Earlier this year, junior Kalani Martial decided to make a podcast for his English Honors class that aimed to illuminate the experiences of his black peers in Hastings. His decision to create this podcast was inspired by the poem “White City” by Claude McKay, which is about how a black immigrant accepts the fact that he is on the outside of the white city, always looking in. Kalani was interested in discovering if McKay's experience and his own experience in Hastings mirrored those of other black students of color.
In fact, creating this podcast really informed Kalani’s own views of race in Hastings. He suggested: “[the podcast] secured the fact that it wasn’t only me that saw things going on that made us uncomfortable. I think that as liberal and as progressive as Hastings attempts to be, if you look closely there’s a lot of things that go on that people don’t really talk about. A lot of things people say are flat-out racist. There are a lot of microaggressions that aren’t necessarily brought to light. Although I used to face them from time to time, I eventually decided it wasn’t worth it because every single time I tried to call someone out or tried to show them that I felt uncomfortable, I would get some form of backlash.”
A common theme that Kalani found among his black peers was the prevalence of racist jokes. Some students noted that they had been called a range of racist and horribly insensitive slurs such as the term a “cotton-picker.” Speaking on this, Kalani said that he has been called a cotton-picker “once or twice, but I don’t pay that much attention to it.”
He added, “oftentimes a lot of white people say and do stuff that makes us feel uncomfortable but we don’t say anything about it because either we’ve gotten to the point where it’s just ‘Alright, whatever, brush it off’ or we just don’t want to say anything because we know that it will turn into a confrontation that will just end up being awkward for everyone.”
There was also a common theme in the discussion among their white peers, some of whom seemed “unaware of the things they do” and others that seemed “racist or are subtly insensitive.” Kalani said, “I think that [some] people just don’t recognize; they need to be aware of their words and their actions.”
Students in the podcast also shared experiences where they felt misunderstood by their teachers.
When Kalani sent his podcast—which he eventually submitted to a national NPR competition—to Hastings faculty, a lot of teachers said to him “Oh wow, this is a great podcast,” but Kalani noted that “actions speak louder than words” and was dismayed to see little impact of his podcast in the classroom.
Kalani suggested, “I didn’t see a sudden change in the way they taught and talked about race, which was barely at all. This is the stuff that students are experiencing in interactions with other students, and it still seems like a lot of teachers are very uncomfortable talking about [it].”
Kalani’s advice for teachers is to engage in more constructive and intentional conversations about race. “I think that everyone should try to lean towards—if anything— slipping up rather than just ignoring it entirely and not saying anything.”
In the future, Kalani would like to see more conversations where students and teachers alike are able to “break past that layer of discomfort."
Reflecting on the overall experience of spending countless hours perfecting the podcast, Kalani said, “The podcast was a good experience, and I just hope that faculty will be able to start having these awkward and uncomfortable conversations because if it’s uncomfortable to have them, there’s something wrong with that. There’s obviously something wrong if people are so uncomfortable to even talk about race because they’re afraid that other people misinterpret what they say and it will lead to confrontation. What needs to happen is that when someone misinterprets what you say, you can just clarify it and learn from it.”