BAM 2.0 Students Face Racism On, Off Miami Campus

BY CHLOE MURDOCK
Miami University journalism student

Last Nov. 1, Miami University freshman Thomas Wright used a racial slur in a group chat called “Power Moves Only” on GroupMe, a messaging app. The conversation had been centered around an interracial couple.

Protests arose, as did Professor Rodney Coates’ task force to examine Miami’s racial climate.

It wasn’t the first time Miami had grappled with racial discrimination on campus, and it wouldn’t be the last.

In the spring semester, Wright took to the dating app Tinder, called his earlier use of the n-word “edgy” — and added a winky face for emphasis. On March 23, screenshots of that post cropped up on Twitter before spreading through GroupMe chats.

Reaction was quick and clear.

Freshman Meagan Holloway-Ragland and others joined a spontaneous gathering in Armstrong Student Center in response. Protesters passed around a megaphone:

“If you’re with us, stand with us!”

Onlookers lined the banister on the second floor of Armstrong Student Center to watch the protest below.

A friend turned a phone screen toward Holloway-Ragland to show her a public Snapchat message tied to Miami’s Snapchat location. It was aimed at the protesters from above and included a monkey emoji with the caption: “Who let the zoo out?”

This message carries historical baggage. Calling a black person a “monkey” and comparing Africans and African-Americans to animals are racial slurs that have been used throughout history to degrade them as human beings.

Holloway-Ragland showed the Snapchat post to junior Aleah Holley, a leader of BAM 2.0, formed last fall 20 years after students created the first iteration of the Miami Black Action Movement to fight campus racism. As she shared the screen with the monkey emoji, Holloway-Ragland pointed to two white students, a male and a female, standing among the onlookers. The male student had been pictured in the video, and Holloway-Ragland believes the female student may have filmed it.

The megaphone turned to the two.

“Do you know what happens when you let a lion out of its cage?” a protester said.

* * * * *

BAM 2.0 chronicled other acts of racial discrimination at Miami University.

* * * * *

Holloway-Ragland is learning Korean.

She is double majoring in international studies and strategic communication. She runs between meetings for Asian-American Association, Black Student Action Association, Korean-American Student Association and the University Academic Scholars Program’s branding committee.

This might be why she forgot to turn in her Korean homework weeks ago.

Holloway-Ragland split her childhood between a town close to Cleveland, Ohio, and Montgomery, Alabama.

Segregation is outlawed in Alabama and the rest of the United States, but “white flight” — when white people remove themselves from a place after people of color move in — has informally carried it into 2018.

In Alabama, Holloway-Ragland saw a constant stream of white people flow to private schools, while her public school with mostly people of color received less funding in comparison.

Holloway-Ragland is black. While she has never experienced racism directed at her, she can recall one kid in high school who was convinced black people were not as intelligent as white people. She doesn’t remember his name.

“That didn’t have any effect on me because he wasn’t very smart,” Holloway-Ragland said.

* * * * *

Public administration major Aleah Holley was class valedictorian of a high school in Columbus, Ohio. Holley shared classrooms with other kids of color and the poor as well as immigrants.

At Miami, everyone and everything was different, including the fashion.

“Everyone had whales on their shirt and I asked, ‘What was going on?’ ” Holley said.

But not all of the surprising changes have been as benign.

Holley recalls being called a racial slur while walking to her dorm as a freshman. It was her first weekend on campus.

Another time, while helping with a summer high school recruiting program on campus, Holley got a call from the three black girls she mentored. Someone driving a truck with Miami football stickers had yelled a racist and sexist slur to the girls while they were walking to lunch from class.

“It’s very hard to help with orientation and recruitment when I can only relate to what happens to them, not help,” Holley said.

* * * * *

After a meeting with administration, sophomore Jermaine Thomas heard the sound of paper ripping outside the Office of Diversity Affairs (ODA).

He walked outside to face a person of color, who did not appear to be black, ripping BAM 2.0 posters off the wall. The student said she had never felt marginalized on campus and did not agree with the protest’s sentiments.

Thomas asked her to stop and attempted to explain that it was possible for other students on campus to still feel this way.

“The conversation went nowhere,” Thomas said.

She left. He put back the posters. There were countless others that hadn’t been touched.

* * * * *

As freshmen, Holley and her roommate, junior Imani Steele, ate on $50 a week. As a result, the pair became infamous for showing up to free food events.

They won attention, too, for getting into Miami’s Inside Washington program at the same time, which began days before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration.

Out of 16 students in that IW group, Holley, Steele and one other student, named Aaron, were black.

Throughout the trip, the three constantly told the other 13, all white, to not say the n-word.

They also had to ask other students – not from Miami – not to fetishize black women.

They had to represent black people when others asked them questions like, “Do black people drink coffee?”

It was exhausting to keep up. But after returning home, they felt proud.

“We conquered the world together,” Holley said.

Before they conquered, they were scared.

A day before the inauguration, the three took the D.C. Metro to a party celebrating then-President Obama. Trump supporters were riding the same Metro.

It was quiet.

“It felt like if I made a wrong move, I wouldn’t be OK,” Holley said.

The three kept their hands to their sides.

They didn’t look at others.

They got out.

“Aaron, did you feel that?” Holley said.

“Yeah.”

Holley had never experienced this kind of tension.

“This is something that can’t be legislated or controlled through policy,” Holley said.

* * * * *

The first time junior Micailah Guthrie went to Brick Street Bar, it was to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

A white male kept trying to touch and dance with Guthrie without permission. A group of his friends egged him on from a corner, while he repeatedly called her a “black queen.”

“It was clear he had some sort of fetish,” Guthrie said. “This happened during rush season, and it seemed like he had to do it as a dare.”

* * * * *

Guthrie and junior Miranda Woods grew up in an inner-city school system in Washington, D.C. It was commonplace for police to tell Woods to “move along” while she waited on a train platform.

“They would tell us to move along because our kind causes trouble,” Woods said. “Meanwhile, I am just waiting for the train like everyone else.”

Woods involved herself in activism in middle school.

In D.C., she made friends from Nepal, from Afghanistan. She met different types of black people.

“At Miami, there is no harmony like there is in D.C.,” Woods said, at the same time acknowledging how gentrification is changing her east D.C. neighborhood.

During her first year at Miami, Woods lived in Thompson Hall. A group of six-to-eight white girls there would slam doors in the faces of Woods and two other non-white girls. The group got up and left common rooms if one of the three entered. The group swiped the dry-erase boards of the three 30 minutes after they had been drawn on.

Once, the bullies opened all the doors to a common room and yelled racist things about the three from their own rooms.

An RA was trying to catch the group admitting to things they had done, and after two hours finally stopped them.

A mother of one of the bullies later called the police, claiming the three girls had threatened her daughter and her friends.

* * * * *

In D.C., Holley worked in the office of Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri, and wore her hair in a natural afro. Many service workers in the office were also people of color.

“I’d get into elevators with them and they’d say, ‘Keep your hair like that when you come back to work here,’ ” Holley said.

Holley also worked with a white student in the office who did not go to Miami.

He knew Holley went to Miami, yet asked why she went to Howard University, a historically black college.

He challenged one of their female bosses. When he was passed over for tasks that were given to Holley, he asked their boss in front of her: “Why did you give that to Aleah, and not me?”

Holley did not pay him any attention.

“I was focusing on my own experience, and with that came a lot of opportunities,” Holley said.

Holley often wrote speeches for Cleaver and said she answered more phone calls than the male intern.

* * * * *

Sophomore Clara Guerra has never lived in the same place for more than five years. She was born in Florida, then moved to Vermont as a kid for her dad’s job with IBM.

After 9/11, IBM laid off a slew of workers, including Guerra’s father. According to Guerra, her father saw one too many people of color being booted from IBM at the same time.

Guerra returned to Florida with her family. Her dad’s job then moved the family to California, but the work environment made him sick.

The Guerras made one last move, to Troy, Ohio, for a slower lifestyle.

“The most interesting thing that happened there was when we got a new Kroger,” Guerra said.

When Miami offered Guerra a scholarship through the Bridges program – one designed to recruit students of color -- she was convinced it was a scam because of the amount of money the school offered her. She saved the original Bridges emails, just in case.

Today, Guerra is a chemical engineering major, with a minor in humanitarian engineering and computing.

Somehow, the ultra-STEM major had time to organize the August 2017 white supremacy protest on campus.

* * * * *

It was two days before Easter weekend. BAM 2.0 was in full force. Holley was tired.

A police officer stopped her in Grove City, Ohio, for speeding on the way home. Holley kept her hands on the wheel. She didn’t make any sudden moves.

When she got home and told her mom about it, she broke down.

Holley had racial fatigue. She was tired of being so aware of her race.

“I was tired of being black,” Holley said.

BAM 2.0 members had been meeting from 9 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. almost every day. Holley attended these meetings after a day packed with step-show practice, duties as the president of Zeta Phi Beta sorority and maybe an hour of homework every day.

She had been sleeping through her alarms for class. She barely made time to eat.

It was the night before Easter. The group stayed on Facetime until 5 a.m. to finish their list of demands in time to be published in the next The Miami Student.

It was spring break. The messages from Tinder had surfaced in the group chat. Holley muted the conversation. She needed a break.

When Holley was back on campus, Steele was sending screenshots of Wright’s original Tinder messages to Miami President Greg Crawford.

“Why are we doing this?” Holley said.

Steele blinked.

“If we don’t, no one else will.”

Top photo: BAM 2.0 members, from left: Taylor Hurt, Clara Guerra, Miranda Woods, Micailah Guthrie and Josiah Collins meet up in the Office of Diversity Affairs Cultural Center. The Miami students had responsibilities in the spring semester protests. -- Photo by Chloe Murdock