Olivia Rembert ‘28
Guest Writer
In a now-deleted TikTok, Black author @A.J. Alford Books said, “I think I figured out why certain readers don’t want to read books by Black authors. [It] can sometimes feel like the equivalent of driving into or through the hood.” Immediately, my For You Page was flooded with videos of Black creators sharing their favorite “hood classics,” jokingly including works like Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. While I agree that the idea of Baldwin and Hurston being considered “hood” is quite absurd, I believe that people focused too much on the provocative language of @A.J. Alford Books’ statement and not her actual argument, which is: non-Black readers often stay away from Black literature because they feel “unsafe” around Black culture. The problem of non-Black people avoiding Black literature is also relevant to the lack of participation of non-Black students in classroom discussions about race.
During my senior year of high school, my AP Literature class, in which I was the only Black student, read Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I recall being the only person to have consistently done the readings and contribute to any discourse, to the point where it felt like my teacher and I were the only two people in the classroom. Unfortunately, I am having a similar experience in one of my classes I’m taking this semester, which focuses heavily on race. The inconsistent participation of non-Black students in classes centered around race is a phenomenon that Beverly Daniel Tatum discusses in her essay “Talking about Race, Learning about Racism: The Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom.” Tatum claims that the discomfort White students experience while learning about racism often makes them withdraw from participating in class, which “is sometimes interpreted by students of color as indifference…fuel[ing] the anger and frustration many students of color experience…”
We cannot expect Black students to continually explain their experiences while simultaneously asking them to make conversations about race comfortable for everyone else. At a Jesuit institution, engaging with Black literature and courses centered on race is part of creating the academic community many of us claim to value. If we are only willing to engage with ideas that make us comfortable, we are not challenging ourselves; we are simply reinforcing what we already know. So the next time a book by a Black author or a conversation about race makes you feel “unsafe,” ask yourself why. Is the discomfort coming from the material itself, or from being confronted with a perspective that exists outside your own? I implore you all not to avoid what @A.J. Alford Books describes as the “hood,” and to ask yourselves how and why you were taught to be afraid of it in the first place.
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