LNanceThis an except of an article written by Jackson Bartlett for INSIDE HIGHER ED. At the bottom you will find link to the entire article on insidehighered.com
Jackson Bartlett describes how to make space for the humanity of students and instructors during troubling national events and crises.
Jackson Bartlett February 8, 2023
On Jan. 27, an hour’s worth of graphic video showing the brutal beating of 29-year-old father Tyre Nichols was released to the public. Anticipating the outpouring of righteous grief and anguish Black communities would experience in the wake of this video’s release, cities shut down and soldiered up.
The mayor of Chicago, where I live, pleaded with people to stay home. A nearby mall instituted a 3 p.m. curfew for youth and packed the halls with heavily armed police throughout the weekend. Videos of Humvees and other riot police gear in cities across the United States proliferated online. The protests have been peaceful.
I thought of my Black and brown college students who, already dealing with way too much in the news of Nichols’s murder, would go about their daily lives that weekend in a country telling them loud and clear that their grief was a threat, that their humanity was not worth holding space for and that the only response they deserved was a defensive one.
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