Education: Equalizer or Oppressor

Keywords: Black Geographies, Racial Geographies, Education
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 77

Abstract

Athens-Clarke County, GA is home to the first public institution of learning—The University of Georgia (UGA). For the last 200 plus years UGA has brought settlers to Athens and led them in indigenous removal, slavery, Jim and Jane Crow politics, segregation, and racial terrorism. These actions transformed Athens-Clarke County to the indigenous homeland of the Cherokee and Creek Nation into a settler town with a white supremacist landscape. Living within this town are the ancestors of the previously enslaved Africans. Their collective position in relation to Athens’ settlers has not changed with many of them working service jobs at the University for what Black Athenians call slave wages. In 2015 slave remains were found underneath a building uncovering the truth of the universities relationship with Black oppression. This paper documents my years studying in Athens and how I have slowly integrated myself into this community and have demands that the University support the city’s Black residents instead of extract cheap labor from them. Through my experience fighting for these demands I have had to change my understanding of universities as a key component in the network of American institutions of white supremacy that sustain the positionality of Black people. In this paper I use UGA as a prime example of the land grant institution that produce white supremacist landscapes and sustains Black oppression.