TUFTS OBSERVER VOL. CXXXV ISSUE 6
race, class, and the lasting legacies of redlining - pg. 2 reimagining the asian american center - pg. 18 retaining my own language - pg. 24
1 - Letter from the Editor by Ben Kesslen 2 - Color-Coded by Carissa Fleury 6 - Retracing Lost Paths by Caila Bowen 8 - Mapping Out Histories by Alexandra Benjamin & Justin Krakoff 10 - Dispel the Southern Belle by Sonya Bhatia 12 - Untitled by Morgan Freeman 13 - Photo Inset 17 - Art by Annie Roome
18 - Breaking Down Doors, Building Community by Vivian Tam 20 - Untitled by Anonymous 22 - Just as Far as Home by Eman Naseer 24 - Retaining My Own Language by Juliana Vega 25 - Reclaiming My Lost Language by Kelsey Narvaez 26 - Histories Unseen by Jonathan Innocent 28 - Beyond Us by Britt
PHOTO BY JUDY CHEN COVER: PHOTO BY JUDY CHEN / ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMMETT PINSKY
FEATURE
Letter from the editor By Ben Kesslen
When a certain man who shall not be named—I’m not trying to get into a legal battle—threatened to sue the Tufts Daily, many of us, myself included, thought: Oh my god, it’s just a student newspaper, this is ridiculous. And the lawsuit is ridiculous—it’s ungrounded and will not stand trial. But there is something in my initial reaction that I want to challenge (completely unrelated to a Former White House Communications Director.) When we say it is “just student journalism” we are delegitimizing the very real and hard work that goes into everything student journalists do. I am immensely proud of the work we produced this semester, work that I think is no less legitimate, nuanced, and detailed than “professional” journalism. This semester I’ve seen our team produce amazingly thoughtful and critical work—stuff that doesn’t deserve to be prefaced with a “just.” I say this not to toot my own horn, but rather to thank the Observer team, who spent way too many hours in MAB Lab (and now the “re-envisioned” Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room—RIP Brown & Brew), who worked tirelessly to be thorough and intentional, and taught me lessons about everything from grammar to Britney Spears’ career. Thank you for trusting the managing board, and thank you for your time, your reporting, your designs, your art, your videos, your podcasts, and your words. I am, as the kids say these days, extremely emo that it is my last issue as Editor-in-Chief.
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December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 1
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color-coded By Carissa Fleury
2 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
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Somerville, 1935: Infiltration of negro. Detrimental influences: obsolescence, low-class occupants, congested area. Foreign born concentrated at western end and negro in central part. Section south of the railroad is a slum area with negro concentrated near the west side. Trend of desirability over the next 10 years: down. Overall area: hazardous.
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t is 1935. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) is one of the most important agencies built by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Each year, between 1935 and 1940, HOLC releases governmental reports of neighborhood area descriptions and “security maps.” The color that HOLC classifies the neighborhood you are trying to live in—green for best, blue for desirable, yellow for declining, and red for hazardous—determines whether you will be given a loan and allowed to purchase a home. Black folks, poor folks, and foreign-born (generally, any non-European) immigrants are seen as infiltrations that bring property values down, and turn neighborhoods into hazardous and dangerous slums. It is 2017. The same neighborhood of Somerville, MA, specifically the area surrounding Davis Square that was described above, is filled with artisanal oatmeal stores, overpriced second-hand clothing boutiques, and expensive coffee shops that underpay their workers. Walk through the streets and you will generally only see young, White college students and nuclear families with blond hair spending $10 for a carton of strawberries at Dave’s Fresh Pasta. What happened, and how did this change so rapidly? Robert Nelson hopes to better understand this phenomenon through his work as the creator of Mapping Inequality. His project takes 150 maps and over 5000 individual area descriptions—previously
accessible only in person at the archives— and integrates them into one interactive map. It allows users to search for cities across the US, and selecting a city reveals the old map images, including the color labels and quotes pulled from the HOLC “security map” documents. Nelson summarizs the impact of the maps, stating “HOLC, these maps, and their accompanying documentation have been named as some of the most important factors in preserving racial segregation, intergenerational poverty, and the continued wealth gap between White Americans and most other groups in the US.” He continues, “many of these [housing] agencies operated under…widespread assumptions about the profitability of racial segregation. Through HOLC, in particular, real estate appraisers used the apparent racial value of a community to determine its economic value.” Redlining, the phenomenon that Nelson is describing, not only formally legalized housing discrimination—against primarily Black folks—but also lay the foundation for the continuation of segregated cities and neighborhoods based on race and class. The “red” neighbor-
hoods, deemed as hazardous and unfit for investment, were then left in disrepair. Any attempts to economically revitalize the neighborhoods by bringing in small business operations were blocked and unable to rent the space or take out a bank loan because it was considered a high-risk venture. With no new revenue or business coming in, when existing ones shut down, whole areas of “red” neighborhoods were left decimated. As a result, whole communities of Black and Brown folks were unable to gain equal, or any, access to banking, proper health care, insurance, or groceries. And the cycle of intergenerational poverty continues. Often when we read or learn about redlining, the research is focused on large cities like Birmingham or Detroit. Because of this, we forget that it occurred where we live and work today with continued legacies. As Cohen says, “in red neighborhoods, you couldn’t get a loan. Nobody could get a loan from the government. You could only get one from a private contractor. The difference is if you missed a payment, the government would give you a break. The private guys wouldn’t.” This led to cycles of Black and
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Brown people being stuck, unable to move out of their underfunded neighborhoods or move into new communities. Cohen continues, “If you are Black or foreign born, you have to get one of those private contracts, and then if you miss a payment, you’re gone. That’s just what the company wanted…so they could sell the same house four times in a year at increasing prices each time— because you have no choice about where you’re going.” James Jennings, Professor Emeritus in the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning department, says segregation has been one result of redlining in the Somerville, Medford, and Cambridge areas, and “there is still extensive segregation as a result of earlier redlining. Redlining also impacted how Black people and other people of color could accumulate wealth based on housing equity […] as well as impacting the quality of public schooling throughout the city.” Cohen explains that the demographics of Somerville at the time, which was largely working class and redlined, led to the Somerville school system to be underfunded and unsupported because the students and their families didn’t come from wealth. “There existed less pressure on the schools to produce students who were going to be going to competitive colleges,” Cohen says. This produced generations of young people who remained impoverished because they were not given the same opportunities in school as their peers who lived in blue or green neighborhoods. Cohen explains the real irony is “that the prices in these red areas could be higher than the prices in the green areas. Because you had no choice but to live in the red. And those who lived in blue or green areas could go wherever they wanted, and pay whatever they wanted.” Jennings highlights that redlining and gentrification have built off each other: “Redlining confined people of color to certain urban spaces, while gentrification serves to remove working-class and low-income populations from these same places.” This pushed communities of color into a rut, as they are being forced to once again leave their homes which they were unfairly confined to in 4 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
the first place. Gentrification follows a specific pattern, typically “an influx of wealthy newcomers without any root in a certain community in a context of rapidly increasing rents and less availability of affordable houses for residents.” What follows is economic development of the area attracting more wealthy newcomers who are able to afford the rent increases that come with this “revitalization.” Some of Jennings’ work centers around dispelling the myth of “gentrification as urban salvation…an idea that is ahistorical and inaccurate.” He continues, “there is a presumption in this idea that Black people, Latinos, Asians, workingclass people have ‘occupied’ urban space without any efforts or struggles to improve their communities. This is then used to justify gentrification as beautiful [when] in fact it represents a dismissal of history, and the role and impact of wealth.” Danny LeBlanc, the CEO of Somerville Community Corporation, a nonprofit “dedicated to empowering residents to sustain a diverse and affordable Somerville,” underlines just how much
Somerville has changed in recent years as a result of gentrification. “I moved here 41 years ago…I can tell you for sure that you can’t even imagine how different it was. There was a deep economic recession in the late 1980s and 1990s, but beginning around the mid-1990s, the cost of housing in Somerville has just gone steadily upward. So one of the big results of that is we’ve seen a dramatic increase in young people, 19-34 year olds living here.” Somerville has more than double the state average of people in the age range of 1934. What could come across as a minor statistic has large consequences: groups of three to four young folks can afford more in rent than a family can; landlords know this and often will choose to rent an apartment to a group of young people over a family. Even more, purchasing property has become unreachable for anyone besides the wealthy. Speaking to his own experience, Cohen said, “My street in Cambridgeport, when we moved there…most of the people living on that street were related to someone living on the street. They
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were teachers—and still are teachers. But that is changing rapidly. My house, that I bought for $200,000 would cost $1,000,000 if I sell it. I mean, who can afford that? None of us could buy our house now.” The gentrification will not stop—instead, as LeBlanc expresses, it will increasingly get worse until only the wealthiest can afford to live here in these same areas that once were seen as “uninhabitable” by redlining policies. “The past six to eight years, we’ve seen major new development
at a scale that Somerville hasn’t seen in decades really,” stressed LeBlanc. Things like the development of Assembly Square— which previously included only a small strip mall and is now filled with “luxury” apartments, shops and restaurants—and the upcoming Green Line extension will continue changing these communities. However, along with patterns of displacement come patterns of resistance. “Community organizing is one of the only things we can do,” emphasizes LeBlanc. In
“these maps and their accompanying documentation have been named as some of the most important factors in preserving racial segregation, intergenerational poverty, and the continued wealth gap between White Americans and most other groups in the U.S.”
IMAGES COURTESY OF UNITED STATES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
anticipation of how the Green Line extension would continue to gentrify the Union Square area of Somerville, community members created “Union United” in 2014 as an effort to ensure the development results in “tangible benefits, not displacement for the Union Square community.” Union United has created a Neighborhood Council that aims to influence the redevelopment, ensuring access to affordable housing and having the voice of the community present in how the space will develop. More recently, Somerville Community Corporation passed a bill to increase inclusionary housing in Somerville—guaranteeing that if a developer is, for example, going to build a 500-unit development, at least 100 of those have to—by law—be affordable. Legacies of segregation, redlining, and racist housing policies haunt the ways that communities exist today. Research shows that Black families making $100,000 live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by White families making $30,000. This is a direct result of HOLC’s policies in the present, and one that is exasperated by the continued gentrification of Black spaces. LeBlanc stresses that even against a seemingly immovable force, communities have to keep fighting. “We can’t stop this. It’s an uphill struggle, but we can win small battles. Community organizing is the key.”
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do not know Gerald Gill, but I do know his legacy. Whether it be the fellowship housed under the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD) or the back room of the Africana Center which he serves as namesake, his legacy lingers all over campus—hidden in plain sight. Each year I have found myself discovering parts of this legacy, piece by piece. And within a few months of starting at Tufts, I uncovered one of the largest: The Tufts African American Freedom Trail. The trail was one of Gill’s brainchildren that was never quite nurtured to maturity. Inspired by his own class expeditions into the city, the Tufts African American Freedom Trail was an attempt to weave a similar thread of connection on campus through a purposeful marking of historical Black sites. This all changed in 2015 when the CSRD, under the tutelage of Professor Kendra Field in collaboration with the Africana Center and a few professors at Tufts, decided to uncover and present the trail in the light of which Gill once dreamt. This initial project featured a walking tour with about seven key sites. Anjalique Knight, a student introduced to the trail as a first-year, said, “It was an important project to highlight that Black people have always existed at Tufts and not only that, but we do work that positively impacts this community.” As it stands now, the tour has expanded to include eleven official on-campus sites with the goal of expansion ever on the horizon. First, on what we now know as College Avenue lies the Stearns Estate. George Luther Stearns, a Medford resident, grew up surrounded by a small but nonetheless significant community of Black neighbors. Retellings of Stearns’ life will tell you of his entrance into the workforce at a young age and his involvement with many anti-slavery causes which ranged from being an avid supporter of John Brown to a recruiter of African American soldiers for the Union army. Although he holds many accomplishments under his belt, he and his namesake estate solidified their spot on this trail because of Stearns’ commitment to helping fugitive slaves. Aided by a network of African Americans expanding from Medford all the way to Beacon Hill, Stearns was able to assist many enslaved persons on their journey to freedom. The estate is the oldest of the on-campus sites, garnering much of its historical significance in the mid-19th century. Next in line would be Carpenter House, known to many Tufts students as a simple residence hall. Students of African descent, especially those who inhabited campus from the years of 1969 to 1977, know that Carpenter House is much more than that. Invigorated by the national Black Studies movement, the growing Black population of Tufts began to
demand more from its institution. Through a series of meetings with administration starting in 1969, students were able to win a space in which they were able to “provide facilities to augment research opportunities in Afro-American history and culture.” The Afro-American Cultural Center of Carpenter House served not only as a residence hall for Black students, but also as a hub for sociocultural events and resting place for available resources and support networks. A year after co-sponsoring the National Black Solidarity Conference in 1976, the Center experienced two major changes: first a change in name and then a change in location. Although the Afro-American Cultural Center of Carpenter House became the African American Center of Capen House, the commitment to creating an environment of education, celebration, and comfort for Black students did not cease. As proof of this commitment, the name was changed again in 2001 to the Africana Center—proof of the diversity of the ever-growing Black community at Tufts. Iconic cornerstones of the Center, such as the first-year retreat and the peer leader program, allow the traditions of the original Center to thrive in modernity. Right outside of the Africana Center sits a bench, and much like the other objects of the trail, it contains much more than what the naked eye may reveal. In bronze and gold, a dedication to Lena Bruce, the only Black woman in the Tufts engineering class of 1992, rests on the face of the cool stone bench. While at Tufts, Bruce kept herself busy by volunteering at homeless shelters, working on demanding electrical engineering assignments, and tutoring kids at local high schools. For all intents and purposes, Bruce had already made the first steps in securing her goal of “making it out” by graduating from Tufts with honors and securing a job. Bruce was only able to enjoy these hardearned spoils for a few months before her life was taken in the summer of 1992. A sister bench of similar style sits across from the Olin Center. The plaque on the front of this bench is dedicated to Anita Griffey, another outstanding member of the Tufts community. With hopes of graduating in 1989 with a degree in Political Science, Griffey passed in a fatal car crash about a month before her graduation in May. Both Bruce and Griffey were members of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a
Retracing lost paths: The tufts african american freedom trail 6 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
By Caila Bowen
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historically Black Greek letter organization founded in 1913. These benches exude a similar reverence for Black students Gill wanted to create with the planting of the Memorial Tree in 2001. Unlike the benches, the Memorial Tree was not in memory to anyone specific, but rather a gift to Black students who have been integral members of the Tufts community as early as the late 19th century. Anéya Sousa, who participated in a special trail tour over the summer, remembers being especially interested in the Tree. “People sit over here all the time,” she remarked “and inhabit this campus without thinking about where the labor really came from to make it possible.” A plaque which names a few of the remarkable faces that have graced the University’s campus exists nearby in Goddard chapel. It is no surprise that Edward Dugger of the historic Dugger family of West Medford is one of the names on said plaque. Dugger’s time at Tufts seems unreal, almost as if it were taken from the script of some Hollywood movie. A member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity (the first international fraternal organization, founded
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at Howard University), class secretary, Vice President of the Athletic Association, and varsity athlete with 24 track and field records under his belt, Dugger was busy, to say the least. By his graduating year in 1941, he had done more than enough to set himself apart. Despite this fact, Tufts had allowed his plaque of dedication to grow hidden under sprouting ivy. On April 22, 2016, the plaque was revealed in a re-dedication ceremony, and his place in the physical landscape of Tufts was reborn. Toluwa Akinyemi, a sophomore at the time, hoped her presence at the ceremony would “support the continuation of his legacy.” A few well-paced steps away is the Planar Mountain Sculpture. When it moved from its original home near Carmichael Hall to the Remis Sculpture court, it was dedicated to T.J. Anderson, an African American Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emeritus. The remaining campus sites are rounded out by two buildings on Tufts’ lower campus, colloquially known as downhill. The significance of our first building, Lewis Hall, dates back to 1969, the year of its construction. That year, the building, then
known as Jackson Hall dormitory, had a problem: all of the on-site construction workers were White. Casual questioning and curiosity led to the introduction of two or three workers of color being placed on the site. However, neither the University nor the work unions responsible for hiring seemed to be interested in increasing these numbers anytime soon. In response, Black students at Tufts came together in a series of protests, which culminated in a demonstration on the construction site. In response to students’ dissatisfaction, the Tufts administration called both Medford and Somerville police officers to the site. Tensions between students, the University, and the contracted company did not subside until 1970, when student pressure led to a lawsuit being filed against the construction company. Eventually, an agreement was reached, and Black workers were introduced to the Jackson site as well as the future construction sites. Rewind to 1956, when Bernard Harleston enters Tufts University as a member of the Psychology Department. Dr. Harleston, the first African American hired on a tenure track at Tufts, dedicated 25 years of service as a professor at the University. Unlike a plethora of remarkable Black people who have inhabited the campus in a variety of roles, Harleston was thoroughly recognized for his work: he received an honorary degree in 1998, a position on the Board of Trustees in 2002, and finally, in 2016, a ceremony which celebrated the renaming of South Hall to Harleston Hall in his honor. Gerald Gill once said the lessons of history are always important to understanding the present. It is an offshoot of one of the most hackneyed phrases of the English language that stands the test of time and just like unacknowledged history, it bears repeating. It is important that we continue to breathe life into these names, these photos, these physical markers of space, and these histories in the hopes that, as we resurrect them, we honor them in the way we will one day desire to be honored.
December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 7
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mapping ouT histories
By Alexandra Benjamin & Justin Krakoff
LEVENTHAL MAP CENTER FOLLOWS BOSTON’S CHANGING FOOTPRINT
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hile many Boston area locals feel familiar with their physical surroundings, fewer know about the intricate details and histories of how the spaces they occupy relate to each other and initially came to be. In an age of sophisticated digital GPS navigation, cartography and paper mapping may seem like an antiquated practice, but maps can actually reveal much more than just directions and geographical characteristics, and even tell otherwise obscured stories of cultural histories. This is precisely the mission of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, a nonprofit organization that operates within the Boston Public Library. The Map Center, established in 2004 in the library’s McKim building in Copley Square, contains a collection of over 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases coming from a plethora of different places and times—one of the ten largest in the country. The Center’s website describes their goals as using their collection to provide for “the enjoyment and education of all through exhibitions, educational programs,” as well as “developing innovative uses of maps and geographic materials to engage young people’s curiosity about the world, thereby enhancing their understanding of geography, history, world cultures, and citizenship.”
The center focuses primarily on two main goals: conservation and accessibility. In terms of the former, the Center has approximately 12,000 maps dating prior to 1900, making the preservation and digitization of these items a critical aspect of its mission. The Center’s oldest map is a copy of Ptolemy’s Geographia from 1482, which was instrumental in influencing ways of thinking in the Medieval Muslim Caliphate and Renaissance Europe. The Center also seeks to make its collection accessible to all, and offers a broad range of educational services. While the Center is a trove for academic researchers, it also offers local schools the opportunity to bring class field trips and conducts workshops for educators. These activities demonstrate how maps can be important for the narration of history through a spatial lens, which is indicative of how Boston has been portrayed cartographically since its founding. This is not a new idea for the Map Center. An exhibit from 1999 (which was also published as a book entitled Mapping Boston) aimed to convey exactly this purpose. The book’s introduction starts off by saying that, “using a map to broaden one’s understanding of a place is especially useful for a city like Boston, whose complex social history is matched by its radical geographic trans-
formation over the years, a transformation best recorded in a sequence of maps.” Ronald Grim, the curator of the Leventhal Map Center, echoes these sentiments, both in reference to his own role and that of the center in portraying the history of Greater Boston. Grim describes his job as “to provide direction in the center’s programming and curatorial matters.” He started out as one of only two employees in the Center, but now has a staff of eight employees who cater to more specialized roles, such as education, cataloging, outreach, and development. Grim emphasizes that maps often have the power to capture societal changes that may go unnoticed by other sources. For example, as Boston has grown in importance as an economic center from the 19th into the 20th century, the relationships between the smaller towns surrounding it have transformed as well. Particularly, previously distinct towns have lost some of their individuality at the price of being a part of the Greater Boston Area. “Initially, these little towns like Medford and Malden are separate villages focused on their churches and maybe a particular industry,” Grim said. “As Boston itself grows in economic influence and continues to grow outward, these smaller communities become subsidiary to Boston, and eventually in the 20th century are sort of subsumed by the ur-
Figure 1: A plan of Boston in New England with its environs (1777)
Figure 2: West medford, massachusetts (1855) 8 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
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news ban growth of the metropolitan area, so it’s hard to really tell one town from another.” This revelation is precisely why the studies of cartography and geography can be helpful in fully understanding societal evolution. In Boston’s case, what is interesting is that while this homogenizing effect has been observed physiologically, many of these towns still maintain very distinct political systems. Boston itself, for example, is divided into several districts which each have their own city councilors. The geographic makeup of Boston today is defined by processes of expansion in the past, as it engaged in landfilling, annexing neighboring towns (Roxbury, Charlestown, Allston), and urbanization. Cambridge, on the other hand, is governed by a board of city councilors at large, and no governance exists between Boston and Cambridge, despite their geographic proximity. This reveals a disconnect between the way the localities of the Boston area are viewed externally versus how they actually operate. Looking at maps depicting Greater Boston in the 18th century, this relationship becomes obvious. A plan of Boston in New England with its environs from 1777 (Figure 1) showcases the area with abundant wilderness, identifiable only by geographical landmarks such as the historical Winter Hill Fort area of modernday Somerville and Harvard College in Cambridge. Medford, the original site of Tufts College, is noticeably absent from this depiction, suggesting that it did not yet quite exhibit the same importance in relation to Boston as it does today.
The post-Revolutionary era, however, saw this change as industrialization brought increased interconnectivity to the Boston area. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, maps became markers of these shifting relationships and increased urbanization. Increasingly sophisticated mapmaking technology, like the development of lithographs, also allowed maps to be printed cheaper, faster, and in larger quantities. According to Grim, all of these changes
“as boston itself grows in economic influence and continues to grow outward, these smaller communities become subsidiary to boston.” together tie into the evolution of mapping. He explains that, “the mapmakers in the 19th century really played to the market of individual localities, they were really playing on the pride of those particular communities,” he said. “They hang it on their well and it becomes a part of their identity.” The commercialization of maps coincided with this change in identity, and indicative of this change was the popularization of two new forms of maps in the 19th century: bird’s eye view and town center. He referenced one of the Center’s maps, West Medford, Massachusetts from 1855 (Figure 2), which documents the various plots of land surrounding Tufts College, held by its founder Charles Tufts, and follows the institution three years after its founding. A later version
Figure 3: map of the town of medford, middlesex county, mass. (1897)
mapping the same area, called Map of the town of Medford, Middlesex County, Mass. from 1897 (Figure 3) reflected Medford’s changing importance as a location. It showcases Tufts College on historic Medford Hillside, now using a “bird’s eye” perspective from above to depict a much more detailed landscape of Medford and all the changes it incurred over the 19th century. These maps can thus serve as an indication in the rising significance of different townships over the century.
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE NORMAN B. LRVRNTHAL MAP CENTER AT THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Another change of the 20th century captured by mapping is the development of transportation technology in the Boston area, specifically, the T system. While any Boston area resident is familiar with the color-coded T map and benefits from the convenience and mobility it provides them, this particular map also more broadly demonstrates the interconnectivity that has increased between distinct townships over the years. Grim echoes this point. “In the 20th century what we begin to see are more maps of Boston and its metropolitan area,” he said. “With those maps, you would start to see the major connections from the local communities into Boston.” While increased urbanization has led to a heightened sense of a Boston metropolitan, this has simultaneously created a community both inclusive and exclusive of Boston and Tufts’ pasts. What some of these maps portray may feel like a sense of unity throughout the area, but certain existing barriers in politics and community structures may suggest this to be false. In this way, studying maps in conjunction with other historical evidence and social sciences can help to tell a complete story of urban development. As Grim puts it, in some senses, this is precisely what is evident when looking at the Boston area on a map today. “You lose the detail, but you pick up the connections,” he said.
December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 9
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arts & culture
dispel the southern Belle By Sonya Bhatia
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n 2015, the Dogwood Ball, one of the debutante balls in Knoxville, Tennessee, required that women fulfill three different criteria in order to receive an invitation: they had to be a sophomore in college, unmarried, and White. The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Anne Trent, the chairperson of the Board of Governors of the East Tennessee Presentation Society, said that she did not see an is10 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
sue with the 53-year-old event being segregated. Even though Trent later denied that Whiteness was a requirement for participation in the event, according to the International Business Times, all 44 debutantes presented were White. In White-dominated populations in the South, there exists a White-centric culture that places supreme value on the image of the Southern Belle: a White woman with
powdered makeup, a skinny body, straight hair (most likely blonde), and a tauntingly picture-perfect smile. But the image of the Southern Belle is nothing new. Tufts History professor Kerri Greenidge explains, “One of the most important things to look at historically is [that] the image of White women particularly in the South has always been predicated on the image of either enslaved women or Native American women‌The
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whole construct of what it means to be a White woman, not just in the South but in general…that identity has always been seen in opposition to women of color.” The Southern Belle—who was often married to a slave owner—was elevated as a symbol of virtue and superiority in order to gloss over the immorality of owning slaves. Greenridge said, “[The Southern Belles] were supposed to be moral… They were supposed to be teaching the new generation how to react, how to grow up in a moral republic of the 19th century. The flipside of that was that given that fact, and [with the] definition of White womanhood, Black women were, by default, prevented from being in the cult of domesticity because Black women were enslaved in the South.” In part due to this history, popular southern culture still idealizes White women as the golden standard for beauty, femininity, and morality. Amanda Borquaye, a Black senior at Tufts who was raised in Savannah, Georgia, experienced the painful realities of these standards when she won the “Southern Belle” superlative at her high school. “When I found this out, I thought in [the pre-Civil War period] I would be a slave, or—if I were old enough—I would be a nanny caretaker whose job would be to bring up a beautiful Southern White Belle. So how dare I somehow get implicated in this terminology…[It] was one of the really cherished senior superlatives.” Race is an integral part of the symbol of the Southern Belle, but it is not the only factor; rather, this trope is a mix of many components, including socioeconomic status. Greenidge explains from a historical perspective, “So would a Southern Belle be a White woman whose family didn’t own slaves, like in Mississippi—would that woman be considered a Southern Belle? No. It’s constructed to be against Black women, but also against any White woman who isn’t of a certain class.” Even if class is historically intrinsic to the Southern Belle ideal, Dr. Greenidge clarifies that, “they would still be considered socially and racially on a higher plane than Black women.” Today, socioeconomic status limits who is eligible to be a true Southern Belle. “You’re a young White girl who’s living in, say, Memphis, Tennessee and your family makes less
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than $20,000 a year, how much are you seen as a Southern Belle in the context of young girls whose families make $70,000 a year?” Greenidge explains. Since its inception, the Southern Belle has permeated pop culture. Scarlett O’Hara in the movie Gone with the Wind immortalizes the vision of the Southern Belle in the Antebellum South. Country singer Tim McGraw describes his dream girl as “Southern girl rock my world/hazel eyes and golden curls/put on a country song/we will dance all night long” in his country single, “Southern Girl.” The
Borquaye recalls beauty standards at her predominantly White school. “There is that pressure because you’re not even considered remotely attractive [unless you’re White] and if you are, people feel the need to tell you, ‘Hey you’re really cool and attractive and beautiful and I like you, but your race and the color of your skin make me feel confused about those feelings and make me feel ashamed of that; therefore, I’m just going to distance myself from you.’” She continues, “I think that’s just something completely rooted in the idea that
“Whiteness still dominates what is considered most beautiful across the south and across the country. ” past five winners of the Miss Alabama Pageant have been White, a state that had a 65.8 percent White population in 2016. Greenidge connects the Southern Belle to the national idea of womanhood. “White womanhood, particularly young White womanhood, is still seen in opposition to whatever it is people construe as being Black womanhood and blackness.” But areas in the South contain rich diversity in race and beauty standards. Pawan Dhingra, a professor in the Sociology Department, says, “Even in the South, there is an understanding of multiculturalism. There are obviously such strong pockets, communities of African Americans and other non-Whites who create their own standards of beauty.“ The Southern Belle archetype does not reign supreme in all parts of the South. Still, as Dhingra points out, “Whiteness still dominates what is considered most beautiful across the South and across the country. These are more tokenized appreciations in difference, but they don’t necessarily change what is dominant.” This especially applies to areas in the White-dominated areas of the South, where Black women are in the minority, such as Jefferson, Georgia and Greeneville, Tennessee—which have over 90 percent of a White population.
beauty is reserved for White people and White women.” Eve Abraha, an Eritrean first-year, talks about how women of color at her high school in Tennessee tried to conform to this White southern femininity. “I know there would be some people who would try to copy their look and try to be a part of their clique but they would go through huge processes and they really lost sight of their own culture.” White culture tends to place the Southern Belle on a dangerously high pedestal. Greenidge expands on the dangers of the Southern Belle. “This version of womanhood is linked to the south, to a very specific moment in the south which is Antebellum slavery and this idea of proslavery thought. So, it can’t be separated from the fact that it is a very racialized image and a gendered image of what womanhood is supposed to be.” In other words, the Southern Belle is inextricably tied to its history of White supremacy. But the White beauty standard of the Southern Belle is not impossible to overcome. When asked if she feels beautiful now, Abraha said, “Yes. I came to love my own culture and through that, loving myself. And loving that I’m an Eritrean Woman.” December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 11
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prose
By Morgan Freeman The ocean gave birth to me. I once stood with my mother looking out at the fjord she used to wake up to everyday. She told me that I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with the ocean and leave it. I wanted to argue, but she was right. I wanted to argue because she was wrong. I’ve always been jealous of people who are from somewhere. Her father was a sea captain. My father studied marine transportation. It costs $70,600 each year for me to learn about the ocean. But I was born in the ocean. Is that ironic? My parents met when my father was on assignment in Copenhagen. My parents don’t swim. I used to hate going to the beach. It was boys who I tried to get to look me in the eye and once my friends got the tan they came for they would say, “Look. I’m Blacker than you.” I like my ocean cold—too warm and it feels like I’m wading in blood. When I lay back and water floods into my ears there’s no more room for anything else. I’ve been delivered. Ægir is the Norse jötunn of the sea, known for throwing elaborate parties for the gods under its surface. Are mine invited? I never knew my mother’s father, and the thought of him scares me. Would he be able to smell the brine on me, too? Know that I’ve been navigating long before this body? I told my parents that I didn’t like the ocean and that the thought of it scares me. My father cocked his head, “but you’re a child of the ocean?”
12 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
ART BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT
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PHOTO BY JORDAN DELAWDER
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PHOTOS BY AUDREY FALK (BOTTOM LEFT), JUDY CHEN (TOP RIGHT)
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PHOTOS BY ELIZABETH BROOKE
PHOTOS BY MUNA MOHAMED
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BY ANNIE ROOME
December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 17
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Breaking Down doors, building community
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“I
personally have only been to the Asian American Center (AAC) once during orientation,” said Mei Nagaoka, a first-year student. “As an international student coming from Latin America, I never considered myself an Asian American.” Going into college, Nagaoka “…wanted to be able to explore these concepts and identities through the help of the centre.” However, when she first entered the AAC during Orientation week, she “didn’t feel comfortable at all. I felt extremely out of place and it absolutely terrified me.” Nagaoka is not the only student who feels that way. Recently, students have started a movement to make the Asian American Center more accessible so it can be a place of community rather than discomfort. The AAC’s central placement on campus, 17 Latin Way, should make it an ideal place to bring students together for programming and events. Some of the Center’s access policies, however, make the space unwelcoming to students. Thao Ho, who is currently an intern at the Center, said “unless people are directly involved with Center programming (people who actually have key access to the Center), many people think that there is no real need to enter this space.” Start House, which houses the AAC, is a dorm under the jurisdiction of the Office of Residential Life and Living. Campus policy governing all residential buildings requires two locking doors to separate bedrooms from the outside. Ana Sofía Amieva-Wang, an AAC intern, mentioned that under this policy, the Center is only located in one room on the first floor of Start House, AAC Director Linell Yugawa’s office—which remains locked when she’s not there. “[Her office] is a different color with different furniture… we can’t even change the common room space because it falls under ResLife,” Amieva-Wang emphasized. “It’s not fair to say her office is a communal space.” Because of Thanksgiving break, we were unable to reach AAC Director Linell Yugawa for a comment. The Center employs a Staff Assistant, Fatima Blanca Munoz; a Graduate Assistant, Koko Li; along with ten student interns. Students can only access the Center during hours when there are interns working who can open the door. This means that students cannot freely use the space. According to the Center’s website, students are asked to make appointments with the Center/house residents if they need to enter the space outside of this timeframe. Currently, Asian American students are pushing Tufts’ administration to relocate student housing from Start House to open up the Asian American Center space. On November 19, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate unanimously passed a resolution––authored by AmievaWang, TCU Historian Jacqueline Chen, Diversity and Community Affairs Officer Shannon Lee, and Asian American Community Senator Charlie Zhen––that called on Tufts to differentiate Asian American housing from the AAC to make the Center more accessible. A student petition calling for community support of the issue collected over 550 signatures. Amieva-Wang said that the campaign has been a collective movement and that having “students and interns who attended our open meetings and expressed interest in supporting the process was crucial.” In addition to relocating students to an alternate residential space, the list of demands includes that the Center be expanded beyond the rooms that are currently utilized as Start House’s common space and the director’s office space. The petition’s vision for community spaces includes a quiet study area, a communal lounge for students to build relationships, meeting spaces for Asian American Studies courses, separate office spaces for the director, staff, and interns, a conference room where clubs, workshops, and discussion groups could meet, creative space for students to collaborate, and an Asian American library available to the community. Lee hopes that when resources are eventually allocated to renovating the Center, there will be opportunities for student input: “This needs to be a space for students, created by students, and led by students. I think there isn’t a better time for the AAC to incorporate this element than now.”
By Vivian Tam 18 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
Reimagining the asian american center ART BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT
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“This needs to be a space for students, created by students, and led by students. I think there isn’t a better time for the AAC to incorporate this element than now.” The AAC is not the only Group of Six center to demand additional resources from the administration. In the Student Life Review Committee Report to President Anthony Monaco released in May 2017, the committee recommended that Tufts conduct a comprehensive study of the programs, services, facilities, and resources provided by or allocated to the Group of Six to determine ways to increase support across campus for traditionally underrepresented students. According to an email from Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon, “fundraising to more meaningfully support student programs in the Group of Six” is a main concern for her office this semester. Specific to the efforts to open up the Asian American Center, McMahon says the “petition makes a very strong case and yes, it’s a priority for me and the Division of Student Affairs to find a way forward that better meets these needs than the present Start House configuration.” As part of the Group of Six, under the direction of the Dean of Student Affairs, the Center is intended to be a resource for Asian/Asian American communities at Tufts and create a supportive and inclusive environment for students through its programming and services. Based on the Center’s mission statement, it “recognizes the mono- and multiracial East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian peoples, cultures and intersecting social identities present in the Tufts community, and advocates for students to ensure a successful college experience.” While the issue of the locked front door to the Start House is an immediate concern, there are other underlying needs that have yet to be addressed. Pat Mahaney, a third year and former Asian American Center Peer Leader (AAPL), acknowledged that the resolution was a great starting point, but emphasized that it was equally important to “think beyond physically separating the AAC from housing.” They added, “Accessibility doesn’t necessarily mean fostering a supportive Asian American community.
Rather, it’s critical to reflect on why we want this space in the first place.” Having a space like the AAC is critical for the many Asian/Asian American students at Tufts. According to data taken from Tufts’ Diversity and Inclusion page, during the Fall 2016 semester, there were 1,073 self-identified Asian students enrolled in the Undergraduate population out of a total of 5,438 students (19.7%). Because the term Asian/Asian American is not a monolith and encompasses students with varying experiences and backgrounds, not all students feel that their identities are acknowledged in the AAC space and programming. Recent graduate Sylvia Ofoma (A’17) felt like she had to choose between different aspects of her identity at Tufts. “I shouldn’t have to suppress my Black identity in the Asian American Center for my Asian identity to be valid.” Josephine Ong (A’17) said, “As a Chinese-Filipino, I never really felt like the ‘Filipino’ side of my identity was welcomed into the space. Moreover, some of my Asian [American] experiences are different because I grew up in Guam, so I would end up running into cultural barriers.” Ho added, “I think of how nuanced the term ‘Asian/Asian American’ is, and how the different ways in which people interpret their identities leads to the divisiveness I see in our communities here […] there’s so much silencing […] because we are never collected in one physical space to truly organize or at least talk over the thoughts that float through our communities.” Throughout the year, according to its website, the AAC intends to provide “educational programs that focus on the Asian experience in the US; [offer] resources for [the] transition to college; provid[e] social opportunities to learn from and engage with peers; and [inform] students of campus events and opportunities.” The Center also serves as a liaison for the 11 Asian culture clubs under the Pan-Asian Council. Students who are not affiliated with culture
clubs or did not engage with the Center during Orientation can end up feeling disengaged with the Center in their later years at Tufts. Natasha Khwaja, co-chair of the South Asian Political Action Committee (SAPAC) and a former AAPL remarked, “We expect to some extent to be involved and given a voice (or at least informed) in AAC programming that is related to South Asian issues, especially given the AAC’s history of being overly biased towards East Asian identities,” adding that even in her time as an AAPL “my largest misgiving was that even us committed students were given little to no say in center programming.” There are efforts being made to make the AAC more intentional beyond opening the physical space. This semester, Munoz and Li started a collective social justice learning space and a holistic mental health space called “Healing and Feelings.” They are also working with a student to discuss how to facilitate conversations on anti-Blackness in the Asian American community and are in the process of collaborating more with the other centers. “What we can do at the AAC to make our center more welcoming for all AA students is to always remember ‘Asian American’ is just one aspect of our identities, and we at the AAC should always be thinking about how we’re making our space more accessible,” Li emphasized. “Is our program accessible to someone who needs wheelchair access, or needs a scent free space, or translation, an ASL interpreter, someone who is queer, are we respecting people’s pronouns, are we checking colorism, classism, etc. at the door?” With over a thousand undergraduate students who identify as Asian at Tufts, creating a sense of community will require reflection and collaboration. Ashley Shen (A’17), elaborated, “Creating and maintaining supportive Asian American communities—especially ones that engage with race, trauma, and injustice—is really, really hard work. If you do it anyway, trust your reasons. Trust yourself.”
December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 19
I find your hair in my bed while changing the sheets and I cry. It is so cold in the morning I shiver awake under my three blankets soak myself back to stillness in the tub and think of the rise and fall of your chest lit by the beams filtering in through your eyelashes and the curve of your nose and you are wrapped around me on a Friday morning warm and hard and real. It echoes in my cave. You slept and I hovered, nervous and smiling, from the corner of the bed to the floor. Hummingbird flitting restless fingertips making space where there was already so much, so full of you. You turned and I slid into the slot left behind thinning myself to line the perimeter of the mattress, keep myself up and you in. You deserve all the space in the world. I barely slept, woke up with the sun, both of us bright and shining. And you wanted me. You wanted me! For once in my life I do all of it right. We share space and time and I am happy I question it constantly But everything lines up and falls into place. The knots in my belly unfurl, cede their territory to the butterflies. And then.
By Anonymous
20 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
ART BY ANNIE ROOME
I lose my peace. Evil. Builds in me like bile and burns, hisses, bubbles... Worthless. stretches, empties out... Loveless. hollow and cold... Monstrous. It melts under my hands. I never knew where to put my hands, When to put my hands. I stumbled through, over you. Mouth glued shut jaw clamped. Lips split, Both ways‌ I went away. I am back without you different for having once been with Back the same Back friend Back Alone Would I Could I Take it back Let me take it back Can we take it Back
(No.) (I know.)
I create borders, extend miles between what I have decided are our cold-warring nation-states. My map may not be accurate, but it is the one that I have. It is all that I have. Time is running out. There is no before anymore. There never will be again. Where will we be when we come (will) we come (will) you come Back...
*
an emotional expression of personal regret felt by a person after they have committed an act which they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or violent; closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment. December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 21
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voices
By Eman Naseer
j u s t as fa r
A
s the words Jordan, Lebanon, and Jerusalem each came out of my mother’s mouth, I remember my 11-year-old self waiting patiently, desperately hoping to hear the only two words I cared about, the one place I wished to spend my summer holiday: New Jersey. As my mother dragged on about Petra, the Dead Sea, and Byblos, I was preoccupied envisioning different kinds of monuments–the Jersey Gardens outlet mall, Cheesecake Factory, and Johnny Rockets. Born in Karachi, I moved to Hong Kong at the age of two and again to Jakarta at 15. My family would visit Pakistan during winter breaks, but these visits would often feel more foreign than familiar. We would then return to either Hong Kong or Jakarta, and while these cities were home for the moment, I knew that at some point they too would come to feel just as foreign as my homeland. The brick fireplace in my grandparents’ house, candlelit card games during load shedding, the challi wala across the street, yellow lemon tarts from United bakery—these were the things that marked winter breaks in Islamabad. It was easy to spend this time getting lost in the sounds of lively gupshup of grownups. In the 22 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
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spaces between the laughter, my cousins would mimic the witticisms and language of the adults, quickly joining in on their jokes. When the attention would eventually turn to me, the few words of Urdu that did manage to leave my mouth were coated in a thick accent that was always met with laughter. Because of this, I didn’t speak much over breaks. I was deemed the shy cousin. For the other parts of those first 14 years in Hong Kong, the staples of my life were spicy shawarma rolls from Ebeneezer’s, halal dim sum brunch at the Wan Chai mosque, sleeping in on Typhoon eight days, finding strange trinkets at Stanley market, and eight-piece McWings. However, coming back to the Hong Kong airport after a vacation, the immigration officer’s reaction when looking at my local passport was always a reminder that I lived within a pocket of Hong Kong’s expat bubble, unaware and unfamiliar with the true face of the country I resided in. When I moved to Jakarta for high school, my world became four-hour traffic jams, late night Gojeks, Pondok Indah Mall on a Friday afternoon, boiling Indomie after a night out—these are the images that came to mind as I stood on the Little Theater stage of Jakarta Intercultural School moments before graduation. As I looked around at my friends, many of whom were half Indonesian, chanting the school motto “Once a Dragon, always a Dragon,” I remember feeling a palpable disconnect, knowing that for me, as my parents would come to move in the following years, the motto simply ended at “Once a Dragon.” These subtle reminders that each home wasn’t quite that—my home—were constant. As a result, I found myself latching onto the image of an idealized suburban American life that I saw time and time again in the culture I consumed. I would stay up until the early hours of the morning streaming episodes of “The OC”, “Friends” and “Full House” on Projectfreetv, accepting that the thousands of pop-up adds for hot girls in my neighborhood were a fair price for the comfort of Chandler Bing and Michelle Tanner. While in reality the contents of these programs were far from relatable to a Brown, Muslim girl growing up in Asia, they held within them a promise of what my life could be. So, while my mother spent hours on end planning family vacations, for me the thought of going to the most beautiful parts of the world didn’t hold a candle to visiting my aunt in South Plainfield, New Jersey and experiencing first-hand the allure of Limited Too, Regal Cinema nacho cheese sauce, Dip’n Dots vending machines, and Costco kosher hotdogs. Coming into Tufts, I was ready for my white-picket-fence, red-solo-cup life to be perfectly actualized, to finally attain the White, suburban American identity that I had spent years infatuated with. However, this dream was crushed by a harmless O-week question: “Where are you from?” Listening to the 13 other first years respond with one word answers like “Iowa”, “Kansas” and even “New Jersey” left me feeling uneasy. Suddenly I was in a room full of Americans, and it was clear to me that despite what I had tried to convince myself of, our experiences prior to this moment were vastly different. It was a strange feeling, realizing that the characters and icons I had found solace in as a child are people I most likely would have felt disconnected to in real life. These feelings of isolation were only exaggerated as I experienced my first American election in the United States that November. After that, not only did I feel like my experiences weren’t understood, but also that they were aggressively unwanted. “I’m originally from Pakistan but I grew up in Hong Kong and Indonesia.” This is a sentence that I’ve repeated so many times at Tufts it’s almost become devoid of meaning. And yet behind this rehearsed sentence, which has lived far beyond its Pre-Orientation birth, is an amalgamation of identities both mixed and separated within me. After being at Tufts for a year-and-a-half, I’ve come to realize that home to me isn’t a place I can point to on a map, but rather a series of images ingrained in my mind. It is Maggie noodles and Indomie, gajar ka halwa and egg waffles, Taitam and Cilandak, South Hall 420, and Lewis 158.
PHOTOS BY EMAN NASEER
December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 23
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voices
retaining my own language H ome for me is a house that overlooks a ravine, and from whose window you can see the morning sun illuminating the icy top of the Cotopaxi Volcano. Ecuador is a country as bio-diverse as it is culturally diverse. Within the borders of a country with half the surface area of Texas, there are 14 distinct ethnic identities, four different climate regions, and over a dozen different accents. With accents come social stratification, and a less noticeable accent becomes a “better” accent. Raised in a dual-citizenship household with an Ecuadorian father and a Colombian mother, a potpourri of accents filled my house. My middle sister and I used to stand proudly as middle schoolers when someone asked us, “Where are you from? Your accents are not from here [Ecuador], are they?” Growing up in Ecuador, my childhood revolved around watching series and movies on Disney Channel, trips to Florida, and jamming to the Jonas Brothers. Both of my older sisters went to college before I did; consequently, I made studying in the United States a goal. I learned my SAT vocab list by heart, attended an international school where the only class taught in Spanish was my Spanish course, read more in English than I did in my native language, leading to me feeling more comfortable doing so; I listened to chart topping English music—I did not seek to listen to Ecuadorian artists until a few years ago. I believed my transition to freshman year of college would be smooth. Amidst political chaos—the first presidential change after a decade of a totalitarian government that precluded journalistic freedom and a devastating earthquake that exacerbated the ongoing economic recession—my last two years of high school were the years I took the most pride in my roots. Not only did I vote and protest a corrupt election process for the first time, but I also had two Spanish teachers who made me fall in love with the verses of Latin American poets and magical realism literature written in a romance language. I had music teachers who were committed to un-Westernize the youth’s music taste through exploring national genres. Being Ecuadorian became a badge I wore with pride, and something I made sure I highlighted in my college essays. I remember watching an episode of “Modern Family” in which Sofia Vergara, a Colombian actress who plays a Latin woman married to a White man from California, exclaims: “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?” I laughed. Absorbing it as a stereotypical exclamation that had the sole purpose of entertaining the audience, I thought, that would be the last thing that would ever happen to me. I was ready to go to college. Little did I know that not even eight hours of classes in English and high SAT and AP English scores would not prepare me for what I was about to experience during my first semester away from home. In September, I arrived at Tufts with replicas of Guayasamin— an Ecuadorian artist—paintings to hang in my college dorm, indigenous patterns in my clothing, and an Ecuadorian flag bracelet around my wrist. When President Monaco mentioned my country 24 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
By Juliana Vega
during his matriculation speech —to highlight the diversity within the Class of 2021— pride accelerated my heart. The first time someone asked me “Where is your accent from?” I proudly responded: “Ecuador.” During the first few weeks of September I found myself answering this question very often. It shocked me. Six years of English immersion and I still had an accent, how could that be? I expressed my concern to my sisters, seeking reassuring words, but they replied: “Yes, your accent has gotten worse since you arrived.” From that moment on, I focused on my pronunciation, on which moments my mind was in Spanish or in English, and on the words I struggled to find. The latter one was emphasized when, every Monday, I sat in my poetry class next to people who wrote poems with words that flowed perfectly and which I did not understand. Contrastingly, mine were filled with words that got my ideas through, but never felt right. No matter how many spelling bee competitions I had been in during middle school, my vocabulary was never going to be good enough. One early October afternoon, when I discussed one of my pieces with the professor, she examined my word choice and remarked that they were not “right”. At that moment, all I wanted to say was “you have no idea how smart, how poetic, how real I am in Spanish!” Since that afternoon, I feel insecure every time I have to speak up in the class and pause, trying to find the words to express my emotions while her eyes scrutinize me. As I shared my experience with other international students, I realized that what one has to say is more about the content than it is about the accent. Yet, having an accent often becomes an obstacle when attempting to communicate the content itself. Preference towards some accents exists, and Hispanic accents are not favored. Studying at an institution where English is the language of instruction is exhausting for a person whose native language is not English. There is a constant battle between the endeavor to pronounce words correctly, to write and read in another language that leads to assimilating into the United States culture (no, not American culture, because America is a continent, not a country), and conserving one’s roots. One language will always overpower the other, and sadly, it is not always an option to conserve one’s own. For now, I will continue to grow fonder of my accent and try not to cringe when someone pronounces my name with a United States one. PHOTO BY JULIANA VEGA
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voices
reclaiming my lost language By Kelsey Narvaez
M
y first breakdown in college was on the first day of my first year. It started with my first Arabic class. I was both excited and terrified to start learning a new language. After 50 minutes, I was confused about who I was and why the heck I thought taking Arabic was a good idea. I began to remember my abuelo’s words from the day I told him I would be leaving Miami to study at Tufts. “¿Como ella va a estudiar relaciones internacionales? Ella puede sacar buenas notas pero sin un segundo idioma, ella no va a llegar a ningún lado.” “How is she going to study international relations? She can make good grades but without a second language, she won’t make it anywhere.” I remember the crinkle on his forehead and the gray in his long black beard the day he spoke these words. I remember the sound of disappointment in his voice. My proudly Nicaraguan grandfather speaks five languages, and I only speak one: English. But that day, I understood every word he said. I know that he didn’t mean just any second language, he meant Spanish. To him, I could not be anything or do anything until I first learned Spanish. I believed him. When my father immigrated to the US he had to learn English in order to go to school, to find a job, and to survive. His Spanish had to become secondary. Without English, my father wouldn’t have fallen for my Jamaican, English-only-speaking mother. My Spanish and my English are products of a system that privileges English. It is also a product of interracial love. So, I wasn’t raised speaking Spanish. I’ve spent my entire life feeling inadequate about not being able to speak Spanish. Complete strangers often tell me “¿no hablas español? ¡Que pena!” without even knowing my story. That night, after my first Arabic class, I spent a lot of time crying and thinking. I was scared that taking Arabic meant that I would possibly never speak Spanish. I felt like an imposter in my own body. I felt like I couldn’t learn Arabic without first conquering the language to which I was supposed to have some kind of birthright. I dropped Arabic 1 for Spanish 2. But Spanish classes do not help quiet the anxieties of my relationship with the language.
ART BY ANNIE ROOME
Every time I walk into my Spanish class I am confronted with what I am not. When I walk into class all tan-skinned, brown-haired, and with the last name Narvaez, people look at me like I’m out of place and I can’t help feel that I am. Spanish teachers, especially White American Spanish teachers, always do a double take when they see my name on their roster. They like to ask if I am in the right Spanish class. Yes, unfortunately, I am in the right Spanish class. And I will also confuse you because my pronunciation is beautiful but I still can’t seem to put sentences together sometimes because I am so ashamed of being a Latina who is taught my language by a White professor with White students who speak better than me. These struggles with Spanish have always affected how I see myself as a Latina. I know I am not the only Latino student to struggle with my Spanish but sometimes it feels like I am. A few weeks ago, I stepped into a house that was warm with the smell of chocolate and canela. I sat in the kitchen drinking hot chocolate and listening to people banter in Spanglish. Even though my actual home smells more like curry and sounds like Patois, the Latino Center never fails to feel like home. I find a lot of comfort in the Latino Center. It is a space that I feel has helped me to become a fuller me in my Latinidad and on campus. It’s the place where I learned that Latinidad has many skin tones and speaks many languages. I’ve been able to meet people who struggle with their Spanish and their identity in ways similar to me. Some of the moments when I feel most understood is when other Latinos tell me that they know how I feel. Some of us might still be struggling on the inside about how our languages relate to identity but it feels good to have someone else tell you that your identity is not solely based in a language you cannot seem to conquer. I’m thinking about studying abroad in Spain or Chile. I know that going abroad will inevitably ignite another battle with my identity. People will continue to look at me with expectations that I cannot meet, and I will be immersed in cultures to which I will never fully belong. I don’t think the hurt will ever fade easily. But the difference now is that I am taking ownership of my Spanish. I’m not doing this for my abuelo or for the strangers who made me feel like I wasn’t Latina enough. Now, my Spanish is about and for me.
December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 25
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OPINION
HISTOries
unseen By Jonathan Innocent
26 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
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“The American inland empire was pushing westward. For the first time, large-scale manufacturing was being established. Every ocean port of the world was coming to know American commerce borne by fast sailing ships, many of which were built in yards on the Mystic River in the shadow of Tufts College. In 1852, in spite of the gathering clouds of the slavery question, enterprise and optimism about the future were in the bracing sea breezes of New England”. -The Centennial History of Tufts College
Sure, most days, by most standards, this campus is a sight to behold, but it has an ugly side, a ghostly shadow, that i can’t unsee.
“You guys go to a really good school. Your campus is so beautiful.” Said the young White lady of the young White couple in our shared Lyft line cruising down Professors Row. After her remarks, I looked around to find what she thought was so beautiful. Was it Ballou, with its high white columns and warm porch light shining out upon the steps and the luscious green lawn? Before I could find my answer, my vision was struck by the bright lights glaring down on the tennis courts outside of Fletcher. Maybe she was gawking at the beauty of the wonderfully manicured fraternity and sorority houses that continued down the Row. Regardless, I wasn’t impressed by the bright lights, the pristine edifices, or the neat hill. I was, however, reminded of the first time my parents and I visited Tufts and all said the same thing… what happened? Sure, most days, by most standards, this campus is a sight to behold, but it has an ugly side, a ghostly shadow, that I can’t unsee. This history is written in The Centennial History of Tufts College, an archived text written in 1952 to commemorate the first 100 years since Tufts’ founding. Charles Tufts, after whom the college was named, donated much of the land beneath our campus. Tufts, so the story goes, “pointed [symbolically] to the top of the windswept height he had given to the new college and said, ‘I will put a light on it.’” This symbolic light would come to be Ballou Hall, once the sole academic building for Tufts College, and now the Tufts University administrative building. Eventually, the light would come to represent the entire hillside campus itself. However, every bright light casts a shadow. To the west of Ballou, resting upon what would later become the residential quad for Tufts undergraduates, was
a water reservoir that was often called the Rez. According to the Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History, “during excavations conducted by the Metropolitan District Commission for an access road to the Rez in 1879 a Native American burial mound was unearthed. Nine skeletons along with various artifacts were found.” While waiting for my usual Nutella latte at the Rez Café, I often wonder if anyone else in line is burdened with the knowledge that, upon finding the remains and artifacts, Tufts students repurposed them as dorm room decorations. Within the history of any great American institution or location there lies a deeper history of Native American erasure. It is widely understood that with the arrival of colonial settlers upon the Americas, including the land of modern day Medford and Somerville, the lives and ways of living of many Native Peoples were lost to disease, dislocation, war, and suppression. After the desecration of Native spaces, the Americolonial Empire carved deeper scars into the same land our campus rests upon today. Over time, John Winthrop’s Ten Hills Farm, a 600-acre plantation cultivated with slave labor, was passed down from one slaveholding statesman to the next, embedding itself into what is now Somerville. The Royall Plantation still stands today, not too far from Tufts’ Fitness Center—barely a jog away. In the wake of colonial settlement, below Tufts’ newly donated, state-of-the-art complexes, a reservoir of histories left untold, unseen, and obscured, still remains. The young White lady was right—our campus is beautiful. Since its founding in 1852, Tufts has applied layer upon layer of expensive, ‘enterprising’, ‘optimistic’ veneers to mask its rotten history. By forgetting, by unseeing, by building over and upon, we continually recreate the genocide and exploitation of Black and Brown people at the hands of our elite American institutions.
ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD
December 4, 2017 Tufts Observer 27
I dream of floating high above the clouds that hover over the heads of those below. Blocking the sun, preventing the warmth and vibrancy of what could be. I can see it. A world that exists beyond ours; within ours. A world where healing is given the time of day; where understanding is sought, not denial.
The steady patteringencouragement to keep pushing. We find peace in these moments, yet we often fail to see the beauty beyond. While the rain provides comfort, the sun’s rays present us with hope. Not simply that the rain will stopfor we need it to growbut hope for moments beyond pain; beyond sorrow.
Not violence, harassment, mistreatment, and bigotry.
The sun itself, a reminder that warmth and joy will be born out of our tears, for rainbows only exist at their intersection.
Remembering dreams that feel like memories. Memories of a past that could have been; a future that just might be. It’s up to us.
28 Tufts Observer December 4, 2017
The rain offers a moment of recognition, of validation.
Valuing reconciliation, recognition, reparations, and relationships.
Falling back through the clouds, I wake up.
us
at the same time, it’s up to us to choose which one we dwell on.
Those days when the rain falls and the sun shines
Our colors, born again out of the gray seconds before. Hold onto these moments, for they are pure, and fleeting. Moments where we can determine the world around us. Moments where we can be.
By Britt
PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS EDITOR IN CHIEF Ben Kesslen
MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR Kayden Mimmack
MANAGING EDITOR Carissa Fleury
VIDEO DIRECTOR Aaron Watts
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kyle Scott
PODCAST DIRECTOR Evie Bellew
PRODUCTION MANAGER Chase Conley
PUBLICITY DIRECTORS Alyssa Bourne-Peters Ashley Miller
FEATURES Henry Jani NEWS Alexandra Benjamin Vivian Tam OPINION Emmett Pinsky Merissa Jaye ARTS & CULTURE Lena Novins-Montague Jordan Lauf CAMPUS Wilson Wong Julia Press POETRY & PROSE Nasrin Lin Alexandra Strong VOICES Gabriela Bonfiglio STAFF CARTOONIST Ben Rutberg WEB EDITOR Sasha Hulkower COLUMNS Sivi Satchithanandan COLUMNISTS Myisha Majumder Riva Dhamala Britt
VIDEO TEAM Daniel Jelčić Dylan Kelly Emai Lai PODCAST TEAM Han Lee Issay Matsumoto Sara Bass Max Battle Izzy Rosenbaum PUBLICITY TEAM Owen Cheung Grant Gebetsberger Ellie McIntosh Sarah Park Amy Tong STAFF WRITERS Kyle Lui Jonathan Innocent Rosy Fitzgerald DESIGNERS Nicole Cohen Erica Levy Anna Stroe Dennis Kim Muna Mohamed LEAD COPY EDITORS Chris Paulino Owen Cheung
PHOTO DIRECTOR Abigail Barton
COPY EDITORS Erin Berja Anita Lam Sonya Bhatia Juliana Vega Niamh Doyle
PHOTO TEAM Priyanka Padidam Roxanne Zhang
CONTRIBUTORS
LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER Jordan Delawder ART DIRECTORS Annie Roome Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert
DECEMBER 4, 2017 Volume CXxxv, Issue 6 Tufts observer, since 1895 Tufts’ student magazine
Justin Krakoff Eman Naseer Elizabeth Brooke Judy Chen Audrey Falk Caila Bowen
LEAD ARTISTS Jake Rochford Nicole Cohen
BACK: PHOTO BY JORDAN DELAWDER / ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMMETT PINSKY
Since 1895