READ MY THESIS
HELLO WORLD! Allow me to reintroduce myself, I am now Olivia Brown, Master of Public Health(MPH), Certified Health Education Specialist(CHES). I am officially a graduate of Columbia University and if that’s not impressive, I did it all in the middle of a pepperoni pizza. I could go on and on about my grad school experience, lamenting about the highs, the lows, the good, bad and the “oh my gosh I want to drop out and move to Nepal”s but I’m sure I’d run out of characters in doing so(and even then you probably wouldn’t get the full picture). But, I think the perfect summary and pinnacle of all of my grad school experiences is in my thesis,An Exploration and Review of the Historical and Contemporary Efforts Towards Acquiring Economic Reparations for Slavery and Building Reparative Systems in the United States, and why I wrote it.
Somewhere in the middle of the Fall 2020 semester, I found myself pissed clean off (as you do every couple of days as a Black student in a Master’s program, or as a Black person in general tbh). I was taking a class called Race and Health (taught by the fabulous Dr. Robert Fullilove, google him) and I found myself in a zoom breakout room debating about slavery. Someone (yes, they were) said something about capitalism and in response I had said something to the effect of “without addressing slavery a conversation about race and capitalism is incomplete.” The blinking they responded with was heavy with “is she seriously talking about slavery”. The person was visibly uncomfortable as they stuttered through their dismissive “well we should focus on things in the present” response. Now, my academic Achilles heel is this: whenever I begin to feel unsafe in my learning environment, I shut down. I don’t want to have anymore discourse, I just want to protect my peace and humanity. So instead of ripping them a new one, I turned my mic and camera off and raged in my room while the class continued. By this time in my program, I was learning that there are certain conversations that are “safe,” some that you need to proceed with caution to have and some that are virtually off limits. Social determinants of health(e.g. racism) = safe. White supremacy = slightly “controversial” (controversial being read as “making white people uncomfortable” proceed with caution. Slavery= off limits 99.9% of the time. I could go into great detail about who determines the thresholds for this conversation safety litmus test but again I’d run out of characters ( and besides I have an episode of Stream of Social Consciousness coming soon that’ll go into detail about my critiques of academia AND even more importantly, this is about me, not them.)
This conversation marked the beginning of a nearly month long anger streak where I found myself on the phone with my friends every day yelling ( 1)”CAN I GO ONE DAY WITHOUT HAVING TO ARGUE WHY I DESERVE RIGHTS” 2) “HOW IS IT THAT THEY CAN LEARN AND SPEAK TO RACISM/ ANTI BLACKNESS SO WELL IN THEORY WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGING THE ROLE THEY PLAY TO PERPETUATE IT” and 3) “I’M TIRED OF HAVING SHALLOW CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACISM AND “ANTI RACISM” THAT NEVER ADRESS SOLUTIONS THAT LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD” ( and a bonus 4) “I left class today because they were pissing me off.” So me, not being one for complaints without providing tangible, actionable solutions, I decided to take this anger, change my thesis from an intervention proposal to a literature review and break down the history of the reparations movement in the United States, prove why any effort at “reparations” weren’t reparations at all and provide recommendations for what could be done to build stronger systems in the United States and beyond.
To write this thesis at Columbia University, a school who’s first presidents were slave owners and who’s current administration preaches anti racism while also largely ignoring student worker strike demands and demands from Black and Brown students on campus felt… correct. And POWERFUL. I felt and feel like I’ve thrown down an uno reverse card to all the “we’re listening and learning” emails I’ve received all year and directly challenged my university and the world at large to put their money where their mouth is, literally. Many people told me reparations wasn’t or couldn’t be a public health priority or gave me a “ooo that’s cute” response when I told them about my thesis topic and my response to them and naysayers who’ll read my thesis is this: if you accept racism as a public health priority and recognize the ways that racism has created many of the disparities we fight as public health practitioners, why would you be against prioritizing a solution that 1) many Black scholars advocate for and 2) directly addresses the problem? Are you actually listening to Black people/ Black women or only when it’s convenient and they’re saying something you like? Do you actually care to advance Black people’s health and status or is social justice just a hobby you participate in when it’s safe and nonthreatening to you?
My thesis is the result of my love for Black people and my anger and disenchantment with academia, and I’m so proud of her. And myself. I made this at a point in my life when I was questioning if any of my ideas were valid because a lot of my peers couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t understand why I pitched them, when I was drowning in imposter syndrome and when I felt powerless. So, READ MY THESIS. CITE BLACK WOMEN. CITE ME. Any time you’re looking for a citation when you need to say “ Because of slavery, damn!” Think of me.
xo- Olivia Brown, MPH, CHES
