It is in this blog post, read to prepare myself for my first Africana course semester, that I notice the issues I have had with trying to listen to and sympathize with black men struggling for equality in their own battles. While I highly respect these men, so many are quick to jump down women and LGBT+ activists’ throats because we seek to ‘diminish’ their issues. I want to say that’s not the case. We want your freedoms to available to the whole community, and not just to you.
I distinctly remember the moment in time during which I began to think about racial oppression on a systemic level. I enrolled in a Sociology of Race course my sophomore year and through the selected readings and class discussions, I was forever changed in my perception of American race relations. I mean, I knew about racism—after all, the greatest way to learn about racism is to belong to a marginalized race of people. I always knew about interpersonal racism but I hadn’t thought about racism as a complex institution upheld through policy.
Following this grand awakening, I became an impassioned opponent of white supremacy and was willing to put my psychological and physical well-being on the line to advocate for change. Spending much of my adolescence being a token in white spaces, I lost many friends who I could no longer relate to. How can you value me as a…
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Nico Addai 
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