Background:
This is a project that I worked on over a period of 3 weeks during a Digital History class at Colorado College.
Research Question:
What has a sense of place for blackness meant on the CC campus and what was the role of the Black Student Union in creating such a place?
Historical context/ Scope
Methodology:
I chose to document “blackness” from the collective identity point of view because of difficulty in finding documentation on individual students. And this in no way disregards the existence of diverse, dynamic differences among black people.
Secondly, the process that I followed included visiting Special Collections on campus and looking through their folder labeled “Colorado College Archives Box 571 Student – African-American” with the intention of gaining context on what form blackness has taken on this campus, aside from the presence of black bodies.
After some searching, I decided on a scope and have selected articles from the Catalyst, written correspondence by the BSU as well as an oral account by a then active BSU member Menelek Lumumba ’02.
It would also be useful to check out the Untold Stories project which was started before this project that I undertook but also does the same way of looking at the identities that make CC the place that it is today.
Frameworks:
The frameworks that this work stems from are: Collective Identity & Blackness Theory
Collective Identity, as defined by John U Ogbu is “people’s sense of who they are, their ‘‘we-feeling’’ or ‘‘belonging.’’ People express their collective identity with emblems or cultural symbols which reflect their attitudes, beliefs, feelings, behaviors, and language or dialect.” Furthermore, it “usually develops because of people’s collective experience or series of collective experiences. Warfare, conquest, colonization, forced labor, mass emigration, imposition of an outcast status and enslavement”[1]
Blackness Theory as defined and discussed by Cross and Strauss is essentially “five everyday functional expressions or negotiations of blackness: (1) bonding, (2) bridging, (3) buffering, (4) code switching, and (5) individualism. Bonding highlights how blacks uniquely connect with or socialize with one another. Bonding is essential in the development and maintenance of a positive black identity and acts to, “facilitate and privilege Black experiences, giving the person a sense of belonging and connectivity to other Black people” (Cross et al., 2002, p. 98). Bonding may take place on an individual as well as collective or organizational level. Bridging is described as the formation of intimate relationships between blacks and non-blacks (i.e., Whites). Such friendships or relationships are predicated on “an intimate sense of each other’s ‘otherness” ’ (Cross et al., 2002, p. 98)”[2].
Why all of this matters
Because History informs the present and in light of CC’s recent anti-racism efforts, I think it is important to look back into the sense of place for blackness on the campus. This is in efforts to better understand the foundations that have been laid by the past as well as to better understand the role of black students on the campus.
The Author
Palesa Mokoena is a senior computer science major ’19 who hails from Soweto, South Africa. Being a black student herself and having witnessed anti-racism efforts by the school to correct past mistakes, she thought it would be insightful and helpful to pursue this project with the hopes that it can be continued by yet another interested student.
[1]Ogbu, John U. “Collective Identity and the Burden of ‘‘Acting White’’ in Black History, Community, and Education”. The Urban Review Vol.36 (2004):3
[2] Arafat, Yasser, Cuddler, Carl. “Cope, Conform or Resist? Functions of a Black American Identity at a Predominantly White University”. Equity and Excellence in Education. Vol. 47(3):385-391
