by Ariana Brown

I entered the white world of collegiate education as a first generation college student, a working class AfroLatina. Immediately, I found myself unable to relate to my peers, people who spoke multiple languages because of their “summers in Paris,” not out of necessity; whose parents paid their tuition out of pocket; the children of CEOs, investment bankers, engineers. Feeling erased, I came to Black Studies because I knew I could not survive the next four years without it.

A bit of nostalgia always crosses my mind when I think back on my college career. There were late nights spent dance battling in the living room with my roommates and even longer nights spent in the library preparing for finals. Experience is an exceptional teacher and looking back, I wish I knew a few things before I took those first few steps on campus.

If you are fortunate enough to be born both Black and female, you will learn early that your needs will, almost never, come before those of The Community. Many within it will expect you to tote the load of White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy without complaint and threaten alienation and derision if you dare push back against the accepted hierarchy. In spite of this, the work of pursuing equity in how we talk about and care for Black girls and women continues.

Legal Scholar Michelle Alexander has been committed to sharing her findings about the explosion of the prison population since the release of her bestselling book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Here is an excerpt of an interview she gave PBS' Frontline back in 2013.