Whats up, doc? Bertram Ashe on Missouri and race relations in America

What's up, Doc? is a Q&A series where The Collegian asks a University of Richmond professor five questions on a prominent current events topic that aligns with their expertise.

After racial tensions recently flared up at Missouri, students around the country have put together demonstrations to display their solidarity with the oppressed students at Missouri. These issues come in the wake of a national debate about whether "Black lives matter" or "All lives matter," two movements that relate to racial injustice and the mistreatment of minorities in the United States. Bertram Ashe is an associate professor of English at Richmond whose areas of expertise include post-blackness and black vernacular tradition. In other words, he is an expert on race, and he answered five questions about topics including Missouri, inclusivity at Richmond and the debate between black lives matter and all lives matter. 

Charlie Broaddus: What’s your interpretation of what has been going on at Missouri?

Bertram Ashe: I think it’s basically a matter of students who felt powerless and put upon, exerted the power that they had. It’s baffling to me that some people who are critical of student action can somehow just focus on the reaction without understanding. They didn’t just decide yesterday, ‘Oh let’s take these extreme measures. Let’s hunger strike. Let’s have the football team put everything that they’ve worked on, on the line,’ as if it was frivolous or as if it somehow was just something that didn’t matter. Clearly it mattered. They were pushed and they pushed back. And I thought it was fantastic that they did it in the way that they did, even if it’s disturbing and horrifying that they needed to.

CB: What has been your reaction, then, to the increase in all of the demonstrations going on at other schools around the country?

BA: I love it and I’m impressed by it. As someone who grew up post-1960s—you know, graduated from high school in 1977 and went to college and was a young person at a time when there wasn’t such activity—it’s been not just gratifying but almost bewildering, and certainly surprising. I was somebody who thought that the advent of so many electronic distractions—videogames and handheld devices—was going to set the stage for an America that just never really had these sorts of demonstrations, and I’m delighted to have been wrong.

CB: How far is University of Richmond from being an entirely inclusive community, and what changes need to be made to get there?

BA: Well there’s the culture of the school, and the culture of the school is constructed by both a kind of administrative way of setting the tone and students who bring a kind of mentality to the school along with them. I’m talking about a kind of culture of privilege, a kind of middle-class, upper-middle-class white privilege that is presumed, and also a kind of lack of understanding quite often of how exertions of that white privilege—which is often unconscious and unintentional—can weigh upon students of color and other white students who are working class or first-generation or whatever. It seems to me that what should happen is a kind of concerted effort on the part of the administration—and I see steps towards that right now, on the part of the administration—to create a kind of context for those students who come to this campus with a kind of unconscious privilege can be made to understand a larger sense of the way things are. Not in a way that’s going to make them feel guilty or ashamed or like it’s their fault per se, but just a sort of larger cultural context that allows them to see in a different way. And if in fact that can be done in a concerted way among the professors and the classes that they teach, the administration and the things that they place amongst the student population, then we’ll have a campus community that will be far more cohesive, far more collaborative in ways that I think works to everyone’s advantage.

CB: What do events like this say about where race relations are in our country right now?

BA: It certainly hammers the idea that we are beyond race or post-racial in the way that people misunderstand that term. It gives a lie to the idea that we’re beyond race because we’re not. That there’s a lot of work to be done but that it’s going to be ongoing, perpetual work. I guess I’m just not one of those people who thinks that all of these problems will be straightened out in a generation or three. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote this terrific book called “Between the World and Me” and his stance is one that I agree with where he basically says, ‘As long as there’s a population of people who think they’re white, then that inherent, hierarchical… In order to believe that I’m white, it must mean that those that aren’t are somehow below me.’ Whether it’s conscious or not, whether it’s intentional or not, owning that identity carries with it certain presumptions that get expressed, whether that person means to have it expressed in a particular way or not. As long as that’s in play, we’re still going to have these issues in one way or another. What we can do, however, and what I hope we do, is struggle against it. Struggle to allow those issues to be addressed in as cohesive and collaborate and well partnered a way as possible.

CB: Do black lives matter or do all lives matter?

BA: It’s a false binary. While I understand why you asked it, I’m going to reject the premise of the question. And the reason I reject the premise of the question is because the phrase “all lives matter” would not have to be a catch phrase if black lives mattered. That’s the reason why the premise is bogus on its face. One would not have to assert all lives matter if all lives mattered. It’s like the thing I often say in class—you see ‘Cheerleaders Are Athletes’ bumper stickers. You never see ‘Football Players Are Athletes’ because it’s presumed that football players are athletes. It’s cheerleaders that have to assert that they’re athletes because people question whether they are. If in fact black lives mattered, no one would have to say all lives mattered. In fact, if indeed black lives mattered, you wouldn’t have to say black lives mattered. So yeah, it’s a false binary. The premise is wobbly on its face. 

Contact sports editor Charlie Broaddus at charlie.broaddus@richmond.edu