The Masks

In his seminal work, Paul Laurence Dunbar, atones that we wear a mask.  He reflects, “We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes-“.  Dunbar surmises that we cover aspects of our identities to protect and shield those aspects of our lives from harsh judgement.  As a young college student in the 1990s, I definitely wore such a mask.  Being a young, Southern, Baptist-raised, Black, Gay student was confusing for me in the 1990’s, especially coupled with contemporary issues of the day.  Much like our White Gay brothers, Black Gay men were in constant fear of “catching” AIDS, “catching” being the common, uneducated response we used at that time.  We didn’t know as much as we do now about HIV or AIDS, so every cough made us leery and we felt threatened that our health was constantly in jeopardy.  Social orders seemed constantly in turmoil!  On our college campuses most of us were protesting diligently against oppression and the disillusion we felt surrounding issues of race and class.  During our times we were fighting apartheid, debating issues surrounding Rodney King and O.J. Simpson, and reeling from the “Trickle Down” theories of financial responsibility, which we felt impacted our college debt.  Sound familiar?    

Reflecting on my own undergraduate engagement, I realize that I was just trying to find a space (notice I did not say spaces) that would accept the total aspects of my identities.  Finding no spaces that embraced me collectively, I felt I had to make a choice.  I chose to be “visibly” Black on campus, while navigating and hiding my Gayness off-campus.  In short, for me, in the 1990s, race and class trumped Gay.  So I donned my own personal mask and joined all the organizations that I thought provided me ways to assimilate.  I became a member of the NAACP, and was an active member of the Black Student Alliance.  I felt as a Black Student on a predominately-white campus, that it was my responsibility to integrate what I saw as mainstream student organizations.  I joined the Student Government Association, became an Orientation Leader, and was chosen Homecoming King.  I decided to wear a mask on campus and felt I was rewarded for doing so.  What I didn’t do; however, was join the Gay organization on campus – our Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity.  I didn’t even go to their room which was on the same hall as my fraternity.  As a young college student, I justified my reasons as to why I thought that it wasn’t important to do so.  I told myself then, it was a White organization and I wouldn’t fit in.  Even though I didn’t always feel that I fit into the Black Student Organizations.  I said that joining the Alliance meant I could not devote my energies towards the causes of Black people.  I thought to join the Alliance would be shameful to who I was taught to be as a Black man.  These venerable moments that I share with you were real for me and so they became my realities as a young college student.

Over the past few weeks, I have become keenly aware of how much many of us have also donned masks.  Since my own college days, I guess, I slipped into some form of a cocoon.  Like many AVPs, whom I have spoken to lately, I seem not to have realized how so deeply divided we appear to be as a society.  As a student affairs professional, who started my career like some of you in the mid-1990s, I thought we were doing our best work to not revisit our own college experiences.  We were the ones, who often were the founders of Diversity and Multicultural Offices.  We diligently worked to ensure that student engagement experiences were vibrant and diverse.  We fostered environments where staff members were trained to embrace differences and infuse that practice in their work.  We did all these really wonderful things and yet here we stand.  Seemingly in those same places on our campuses today, where we stood ourselves not so long ago as young college students.  Like many of you recently I have felt a bit overwhelmed with the seemingly deep and embedded divisions that exist between race, class, gender, religion, opinions, sexual identities, political parties, localities…. The list seems endless.  What we cannot do, however, is despair!  We have seen some of these things before, but we now serve in roles where we can, and must lead others.  AVPs, these are the times that we, through our personal and professional experiences, help to guide our campuses.  We have an awesome responsibility ahead of us as professionals to embrace and understand these times in efforts to help move our campuses forward.

Should we solely accept the responsibility for things that seem to have divided our nation?  Absolutely not, we can’t, nor should.  We can, however, remember what it felt like being a college student or new professional, who was scared or confused, when the realities of life permeated the campuses we were on at that time.  These are the times, as AVPS, that we work to heal and soothe our campuses, even when it may appear that the divisions persist.  We must continue to create spaces where differences are embraced but similarities are explored.  We must find the moments that we guide our staff through their confusion, while educating them on practices that help them have conversations with the students they are developing.  We must move beyond the confines of our offices to speak to student groups personally.  We need to find spaces at the table to discuss policies that influence the retention, progression and graduation of our students.  Most importantly, we must find ways that we remove our own masks, so that we can critically examine our campuses, organizations, and groups to see who isn’t represented.  And we cannot assume that because our campuses are predominately-“this or that”-that everyone is represented and treated equitably.  This was a difficult piece to write because I realize that my own masks have grown, deepened and expanded.  My views are shaped in more complex and various ways.  Yes, I am Black and Gay, but now I am a husband and a father.  As an AVP, I am responsible for more people and vastly larger budgets.  As a seasoned student affairs professional, my campus is more diverse and requires that I think more broadly about the work that I do.

But as Dunbar concludes, “We sing, but oh the clay is vile beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise…”  In short, AVPS we move beyond the mask!