I, Too, Am Here: Students Mobilizing Images and Words Against Everyday Racism

• In Event: 452 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Mobilization and Social Movements

Abstract

In March 2014, the “I, Too, Am Harvard” photo campaign spread across the internet, featuring portraits of over 50 black and mixed race students holding up message boards with handwritten examples of interpersonal and institutional racism they experienced as students at Harvard College. Examining this campaign in the context of postracial ideologies in the United States and utilizing a critical race theory in education perspective, I argue that the creators and participants of the “I, Too, Am Harvard” campaign created powerful counternarratives that individually and collectively process, expose, and challenge systemic inequities, stereotypic representations, and problematic interactions. Through strategically communicating and circulating images of embodied personal experiences connected to historically situated, institutionalized, cultural, or systemic issues, the campaign works on multiple levels, exposing subtle instances of everyday interpersonal and institutional racism, showing how racial hierarchies are naturalized or disguised in conversations about culture and class, challenging popular stereotypic assumptions, and working to destabilize hegemonic postracial and colorblind ideologies. By examining how this group of students utilized words, images, social media, and networked online communities to create and circulate these reflexive educational and politically resonant counternarratives, we can also learn how educators can potentially use this example to help others name their experiences and teach and learn about race and racism while utilizing the pedagogical affordances of mediated participatory resistance practices.

Author

• Diana Lee, University of Southern California