{"id":953,"date":"2017-10-04T04:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/?p=953"},"modified":"2017-10-02T15:40:37","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T19:40:37","slug":"soba-and-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/2017\/10\/04\/soba-and-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the Archive: SOBA and Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dominique Harrington<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I’ve attempted to explain to people what I’ve been doing this summer, I’ve gotten a few typical responses.\u00a0 First, I get the generic, “That’s so cool! Good luck!”\u00a0 The next one provokes more of a conversation, “That’s interesting, but what’s the point?”\u00a0 However, the response I’ve received most frequently is, “Wow, that must be pretty depressing!”\u00a0 When I explain that I am grappling with the University of Richmond’s racial history, I think they probably thought that I would be faced with more violent instances of racism during the Jim Crow era.\u00a0 However, I’ve mostly gone through letters to President Modlin and Academic Departmental Reports; I haven’t witnessed anything as egregious as one might expect in the former capital of the Confederacy from 1946-1971.\u00a0 Still, I’ve found myself quite disheartened more times than I anticipated — not because of what I saw, but because of what I didn’t see: progress.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As a current black student at the University, one document in particular exemplified just how much progress we haven’t achieved.\u00a0 In the fall of 1977, Students Organizing for Black Awareness (SOBA) recorded their three goals for the 1977-1978 academic year which centered around recruiting more black students and faculty (click here<\/a> to see a full description of this archival document).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Student Organization for Black Awareness “Three Goals for 1977-1978”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SOBA was founded in 1974, just six years after the University of Richmond accepted its first black student, Barry Greene, on its main campus.\u00a0 In a Collegian<\/em>\u00a0article, “Blacks Seek to “Become a Part,<\/a>” a quote from SOBA Chairman Stanley Davis stuck with me.\u00a0 He said, “We got tired of waiting around to be incorporated into the University, so we are incorporating ourselves.”<\/p>\n

They were tired then, and we are still tired today.\u00a0 Starting with SOBA’s list of goals, it seems as if representation is still one of the biggest issues for which multicultural organizations on campus are advocating. The University of Richmond prides itself on its diversity.\u00a0 When I was a prospective student, I consistently heard speakers boast about “26%”- the percentage of American students of color on campus.\u00a0 However, it certainly doesn’t feel like students of color comprise that large of a portion of campus — especially for black students, because that number is less than ten percent.\u00a0 Regarding faculty, professors of color are still few and far between. Students of color are still tired of waiting to be incorporated, and thus, we are still constantly trying to insert ourselves both in and out of the classroom.\u00a0 The same issues black students were facing then, black students are still facing today.<\/p>\n

I won’t claim that the University hasn’t progressed at all, or even that all black students have the same experience.\u00a0 Yes, the number of black students on campus has significantly increased, and there are certainly more faculty of color.\u00a0 However, I don’t believe that numbers that are as a good of an indication of progress as we make them out to be. Although it is great that the number of black students has increased, to me, that number is irrelevant since black students still feel similarly unsafe and left out as their predecessors did.<\/p>\n

As I’ve noted in previous posts<\/a>, progress isn’t linear at all.\u00a0 I suppose that’s why I’ve been so disappointed during my summer experience.\u00a0 Each time I went to the archive or a site, I naively expected to be able to derive some progress from that experience.\u00a0\u00a0 Obviously, that’s not what happened.\u00a0 When I learned about SOBA, I expected to find pride in how far the black student community has come since black students were first accepted on campus.\u00a0 Instead, I found that black students are still asking for the exact same things, and having the exact same conversations.<\/p>\n

An activist and Youtuber, Kat Blaque, that we engaged with during a team meeting claimed that guilt is useless.<\/a>\u00a0 To me, disappointment without action is just like guilt.\u00a0 Therefore, instead of dwelling in my unreached expectations, I’ll continue following SOBA’s lead- incorporating myself in an institution not meant for me and carving out space for those like me — both historically and in the present.\u00a0 As Frederick Douglass once said, “Without struggle, there is no progress.”\u00a0 However, my only qualm is that it seems as if some would claim that a significant component of the black experience has been exactly that-struggling. When exactly will progress catch up to the struggle? To me, we aren’t there yet — not even close.<\/p>\n

For more information: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lassiter, Jay. “Blacks Seek to ‘Become a Part” The Collegian.<\/em> 31 January 1974.\u00a0 http:\/\/collegian.richmond.edu\/cgi-bin\/richmond?a=d&d=COL19740131.2.2&srpos=1&e=–1968—1978–en-20–1-byDA-txt-txIN-<\/a><\/p>\n

“The Absence Of A Black Social Life” The Collegian. 1 October 1971. http:\/\/collegian.richmond.edu\/cgi-bin\/richmond?a=d&d=COL19711001.2.8&srpos=6&e=–1968—1979–en-20–1–txt-txIN-<\/a><\/p>\n

Dominique \u201cDom\u201d Harrington<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is a junior majoring in American Studies and minoring in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.\u00a0 She worked with the Race & Racism project for the Fall 2016 seminar, Digital Memory and the Archive. This summer, she was thrilled to continue working with this project remotely from her hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dominique Harrington When I’ve attempted to explain to people what I’ve been doing this summer, I’ve gotten a few typical responses.\u00a0 First, I get the generic, “That’s so cool! Good luck!”\u00a0 The next one provokes more of a conversation,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2990,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64771,64768,64766],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-as-summer-fellows-2017","tag-dominique-harrington","tag-this-week-in-the-archive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2990"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}