Do White Spaces Deserve Black People?

Becoming a Young Man in Hyper-White Spaces

The public schools had a different way of functioning. These schools were in the inner-city where white students were not the majority and so they functioned less in the country club style and more so like real-world white spaces. In these schools, the staff created micro white spaces within space. The AP classes and certain extracurricular activities are where they resided. Crosscountry skiing, Orchestra, Robotics Club, Debate Team, these were all micro white spaces within the racially “diverse” schools. Thee spaces were very insulated and many times you would hear white students saying it felt like they went to a completely different school inside the school—because they did. Generally, when I entered these spaces I felt the exact same anti-blackness as I had the private schools. The country club mentality was still there, but this was now backed by government systems. Public schools of course are a part of the racial social system, and they have school social workers, police officers, and law enforcement policies and the courts to create sanctions for students who do not follow the norms of white space. If you miss enough school or violate school rules like dress codes, you go to court, if you keep missing school or violating rules, you go to jail. Ultimately, this system was a lot more in your face and brutal than the private school for me. I witnessed Black and POC students get tazed, arrested, and brutalized by the staff and police on the school grounds. This was not only extremely traumatizing as a young student but was more difficult as I realized this is just a reality of the world we live in. Another method of trying to break you and get you to conform to whiteness.

Now, the public school lunch tables were where you really began to see the dynamics of racialized space. In my high school, St. Paul Central high school, that by diversity standards was seemingly utopic—30% Black, 30% White, 30% Asian/Latinx, and 10% other demographically, you could see each group broken down and segregated by a lunch table. The Hmong students sat with each other, the East African students had their table, the Black American students had theirs, and the white students had theirs. Of course, there was some overlap but if you walked into the cafeteria and looked around it very much resembled a prison yard style of segregation. These divides are ultimately a result of cultural, social, and economic norms, and of course, there is a larger context resulting from racialized space. At one point, the school even tried to create Black academic spaces within the high school. They created a program called African American Male AVID. This was a program that I was in the ninth grade and it had black students from all walks of life, and our staff leader was ironically and perhaps unsurprisingly a white male. The space to me felt synthetic, though it was good to be with my people, we were still under the rules of the system in a white space. They created an academic policy required for participation in the group, so if your grades dropped below a certain GPA you would be unable to participate. As a result, I was kicked out of this program during my first year because the traditional curriculum and rules-based organization of the educational system did not fit with my learning style. There was no academic space within educational white spaces that functioned for my benefit as a Black teen. My choice was either to learn the type of material presented in the type of way institutionalized by these white space or you fail. So I failed. Over and over again. This experience trained me to think I was a failure; dumb because I was unable to learn or adapt to the style of learning in white spaces: a style that ultimately was never made for me. It was this experience that pushed me to the afterschool program that really informed my current trajectory: Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA).

Navigating Hyper-White Space to Become a Professional Black Architectural Designer

After failing out of High School, I took my GED and I began my journey to higher education. It took a couple years and going to what I call a JUCO (Junior College) of Art schools to get me to where I wanted to be, and eventually I was accepted at Parsons. Parsons is one of the top ranked and most elite art and design schools in the world. Situated on fifth Avenue in Manhattan, NY, it attracts some of the best, “brightest,” and richest students from around the world. If the Private Schools I attended were like country clubs, then Parsons was like the MET Gala. Almost immediately upon entering I realized that I was in for a challenge in that space. I was not scared because I was a seasoned vet in racist academic spaces, and I had learned how to articulate my experiences with white racism by working with prominent Black architects at JXTA, so I felt nothing could phase me. I quickly discovered that students at Parsons generally never interacted with Black people in their lives, so their reaction when seeing me was either shock or just dead silence, usually the latter. By that point in my life, I preferred someone ignoring me to anything else that might lead to a hostile racist micro-aggression.

In my first year at Parsons, I had a few racist professors that gave me that crazy look or energy that let me know they didn't respect me. I decided the best way to deal with that level of hostility was to drop the classes with these professors, so I didn’t experience anything too crazy in that first year. When I entered my second year, I saw the true colors of Parsons Architecture program. I was one of maybe five Black students in my whole program. In my year, I was one of two. It was immediately clear that I had entered another hyper-white private school space, like those I had grown up in. Me and the other fellow black architect were immediately alienated. We experienced regular micro-aggressions letting us know that we were outsiders and were not completely welcome in that space. Fortunately for me, I encountered a good German professor who saw my talent and insight from day one, and he made sure I knew it. Unfortunately for my the other Black student in my year, he had one of the worst, most anti-Black professors who was notorious for hostilely targeting students of color, and as a result he dropped out of the program. That was when I began to understand why Architecture is such a white profession. The gatekeepers were white men, and most of them were intentionally or unintentionally anti-Black. If these gatekeepers decided they did not like a student, the student could literally be removed from the program. There was one professor who was notorious for telling students “you will never be an architect” as a way of breaking students.

In my years at Parson, I watched as many of the very few Black students in my Architecture program didn't survive. There were many elements of the program that could take you out including professors, students, and supplies. Supplies became an ultimate evil for those of us Black students who were not wealthy, because if you could not afford the hundreds of dollars worth of supplies you needed each semester, you ultimately could not succeed in courses. Another thing that held back Black students was that, if one professor failed you, you would have to re-take a course, adding another 70,000 to your debt or taking you out if you could not afford the money or time. Because nearly all of the professors were white, they held white biases about what constitute good or bad architecture, and this meant that many of the Black students, who were not lucky enough to get the one or two professors who valued Black art, ended up being failed out of the program.

I was lucky, because I started my program with an amazing professor as well as real-world experience in the field of architectural design that had shown me the value of Black art and design. I had knowledge at my disposal which gave me the resilience I needed to succeed in the white space of Parsons. Unfortunately, when white students saw this, I encountered resistance. They showed me their fragile anger in the critiques they gave my work. Part of the architecture program involves showcasing of your work in front of staff, guests, and your fellow students and getting receive critiques. These are supposed to serve as a space where you get constructive criticism and learn how to better your work. The white students in my course, many of whom were explicitly racist, used this as a time to tear me down. They laughed through my presentations, talked to each other, and did not even looking at my work. These white students were blatantly disrespectful to me and to my work, as well as to other Black and other POC students. Eventually I realized I had to report their behavior to the dean because it was affecting my ability to succeed in the program. When the dean did not take any action, I decided that the best strategy would be to disrupt the white space in my classrooms by having my own people in my corner, so I invited my fellow Black students and friends to come to the critiques. Their very presence would begin to break up the white space from its core. On top of that it made me feel more safe and comfortable within the space. They knew that if I was not the only Black person in the room they had to be held accountable.

Some of my fellow students understood this need to create Black space inside of the white space of Parsons as well and together we formed the first Black designers cohort in Parsons history called The OBSIDIAN Group. We were able to come together to organize and ensure we could attend each other’s critiques, and hold space and just talk amongst each other. In the process, we realized we were encountering the exact same things, just in different classrooms, or at different times and spaces. Just the fact that we were able to create Black space within the hyper-white space was beneficial for our success. In my senior year, I served as the Vice President of The OBSIDIAN Group. During that year we started to ask the question, Does Parsons deserve Black students?

I want this to be a question that Black students across the nation consider, not only at Parsons but for academia at large. Does your school deserve Black Students? Or does your profession deserve Black people? I see it as simple as this, if Black people are unable to sustain and maintain a healthy and happy Black body within any white space does that space really deserve them? We have fought battle after battle to enter these spaces. Our very presence adds an irreplaceable insight and expertise that can only come from the Black community. It is irrelevant how wealthy or “educated” your student body or workforce is, ultimately it is lacking without the presence of Black people. So you need us, but do you deserve us? If you don't deserve us, what can these hyper-white spaces do to deserve us? This is a conversation I would like to see happening in academia and beyond.