Black Bodies, White Classrooms

As a white, cisgendered, heterosexual male, I often find myself pondering my role in analyzing and studying the Black Body in anthropology. At a recent talk and film screening, Martine Syms described the social media video platform Vine as a sort of “video vernacular,” the camera in her “My Vine Comp” collection giving the viewer six second glimpses into the lives of Black persons in the United States. I found myself examining my own interest in Vine as a sort of cultural expression, and the consumption by many white teenagers of what is described as “Black Vine”. Syms also discussed what she believed was mainstreaming of Afrofuturism through the contemporary art crowd and growing white interest. As she discussed these points and the collection of films she chose to curate for the showing, I realized that the majority of the audience at this talk on Black experience and film, was white. Suddenly I was reminded of my own department, and the interest that many of my fellow white Anthropology students had in Professor Mariner’s “The Black Body” course. Through Syms’ film collection and my own experiences as a white student often studying people of color, I began to ask myself: What is so attractive to white students about the other?

While I believe that it is important and necessary to study the experiences and lives of Black persons and the construction of the Black Body, I also feel that it is equally important to recognize the history of race in Anthropology, and the “othering” that I think can come from looking at race from an academic lens as a white person. When engaging with weekly readings, I often find myself studying the effects of racism and colonization of the Black Body, with no frame of reference with respect to personal experience. It is easy for me to gain salient points from the readings without understanding the lasting impact that the subjugation of the Black Body has on those with actual Black Bodies. As a white American undergraduate, I am constantly studying societies, cultures, peoples, and bodies that do not intersect with my identity, and so I fear that when analyzing the Black Body through an academic lens which does not take into account the real emotional and physical pain of Black suffering, I trivialize the experience of those with Black Bodies.

So how should the white student approach the study of the Black Body?

First and foremost, I believe it is critical for the white student to ground their study of oppressed groups in the experiences and writings of those who have been oppressed. Blacks scholarship must be respected, such as the work of Angela Davis--a Black woman who has been to prison--on prison reform. At a recent event “An Evening of Empowerment with Angela Davis,” Davis spent most of her keynote address reflecting on a new political party that would be dedicated to the advancement of Blacks and Latinos, women, the disabled, and the working classes, and provided an education of American history through the Black Body. Here I received an analysis of how to advance the Black Body through a Black scholar, one that informs my analysis the body in future anthropological work.

Second, white students must be willing to listen to the experiences of Black students. We ought to give academic space to students to analyze and comment on scholarship of their own bodies, in order to combat the often “othering” experience of anthropology.

Finally, as white students of Anthropology, we must address our privilege and our history. We must be willing to use our education to educate other white persons and support students of color. I believe that Anthropology is a powerful tool of antiracism and progressivism, and as white people, we must address our positionality within Anthropology in order to be effective and inclusive activists.