How I Got to Black Studies

                I came to UCSB Undeclared, yet knowing that a career in law was in my future so since the Law and Society major program was closed, I knew I had to find an alternative way to grasp the knowledge that I was so eager for. I have always wanted to be two things in my life: a lawyer and a mother. In our senior year of high school, my cousin had a baby who became my goddaughter. The baby, Evony, was mixed- half black- but her father refused to be in the picture so I became the person who helped out the most in order for her to have a simulated "two-parent household". So, in my first year here, when registering for classes I saw Black Studies as a category and was immediately intrigued. I signed up for Black Studies 1 with Banks, which I am incredibly happy I did, because I acknowledged that my cousin was going straight into a job and would not have the opportunity to do so and I began to think of how unfortunate it would be for my goddaughter to grow up in an all-Mexican family where none of us could really give any history or information about the other half of her.

               It may seem a little naive or even rude or ridiculous but this is honestly where my interest began- as if I did not have enough reasons for being grateful for having my goddaughter in my life, her beginning my involvement with Black Studies is definitely high up on that list. While many of my acquaintances here at UCSB have their opinions about Professor Banks, that she is incredibly hard and there is no way to BS in her class, I absolutely LOVED the class and found myself thinking in ways I never really had before in terms of the government and the way that peoples histories could be manipulated. I found the information challenging yet incredibly stimulating and generating a lot more interest in me. I went on to take Black Studies 6 with Lipsitz and felt every lecture completely tugging at my heartstrings. After discussing the Emmett Till Case and seeing the video and the imagery of his disfigured body in his casket and the lack of justice that occurred for him and his family as well as many black people who were the targets of the "pervasive presence of violence" as Professor Lipsitz would say, I was mind-boggled and knew this was something I wanted to continue learning about. The fact that events like these happened throughout history yet has been completely erased from the dominant history that we receive is astonishing- I felt sad, cheated and really uneducated. After that I took every class that fit into my schedule (as I commute and only come to campus certain days) which included another class with Lipsitz, Education of Black Children with Professor Johnson and two upper division classes with Dr. Banks in the same quarter (Women and Politics of the Body and Black Feminist Thought) and I finally realized that I had all of the requirements to double-major in Black Studies except this class and one lower division class. So I just recently declared a Feminist Studies-Black Studies double major and am so happy that I did so, even if it means taking one more class after Graduation. Black Studies has allowed me a new lens with which to view the world through and although the concepts I learn will still help me in educating my goddaughter, it is about so much more than that now. I am sincerely interested in social justice and hope to only further this and make a difference once I am a Civil Law lawyer.