) classes, 83, 84, 192, 278, 282 Affirmative action, 209–211, 215–217 African American Studies, 125, 128, 144, 155 Afro-Mexicans, 241 AIDS, 152, 187 Alexander, Michelle, 154 Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), 342 Alternative facts, 257 Alt-right movement, 71 The “American experience,” 270 American Girl books, 211 Anorexia, 271, 275, 276, 279, 282 Anti-racist/racism, 331, 333, 337–339 Anti-war movement, 64 Anxiety, 247, 265, 271, 276, 281

AP (courses/exams), 161 A People’s History, 62 Arendt, Hannah, 148 Aristotle, 330 Armstrong, Charles J., 14, 23n11 Assimilation, 140, 206–213 Associated Students University of Nevada (ASUN), 316, 317 The Atlantic Magazine, 359n10, 359n13 B Bakersfield, 180 Batman, 184, 192 The Battle of Algiers, 62 Bell hooks, 269 Where We Stand: Class Matters, 269 Binary (of race and identity), 332, 335 Black Codes, 14 “Black enough,” 30, 61, 80 Black hair, 117

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Ring et al., Saving Public Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8

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INDEX

Black Lives Matter, 154, 176, 306, 309, 314, 315 Blackness, 127 Black Panthers, 62 Black Power Movement, 61 Black Rock Desert, viii Black Student Organization (BSO), 50, 97, 121 Black Student Organization (BSO) (Nevada), 50, 121 Black Studies, 349, 350, 359n15, 360n16 Bloods/gangs, 51 Boise State, 41–49 Bolivian, 179, 185, 200, 241 Bollywood, 224 Book of the Oath, 11–18, 337 Bossa Nova, 60 Boy Scouts, 190, 191 Brown, Michael, 49, 54 Bryant, Richard, 262 Bubba, 204, 205, 222 Buenos Aires, 179, 181 Bullying, 80 Bush, George W., 255 C Calhoun, John C., 261, 262 Camp Fire, viii Canada, 126, 204 Canyon Springs Law and Leadership Academy, 38–41 Capitalism, 55, 74, 245 Carnegie Mellon, 229 Carson City, Nevada, 250–257 Catholic/Catholicism, 127, 184, 185, 187, 188, 191, 192, 233 Central Valley, CA, 201, 218 Cha-Cha, 207 Charlottesville, 5, 10, 11, 15, 18, 22n8, 333

Charlottesville rally, 309 Che Guevara, 126, 228, 244 Chicago, 99, 102–104 Chicano, 58 Chicano culture, 173 Chile, 180–182 Christian, 184, 186–194, 198, 221, 222, 227, 228, 234 Cisgender, 128, 260 Civil Rights, 151 Civil Rights Movement, 42, 74 Civil War, 336 Claremont Consortium, 281 Clark County School District, 85, 87 Clark, Walter E., 13 Classism, 248 Cleveland, Ohio, 34–36, 42 “College Dropout Scandal,” 4 College of Southern Nevada (CSN), 109 Colonizers, 239 Color-blind, 292 Colorism, 126, 154, 222–225, 238 Columbia, 343, 345 Columbus, 321, 322 Communist, 129, 226 Communist manifesto, 73 Communist regime, 129 Confederacy, 336, 337 Confederate, 70, 71 Confederate flags, 190–192 Congressional Republicans, 256 Cornell, 2 Coronavirus pandemic, 294 Coulter, Ann, 311 Criminal justice system, 253 Cross-dressing, 248 Crowley, Joe (Student Union), 262 C-Span, 256 Cullors, Patrisse, 65 Curriculum, 270, 278 Cvjetanovic, Peter, 10–11

 INDEX 

D DACA, 168, 307, 309, 317 D’Azevedo, Warren L., 14, 15 Debate Team, 81, 83, 85 Degree (academic), 249, 257, 285, 286, 292 Deported, 144, 156, 157, 197 Depression, 247, 271, 272, 281, 282 Diamond, Jared, 189, 190 Discomfort, 333, 335 Diversity, 133, 138, 167, 195 Diversity and inclusion, 329 Diversity requirement, 338 Division I football, 35 Dreadlocks, locs, 29 Dual citizenship?, 126 Dubois, W.E.B, 62 E Economic deprivation, 136 Elite universities, 332 Elitism/Elite, 271, 278, 280–288 ELL students, 258 Emancipation Proclamation, 336 Ethiopian, 125, 128, 130–133, 135–137, 145, 149 Ethnic Studies, 349, 350 Evangelical Christian, 127 Exclusionary, 251, 258 “Exotic,” 151, 214, 215, 220 F FAFSA, 84, 166 Fanon, Franz, 62, 74 Feminism, 284, 285 Feminist, 55, 67, 69, 70, 72 Feminist studies, 249 Ferguson, Missouri, 261 Fiji, 126, 203, 204, 206 Filipino, 133, 179, 185, 221, 241

367

First Amendment, 307–316, 333, 334 First generation college student, 41 Floyd, George, 294 Francisco, San, 203, 206 Free or Reduced Lunch, 81 Free speech, 307, 311, 313–315, 332, 333 G Gandhi, 204 Gandpat, 205 Gang members/gangbanger, 159, 163 Garner, Eric, 49 Gay, 247, 252, 273 Gay/straight binary, 247 Gender, 28, 32, 33, 56, 67, 69, 70, 76, 77, 91, 97, 99, 112 Gender identity, 260 Gentrification, 71 Germaphobia, 187, 189 Get Out, 67 Girthan, 205 Golden, Daniel, 2, 346, 359n13 The Price of Admission, 346, 359n13 Gonzaga Law School, 264 “Good Hair,” 114, 115 Gore, Al, 255 Greenfield, Laura Writing Centers and the New Racism, 258 Guns, Germs and Steel, 189 Guru Granth Sahib, 205 H Hair relaxers, 80 Halloween/Superman/Batman, 183–185, 191, 192 Hamilton, Laura T., 4 Hannity, Sean, 254

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INDEX

Harvard Law School, Harvard University, 343–347, 349, 350, 357n7, 358n9, 359n11 Healthcare, 228 Health Center, 94 Health Insurance, 77, 94, 96 Heller, Dean, 90 Henderson, Nevada, 33–35, 38, 42, 43 Hetero-normative, 251 Hinterlands, 346, 347 Hispanic, 127, 156, 176, 178, 207, 239 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), 83, 86, 87, 89, 117, 118 Homophobia, 252, 273 Homosexuality/gay people, 152, 187, 190, 195, 247 Houston, 127, 180–186, 188, 193, 198 Howard University, 42 Hug High School, 256, 269 Hurricane Katrina, 63 I Identity, 126–128, 132, 136, 148, 177, 179, 184–186, 191, 192, 195, 196, 199, 203, 204, 226, 229, 233, 237, 238, 241, 242, 244, 245 Identity complex, 109 Identity politics, 55, 71, 127, 201, 223, 243, 271, 280 Immigrate, 128, 131 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 155–157, 332 Imperialism, 244 Implicit bias training, 335, 336

Implicit racial bias, 326 Imposter syndrome, 283 India, 126, 201–204 Indians, 202, 203, 207, 208, 213–215, 220, 221, 223 Indigenous people, 201, 202, 239 Indigenous People of North America, 201 Inequality, 145 Instagram/Facebook?, 37, 107 Integration, 329 Intercollegiate Athletics, 76 Internalized homophobia, 252 International Baccalaureate (IB) Program, 278–280, 282 International Human Rights, 236, 237 Interracial dialogues, 328 Intersectionality, 72 Iraq War, 64 Islamophobic, 126 J Jack, Anthony Abraham, 2 Jamaica, 29, 77, 78 Japanese internment, 154 Jewish, 125, 126, 131, 144, 145, 184 Jim Crow, 5, 14, 153 Jose, San, 207, 216, 226–245 JROTC, 63, 64 K Kaepernick, Colin, 9, 11, 17, 303, 304, 315 King’s English, 259 Kirp, David, 4 Klan, Ku Klux (KKK), 15, 43, 45, 323, 324 Klein, Naomi, 306 Korn, Melissa, 2

 INDEX 

L Lafayette, CA., 205–208, 211, 213–217, 221 La Frontera, 242 Lake Tahoe, 193 Land grant institution, 318 Land Grant University, 2 Las Vegas, 33–38, 40, 78, 79, 85, 87, 99, 102, 105, 106, 122, 336 Las Vegas Arts Academy (LVA), 99, 112, 113 Latino/a, 156, 158, 165, 168–171, 174, 176–178, 221, 225, 234, 237–239, 241–244 Latino Student Advisory Board (LSAB), 167, 304 Latinx, 126, 152, 199, 238, 240, 278, 279 Leftist, 49, 56 Legacy, 3, 11, 13, 24n16 Levin, Richard, 347 Levits, Jennifer, 2 LGBT/LGBTQ, 99 LGBTQ spectrum, 258 Liberal, 250, 255, 273, 280, 284 Liberia, 77, 296 Lies My Teacher Told Me, 62 Limbaugh, Rush, 254, 255 Lincoln, Abraham, 2 Locs (dreads), 113 Loewen, James, 62 Loneliest Road in America, viii Loyola Marymount, 264 M Machi, 204 Machista culture, 160 Mackay, John, 262, 263 Madeline (Children’s book), 103 Magnet school, 279

369

Major League Baseball, 344 Malcolm X, 245 “The Male Gaze,” 33 Mammy statue, 91 Marginalized, 331, 332 Markovits, Daniel, 2 Markovits, David, 344, 357n7 The Meritocracy Trap, 344 Marx, Karl, 55, 56, 73 Marxist revolutionary politics, 126 Marxist/Marxism, 126, 225–230, 234, 235, 237, 243, 244 Masculine role models, 252 Mental health, 247, 252, 272, 275 Mental illness, 271, 275, 281, 282 Meritocracy, 3, 343, 346, 348, 357n7 Mexico/Mexican, 126, 127, 156, 158, 169–173, 176, 177, 179, 182, 185 food, 126, 229, 244 heritage, 126 identity, 126, 229, 233, 244 90s economic crisis, 230 Microaggressions, 172, 174, 213–219, 242 Millennium Scholarship, 167 Minor in Consumption (MIC), 46, 47, 199 “Mississippi of the West,” 14 MIT, 2, 345 Mononucleosis, 77 Morrill Act, 2 Musical theatre, 227, 229, 230, 236, 237 Muslim, 126, 195, 207, 218–220, 245 N Nairobi, Kenya, 131 Natural hair, 154 Navy Seals, 111

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INDEX

Neoliberals, 65, 71, 73 Nevada is not a Wasteland, viii New Nevada Oath, 12, 16 NFL, NHL, NBA, salary caps, 351 Nielsen, Kelly, 4 No Child Left Behind, 65 Nonna, Nonina, 218 North Las Vegas, Nevada, 33, 38, 79 Northern Nevada, 250–252 NYU, 166

Public/private universities (resources/qualified faculty), 261, 271, 290 Punjabi American, 126

O The “Oath,” 315–317 Obama, Barack, 253–256, 259 Occupy Wall Street, 237 OCD, 271, 281 Odessa, Texas, 101 Ohio University, 34 Olaf, Saint, 281 “Oreo,” 80, 107 Otherness, 230

R Race, 27–34, 42, 44, 45, 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 67, 69–73, 75–77, 91, 92, 97, 99, 107, 113–117, 126, 128, 131, 135–140, 145, 148, 149, 152, 154, 158, 168, 170, 171, 173, 176, 179, 180, 183–186, 190–195, 199, 202, 204, 209, 210, 213, 214, 216, 217, 221, 223, 230, 233, 241, 242, 244 Race and Class, xii Race as Spectrum, 341 Racial ambiguity, 241 Racial awareness, 255, 280 Racial hostility, 155 Racial stereotypes, 214 Racial stereotyping, 213, 242 Racism/normalizing racism, 137, 151, 152, 161, 170–174, 176, 177, 184, 190, 194–200, 214, 220, 221, 223, 240, 244, 245 Ranch, Damonte, 161–173, 176, 177, 227, 234 Reagan, Ronald, 157 Reconstruction, 14 Redlands, 264 Refugee, 125, 129, 148 Reid, Harry, 162, 259 Reno Justice Coalition, 306, 316

P Pakistan, 204 Paolo Freiren, Freirean Education, 7 Papers/official papers, 130, 157, 158, 166, 168, 237 Paradise, California, ix Parson, Stella, 98, 99 Patriarchal, 125, 137 Petit bourgeois, 234, 235 Pew poll, 326 Police, 46–48, 51, 53, 54, 61–63, 68, 79 Predominantly White Institution (PWI), 109 Prejudice, 125 Princeton, 343, 345, 347, 350 “Privileged Poor,” 2 Progressive, 249, 251, 255–257

Q Queer, 56, 67, 69, 70, 99, 247, 249, 251, 253, 261 Queer movement, 152

 INDEX 

Required Parental Conference (RPC), 39, 40 Research I University, 8 Resilience, x, xi Revolutionaries, 228, 244 The Rez, 85 Rich white kids, 210 Rosenberg, John S., 346, 347 Harvard Magazine, 346 Rowan, Karen Writing Centers and the New Racism, 258 Russia, 181, 183 S Sagebrush, Nevada, 22n8 Saint’s Day, 233 Sanders, Bernie, 342 San Francisco, 9, 203, 206 SAT, 280, 282, 344 Scripps, James E. (scholarship), 281–286, 288–291 Scripps college, 271 Self-segregation, 254, 263 Sexism, 131, 137, 245 Sexual Harassment, 76 Sikh American, 203, 204 Singapore, 180, 184, 186–189, 191 “Sit for Kap,” 303, 304 Social justice, 332 The Souls of Black Folk, 62 South Asian American, 203 Southside (Chicago), 103 Spanglish, 299, 300 Spanish (language), 127, 163, 170, 171, 173–175, 178, 181, 182, 193, 195, 226, 233, 235, 238, 241–244 Spanish Springs (Reno), 274, 275, 279, 288 Sparks, NV, 56

371

Stanford University, 269, 343, 345, 346 States’ Rights, 297 Stereotypes, 127, 161, 170, 172, 213–219, 241, 242, 331 Sterling, Austin, 54 Stewart, Matthew, 347, 359n10, 359n13 Substance abuse, 252, 264 Switching it Up/Code Switching, 51–54 T Teach for America, 82 Teach-in, 338 Tea Party, 253 Terrorist, 147, 222 Texas A&M, 345 Texas flags, 190 Therapy, 272, 276, 279, 287, 288 Third World Feminism, 68 Three Strike law, 66 Tilghman, Shirley, 347 Title IX, 312 Tracy, CA., 207, 218 Trauma, 277, 332 Tree hugger, 85 Truckee Meadows Community College, 53, 155, 166 Trump, Donald, 1, 4–6, 8, 10, 168, 171, 172, 183, 196–198, 203, 216, 224, 225, 244, 245 2008 housing crisis, 228 2016 Clinton campaign, 93 2016 presidential campaign, 296 U UC Berkeley, 281, 311 UC Davis, 219 Undocumented, 156–158, 167, 168

372 

INDEX

Unite the Right, 5, 10, 24n16 University of California, 345 University of Chicago Law School, 343 University of Cincinnati, 227, 229, 230, 236–237 University of Michigan, 345 University of Nevada, 145–155, 167, 193, 195, 219–222, 237 University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), 39, 46, 87, 97, 109, 110, 117, 121, 122 University of Pennsylvania, 345 University of Texas (UT), 193 U.S. Citizenship (exam and overall meaning), 162 U.S. Constitution, 162 US News and World Report, 348 V Varsity Blues Scandal, 2 Vietnamese, 185 Voto Latino, 167 W Warren, Elizabeth, 342, 350 Washington D.C., 162 Washoe County Hospital, 77 Wasteland, vii, viii, viii, ix, ix Wealth gap, 73 Wealth tax, 350, 353 Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE), 41, 146, 219 We the People, 162, 169, 170

Whiteness, 192, 195, 199–200, 229, 240 White passing, 199, 238, 240 White power, 323, 324 White privilege, 200, 201, 210, 211, 216, 222, 238, 240, 242 White space/whiteness, 43, 48, 52, 53, 147, 178, 192, 195, 199, 229, 240 White supremacists/nationalists, 333, 334 White supremacy/nationalism, 307–316, 323 White terrorism, 201 Whitewashed, 177, 241, 242 Wilson, Woodrow, 261, 262 Womens’ March, 317 Women Studies, 55, 70 Wooster High School, 161–173, 278 The Wretched of the Earth, 62 X Xenophobia, 72 Xenophobic, 243 Y Yale, 2, 5, 20n1, 24n16 Yale Law School, Yale University, 343–345, 347, 357n7 Yiannopoulos, Milo, 311 Z Zapata (Emiliano Zapata), 236