By: Salena Braye-Bulls (’23), Staff Writer
Earlier this semester, Lamar Richards was elected as the Student Body President for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year. Richards’ powerful campaign hashtag, #ITooAmCarolina, reflected his dedication making UNC an inclusive home for all students. As a Black gay man himself, he has also emphasized his commitment to marginalized folks. On March 10th, I had the opportunity to interview him about his time as a Black person at UNC, administrative challenges, and his perspective on Black UNC as a community.
In your experience, what’s been the hardest part about being Black at Carolina?
Quite a list…I don’t know if I can say the hardest thing. I think the most prevalent thing is being excluded from conversations that affect us most. That’s one of the most frustrating things to me. Decisions made – for example, to have greater police presence on South Campus or to not allow students on South Campus (or on campus in general) to not have meal plans as decided in the fall – do largely affect people of color. And let’s be honest here, mostly Black students. From a student leader perspective and my two years of experience, the most frustrating thing to me is to have these conversations happening when there are no Black people in these spaces to advocate for our people and what we need.
In addition to that, what has your experience being both Black and out of state been like? I’m from Alabama, so I empathize with the “not being from North Carolina” struggle.
Yeah, I think what you’re hitting on is a part of a larger conversation that needs to happen within the Black community. The Black community is not a monolith. We are not the same. We were not all raised the same, despite common beliefs. No, we do not all do the same things and we don’t all eat the same foods, etc. I think this is often the downfall of our community – we don’t always embrace our differences. And one of those things for me, being out of state, was it being harder for me to connect to the network of my peers of color – just because I didn’t have experience in North Carolina or I didn’t know of certain geographic locations or certain high schools or I didn’t have the institutional knowledge about Carolina. Some students already know the colorful history of Silent Sam, the other racist things and oppressive things that affected our people on campus just by being in geographical proximity and being in state. I do feel like I had to learn all of that and make those connections because I was starting fresh…There’s not a lot of programming available for out-of-state Black students to connect with each other and to also connect with the larger population of Black students. We have groups like BSM, OASIS, and Black Congress and other groups that are prominent within the Black community – but they can only do so much. At some point, we have to ask “what burdens and responsibilities fall on the university to make sure they’re taking care of its Black out-of-state students? Its international and immigrant Black Students?
Do you have plans to expand programming like this under Student Government?
Absolutely! I think it comes naturally with me assuming this position. Now, I do understand – and my mama used to say something along the lines of ‘all skin folk ain’t your kinfolk’ – that just because I’m Black doesn’t mean I automatically would advocate for Black students. But I am. And I think that’s my number one passion: advocating for marginalized students of color. In Student government, one of our biggest priorities is advocating boldly for underrepresented students. This also includes white students who may be low income, undocumented or international students, and out-of-state-students. I think the way we interact with the university largely depends on the intersection of all of our identities. In my case, I’m Black, first generation, gay, and out-of-state. These are all identities that I embrace as who I am, but these also impact the lens through which I see the university. I really want to address and support our auxiliary services. One thing about Carolina, is that a lot of times, I may go into a space to advocate for something, just to find out it already exists. [Like] our new multicultural health program in CAPS. There are several well qualified and all-around nice Black health professionals that we’ve hired to provide services to marginalized students of color on campus. This was not widely communicated on campus…many of my peers don’t know it exists. I really want to get to a place where we can build trust for Black students to use CAPS, for Black students to trust Campus Health, for Black students to really take advantage of the EOC office and reporting sexual and gender violence. We are the lowest ranked in regards to reporting violence and using Counseling and Psychological services. That is not by coincidence. [This is] because the Black community has fostered a large distrust in services provided by predominantly white institutions like Carolina because of institutionalized oppression. My administration is working to bridge that divide.
I think that’s very important work and very needed. I know you just mentioned that “all skin folk ain’t kinfolk” and with that in mind, Black UNC has its own internal conflicts at times. Sometimes it’s a social factor or an ideological factor. How do you think those bridges can be crossed?
Well, I think I can appreciate ideological differences. They’re what set us apart. Like I said, we’re not a monolith and I hate that a good bit of the world thinks we are. We have a culture that we appreciate, yes, but that does not mean that we’re all the same. I’ll also say that I think many of our problems stem from what I like to always reference as the ‘crab in the barrel analogy’. We’ve all been oppressed as a race by white people and people who are not marginalized. I think for so long that we had to stand out, and that’s common. If you’re Black in a white space, you’ll do whatever you can to stand out. I’m student body president and even with that on my resume, I am going to work just as hard to get into law school, trust me. But I have to do something to set myself apart and be seen in a room full of white people. I think that statement is where a lot of our problems lie in the Black community. We’ve been so used to fighting each other, arguing with each other and tearing each other down to get ahead. That’s been the way for so long, not because it’s what we want to do, but because it’s what we felt we had to do. We felt like all of us couldn’t make it. We thought “they won’t let allow us all into this room”. One of us has to stand out, and in order for one of us to stand out, that also means that you can’t. I think that part of this is a systemic issue. Fighting is at the root of oppression, and we have to understand that the only way to defeat this is as a unified front together. I think that within Black UNC, for so long, we have kind of talked about what the university hasn’t done. We haven’t had a Black Student Body President in a while and we haven’t had the prominent Black leaders and voices that we have now. I think it’s prime time for us to start talking about how we can help each other and how we can get out of some of the situations we find ourselves in. I can assure you that unless something drastic happens, the university will not wake up tomorrow and say ‘we appreciate and value our Black students’. Not even with a Black Student Body President or a Black chancellor. There are times when we go to the university and we say ‘we need X, Y, and Z’, but there are Black alumni, staff members, donors and other people in our community who are willing to help us just as well. Sometimes we go to the university and try to hold them accountable because they should embody service, but in the effort to make this happen for all of us, we have to understand where we can join together with our collective identity. I think that’s the most important part: collective identity. We are not all the same. We have Black heterosexual students, Black homosexual students, Black trans students, Black low-income students, Black students who do make $150,000 a year who are not low-income. Yes, some of us are wealthy. We are different. We have to realize that, reckon with that and appreciate that. I won’t get before you and say that the Black community is perfect. It’s my community, but it’s not perfect. As a Black gay person, I felt isolated from the Black community at Carolina. They won. The Black community was not as embracing to me as it would’ve been to a heterosexual male or to a Black male basketball player who’s heterosexual. I didn’t feel as embraced. I felt like I wasn’t on the same playing field or same level. Don’t get me wrong, I made some of my best friends, lifelong friends in the Black community. It just wasn’t as widely accepted. We cannot do that. We cannot annihilate members of our own community just because they’re different. That causes a lot of divides in our community. We have so much untapped talent and academic merit that is in our community, and we should never be tearing each other apart. We should always be building each other up. Believe it or not – even if you’re wealthy or your parents have a little more money on the Pell grant scale – if your skin is brown, yes, you are part of the struggle. You may not know it, but systemically, this struggle impacts you too. I think that’s something that needs to be more widely spread.
I completely agree. And, I think this goes back to your previous point about Black cultural groups on campus like BSM, OASIS, Black Congress and how they can only do so much. Even in these groups, there are a lot of the same student leaders who are also often tapped by administrators to do more of the same work. It can be a lot, constantly. What do you think about Black student leaders being overwhelmed?
It’s a lot. It really is a lot…One of the things that we must make clear in these spaces with non-Black people, is that we are not here to tell explain to you what you should do. We are here to help you make decisions. And even more importantly, that even if they’re not paying you, your time is not worthless. Your time is worth something. When we go into these spaces, I am not there to explain to you why Black people feel this way. This is not Black 101. This is not a cultural course on the Black community. I am here as a Black student, as a gay student – from all of my identities in this space – to help you make a decision from my perspective. One of the things I’ve had to learn how to do, though it’s been hard, is to say “no”. I was afraid that if I said no, and wasn’t in the space, that I’d be hindering our community. But this is the question I had to ask myself: “is having more of us in the space for them or for us?”. Is it to make them look good and feel good about having more of us? Or is It because they want to work with us and get more of our opinions? I just talked about this yesterday at a conference for Black student leaders. One of the things we talked about was the idea of ‘Good Blacks’ – that white hiring managers, CEOs, and operations managers are looking for ‘good Blacks’. Black people that have joined the organization but will not change the status quo, be resilient, or talk about race. And that’s what they call a ‘Good Black’. That’s someone who won’t speak out or go against the grain. I had to ask myself if my presence in these spaces was to perpetuate the idea of the “Good Black” or because they actually valued my opinion. It was hard. I was still weighing whether or not I thought being in the space was still a step forward for our community Eventually, I started saying “no”. My time is worth too much to me, to be in this space with you, just to be another number on your page, screen or excel sheet. It was when I started saying ‘no’, that the administrators said ‘okay, come back, let’s talk about what we can do to get you back at the table’. One thing I would say to Black student leaders is that “This work that you’re doing is important. At times it will feel like it’s not important and you have to keep pushing. But my grandmother used to say ‘an unhealthy leader will lead an unhealthy herd’, and what she obviously meant is that if I’m not taking care of my health, I cannot lead my people and my community. Don’t always feel like you have to say yes. That’s one of the mistakes I made originally was thinking that I had to say yes because something is moving in the right direction for me. But that’s not the case. You don’t always have to say yes, especially if it’s unpaid. Unpaid work is especially prevalent among communities of color and most often Black low-income students. That’s not a coincidence either, but that’s a whole other conversation.
What’s your favorite part about Black UNC as a community?
That’s a good question! One thing about us, we can have our differences within our community, but the moment someone out of our community turns to us and says something oppressive or racist…I have never seen a community band together in those times like the Black community does. I appreciate that. Not only in terms of coming to bat for each other but also as a supportive network. It’s also a part of our resiliency. Our tolerance is low – as it should be! That, to me, speaks to generational love or how you’re able to love people that you don’t even know. I can honestly tell you that as student body president, I’ve gotten hundreds of messages and encouraging words from Black students I don’t know – law students, grad school students, undergrads – not because they knew me, but because in times like this, our community always makes an effort to be there. And at times, we’ve failed, but for the most part, the Black community is always there to support our own.
Right, right. That generational love kind of transcends all especially, when people are – for lack of a better word – trying us. Thank you so much for your time, Lamar.
