CCNY to participate in #ScholarStrike this week in solidarity with Black Lives Matter
Words by Andrew James
Graphic by Aspasia Celia Tsampas
After a summer of protests and tension, the Black Lives Matter movement continues to gain momentum as we move into fall. With new incidents of racial injustice after the shooting of unarmed Jacob Blake by a police officer, Professor Anthea Butler of the University of Pennsylvania started a Twitter thread proposing a 48-hour strike for professors starting this Tuesday, September 8th, and continuing into Wednesday, September 9th. The trend caught on nationwide with the hashtag #ScholarStrike and within a few hours of the thread's publication, over 600 educators had committed to join.
For professors at The City University of New York (CUNY), the incentive is to eschew their regular curriculum to open a conversation about systemic racism in America. Professor Vanessa Valdes, head of the Black Studies Program at The City College of New York (CCNY), assembled many professors from her department for this cause, she said, “All of us, we are envisioning and working toward a present and a future in which laws are changed and these massacres are prosecuted.”
Valdes expressed rage that people of color were considered to be “disposable” and that their murders and the disparity of opportunities have been normalized by society. “...it must stop. We must stop it”
And it starts in the classroom.
In an email distributed to the CCNY community over the summer, President Boudreau expressed his desire to transform CCNY into an area where these issues can be addressed and where the oppressed can have a voice, “Our teaching must, wherever possible, unmask the racialist myths that divide us and confront the racist attacks that enforce that division”, he wrote.
Valdes agreed, “To a larger extent, we are working toward a society where health disparities, disparities in educational achievement, in income, in housing, are all eliminated. It also shows that we as workers in a university, we are not separate from this larger conversation - education too has historically been a site of the perpetuation of white supremacy, and we must make those changes within this structure.”
As a Black Nuyorican from New York, Valdes is no stranger to racism, “My intellect has been questioned based on that simple profile; I have been rejected, sexualized, and exoticized based on my identity.” Instead of being deterred, her experiences motivated her to push forward. With the #ScholarsStrike she feels like she can build confidence in her students to confront the world ahead, proving their not alone in their racial journey.
In the last year since becoming director, Valdes has aimed to expand the Black Studies program with groups like “Beyond Identity,” a gendered platform for scholared activists, the Racial Justice Fellows program, geared toward equity and sustainability, and providing more opportunities on campus with tutors.
Valdes, however, doesn’t believe that these perspectives can convert those who don’t understand the movement but would like to cater to those who would listen, she states, “If I bring light to one episode, or influence how one person thinks on a given topic, I have succeeded.”
When asked what her “ideal America” was, Valdez discussed breaking the barriers that divide citizens, “The leadership of every single organization across industries has representation at least directly proportional to the demographics of our population, and profit margins no longer have anything to do with our qualities of life - with our educational achievement, our health care, our housing. We care for each other as the human beings that we are, all of us”
