Is It Democratic to Hurt Our Souls? Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education

• In Event: Public Scholarship on Racialized Opportunities and Experiences in Higher Education

Abstract

This paper looks critically at how alliance and allegiance work was built among the presenters as a means of mobilizing discourse, and putting efforts toward social justice on its feet. These efforts fight against the anti-democratic and anti-intellectural climate facing much of higher education. Despite the struggles, remaining silent causes more damage. This paper models the interplay of dialogue necessary for social justice workers and practitioners to not simply exercise the legal right to remain silent, but to transcend our silence through dialogic allegiance building, looking at how the history of our institutions and the contemporary realities plays out with an anti-democratic and anti-intellectual assault for scholars of color and white allies that constitutes Racial Battle Fatigue.

Authors

• Chaunda Allen, Louisiana State University

• Kenneth James Fasching-Varner, Louisiana State University

• Roland W. Mitchell, Louisiana State University

• Christine Clark, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Lori Latrice Martin, Louisiana State University

• Sarah K Corie, Louisiana State University