Prometheus 6

when i spoke to the aforementioned young man on the phone, he told me he was not scared he's been attacked by drunk white men muttering the n-word on late trains coursing through brooklyn, where he lives. where i am from as well. he told me that these sorts of encounters are why he did not want to go to school in the South.

welcome to New England.

race and violence: freshmen of color at yale

i have someone here at yale this year who i love very much. we have known each other a long time and he is a brilliant, forward thinking, conscious young black man. he is a freshman from brooklyn, new york with sensibilities he has gained from navigating all sorts of worlds - prestigious boys' school for the New York City elite, elementary school in clinton hill in the nineties, all sorts of neighborhoods in brooklyn and queens and the bronx, now yale's campus and new haven.

in the two months he has been at yale he has had white men threaten him multiple times with violence, with power, with their own acute and oppressive sense of entitlement. during his first days here he went to a party at one of the greek houses on campus with a large group of other freshmen. he alone was singled out of the line for entrance. he was not simply asked to show ID before being allowed in, which is standard procedure for racists about town who are scared of mixing company with the black and latino new haven residents who have been here long before they were accepted to yale. this young man was instead frisked by another student - a young white man who had the audacity to put his hands on another human being, without any authority vested in him by law, institution, or consent. he acted only with the authority he perceived bestowed upon him somehow by his whiteness.

the humiliation of being frisked in front of the other freshmen, othered in his construction as black, as latino, as a danger. of course, this white student who did the frisking would not have known what to do should he have even found a weapon. he did not really expect my friend to have a weapon. the frisk was merely an exercise of control: a performance of power. "This is my space, I can put my hands on you because I am white, because you are black, and because I decide whether or not you can stay here --- for now and of course, on my terms."