{"id":8997,"date":"2015-11-13T09:04:37","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T17:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/black-students-complain-of-casual-racism\/"},"modified":"2015-11-13T09:04:37","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T17:04:37","slug":"black-students-complain-of-casual-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/black-students-complain-of-casual-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Black students complain of casual racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON \u2014<\/strong> It\u2019s not always the slurs and the other out-and-out acts of racism. It\u2019s the casual, everyday slights and insensitivities.<\/p>\n

Sheryce Holloway is tired of white people at Virginia Commonwealth University asking if they can touch her hair or if she knows the latest dance move. At Chicago\u2019s Loyola University, Dominick Hall says groups of white guys stop talking when he walks by, and people grip their bags a little tighter. And Katiana Roc says a white student a few seats away from her at West Virginia University got up and moved to the other side of the classroom.<\/p>\n

As thousands of students took part in walkouts and rallies on college campuses across the country Thursday in a show of solidarity with protesters at the University of Missouri, many young black people spoke of a subtle and pervasive brand of racism that doesn\u2019t make headlines but can nevertheless have a corrosive effect.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even a word on campuses for that kind of low-grade insensitivity toward minorities: microaggression.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more the daily microaggressions than the large situations,\u201d said Akosua Opokua-Achampong, a sophomore at Boston College. \u201cThose also hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Opokua-Achampong tells other students that she\u2019s from New Jersey, some ask where she\u2019s REALLY from. \u201cWhen you\u2019re not white, you can\u2019t just be American,\u201d she said. (She was born in the U.S. to parents from Ghana.)<\/p>\n

Janay Williams, a senior at the University of California Los Angeles, said she is the only black person in her biology class and is routinely among the last picked for group assignments.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents don\u2019t want to be in the same group as you with a group project, because they\u2019re afraid you\u2019re not going to do your share,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Jioni A. Lewis, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, said research has shown that the stresses of being a minority, on top of the usual pressures of adjusting to college, can cause some students to leave school.<\/p>\n

Roc, a junior at West Virginia, said she can\u2019t forget the day that student moved across the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looked uncomfortable. I\u2019m pretty sure he moved because of the color of my skin. It didn\u2019t hurt my feelings,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat disappointed me was his ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that just being on campus can be a day-to-day struggle.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut instead of me saying that I\u2019ll transfer where I feel more comfortable, I\u2019d rather stick it out here,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not here for how people look at me; I\u2019m here for my education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stories like that aren\u2019t new, students said. But many said the revolt at Missouri \u2014 and the Black Lives Matter movement that was set in motion by the shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri \u2014 have finally driven them to talk about it and confront it.<\/p>\n

On social media, students are sharing their personal experiences with racism, using the hashtag \u201cBlackOnCampus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students at some colleges have also presented administrators with lists of demands in recent days, inspired by those of the protesters at Missouri, who brought down the university president and chancellor this week over what they saw as a sluggish response to racial slurs and other incidents on campus.<\/p>\n

Among other things, the student protesters are calling for greater diversity on the faculty, more spending on scholarships for minorities, more instruction on tolerance and sensitivity, and more resources such as cultural centers.<\/p>\n

University administrators have responded by hosting diversity forums in recent days, or meeting to hear demands.<\/p>\n

Students at some schools, such as the University of Michigan, said the Missouri case has emboldened them to take a harder stance against administrators if they don\u2019t keep their promises.<\/p>\n

Holloway, the Virginia Commonwealth student, said she used to try to ignore subtler instances of racism. But she has decided not to keep quiet anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard when it\u2019s something you see every day,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s exhausting. It\u2019s fatiguing and, you know, we\u2019re frustrated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOSTON \u2014 It\u2019s not always the slurs and the other out-and-out acts of racism. It\u2019s the casual, everyday slights and insensitivities. Sheryce Holloway is tired of white people at Virginia Commonwealth University asking if they can touch her hair or if she knows the latest dance move. At Chicago\u2019s Loyola University, Dominick Hall says groups […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":8998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8997"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}