The Earthquake my Safe Space Created, and the Silence that Followed

The very first week of high school was a lot like an episode of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, where Will’s aunt Janice brings her white fiancé home for the first time. The first and second week of school was spent spotting people of color across the hallway and having conversations about the lack of diversity and just like Will’s family, we danced around the word. Instead of calling the entire school, we would point out things which hinted at whiteness. Every high school has their own identity and that was prevalent in how we dressed, where we lived and how we spoke. It was overwhelmingly obvious that we existed in white spaces, everyone could feel this presence without voicing it, until someone, just like Will, did.

We are told to embody whiteness from the very start of our lives. It has an imprint on everything we do- from the way we speak to the way we move our bodies in certain situations. We’re either in the center of a white lens, or feel like we are. Whiteness was something that itched in the back of my head. My parents were quick to send me to school where the students were predominantly white, with hopes that their dialect would influence how I spoke Swedish. The itch wasn’t so bad during my time in first grade to ninth because my class was pretty diverse. But when upper secondary school, or high school, started, the itching grew into something I couldn’t ignore. In a school of 1,100 students, there were four people of color in each class of 30. These numbers clearly showed that the school lacked diversity.

I spent my first months figuring out ways to make the issue lighter for myself and my friends. Being in a completely new environment was already hard for me, and being 16 years old with zero to no identity made it harder to navigate a place that already felt distant. I, along with a few old friends of mine, started attending a school club run by students of another school that was exclusively for people of color. I hadn’t heard about the concept of separatist spaces, but my eyes were quickly opened to the possibilities with it. For three hours every other week, I got to vent, discuss and analyze both others’ as well as my own experiences. It was a safe space and it quickly inspired me and my friends to start something similar at our school. But the issue with white spaces is that they are the norm, and calling out the norms leads to anger from the majority group. It didn’t take more than a few hours before the school board reacted. I put my posters up on a Tuesday afternoon, and noticed their absence when I walked in on Wednesday morning. The conflicts between the school board and I continued for about a year: We had a heap of meetings, I was screamed at in front of the entire school while one of my principals ripped our posters down, and I was threatened to face the school’s lawyers. While this was all happening, faculty would passive aggressively smile at me in the hallway. The calmer lows of the situation was when we did have meetings over the issues. The faculty would discuss their relationships with their ethnic partners and children of color as a justification and shield for why they would never commit a racist act. This was all in an attempt to sympathize with me and demonstrate that they were completely on my side.

I was 17 when the problem peaked. I was a child sitting in a room with all three of my white principals, with what felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders. The last time we talked about it, we had a very short letter exchange in the school paper. The principals wrote an open letter as a reply to an interview where I spoke about the issue, and I replied back. I poured my heart into that fairly short letter. I talked about how I never got an apology for being shouted at in private meetings, how stopping a safe space seemed to be more important to them than the racism I had brought up during our meetings. It felt like the school’s reputation mattered more to them than the health of their few students of color. The school board went silent, as if nothing had ever happened. The second time we did what Will did with his family, the school started acting like the past year never happened. The fight for safe spaces for students of color ceased, and once again the spaces were back to the norm. I stopped trying after that letter, partly because I felt like I had been speaking to a wall for a year, and partly because my mental health was taking a toll.

There is a lot to unpack in situations like this, but some things stand out more than others. For example, something that incised situations like this is the entitlement felt by the majority, and the power dynamics that created it. With white privilege comes the benefit of racial unconsciousness, or color blindness. While we often make ourselves aware of who we are sharing space with, white people do not have to- because power dynamics are to their benefit. Analyzing the space you are in is not necessary if you are the norm of that space, because there’s nothing to compromise with. If you’ve ever been in a safe space for people of color as a person of color, you’ll (hopefully, if the space is done right) get to experience the feeling of being the norm. Because of the unconsciousness, the entitlement is often passive until the spaces are questioned. Whether people of color felt like the school space was for them too or not was probably not on the school board agenda, because they believe “if the majority feels good here- everyone should”. When I questioned the school and the white spaces, I was told I was creating issues out of nothing that it was in my head. That’s because what’s invisible to the majority is very visible to the minority.

Another thing worth bringing up is the guilt put on people of color who question white spaces, whether it’s active or not. Because whiteness is the norm, and because we learn to embody it, we are often blamed for questioning whiteness. Being told you’re creating problems from nothing or being called delusional are ways to make us feel smaller, but these thoughts don’t always come from the outside. I sometimes get a heavy feeling when I speak of these issues, even if no one openly questioned what I’m doing. Racism is exhausting. Enduring racism is exhausting. And when we put extra pressure on ourselves to conform to whiteness, that exhaustion will grow.

But we cannot allow the exhaustion to grow, not for ourselves nor the people around us. So what can you do for yourself? Find communities and spaces you won’t have to navigate, and remember your feelings are real and valid. It’s easy to feel lost and as if you don't belong, and that feeling often grows when you’re actively trying to make a change. If you are trying to challenge the system: stay strong and remember to pick your battles. You can’t take on every fight, even if you at times feel like you can. And if you aren’t: that’s okay. You are valid, and your existence in that space is doing things on its own.

By Nilo Khamani

(she/her)

Nilo is a First Person and Opinions writer @ PARDON!

Read more about Nilo on OUR TEAM! page.