From 'We the People' to We the Elite
By Nyles Pollonais
Prologue for Breonna Taylor:
As I had practiced since the founding of Binary Aeon, I stepped away from social media as a way to open my eyes to the world around me. Though I wasn’t as engaging as I always had been, I kept an eye on the site partly to maintain the ongoing contract I have with Audacity and to check in on friends and family. When things began to unravel in the streets, colleagues and counterparts alike took to their profiles to express sympathy, confusion, anger, and frustration to each other. So many things were said. It was in what was not said that I found my disappointment.
I had too many friends who loved sports that featured Black athletes, sported the latest streetwear obviously influenced by Black culture, and rapped the latest song from any Black artist in the club — carefully enough to never say the N-word in front of me unless I visibly looked intoxicated enough to not put up a quarrel — who were not saying anything about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or BLM for that matter. I had too many friends who touted conservative principles, argued for individualism, and against intense government involvement that this seemed more than just a political thing. I let it slide. When the decision for her murders came, I looked around once again. I saw no black squares, no BLM posts, no outrage, just silence and selfies.
The silence was deafening. Not only were you silent, your girlfriend was silent, your cousins are silent, and even your parents are silent. So I shouted into cyberspace as if the world could hear me. They needed to know that silence couldn’t hide them like it had for so long. I told folks that being silent was being complacent, and that people of all races should pick a side whether for or against human rights. Granted, it wasn’t as well put, but the message still got out. Shortly after that I was contacted by an old friend who said in a long Instagram DM the following morning around 8 AM that the message I posted was about him and that I did not understand the reasons for his silence — he went on to explain it in depth. I responded “Good morning…” and continued to let him know that the explanation for his reasoning is not what the world gets. Only I got it. It is up to him to share his confusion, his disappointment, his frustration with the world, not just me.
See, a lot of folks sit on the sidelines, immigrants and liberal Whites especially. They sit and wait in this token seat, appealing to both sides, until they notice a clear winner and then follow behind them, instead of realizing that they too are in this fight and have been. I am tired of the twisted narratives, the white guilt turned victim, and the willfully ignorant. At this point in time, I don’t even have to tell you what the choices are — you should know. And if you pick the side of the oppressors, by sitting in your silence, know that your inaction is being noticed. What would you have told Ms. Taylor? Don’t sleep?
Standing for something is more than touting it once on Facebook when you live in NYC and go to NYU. Standing for something is planting your feet in the shifty soil as your parents judge you, your friends judge you, your lover judges you, but you continue to stand because you know that it’s only shifty because others are planting their feet as well. I urge you to take off the anti-Black shades your mother put on your eyes before you were old enough to see, and to recognize the situation at hand. I stand for you, Breonna Taylor, and I do believe there should be a recourse in the law for an innocent someone who was injured at the hands of government officials wrongfully, especially when what was done was done in ignorance.
Now, let’s begin...
As my graduate studies in educational policy progress, I begin to take mental note of the statistics from research studies that make up these papers. These statistics — often mentioning the plight or inequality women, low-income earners, and people of color face daily — seem to remind me of where I come from, as if there will never be a change. I read, I note-take, I study, and slowly, as the days go by, I am separated from the statistics I noticed. No longer am I a part of the disadvantaged few who are unable to access resources, face discrimination in school choice, or struggle at the hands of the educational system. I, somehow, was able to transcend the conditions of the many (partly) to reach a place where study of the oppressed (the Others) is possible — if not encouraged.
I made it, and I’ve made a few friends here too. I see myself, like many others here who have come from backgrounds of strife, begin to join a class of elite and privileged individuals in spaces that look nothing like where we came from. To forget your history is something the old people warn us never to do, and I try. But, as I sit in this apartment reading my stats for class, I slowly begin to disconnect from the actual life behind the statistics. I join a new statistic of my own, if you will: 4% of the students enrolled at the University of Michigan are Black. With all this mentioned, I wonder if it’s possible to maintain your connections, to not alienate these communities/people/spaces by reading without context, and to refuse assimilation into the elite spheres.
I was talking with my therapist about this before I left Georgia to move to Michigan. I brought up feelings of guilt and pressure around this idea of returning to school. I felt guilty because I was leaving my friends and felt pressured to stay, but I couldn’t.
See, I’ve had an amazing gift that might have been within me all my life. I can fly. Not literally, obviously, but I have always had this ability to go when I want and do what I want: flight. This gift evolved in 2013 when I won the Gates Millennium Scholarship and since then, I’ve only taken off my wings to rest. This year, I had the opportunity — in the midst of one of the worst socio-economic crises the country has seen — to fly once again. And I felt guilty. I knew what I was coming into. I was walking into security. I’d have a safety net, money, a community of academics, healthcare, amongst a list of privileges that those in academia acquire. These things were almost inconceivable to me a few short months ago and are still inconceivable to those who have never seen it. My guilt came from sadness. Once again, I’d be blessed and once again, the people I left behind would be in the same place with the only change being me leaving again.
I get to Ann Arbor and it’s a new ballgame. Black Lives Matter signs and posters litter the walls and windows of the homes and apartment complexes in this city. Marijuana is decriminalized for recreational use. White people apologize to you when your order is not going to arrive as fast as they thought it should have and then deny any tip because of it. This all happened to me just the first night of my move-in. So you could see how it would be a shock to me to find out that this school and the city that it runs caters its immense resources to a student population partly composed of only 4% Black students. I didn’t let it bother me, but the thought stuck with me. As classes began, I noticed the 4%. There are 3 black men in my Tuesday 1pm - 4pm Educational Reform course, and I am one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I see Black folks around here, but they’re working in the building. They’re at the park playing chess. They’re on the streets not in the school. There’s a disconnect.
One of my professors is a Black woman from California who is running my Educational Policy course. She’s awesome. She’s got kids and she’s very in tune with the larger neo-liberal agenda affecting school policy today. Needless to say I’m learning a lot — and this is true of all of my classes— but this is where my critique begins.
I find that as we begin to delve into these public policy topics, read these research articles, and watch the breaking news stories relevant to our subject, a process of desensitization begins to take place where you no longer recognize the human aspect of what you’re reading. You read to digest and to answer questions, but no longer to understand. Eventually, if you stay here — in academic isolation — long enough you can develop a savior complex. This complex is fueled by the knowledge, numbers, and tutoring you received to help you grasp the concepts needed to pass your course, but is hindered by its lack of human empathy or connection. In essence, studying about underprivileged peoples and areas does almost nothing to help them if that attainment of knowledge does not include an individual perspective of the people you hope to serve.
I bring this up because as a 21st century Black man who hopes to progress the ideals of the ongoing civil rights movement, I believe it’s important to check yourself. I noticed myself living in this beautiful academic bubble and wondered if I was being changed by it, as I know my presence was changing it. And before, I was. My experiences at New York University gave me this savior complex that desensitized me from my own conditions. It was only after graduating and hitting rock bottom that I realized — not only did the knowledge I gained fail to really help me or my family, but that the conditions I stood so strongly to address had not changed one bit.
College is important, that is not the point. It is the savior complex these spaces often encourage and the desensitization that can be left behind. This time, I don’t want to stray too far. I want to make sure that as we have these discussions, as we meet with our peers, that we remember the people behind the texts, the lives behind the statistics, the people and their pressures. It’s easy to read that “Black and Latino students make up 70% of the NYC student population, yet make up only 10% of the offers from the only 8 specialized high schools in the city” (PBS) but it’s harder to get a sense of what the correct answer is to address this issue without knowing the communities, first.
There is a community here in Ann Arbor, small, but powerful, that fights for the few. Last week, the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) ended their two week long strike against the University of Michigan for not taking the proper precautions against COVID-19 or working to dismantle systemic racism on campus. The resulting agreement was bitter because the University decided to sue the students — after the RA’s and Theater Kids joined in the movement. The fight was not felt evenly across the University — some students went without instruction while others only heard whispers of the strike. Though the organization did not succeed in achieving all their demands, they did amazingly well in showing to new students and faculty without community that there is one here. Where the GEO at UM succeeded in this strike was in bringing the importance of Black Life to the movement. In doing so, they made their efforts, persona, and mission larger. So maybe change is possible and it has already begun.
As I embark on this journey into academia again, I hope that this time I will not become desensitized to the lives of those around me, my friends, my family, and my hood. This time I can’t. It’s not possible in this climate. So, I hope that I can help others studying here to also relinquish their savior complexes and not to become desensitized to the data they digest because there is so much more to data than just the numbers. We the people cannot become we the elite. We cannot afford during this time to see ourselves as separate to the struggles we study, because we are of them. I encourage you to do this in your work as well. See yourself as a part of your study, not apart from it. I will do my best to keep you all updated as I continue my journey here at U Mich. Stand softly.
