After seven years of membership with the National Black Graduate Student Association, serving as the Assistant Director and Acting Director of the Bruce D. Nesbitt African Cultural Center for seven years, and traveling all across the country to academic and professional conference, this weekend I heard the most phenomenal speaker I had ever heard in my entire life. I have been blessed to sit in the audience, ask questions, and shake the hand of Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Dr. Cornell West, Spike Lee, Afena Shakur, Sapphire, and many more. Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry gave me the greatest gift on Thursday, March 10th, 2011. She stood in front of a crowd of over 200 African American faculty, recruiters, undergraduate, and graduate students and challenged us to use the information that she was sharing to think beyond that which we might have been able to imagine. Dr. Harris-Perry is a teacher in every sense of the word.
After the first five minutes of Dr. Harris-Perry’s talk, people began to scramble for a pen and paper. With the advancements of technology, I no longer had to scramble as I pulled out my IPhone4 to jot down interesting points using my notes application. The only thing I regret about using the notes application instead of the camera was my desire to go back and hear again the thoughts that she shared with us. Dr. Harris-Perry has a brilliant mind that a budding scholar aspires to touch, hear, and see with their own eyes. As I listened to her speak, I thought about Maya Angelou’s ability to make ordering coffee sound poetic, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson’s ability to articulate the hip hop moment in a way that makes white conservatives refer to it as art, Bernard Stanley Hoyes’ ability to paint a canvas with the most vibrant and vivid colors found on a palette, and Sister Harriet Tubman’s ability to think beyond her own freedom as she continued to return to free hundreds of slaves. Dr. Harris-Perry is a scholar as I define; S equals Scholarship, C equals Class, H equals Honesty, O equals Omnipresent, L equals Learned, A equals Accomplished, and R equals Respect.
My aim is to become a sport studies scholar, and most often I hear the media, academics, and friends unable to relate to my desire to begin the world looking differently at the African American male athlete. Dr. Harris-Perry had me at hello and mesmerized me when she began to insert sport analogies into her talk. Challenging the audience members to consider the connection of Michael Vick’s relationship with dog fighting to the use of dogs upon Black American’s during the Civil Right Movement. Not using our historical connection to dogs as an excuse for his actions, Dr. Harris-Perry simply offers a perspective on how African American people have a “different” relationship with dogs. She also presents the audience with a look at the statistical possibilities of career choices for African American male athletes. Only, she does not argue against their pursuit of a professional athletic career, she offers that the delusional thought that our children should aspire to be the President of the United States over professional athletics is statically inaccurate. These two analogies created a new research spark in my brain, and I suspect that I will be quoting Dr. Harris-Perry as I drawn on her two critical inquiries.
I have felt cheated throughout my academic career. It is my opinion, that teachers, instructors, and professors have become lackadaisical in the area of educating. My educational process has consisted of the teacher/instructor standing in front of the class reading directly from PowerPoint slides, while offering no additional thought provoking information during the lecture. This process does not consist of any intellectual dialogue and mired with the expectation that we educate ourselves without any further knowledge of where this information is located. Dr. Harris-Perry reminded me that there are instructors who still believe in “teaching” young people to think critically beyond the information that she has within herself. Her willingness to share the knowledge and expose her intellectual thinking processes was something I have not encountered in some time. She reminded me that teaching is about sharing the knowledge and information that you have and empowering those who will listen to engage in that knowledge to expand their horizons. These two examples from her talk are only a peep at the information she shared with us, so I hope that you might do more research on her as I plan to gain more from her teachings.
In a nutshell, I am Dr. Harris-Perry’s new BIGGEST Fan! I want to transfer to Tulane to take her course. I want to search the internet for any glimpse of information that she has shared. I want to make a daily check of her website hoping that she has bestowed new and refreshing information about the world that we live. I immediately downloaded her book Barbershops, Bibles, and BET onto my IPad and began reading the text upon the close of the conference day. Thank you, Dr. Harris-Perry, for restoring and renewing my dedication to my personal education and the work that I declare to produce in the future.
Nameka specializes in celebrating the athletic experience through academic and practitioner applications of the athlete experience. In an effort to have athletic voices more visible in society, my goal is to utilize this blog to share stories and ideas that enhance our "human" understanding of the athlete experience for myself and the world.
