Background
On May 7th, 2018, Black Yale graduate student, Lolade Siyonbola, was independently writing a paper for her finals before deciding to take a nap in Yale’s Hall of Graduate Studies common room. She turned the lights off in the room and fell asleep only to be woken up by harassment from a white female graduate student. At around 1:30am, Sarah Braasch, entered the common room claiming Siyonbola could not sleep there. She then proceeded to call the police on her. Several Yale police officers responded and began questioning Siyonbola. The video she recorded shows her opening the door to her apartment to prove to them that she lived there. Even after doing so, the officers ask for her student ID to which she responds asking why. They claim they have to verify that she is a student at the university. When Siyonbola presents her ID, police look her up and realize the spelling of her name is not exact in their system. This only prolongs the process as they go through other measures to “verify” her student status.
The woman that made the call, Braasch, is a Philosophy PhD candidate at Yale. In the video, Siyonbola states that three months prior Braasch also called the police on her Black male friend for sitting in a stairwell while Black. When she tells the officers about this incident, one responds with inevitable denial, “that doesn’t sound right”. The friend that she referred to later added that he was asking for directions before Braasch called the police on him.
Lolade Siyonbola is a highly accomplished woman. Before attending Yale, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a minor in Spanish from Missouri Columbia. She then moved to New York where she worked in the technology industry. She is the founder of The Yoruba Cultural Institute as well as the Nollywood Diaspora Film Series. Siyonbola also served as Editor in Chief of Applause Africa magazine and authored a book titled, Market of Dreams in 2012. At Yale, she is working towards her Masters degree in African Studies where she focuses on migration, identity formation, and culture. But none of this mattered. Neither Braasch nor Yale police cared enough to consider the amount of success that was a prerequisite for Siyonbola to even be at Yale as a Black woman. Or, they recognized the amount of intelligence, talent, and work ethic required and assumed that as a Black woman she was not capable. This is a fundamental problem in academia. We are taught as women and as people of color especially that we can achieve similar successes as our white counterparts if we work hard. We are taught that everyone has the same 24 hours and that if people “choose” to not make them productive then it is their own faults and structural systems of inequality are not to blame. We are taught that once you reach a certain level of prestige and financial access, race does not matter anymore. This incident alone falsifies each of these statements. No amount of educational, class or socioeconomic privilege can erase sexist and racist forms of oppression. Lolade Siyonbola did everything society tells her she must do in order to obtain success as a Black woman. She studied, worked hard, invested in her education, contributed to her society, obtained a degree, and went back to obtain another. Still, this did not matter because her exhaustion made a white woman uncomfortable.
Women of Color Feminisms
Braasch is quite confident in the decision she made to call the police on a sleeping Black woman. In fact, she felt like a victim in the scenario and its aftermath. When police arrived and Siyonbola began to film, Braasch demanded that she stop claiming she had no right to record her. Additionally, earlier this year Braasch created a Youtube Channel to explain her side of the story. The caption for her introductory video reads, “Introductory Video for my YouTube Channel about what happened at Yale during the Napping While Black / Living While Black incident when I was falsely accused of racism and my idiosyncratic life story and my philosophical and legal and political views, etc.”. In the video she begins, “I cannot believe that this is happening. I still sometimes literally go into shock”. The next video she posted in relation to the incident states, I (Sarah Braasch) was falsely accused of racism. Thank you for your support as I rebuild my life. Please donate to my legal fund here [she inserts a link to her paypal]”. She considers herself entirely innocent as she admits she will monetize her videos to seek justice and “repair her life”. There are over 20 short videos recorded by Braasch, all of which are scripted accounts and commentaries on what happened that day and her experience afterwards. She states that she has a mental disorder, PTSD, and suffers from witnessing traumatic familial experiences. While she admits she is troubled, she takes absolutely no responsibility for what happened on either occasion and never considers the effects the police encounters may have on the two Black people involved.
As a white woman, Braasch’s race trumps every other component of her identity and allowed her to feel comfortable in her decision to put the lives of Black people at risk. This greatly reminds me of the idealization of white womanhood that bell hooks refers to in Ain’t I A Woman. hooks references the era of slavery to explain the assumption of innocence that white women have been awarded. Black women were made to be sexual deviants which justified the sexual abuse they experienced at the hands of white slave owners. White women on the other hand were protected by the cloak of innate purity given by their white male counterparts. Though different contexts, these stigmas still exist. In relation to white women, Black women are still considered to be deviant and violent in nature. This has fueled the pattern of harassment by white women on Black people. Of all of the ridiculous scenarios I have recently witnessed where police were called on Black people simply living and minding their business, the call has been made by white women. There is a sense of privilege that they hold that allows them to assume their “safety” is more important than the peace of Black men and women.
Call to Action
The first action to address this issue requires us to stop spreading the idea that achievement in any capacity will keep individuals from experiencing racism. No amount of success can guarantee this. Yales’s response specifically was typical of any official university response to racially charged incidents. The university as well as its President, Peter Salovey, sent individual emails to the school highlighting “Yale’s commitment to equity and inclusion on campus”. The Dean of Graduate Studies sent a similar email stating, “Incidents like that of last night remind us of the continued work needed to make Yale a truly inclusive place”. But Siyonbola was not impressed. She stated that Yale needs to make more decisive actions to ensure incidents like the one she was involved in do not continue. According to Yale Daily News, “Yale announced new resources to address discrimination and harassment concerns in October 2017, which included dean’s designees in the graduate and professional schools ‘to whom students may express their concerns about any form of discrimination and harassment,’” and an app that allows students to anonymously report these issues.
*Tymerra Coleman
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