The green and yellow balloons sprawled across Skidmore’s campus tell the story of the recently moved in Class of 2025. The First Years are arriving at Skidmore on the heels of a whirlwind summer: ongoing news related to COVID-19 vaccinations and variants, climate catastrophe, and continuous geopolitical strife. Students are looking to take what they have witnessed and apply it to their experience at Skidmore.
One lens through which First Years will transition to the Skidmore academic mindset is with the analysis and connection of this year’s summer reading to their various Scribner Seminars. Over the summer, the Class of 2025 and their Peer Mentors were asked to read Ibram X. Kendi’s second book, How to be an Antiracist (2019).
How to be an Antiracist focuses on the praxis of typically theoretical antiracist ideas. Kendi delineates that one cannot describe themself or another as ‘nonracist’; your actions and ideas designate you either a racist or an antiracist. The reason for this, he charges, is that “there is no neutrality in the racism struggle” (Kendi 9). “One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist.” Through chapters dedicated to facets of the fights within and against racism, such as culture, behavior, color, sexuality, gender, Kendi dissects the “struggle to be fully human and to see that others are fully human,” a struggle in which we are all engaged (Kendi 11). Towards the end of the book, as he ponders the future of race relations, Kendi poses two questions which hint at the antiracist society he envisions (210):
What if instead of a feelings advocacy we had an outcome advocacy that put equitable outcomes before our guilt and anguish? What if we focused our human and fiscal resources on changing power and policy to actually make society, and not just our feelings, better?
Kendi’s lessons and How to be an Antiracist’s instructive and intricate framework can be applied to our community at Skidmore, and can be a guiding force for the Class of 2025 as they begin their four-year journey here. Considering Skidmore’s position as a predominantly white institution (PWI), many of Kendi’s potent arguments have a strong connection to the ways in which we can work to make Skidmore an antiracist community and institution.
Important to keep in mind, Kendi reminds us, is the fact that a “diverse” or “integrated” community often continues to benefit white supremacy at the cost of more resources and safe spaces for Black bodies. “Space antiracism,” as Kendi calls it, refers to “antiracist policies that lead to racial equity between integrated and protected racialized spaces” (166). In our communities, that looks like “eliminating all barriers to all racialized spaces,” “support[ing] the voluntary integration of bodies attracted by cultural difference,” and “[prioritizing] resources rather than bodies” (Kendi 180).
Rather than continue to summarize Kendi’s arguments and suggestions for antiracist spaces, I believe it is more useful to understand how at Skidmore, we can work to find our own solutions that fit our specific community. One present example is the movement on campus for more inclusive spaces for queer, trans, and gender non-conforming (GNC) students and, specifically, students of color. Campus group Black Trans Abolitionists (@blacktransabolitionists on Instagram), and members of the Skidmore community who stand alongside them, are fighting for accessible and gender neutral bathrooms in all buildings on campus, as well as more diversity in the classroom and curricula. Specifically pertinent to Kendi’s work is the demand from Skidmore students that:
There must be additional bathrooms designated as gender-neutral that are not designated accessible bathrooms. In addition, these bathrooms must be labeled as ‘Gender-neutral’ or ‘All Gender’ restrooms. This will ensure that [transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC)] TGNC individuals, individuals with disabilities, and TGNC individuals with disabilities have a convenient and safe space to use the restroom.
This language comes from a script for an email blast created by the Black Trans Abolitionists with the purpose of inviting faculty and staff to join in the fight. The entire script, with more detailed demands from the group, can be found here.
Already this year, students on campus are applying Kendi’s concepts to our own community. Without inclusive and accessible spaces, Skidmore is incapable of either calling itself or working towards being an antiracist institution. The Black Trans Abolitionists have cultivated serious and plausible ideas for how to do this. There are also, as Kendi lays out, numerous other ways to make the spaces and community here actively antiracist and supportive. For those, I do recommend reading How to be an Antiracist. This semester, as we get settled into new classes and a fresh routine, it is imperative that we take Kendi’s lessons and use them to improve our community for all.