Dear Chuck,
Remember that email you sent me about my column on the erasure of Black women at UNC?
I almost forgot about it. Your email was — to borrow from your misspelled vernacular — “choked full” of white tears and wasn’t high on my list of priorities.
You claim you and the rest of the Board of Trustees listen to Black women at UNC. This claim is, as you put it, “manufactured for effect.” Had you listened to Black women at UNC, you would not have placed a 16-year moratorium on the renaming of campus buildings. Had you listened to Black women, you would have supported Hurston Hall; instead, you whitewashed Saunders to Carolina Hall. Had you listened to Black women, you would have considered how women of color are silenced and attacked before sending me that email.
Don’t come at me with white supremacy under the guise of “educating” me on what Zora Neale Hurston’s work was about and what the intentions of this institution are. Thanks to the organizing and labor of Black women in the Real Silent Sam Coalition, I have been educated on Hurston, and thanks to the board’s track record of condoning institutionalized racism, I have plenty of receipts of the intentions of this institution.
You say Hurston was “48 years old and not a student.” Hurston was never enrolled as a student here because she couldn’t be. She was barred because she was a Black woman. You write, “Did you know that she was also against desegregation? ... that is one of the main reasons her career cratered in late life.” Hurston criticized desegregation because she knew it would mean assimilating into a proverbial burning house.
You pretend Hurston’s legacy does not have a profound impact on Black women and women of color. You act as though Hurston should be erased. Are we to disown her now that you remind us that she did not advocate for the further subjection of her people through the pretense of desegregation? Hurston’s career did not decline because she criticized desegregation, Chuck. Her career “declined” because she spoke truth to power, and people just like you were uncomfortable. People like you silenced her then, and you attempt to silence her now. I am here to let you know that Hurston, Black women and women of color will not be silenced.
History repeats itself in your email; speaking truth to you results in your discomfort, and you project the goals of this institution onto me. You tell me, “I think your column actually might drive away black women from our campus because it misrepresents what Carolina really is doing. Is that your intention?” But this question is better directed at the board.
You and your white male discomfort feel the need to extinguish the lives and legacies of Hurston, Black women and women of color. I am not misrepresenting what this institution and the board are doing, Chuck. I am exposing it. Your ahistorical amnesia is embarrassing and petty at best, and violent at worst. Now do your homework, Chuck.
