“Don’t Talk About It, Be About It: A Model of Material Support for Black Graduate Students”
by Lida Colón, Digital Black Lit and Composition (DBLAC) | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020
Introduction: Being a Black Graduate Student
In this symposium, graduate students detail the importance of mentorship. Presswood and Schwarz (2020) of the Writing Program Administrators Graduate Organization (WPA-GO) discuss the value of learning from the “trials and successes” of a network of established scholars (“Introduction”). The range of experiences relevant to Black graduate students includes, in addition to those mentioned throughout this issue, navigating professional structures that not too long ago actively excluded us from participation. This essay details some specific challenges faced by Black graduate students and argues for the importance of mentorship for Black scholars. It then details how one education nonprofit, DBLAC (Digital Black Lit and Composition), provides both conventional modes of mentorship as well as material support in order to serve as a learning community and pipeline for self-identified Black scholars including high school students, advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and junior and senior faculty.
Dr. Cecilia Shelton1, in a talk at the 2019 Conference for College Composition and Communication, recalled data of an original survey which asked Black students in Rhetoric and Composition (Rhet-Comp) graduate programs about their work and experiences. Ninety percent of respondents reported that their research at least somewhat related to blackness. Given the impetus for the birth of our field—the maintenance and protection of the ruling class through language education—the lack of coursework that centers Black Studies in Rhet-Comp departments and the scarcity of Black scholars on core graduate syllabi is unsurprising. This means, though, that students have a difficult time getting exposed to scholarship in their specialties. And, with Black faculty comprising only 6% of the total professoriate in the United States, including graduate faculty, Black students doing Black research must do more for themselves than those with more mainstreamed interests (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Utilizing nexuses of graduate resources like faculty and coursework with intersecting interests is a professionally essential convention of graduate study that may prove an obstacle for students researching in Black scholarship. Exposure to Black faculty and scholarship is key, and many programs may be unable to provide that to their students.
Kynard (2015) details the suspicion, dismissal, hyper-surveillance and blatant disrespect that students and faculty of color face in the academy in one anecdote after another, including some of her own as a Black woman. Lazos (2012) considers the data from a number of studies about the relationship between race and gender and student evaluations and concludes that “minority professors must negotiate many more burdens than non-minority professors from the moment they walk into the classroom” (p. 183). The above finding is reflected in Shelton’s (2019) survey as well, illuminating one of the many links between Black graduate student experiences and those of Black faculty. Many students learn from both colleagues and faculty how to navigate institutional racism, an intellectual and emotional labor for all parties involved that ultimately lends itself to a more inclusive and equitable workplace.
Polk, Russell, and Sockwell (2020) in this symposium consider the value of mentorship regarding the navigation of the line between opportunity and exploitation, reminding us that opportunities for service, including diversity work, have the potential to exploit graduate student labor in ways we do not anticipate, and that faculty mentorship is crucial to helping graduate students develop healthy boundaries. Ahmed (2012) points to how institutions’ reliance on diversity practitioners’ labor can undermine the oft echoed purpose of a more equitable academy because the investment and labor are not shared by everyone. Black graduate students, whose sometimes singular presence is often universities’ answer to accusations of unfair admissions practices, sometimes perform this labor in order to foster a more welcoming and supportive environment in which to do their work, but as Ahmed explains, “becoming the race person . . . can allow others not to turn up” (5). The diversity labor to which Ahmed refers goes even further than the department. Many Black students feel obligations to their families and communities, who are often both direct and indirect beneficiaries of Black scholarship. They may also feel obligated to serve as an example and necessary resource to black undergraduates, high school students, and intellectuals unknown and unnamed who have never been afforded the access we have been granted. It is a heavy weight to carry on top of a rigorous course load.
Enter Digital Black Lit and Composition (DBLAC) (n.d.), “a digital network of Black graduate students” that “provides safe spaces for members to testify to, discuss with, and share support for each other” (“Welcome and Mission Statement”). The organization’s direct service model advances three “Signature Programs”: the Virtual Writing Group (VWG), an online writing space used for motivation and accountability, the Reading Series, which “supplement[s] the work of Black graduate students within [the] network” (“Signature Programs”), and the Writing Retreats, an opportunity for Black scholars to gather, think, and write in community under the guidance of a Scholar-in-Residence. By utilizing this model, DBLAC provides the direct and pragmatic intellectual and emotional nourishment required for scholar-activists to collectively face larger systemic and institutional issues. The remainder of this essay will outline the aforementioned Programs and their impacts on my own experience.
[1] Dr. Shelton was a graduate student at East Carolina University at the time of this talk. She is now a faculty member at George Washington University.