S&F Online

The Scholar and Feminist Online
Published by The Barnard Center for Research on Women
www.barnard.edu/sfonline

Issue 3.2 - Jumpin' at the Sun: Reassessing the Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston - Winter 2005

Testimonials

Manifesto
Esinam Bediako

I am a student at Columbia University.
But let's FACE IT.
I DON'T DESERVE to be here.
I am BLACK and I am FEMALE and IT'S BEEN SAID that I'm getting a FREE ride.
But what am I? I am:

Walking down the streets of Morningside Heights behind a woman who's constantly looking over her shoulder at me as she clutches her purse and her cell phone in fear, then realizing this woman used to be my PROFESSOR.

EARNING an academic prize and having the secretaries in the Dean's office eyeball me when I go to pick up invitations for the awards ceremony . . . "Are you sure you won a prize? Did you get an e-mail from our office?" . . . they check my name on the list once . . . they check it twice . . . and then they make sure to let me know that there's no campus housing for any guests I might want to bring to the ceremony . . . "Can you AFFORD to invite guests?"

Expected to BE THE VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY during the SOULS OF BLACK FOLK discussion in CC . . . and being made to feel as though the Core is GENEROUS in its inclusion of just ONE DIVERSE VOICE among the important words of the WHITE MEN OF THE CANON.

Walking into Lerner Hall, my so-called student center where I should feel I have a SPACE OF MY OWN as a student here and hearing people shout that Columbia should CHECK THE GRADE POINT AVERAGES to prove that I and others don't belong here (check them and you'll see that we do).

Yeah, this IS all FREE. I'm not paying for this experience, this having to JUSTIFY my existence. I'm not paying for the bitter knowledge that I MUST LEARN the classics before I graduate but that another student can graduate from this institution that praises its own DIVERSITY without learning much about the ACCOMPLISHMENTS of minorities who were NOT SO MINOR in building this nation and the WORLD. I'm not paying to be ignored, to be assumed ignorant, to be condescended to by "SYMBOLIC" bake sales, to have to beg to be heard, to compromise my personhood, to be told that this school doesn't have to change because I SHOULD'VE KNOWN WHAT I WAS GETTING INTO.

I am black, I am female, and I am told I don't deserve to be here. But I'm here, and I earned it, and I am still earning it every day.
But what else am I? oversensitive? overreacting? complaining too much? asking for too much?
I am a student at Columbia University, and I am seeking a community of UNDERSTANDING.

No Place Like . . . :
On Living in a Small Brown Place
Self, Space, and Universe(city)
Alexis Gumbs

It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and identity has not, in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you.
                        —James Baldwin (boldness mine)

Home. A small brown place.

Who would have thought standing up would be such a complex contortion, or that walking on brick would become such a frantic dance? I often wonder if I really have the nerve to be all at once black and woman and visible and here for even one more minute. The space that I am completely free in ends at (and too often because of) the barrier of my brown skin.

Home. A small brown place.

And even that barrier is at risk. I earn my keep at this university by embodying diversity. By being the one on the panel
heading the committee
writing the article
explainingexplaining breathing and explaining.

Home. A small brown place.

Columbia University, despite its lies to itself and you,
despite not paying taxes
despite real estate takeover
is in Harlem.

Home. A small brown place.

The Intercultural Resource Center is a never-been-big-enough brownstone. What I do here is called living. The floors and doors are me-colored wood, but if you look, the walls and ceilings are definitely white. I spend most of my time in here staining white paper and the walls themselves with words colored like hope.

Home. A small brown place.

I am convinced that constant movement in my legs, feet, arms, and hands will grant me infinity despite my less than 100 brown pounds. I am convinced that I have every right to stand on the sundial and scream for joy in the middle of the day, because I am the place where the sun makes her mark. I try harder to believe those engravings about the public good on Low Library every time I walk by. I think when those words change from stone and live and breathe they'll look a lot like me and you. Prove me right.

White Girl Oh White Girl
Leah King

White girl oh white girl
Please don't touch my hair
Oh White Girl at Barnard
You guys are everywhere

In a city as big
As this mega-metropolis
I am shocked and surprised
You revel in ignorance's bliss

But you read, write, and create
For the Ivy League you were born
New York's opportunities are endless
Yet you rarely leave your dorm

You question great philosophers
And read complicated manifestos
Write papers on globalization
And the dangers of asbestos

You can debate how America's power usurpation
And disregard for slave labor
Fuels Third World economies
And tips all politics somehow in our favor

Yet you sit here and ask me
How you can get hair like mine
And ask why people still complain about racism
While in your perspective, everything seems "just fine!"

The next time you see me passing
Without my curly head bowed
Know that for some reason at Barnard
It's always my job to be loud.

Remember education is a privilege
Humility can't be taught
And feminism goes beyond
Your own circle of thought.

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