A Guide to Existing as and/or Supporting Queer Black Students
Queer Black (QB) students at predominately white-bodied and white-serving institutions of higher education exist at the intersection of synergistic marginalization.
Queer Black students' identities of being both Queer and Black are interrupted in the pursuit towards student success by complicated systems of oppression and individual acts of discrimination. QB students are constantly made to prove their worth on college campuses in order to be seen, respected, and treated fairly. If you are not a QB student or never have been, simply trust that it can be an exhausting life to live. Commit to showing up as an ally all of the time and an accomplice when you are called upon.
To the brave and courageous students at the intersection of Queerness and Blackness, I see you, I hear you, I love you, and I am you. We are not our GPA. We are not our resume. Our worth is inherent and our human value is distinct from our achievements.
We need not do anything to be worthy of love, happiness, joy, or compassion. In your quest towards self-love and identity development, here are a few words of wisdom:
1. Name the source of your worth
When examining your worth as a Queer Black student, you must think critically about where you’ll allow it to come from and how you’ll allow it to manifest. Are you willing to allow other people, systems, and structures to invade the self-perception you create of your personhood?
Self-worth is sacred and deserves to be protected from those who do not fully understand its fragility. Personally, I use the following mantra:
“Extrinsic factors will neither inform nor influence my intrinsic self-worth.”
This means that the way I am evaluated on an academic assessment, the feedback I receive from a supervisor, and the praise I hear from colleagues do nothing to suggest how much I matter or how much value I have. Instead, I believe my worth is innate, intrinsic, and spiritually protected.
Reclaiming the constructs that validate or invalidate you is an essential part of stepping away from hyperachievement tendencies and developing sustainable practices for existing in straight white spaces.
2. Say no
Many student leaders have a fear of saying no and missing out on an opportunity that might advance their career goals or allow them to leverage new professional relationships. However, the truth is nobody can do it all.
As a Queer Black student, you must look critically at your capacity and continually gauge whether or not you are leaving room for self-care.
Saying no can be one of the most empowering things as a hyper achiever.
I recommend practicing saying no to experiences that are duplicative to ones you have already had or those that don’t directly support your immediate goals. You will always be able to make a case for the transferable skills you would learn but signing up for purposeless experiences simply to counterbalance your identities will not sustain you in the long term.
Be judicious with your capacity and be honest with yourself. In the times you must say yes, do so at your own pace. Practice reserving time to reflect on the implications of another added experience. Take a weekend or a standard forty-eight hours to respond rather than rushing to say yes.
3. Be selfish
If you've become a hyper achiever, you have practiced skills in selflessness. You've given yourself to your work, to your studies, to your community, to your family, and to a number of other structures around you. Maybe your hyperachievement takes shape in completing volunteer hours or committing to your research.
The work you dedicate to the world around you is important; but it is not more important than your health.
The things you create and produce are a byproduct of your innate excellence and greatness. It is time to create space for selfishness. There is nothing wrong with giving yourself the same love, attention, care, and passion that you give abundantly to the world around you. Reclaiming your focus is a great way to encourage the self-work necessary to disrupt hyperachievement.
Queer Black students, especially, must retain enough self-focus to agitate the expectations that have been placed upon us by our sometimes-competing Queer and Black communities.
4. Protect your blank space
The time that you reserve for you and you alone should not be intruded upon by other people, systems, or job responsibilities.
The blank space on your calendar is sacred and should be protected at all costs. Blank space can be an important breath in an otherwise back-to-back schedule.
Queer Black students, especially, must protect the blank space on their calendar to unpack and digest how their identities are showing up in spaces that do not feel entirely welcoming of all or part of them.
In my undergraduate experience, my campus used a shared calendar system and colleagues would unabashedly schedule meetings over time I had dedicated to lunch or other things that nourish my mind, body, or spirit. So, instead of listing lunch, working out, or meditation under those titles, I listed them as “Important Meeting” or “Project Hours.”
I found that colleagues were less inclined to intrude upon my work than they were to intrude upon my self-care and wellness. Humbling as that may be, I encourage you to find what works and protect yourself and your time at all costs.
5. Find or create affinity
You may feel too Black for Queer spaces and too Queer for Black spaces as a Queer Black student at times. You may not have clubs, organizations, or off-campus resources that adequately tend to your intersecting identities.
However, affinity is crucial in realizing that you are not alone and that your experiences are not isolated. Finding affinity might mean researching spaces expansive of your college and surrounding community. There are positive affinity spaces online that will connect you with students across the nation and around the world. Seek out a place to share your story and be heard by folx who can truly listen without judgement or opposition.
There is a powerful energy in storytelling that uplifts resiliency and courage.
Creating affinity might mean urging identity centers on your campus to offer joint programming that tends to your unique intersection of identities. This requires a mutual trust between you and the student affairs staff members who are tasked with generating identity-based community on campus.
Supporting Queer Black Students:
1. Trust
Student affairs professionals must commit to trusting the experiences of Queer Black students.
College may be the first time that these students have the opportunity to write their own narrative and develop a strong sense of self. Student affairs professionals can demonstrate their trust by providing nurturing and compassionate care for students regardless of identities, involvement, or achievements.
Overinvolved students present as having their lives “in order” and “under control.” If a hyper achiever confides that they are experiencing burnout or exhaustion, those messages should be met with emphatic support. It is a courageous and brave act to evaluate one’s own capacity and admit they are exhausted. That courage should be commended and help should be offered.
2. Fair expectations and evaluation
As student affairs professionals, we sometimes get the privilege of working with exceptional student leaders and supervising their role in our shared department.
Queer Black students who have become accustomed to hyperachievement as a means to counterbalance their identities should not be expected to perpetuate the self-harm that comes with perfection-seeking behavior.
Just because a student can produce work at above and beyond rates and levels of quality, does not mean that they should be expected to.
Celebrate Queer Black students as exceptional people before you praise them as exceptional workers.
Also, it is important to evaluate hyper achievers fairly and accurately. If a student is accomplishing more than what is expected, remind them of the scope of their work without stifling their creativity and ability. Your expectations of a hyper achiever student should not rise beyond the scope of their work because they will always meet your expectations even at the expense of their own wellness.
3. Ask questions about them, not just their work
We all enter every part of our life as whole beings. Queer Black students have to bring all of their various identities with them to class, work, and home. When a Queer Black student enters your office, acknowledge that they are more than the sum total of their achievements.
Get to know the QB students you work with as more than just student staff members. The ways you validate Queer Black students in their wholistic personhood will go a long way in supplementing their intrinsic self-work.
It is important for students to feel sustained in who they are and confident that they can show up as courageously as possible and still be welcomed with affirmation. Practice this by having conversations that neither focus on nor pertain to their work but instead uplift their personal interests, abilities, and thoughts.
4. Center wellness, not work
As supervisors and department leaders, student affairs professionals are uniquely positioned to decide where an office will direct energy and what values will be uplifted.
I implore college administrators who work with students to center wellness more than they center work. Strict timelines and expectations for productivity are rooted in patriarchy and are in opposition to wholistic student development and success.
There are ways to center wellness in a work place that yield productivity. Practice cogenerating timelines for work completion rather than enforcing a unilateral imposition.
Students are experts of their own experiences...
... and they have significantly wider perspective when it comes to their own obligations, responsibilities, and capacities.
In conclusion...
By aligning ourselves as compassionate advocates in professional student affairs positions, we may be able to more fully support the unique experiences of Queer Black students. The unsustainable practice of over achieving as a means to counterbalance Queer and racial identities in the college context is unhealthy and problematic.
Colleges and universities must not allow students to evade their identity development by engaging with student leadership roles that are advantageous for the institution.
It is paramount to work collaboratively with students who demonstrate hyperachievement tendencies to develop sustainable work behaviors. Additionally, we must commit to identity-informed and wellness-centered practice so that students may use college as an opportunity to develop a strong sense of self.
Additional literature must be contributed to the understudied body of preexisting work on Queer Black student engagement and success.
By further studying the barriers Queer Black students face, student affairs professionals and institutions of higher education will be better equipped to manifest more inclusive and supportive spaces for the Queer Black story to be fully recognized and appreciated.
So long as a void exists where the Queer Black student narrative should be, our success in all aspects of our personhood will be stifled.
Next read: "11 students explain what being queer, black, and proud means to them" https://www.glaad.org/amp/11-students-explain-what-being-queer-black-and-proud-means
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JAKE Small is a Career Educator & Educational Consultant. He has a Master of Education from the University of Vermont where he studied Higher Education & Student Affairs Administration while working in career readiness education. His academic focus is on building equity initiatives in the college context which supplements his lived experiences as a student affairs practitioner. His most recent peer-reviewed publication is titled "Reimagining an Antiracist Career Center'' (Small, 2021) which he uses to problematize the cultural norms associated with higher education. Request services on his LinkedIn page HERE.