One of the things that’s broken about academia is academia is so broken that students often get put in a position where they need someone to pull them out of a bad situation and if they are a minoritized person often they are looking to another minoritized person for that help

And that’s actually too much for one person. No system should hinge on saviors and especially should not hinge on minoritized people doing most of the saving.

Thinking about this because as a student I definitely looked to Black people to do this and felt mad when they didn’t.

Also some Black people *did* step up and I didn’t realize how unfair it was that they needed to, felt they had to, and etc.

And I really had no appreciation that how *they* experienced this was part of what is deeply broken about academia.

And this means that for a long time I tried to reproduce the mentoring behaviors that I felt had been most useful to me, without any consideration for how maybe I was inadvertently supporting a broken system while trying to support people getting around barriers in it.

I also can think of people who took “no” too far. People who wouldn’t write letters for their students or send emails urging people to hire them, when a 10 minute email or phone call could have made a big difference in someone’s life.

But the system should not hinge on the ability to make that 10 min phone call.

And if you’re the only Black person who is making them, who is in a position to make them, I get being tired. I also know sometimes Black folks are gatekeepers too.

The system is broken.

I guess I will add that I used to think people were in a position to make calls that they couldn’t make.

I had no real appreciation for how much of a juggernaut the system was, designed to be implacable in the face of one person’s pushback.

The more I’ve risen through the ranks, the more I’ve realized how big the system is. It’s much bigger than I could even imagine. It’s some real evil genius shit.

And by the system, I mean the way the structures pressure and punish at every level. Every level.

This is an excellent point: part of the brokenness is that the people who cause problems get to just keep going like nothing happened, to the detriment of the student AND the person who is taking time to help out. https://twitter.com/EdenTanner/status/1282111024108371975?s=20

Yes this this this this. The system is designed to pit us against each other. https://twitter.com/shengokai/status/1282127227581345792?s=20