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Reflection Paper

Decent Essays

Before I left Spelman for my domestic exchange at LSU and Stanford, that story was just a good memory, but when I was away, its importance to me was more than nostalgic, it was an example of the power black love. HBCU campuses, like Spelman, create spaces for loving blackness not only to cultivate self-worth or restore dignity but also to activate black love as political resistance. What I experienced with the Outdoors club and what I took for granted before I left Spelman’s campus was how supporting, encouraging, accepting, and acknowledging blackness in the classrooms and on campus was a daily enactment of loving blackness as political resistance. For example, when I am in convocation and the student introducing themselves before introducing the speaker declares their major and the audience roars “YAASSSSSS,” that is intellectual reinforcement and support from their peers. The applause is to congratulate the student for making it this far, declaring to continue, and letting them know that they are not alone, but they are in fact supported. At a PWI, this would either be considered ratchet or it would not happen at all. Furthermore, loving blackness as political resistance looks like the letter that the professors of Spelman College signed in support of the students’ protests and awareness campaign on sexual assault and sexual violence with the AUC. A student or a group of students on Spelman’s campus started a sexual assault and sexual violence campaign with the hashtag

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