Project Token | White Paper

Definition

A “White Paper” is an authoritative report that provides information about a problem, issue, project, or product. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) describes a White Paper as:

an opportunity to share any best practices and lessons learned from the project. Please be candid in describing the work undertaken and discuss any aspects of the project that might have been done differently.  The hope is that the White Paper will help inform the work of others in the field.

Because the NEH sets the standard for White Papers on Digital Humanities projects, I have drawn from their guidelines to generate the specifications below. My hope is that the White Paper will provide a valuable opportunity to reflect on the project management and accomplishments, providing lessons applicable to future endeavors.

I welcome your suggestions for improving the report specifications.

1. Project Description

Project: Token is a creative hub for combating racial tokenism on college campuses while empowering minority voices of color. The first core program of S.I.L.E.N.C.E, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering black voices through creative, community narrative projects, Project: Token has three interconnected parts: a digital humanities platform, a creative hub, and a literary component. The Project: Token website presented here, the most recent advancement of the digital humanities platform, attempts a creative, community narrative project that assists students of color in combating tokenism on predominantly white college and universities. The project asserts that by using artistic, qualitative research, and digital humanities methodologies it becomes possible to deterritorialize and defamiliarize predominantly white spaces, while empowering students of color. The website will curate all of the project history (from the team members to community outreach to current moves) into an equally engaging and immersive storytelling experience for the audience. The website to-date has curated roughly 45% of the project history and samples foundational digital storytelling tactics.

The website contains Project: Token’s scholarly foundation within a growing literature review (last updated on 10 April 2020). Project: Token relies on the scholarship to retrospectively analyze the last three years of community outreach on Davidson College’s campus. The pursuit for legitimate scholarship (currently citing 5 sources) has not changed since the proposal phase. On the other hand, the vision for additional community outreach altered considerably due to COVID-19 complications. I originally planned to network with several departments and facilities on Davidson College’s campus, i.e. the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) or the Dean of Students Office, but had to temporarily omitted those relationships. I also needed to scale down the project history being curated onto the website and focus on quality design.

Without additional community engagement I did benefit from strengthening Project: Token’s scholarly framework and website ecosystem.

Project: Token has three target audiences

  • college students, faculty, and staff, ranging from young adults (ages 18-22) on the lower end, to more mature audiences (ages 22 and upwards).
  • digital humanities practitioners
  • the communities within and surrounding sites of tokenism.

Project: Token will raise awareness about the production and reproduction of tokenism in higher education and, by spotlighting minority voices of color, inform target audiences about how to identify, and combat, tokenistic environments.

2. Individual Roles & Responsibilities

As the sole Project Coordinator my primary tasks and responsibilities included developing and implementing a strategic plan for Project: Token’s next phase, designing and creating a work of digital scholarship that conveys research findings to users in a dynamic, innovative way, and synthesizing different positions and arguments into a literature review.

The tasks and responsibilities resulted in a complete renovation of the Project: Token website, using an increased proficiency in WordPress, including the ability to customize with plugins, widgets, and html code; a growing scholarly framework informed by legitimate sources; a baseline for the social media platform that will housing the project.

3. Project Goals & Objectives

The overarching goal (from months January 2020 to May 2020) was a retrospective analysis and synthesis of the past three years of project history, while building an internal network at Davidson College.

The specific, measurable objectives included completing an informative yet engaging Literature Review that defines tokenism, tokenism as racism, and curative storytelling; synthesizing and creating immersive storytelling pages for at least half (8.5 – 9).of the Original 17 participants onto the website.

4. Project Activities & Process

The chronology of the project’s development (since January 13th, 2020) is as follows:

  • February | Through continued consultation with Ms. Johnson, and further synthesis of Transforming the Ivory Tower, the project obtained a preliminary understanding of how higher education institutions discriminate against minorities, and sought to gather more sources for the literature review including “The White Space” by Elijah Anderson and “Art for Mental Health’s Sake” by Helen Spandler, et al.
  • March | The creation of extensive secondary source reports for Transforming the Ivory Tower, “Art for Mental Health’s Sake,” and “The White Space” challenged the website to adopt more evocative, immersive digital storytelling tools. Therefore the old website, built on the WordPress Organic Block Lite Theme, had to be renovated into the WordPress Organic StartUp theme. The new website design provided more tools, widgets, and aesthetics for synthesizing scholarship. The literature review found a new home.
  • April |The project continued the working literature review and synthesized “The Social Ecology of Tokenism in Higher Education” by Yolanda Flores Niemann, “The Healing Effects of Storytelling: On the Conditions of Curative Storytelling in the Context of Research and Counseling” by Gabriele Rosenthal, and “Racism in the Structure of Everyday Worlds: A Cultural-Psychological Perspective” by Phia S. Salter, et al. Alongside, the purchasing of Builder Widgets Pro provided 12 additional widgets for website design. The website ecosystem (how pages interact with each other) and the aesthetic qualities greatly enhanced.
  • May | The website houses the most recent, complete draft of the working literature review. The website has obtained a foundation design quality and standard and now slowly synthesizes the project history.

5. Accomplishments & Lessons Learned

The project did not obtain a full retrospective analysis and synthesis but did complete the working literature review. I did not successfully synthesize half of the Original 17 due to a focus on quality design through new widgets. The COVID-19 complication completely halted, or temporarily complicated, my internal networking at Davidson College, though I could have continued digitally to a lesser extent. I learned that networking requires flexibility, and building a strong foundation for website design will be more fruitful in the long-run than hastily synthesizing project history.

6. Works Cited

Niemann, Yolanda Flores. “The Social Ecology of Tokenism in Higher Education.” Peace Review, vol. 28, no. 4, Oct. 2016, pp. 451–458. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/10402659.2016.1237098.

Rosenthal, Gabriele. “The Healing Effects of Storytelling: On the Conditions of Curative Storytelling in the Context of Research and Counseling.” Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 9, no. 6, Dec. 2003, pp. 915–933, doi:10.1177/1077800403254888.

Salter, Phia S., et al. “Racism in the Structure of Everyday Worlds: A Cultural-Psychological Perspective.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 27, no. 3, June 2018, pp. 150–155, doi:10.1177/0963721417724239.

Secker, Jenny & Spandler, Helen & Hacking, Suzanne & Kent, Lyn & Shenton, Jo. (2007). Art for mental health’s sake. Mental health today (Brighton, England). 34-6.

Stockdill, Brett C., and Mary Yu Danico, editors. Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy. University of Hawai’i Press, 2012. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqmdd. Accessed 3 May 2020.

8. Appendices

[the report contains no appendices]

Literature Review for Project: Token

Draft (2) of Literature Review | Composed 10 April 2020

The following scholarship  strengthens a theoretical framework for combating tokenism on college campuses through creative, community narrative projects. 

Keywords: racism; cultural psychology; social inequality; tokenism; social ecology; higher education; biographical narrative interviews’ narrative questioning; the healing effects of storytelling 

Table of Contents: 

  • I. Introduction
  • II. The Social Ecology of Tokenism
  • III. The Reproduction of Tokenism
  • IV. Combating Tokenism through Storytelling

I. Introduction

Following the examples of Angela Davis and Michelle Alexander, you might argue that in a world where overt racial slurs and forms of segregation are no longer socially acceptable, expressions of racism become more subtle, often taking the form of microaggressions:  

the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group (Sue, Capodilupo, et. al., 2007). Perpetrators are usually unaware that they have engaged in an exchange that demeans the recipient of the communication.

Sue, D. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

The culture of silent pain, created by the conscious or commonly unconscious disregard for such occurrences, leaves those inflicted by such violence without support or acknowledgment. Through the efforts of four students at Davidson College, Project: Token began with the objective of targeting a specific subtle violence: racial tokenism on college campuses (beginning at Davidson College). 

Before initiating community outreach, Project: Token sought credible definitions of both tokenism and the token. As a social phenomenon, tokenism is the enactment of policies or practices in “only  a symbolic effort (as to desegregate) [or] to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly” (“Tokenism.”) Tokenism intentionally deceives onlookers with a false sense of equality, when in reality, disregarding the needs of minoritized populations. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in her classic book on power dynamics in the workplace, Men and Women of the Corporation, provides an effective introductory definition of the token: 

Tokens are not merely deviants or people who are different from other group members along any one dimension. They are people identified by ascribed characteristics (master status such as sex, race…) or other characteristics that carry with them a set of assumptions about culture, status, and behavior highly salient for majority category members. They differ from dominants, not in ability to do a task or in acceptance or work norms, but in terms of secondary and informal assumptions. Tokens can never be just another organizational member while their category is so rare. […] In these contexts the word token reflects one’s distinctiveness in the context and status as a symbol of one’s kind.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Men and Women of the Corporation. Basic Books, 2010.

In other words, tokenism provides the minoritized with opportunities, unequal in comparison to the well-serviced majority, and built upon the aesthetics of inadequacy. As a result, the token, those impacted by tokenism, experience an array of exploitation and social-psychological wounds inflicted upon their identity (i.e. the terminology “token”) and psyche.  Project: Token relied on both definitions to begin supporting students of color, specifically Black students, largely minoritized on private, predominantly white colleges. 

Racial tokenism originated in the 1960s as a social phenomenon in response to desegregation laws that advocated for the integration of Blacks into schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and additional public and private spaces (“Tokenism”). The social and racial climates of many predominantly white colleges and universities, especially private institutions, reflected the historical anti-black sentiments of larger society. Such attitudes have persisted today in many higher education institutions, if not blatant, then embedded in the culture, or represented by the non-diverse student-faculty demographics. Tokenism itself can continuously manifest in a variety of ways. Two common examples of tokenism on college campuses include 

1) the selective acknowledgement of the “successful minorities,” who then become the “website mascot,” or another commodified statistic for the school’s diversity quota and 

2) a scarcity of curricular, or extracurricular, resources (in and out of the classroom) by school’s claiming to practice progessive diversity and inclusion methods. 

The lack of substantial support for students of color compounds the distinct otherness felt by many minoritized populations. Without proper outlets for expressing such feelings, students of color can develop psychological ailments including imposter syndromes, inferiority complexes, repression, depression, and anxiety. As researchers from the National Public Radio (NPR) have shown, first generation students, for example, feel more discrimination, isolation, and loneliness. All these factors discourage belonging and social cohesion of the student body. On the other hand, students of color reporting higher levels of optimism also report higher levels of satisfaction which translates to improved performances in the classroom, extracurricular, and social life. Project: Token acknowledges and grapples with the dichotomy, or metaphorically, “both sides of coin,” seeking ways to bolster the positive experiences while mitigating the negative. 

Project: Token centers around the lack of expression experienced by students of color and offers a space to break from tokenistic facades. By first recognizing how easily institutions can strip agency from minority voices, Project: Token attempts to reclaim narratives. Therefore, community outreach began through a series of oral narrative interviews with the inaugural leg of participants at Davidson College, called “the original 17,” who brought context to an array of experiences, for example, a dominant sense of otherness felt by students of color navigating private, predominantly white college campuses. Additionally, the original 17 narratives revealed levels of comfort coexisting in the tension of alienation. By building relationships one person at a time, the growing community helped stimulate conversation about tokenism and the counter-narratives while spotlighting students of color thriving in ill-designed social environments. 

Moving forward with a focus on curating dichotomous and representative stories, each interview occurred where each participant felt most comfortable on Davidson College’s campus. Alongside the oral narrative interviews, community outreach continued with photoshoots at the respective locations. 

After three months of interviews and photoshoots, Project: Token mounted the community, student voices of faces of color, onto an art installation: three shadow boxes collectively ten feet high by twenty-four feet wide (10’ x 24’). The art installation stood for a single month defamiliarizing (disrupting the common aesthetics) and deterritorializing (reclaiming predominantly white space for the minoritized) Davidson College’s campus. Spatializing photographs and narrative texts onto an art installation allowed for visual confirmation of the struggles and triumphs experienced by students of color and often disregarded by the larger campus climate. Additionally, the space surrounding the art installation confronted onlookers with material evidence about racial tokenism. Onlookers could no longer consciously or unconsciously ignore minoritized truths or candid dialogue concerning racial tokenism. Ultimately, the emotional transparency of students of color sharing their narratives broadcasted a resounding message of resilience. 

II. The Social Ecology of Tokenism

Within the continued efforts for preserved and sustained dialogue, Project: Token has co-sponsored with various ethnic and artistic student organizations, and campus-wide inter-departmental projects, in the creation of narrative-based events. The objective has been to empower voices of color through additional visibility and acknowledgement. However, as the definition affirms, if tokenism relies on providing minoritized populations inequitable (access to) resources, within the aesthetic of false diversity, then Project: Token will require more effective social justice strategies to remove the scarcity or help correct the inadequacy. In “The Social Ecology of Tokenism in Higher Education,” Yolanda Flores Niemann argues that tokenism in higher education produces and reproduces itself through the interaction between student and faculty communities and social powers (including policies, discourses, aesthetics, and so on).  Niemann identifies institutional barriers including _____. Project: Token aligns _______ scope. The community outreach on Davidson College’s campus had largely occurred on the student level. The co-sponsored narrative based events had successfully brought students together in dialogue about racial tokenism. Project: Token had not yet developed a methodology for halting the production and reproduction of racial tokenism on an institutional scale (at the level of policy, campus-wide aesthetic, and so on). Whether by lack of legitimacy, scale, or opportunity, Project: Token’s efforts had been a bandaid on a larger institutional problem. 

In helping reconfigure a tokenistic culture, Project: Token sought a better understanding of the forces that produce tokenism and solutions for mitigating them. The field of social ecology, founded by the prominent 20th century ecologist Murray Bookchin, offers valuable insight into breaking down the hierarchical, authoritarian, power structures between human communities and nature to create a more sustainable environment (“What Is Social Ecology?”). Niemann relies on Bookchin’s societal views to diagnose the relationship between tokenism (as a community-bred social phenomenon) and the institution of higher education. 

Social ecology positions human beings equally within the larger global ecosystem and identifies dysfunctional human society and social issues, including racism, sexism, and classism, as damaging factors to all living organisms and the physical world we inhabit. The inextricable link between social issues and environmental damage demands more introspection and accountability from human societies. In healing environmental damage, social ecologists do not propose radical changes to human society. Rather, they seek to bolster communitarian approaches (the collective efforts between all organisms) within a firm practice of cooperation, collective action, and equality. (“What Is Social Ecology?”). 

The social ecology of tokenism, as Niemann proposes, posits Bookchin’s ideologies within the ecosystem of the academy or higher education institutions.  Niemann identifies human social issues (racism, sexism, classism, and so on) as the progenitors of tokenism, and as such, damaging to the minoritized populations who inhabit the academy. As previously stated in the introduction, the token, those impacted by tokenism, experience an array of social-psychological wounds inflicted upon their identity (i.e. the terminology “token”) and psyche. Detailing the breadth of the injury, Niemann list eight key effects of tokenism:

  1. Tokenism destroys the token’s agency.
  2. Tokenism produces tokens from the low numbers of the minoritized population. 
  3. Tokenism creates a dynamic of “the perceived and the perceiver” between the token and the majority population.
  4. Tokenism ignores the valuable intersections of identity and reduces the token to the more exploitable racial classifiers.
  5. Tokenism lumps the token with other similar racial groups and ignores individual distinction.
  6. Tokenism thrives within the everyday conscious, subconscious, or unconscious biases of the majority population.
  7. Tokenism in higher education thrives through intentional hiring practices that benefit the majority group.
  8. Tokenism can be overcome by the intentional efforts of the majority group. (_____________).

Project: Token has achieved valuable insights about the experiences of students of color from the original 17 narratives and co-sponsored narrative-based events. However, what’s lacking by the small sample size can be supplemented with a diagnostic understanding of tokenism’s effects. For example, tenet #4 contains an intriguing insight that even students of color, when seeking mentors or racial guidance, can tokenize faculty of color. The reduction of an individual to their racial identity will have detrimental effects even when framed in positive intentions. Due to tenet #4, Project: Token recognizes that even tokenized students of color may not be able to lean on tokenized faculty of color for support. Such an odd double-bind shows the urgency of combating tokenism through meaningful dialogue building between the hierarchies in higher education. 

Project: Token will rely on Niemann’s interconnected tenets not only in further review of participant narratives, but also when synthesizing new voices of color into an understanding of racial tokenism. Though each tenet informs the other, and combating racial tokenism would requires addressing each one, the insights gained from tenets #2, #7, and #8 hint at the potential for targeting tokenism on the demographic level. In her research Niemann establishes that tokenism can exist most blatantly when the minoritized population does not exceed 15% of the entire population. If tokenism requires that numerical threshold of 15% or less (tenet #2), then reforming tokenistic hiring practices (tenet #7). The approach would require mobilizing the majority group (tenet #8), would remove tokenism’s sustenance. Project: Token can develop more actionable steps, through a closer examination of the interconnected tenets, and activate community narratives in pursuit of tokenism reform. 

Due to Niemann’s research centering around the experiences of faculty of color, Project: Token has to  identify parallels between the experiences of students of color. When seeking social reform in the inherent hierarchy of the academy, students deferring to faculty, faculty working alongside staff, Project: Token recognizes the value of Niemann’s and Bookchin’s communitarian approaches. Institutional change will first require clear dialogue between all participating members of the higher education ecosystem. Actionable steps to changing a tokenistic culture can begin after comprehending, then understanding, the social-psychological effects that tokenism inflicts on the entirety of the minoritized community. 

III. The Reproduction of Tokenism.

Project: Token deals specifically in combating racial tokenism as opposed to tokenism based on gender or sexuality. Such an intentional distinction allows the project to center around identifiable ethnic minority populations, without ignoring their intersectionalities (or any additional identity classifications), and to focus dialogue around racialized experiences. Furthermore, due to tokenism’s various manifestations, which result in an array of social-psychological wounds, Project: Token narrows its scope to the production, reproduction, and impact of racism. In “Racism in the Structure of Everyday Worlds: A Cultural-Psychological Perspective,” Phia Salter, Glenn Adams, and Michael J. Perez argue that racism persists in the dominant culture not because of overt racial animus, but through entrenched systems of white privilege that reproduce themselves, often unconsciously. While Niemann speaks from the perspective of a social ecologist, and articulates many social phenomena (racism, sexism, classism, and so on) that produce tokenism, and negatively impact the token, Salter et al strengthens an understanding of racism’s persistence in the world. Project: Token establishes a bridge between Salter et al and Niemann’s sixth interconnected tenet of tokenism (broadly listed above though quoted directly here):

“tokenism does not necessarily arise from intentional prejudices of white persons or persons of color in the workplace, whose conscious and unconscious biases and perceptions are affected by the context (italics added)”

(Niemann 457)

Salter et al’s research confounds social-psychological thought with a cultural-psychological perspective that acknowledges racism, not only by its individual performance, but also the contexts that produce the in and out groups, the marginalized and dominant, the low status and privileged. In such a way, Salter et al supports Niemann’s communitarian investigation of tokenism reform. Within Project: Token’s continued efforts to reconfigure tokenistic cultures in higher education, thorough insights about the origin of racist culture will help advance tokenism reform into the institutional level.

The cultural-psychological terminology that Salter et al. introduces provides Project: Token with a vocabulary for understanding how students of color (the original 17 narratives & additional co-sponsorships) instill feelings associated with tokenism. The term “mutual constitution…the idea that psyche and culture are inseparable outgrowths of one another,” identifies two valuable social phenomena: 

  1. The environment will (re)create itself in the psyche, and the psyche (re)creates itself in the environment. 
  2. Racism exists as the simultaneous production of a racist environment and the structural foundation for the dynamic reproduction of racist action (Salter et al, 151). 

In other words, and in the context of tokenism in higher education, a compounding cycle occurs: a tokenistic environment produces both tokens and tokenizers; in return, both the  token and the tokenizer will recreate the same tokenistic environment. The art installation that spatialized voices and faces of color has been Project: Token’s most visible attempt at disrupting the cycle. The campus could no longer ignore the experiences of students of color due to heightened visibility. However, the art installation lasted only a month. The visibility boost continued in the co-sponsored narrative-based events that lasted temporarily. Salter et al’s vocabulary alludes back to the labor of tackling Niemann’s interconnected tenets. Project: Token will require more sustained disruption to help dismantle cycles of tokenism production and reproduction.

Project: Token must emphasize permanence because the violent nature of America’s colonial origin has been reproduced more sophisticatedly in new contemporary contexts. Salter et al illuminates the colonial cultural-psychological roots through the Marley Hypothesis that states, “white American students perceive little racism in U.S. society because they are relatively ignorant about critical historical knowledge” (Salter et al., 152). A culture of silence and disavowal has produced color-blind ideologies, “I don’t see color!,” or complete ignorance to history’s honest brutality. American culture promotes cultural tools of silence and disavowal (textbooks, museums, national holidays) to intentionally manipulate racial memory. Institutions for higher education could negate such complicit erasure. Once again, Niemann’s eighth tenet roughly states, tokenism can be overcome by the intentional efforts of the majority group. Salter et al echo Niemann with a candid cultural-psychological affirmation. Both Niemann and Salter et al challenge Project: Token to create honest, permanent, cultural artifacts informed by voices and faces of color. 

The cultural-psychological approach does not exclude social reform at the level of the individual, but assumes a greater responsibility for halting the reproduction of racist mentalities in culture. Salter et al pose a salient metaphor  to describe the approach: 

Rather than something extraordinary or rare, racism is akin to the water in which fish swim. […] A cultural-psychological approach suggests that the solution to the problem of racism is not to change the fish so that it can survive in toxic water but instead to change the water the fish has to live in. 

(Salter et al, 150, 153)

In order to change the waters of tokenism in higher education, Project: Token must practice more intentional cultural-psychological approaches and activate community narratives with the intent for institutional reform. Reiterating insights above, the approach will require substantial hierarchical dialogue in the academy, targeting the interconnected tenets of tokenism, and producing permanent cultural artifacts in opposition to silence and disavowal. 

IV. Combating Tokenism through Storytelling. 

Project: Token’s community outreach began with two students conducting a series of semi-conversational oral narrative interviews with the original 17 participants. Each oral narrative interview began with a single open suggestion to “speak your story” and occured on Davidson College’s campus at the participant’s selected “site of comfort.” Alongside the open-ended prompt, the interviewer guided the conversation with questions in response to the interviewee’s narration. The interview did not have a clear objective centered around themes of tokenism. Rather, Project: Token simply encouraged each participant to tell their story and focused on the cathartic act of storytelling. After a single session with the participant, lasting anywhere from thirty minutes to the two hours (all depending on the conversation), the interview closed and the interlocutors continued with a post-debrief. The original 17 narrative texts informed the inaugural leg to then jumpstart the conception of Project: Token. 

Though effective for the semester (the two students curated 17 oral narrative interviews in the span of eight weeks), the qualitative methodology could have been greatly improved. Firstly, the two students, one a college Sophomore and the other a college Senior at the time, possessed novice to intermediate social researching skills. Rather than inviting the participants into a formalized setting, Project: Token’s initial community outreach began improvisational and with more structure towards the final interviews (essentially as the student social researchers “got the hang of it”). Secondly, the semi-conversation interviews could have been supplemented with clearer guiding questions. The insights derived from each interview varied from participant to participant and reflected the detail of the conversation. The interviews lacked a clear thematic continuity centered around tokenism which resulted in both positive and negative consequences. 

Positively | Project: Token organically resembled a space for storytelling and invited participants into a “low stakes, low pressure” environment to speak their truths. 

Negatively | Qualitative data concerning experiences of tokenism may not have clearly appeared in each interview, or had to be carved out of the narrative text post-interview, by the project coordinator.

Thirdly, each interview occurred in a single session. With interviews ranging in length and varying in focus, a single session could by no means encapsulate the student’s entire life story, even in the semi-conversational model. After the original 17 oral narrative interviews, Project: Token ceased interviews to practice campus-wide community outreach through the co-sponsored development of narrative-based events. 

During the hiatus, the project coordinator began to address the critiques and seek a stronger qualitative method (eventually for the next wave of interviews). Gabriele Rosenthal’s article “The Healing Effect of Storytelling: On the Conditions of Curative Storytelling in the Context of Research and Counseling,” recollects her groundbreaking work in biographical case reconstruction using biographical-narrative interviews. Rosenthal provides psychological evidence, through her first-hand experiences interviewing trauma survivors, refugees, and asylum seekers, that biographical case reconstruction through storytelling, and generating a life story, empowers and restores agency to the traumatized. She notices that the past trauma, when materialized and made real through vocalization, exists in seamless continuity with the present, and thus becomes capable of overcoming. She notes that the first sign of trauma is the inability to speak about it: silence. As previously established by Niemann, and supported by Salter et al, the token experiences an array of social-psychological wounds (resulting from alienation, prejudice, and so on) to their psyche and identity which qualify as trauma. Within the biographical-narrative interview, and encouraging, and guiding, the interviewee to find a language for trauma, the act of speaking stimulates the curative process. In other words, speaking and acknowledging leads to healing. Storytelling, the act of acknowledgement, can offer an avenue to heal the trauma impressed onto the tokenized. Within a culture of silence and erasure, Project: Token comforts students of color, who may feel a lack agency (#1 of Niemann’s interconnected tenets), to speak their story, and thus challenge tokenistic environments. 

Rosenthal further identifies the immediate curative value of the biographical-narrative interview (healing that begins with the first interview), and the narrative-conversation-guiding method, for research and counseling purposes. All the while, Rosenthal continuously stresses the duty of a social researcher, also referred to as the interviewer or an interlocutor, to practice ethical interview strategies with care and consideration of the participant’s mental health. The article’s four sub-categories: 

  1. How to conduct a biographical narrative interview
  2. The main narration’s curative chances for coming to an understanding of oneself
  3. On the curative effects of directly asking the client to narrate
  4. Conversations during acute life crisis

effectively, and thoroughly, deconstruct the methodology, benefits, and limitations of the biographical-narrative interview (as if reading a how-to manual). Ultimately, Rosenthal stresses the careful utility of biographical-narrative techniques, and teaches social researchers how to cater those techniques to participants ranging from 1) being plagued with trauma to 2)  living in a stable life. No matter the degree of mental health damage experienced by the token, Project: Token must strengthen its qualitative method to cater specifically to the participant and their biography. 

Project: Token dealt, and will continue dealing, with college students commonly ranging from ages 18-21. In such a developmental period, transitioning from teenage years into young adulthood, a participant’s “life story” will not contain the breadth of Rosenthal’s participants, many in their late adulthood (40 and older). Some of the original 17 narratives ended shortly because the interlocutors ran out of things to speak about! Rosenthal’s methodology for conducting a biographical-narrative-interview would help Project: Token develop interviewers more proficient in stimulating the narration process. The phases of Rosenthal’s biographical-narrative approach apply several critical interventions for advancing the field of qualitative inquiry. 

  1. She encourages a preliminary session (the first phase) for constructing the interviewee’s “entire life story’s structure, or Gestalt, and the whole life narrative” before forming any social science research questions. The biographical-narrative interview’s curative value relies on the successful narration of the participant’s individual developmental phases, building trust, and establishing a space for intentional, deep listening, between the interlocutors. 
  2. The curative process continues (in the second phase) with the interviewer acting as a guide, or a medium, for generating narration. The interviewer does not intervene, or assert personal bias, onto the participant. Rather, through the careful employment of narrative-generating and questioning techniques, aids the participant in successfully remembering, (re)constructing, and articulating their biography. Rosenthal reframes the role of the interviewer as less extractive and more generative. 
  3. Especially noted through Rosenthal’s experiences interviewing refugees, the relationship between the interlocutors should extend beyond the interviews and into a realm of tangible, actionable support (i.e. additional resource provision or referral to mental health services). In such a way, Rosenthal’s views align with both Niemann’s and Salter et al’s concerning a communitarian approach, and coalition building between a variety of organizations, services, and resources,  for meaningful healing. 

Project: Token seamingly combined the three phases together with less efficiency. The original 17 interviews provided the biographer with an open space to tell their story. However, the interview quickly became guided by follow-up questions, rather than an uninterrupted session. Moreover, beyond the immediate warmth and support of providing a space for conversation, Project: Token could do much more resource provision. 

Already centered around empowering participant life stories, and attempting to mend the damage of tokenism through creative storytelling forms (photography, videography, poetry, and so on), relying on Rosenthal’s qualitative methodology, and acknowledging the curative process of biographical-interviews and biographical case reconstruction, will strengthen Project: Token with more effective, and intentional, interviewing methods.

In conclusion, moving forward with the intention of institutional reform, Project: Token will continue its effort in combating tokenism on college campuses through creative, community narrative strategies. With a final reiteration of core insights, the next phase of Project: Token will gather voices and faces of color, empowering them with curative biographical-interview methods. The cultural-psychological approach will activate community narratives with the intent for institutional reform, necessitating substantial hierarchical dialogue in the academy, targeting the interconnected tenets of tokenism, and producing permanent cultural artifacts in opposition to silence and disavowal. 

End of Literature Review.

Works Cited

Niemann, Yolanda Flores. “The Social Ecology of Tokenism in Higher Education.” Peace Review, vol. 28, no. 4, Oct. 2016, pp. 451–458. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/10402659.2016.1237098.

Rosenthal, Gabriele. “The Healing Effects of Storytelling: On the Conditions of Curative Storytelling in the Context of Research and Counseling.” Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 9, no. 6, Dec. 2003, pp. 915–933, doi:10.1177/1077800403254888.

 Salter, Phia S., et al. “Racism in the Structure of Everyday Worlds: A Cultural-Psychological Perspective.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 27, no. 3, June 2018, pp. 150–155, doi:10.1177/0963721417724239.

“Tokenism.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tokenism. Accessed 27 Mar. 2020. 

“What Is Social Ecology?” Social Work Degree Guide, www.socialworkdegreeguide.com/faq/what-is-social-ecology/?fbclid=IwAR2g_56O8vjXSAe04vDju-Zz02RdIf6FZEN5Uo_FBVzbNNjBeDM5b27c_5o.

Outreach and Sustainability Plan for Project: Token

Outreach and Sustainability Plan: Project: Token

Community Resources – in a couple of sentences describe the benefit of the collaboration.

Dr. Shireen Campbell | Chair of the English Department | The English Department could direct me toward financial resources for funding operations, scholarly resources about decolonial poetics, and effective models for community-based narrative work.  

Ms. Kristin Booher | Director of Civic Engagement & Bonner Scholars |The Center for Civic Engagement and the Bonner Scholars Program could provide campus and community wide channels for disseminating information and outreach.

Dre Domingue | Assistant Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion | The Center for Diversity and Inclusion, specifically the S.T.R.I.D.E. Program, could provide campus and community wide channels for disseminating information and outreach.

David Graham |Director of Student Health and Well-Being | The Center for Student Health and Well-Being would definitely provide 1) campus and community wide channels for disseminating information and outreach and 2) vital commentary about successfully using arts in health and wellness.

College Communications | College Communications shares the Davidson College story through a variety of communications platforms, including the college website, video, publications, social media and earned media. In terms of creating high-quality content it would be imperative to partner with Davidson College’s official media team!

Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement | The office of Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement (DACE) strives to integrate the arts into the daily lives of students, faculty and staff. The office supports and works closely with the departments who foster intellectual and artistic growth of the visual, performing and literary arts at Davidson College. Specifically, the office could provide funding and campus-wide channels for community outreach.

Professor Alan Michael Parker | Advisor of the FreeWord Poetry Group | FreeWord would act as the first collaboration with a student organization! A seamless relationship.

Ms. Jessica Cottle | Archives and Special Collection & JEC Advisory Council | Supported by the archival portion of the JEC Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, The JEC Advisory Council, composed of Davidson College students and recent alumni and led by the JEC Project Archivist, Jessica Cottle, was created in 2019 to document and publicize the ways in which students have engaged with and responded to historical and contemporary manifestations of injustice and inequality in Davidson and the surrounding area.

Project: Token will become a creative, digital archive and could be implemented into the Davidson College archives!

Dr. Laurian Bowles | Commission on Race & Slavery | In keeping with Davidson’s commitment to the quest for truth, the Commission on Race and Slavery will assist the college community in building a comprehensive understanding of the college’s own history, which is intertwined with the institution and legacies of slavery and the lives of enslaved persons. The Commission could provide great scholarly resources for Token’s framework for decolonial poetics. Alongside, of course, the community and campus-wide channels!

Mr. David Holthouser | Physical Plant | I would partner with Physical Plant in the creation of Token Walls.

Mr. Thomas Espenschied | Digital Media Specialist | Ms. Sundi Richard | Assistant Director for Digital Learning | Daniel Lynds | Instructional Designer | The Website!

Dean McCrae | Dean of Student’s Office | A beneficial endorsement.

President Quillen | President’s Office | Another beneficial endorsement.

Social Media

I will need to connect with all my Davidson community on social media. I need to begin circulating news about Davidson to Davidson. With my current trajectory, once I graduate a can shift to a more intentional focus on off-campus dialogue about tokenism. Right now I will do preliminary research about decolonial work being done on other campuses!

Sustainability

Project: Token will grow as a core program in the non-profit organization S.I.L.E.N.C.E. The project will grow according on where I’m employed after graduation. But regardless, I will begin planning sustainability as if I’m not going to be on Davidson College’s campus. My bare minimum will be slow but the project will still grow!

A sample wireframe for the Token website.

The beginning reads, “note: the changes I write on the page will be an honest next step of Token’s digital design. I currently have a website that accurately accomplished show community and puts faces in the forefront. The website could really use more ANIMATION and INTER-ACTIVITY.

A introductory Twine before the landing page. A slideshow/Video for the landing page. Animated, interactive Blocks for the participation token community, pulsating Big and Small sizes.

Once again, pulsating big and small sizes would look intriguing–like a breathing organism (a living community!).

The participant portfolio will ultimately rely on the text and the new creative approaches to showcasing the Token story. In terms of digital design, moving text interwoven with quotes, poetry, and narrative!

A closer look at the Immersive Reality Lab.

I will be evaluating the Immersive Reality Lab and one of the presented projects.

I write the current post with an increasing comfort using Hypothesis for digital annotations, shown in parenthesis, and a growing understanding of Information Architecture, i.e., and most resonantly, the techniques for wire framing.

Upon entering the web page the user sees a top menu bar with the website’s logo leftward of the words “Home,” “Projects,” “People,” and “Our Blog” (“The Immersive Reality Lab for the Humanities.”).

Beneath, The Immersive Reality Lab for the Humanities self-defines as a “digital and experimental humanities work group (with a logo) and the words “digital” and “experimental” have a different form than the surrounding words, emphasizing the Lab’s core values (“The Immersive…).

The website has some interactivity scrolling down the page presenting the projects in a rightward scrolling showcase. The projects being the only moving thing on the screen captures the user’s attention. The sleek white and opal theme allows the projects’ colorful logos and descriptions to pop, encouraging the user to click (“The Immersive…).

For the Token website I know I could bolster the user interactivity. Currently the landing page looks colorful (wonderful right?) but there’s nothing that MOVES and POPS to invite the user to click. In order build a trusting relationship between the participant stories, the user, and Token I must create an engaging digital experience.

The Lab has a pretty simple set up in the “Projects” and “People” tabs, presenting the additional projects, and the Team behind the Lab, for users. Not really anything too crazy going on BUT I really enjoy a minimalist approach that accomplishes the goal!

I understand the reader wants to feel energized and captivated. That does not always need to be FLASHY. The Project: Token website, with the Block Lite Theme, has a baseline minimalist approach that can only grow upwards. I feel the website effectively draws the user in enough. I can improve with any extra additions for accessibility or interactivity and not necessarily change or renovate the core design.

I venture onward to Dare to Remember | A Digital Memorial of Black Brooklyn.

The website OPENS with an evocative Twine poem seven lines long, twenty one words long. With attention spans fluctuating (lower) every year, the short and sweet approach works, while still evoking the core sentiments of (mis)remembrance and historical recovery! The must now “Begin,” accept the challenge to remember, and enter the site (BlackBrooklyn).

I definitely would like a screen that preludes the landing page! A poem, or maybe a definition of tokenism, or ANYTHING! The Dare to Remember theme is “Sydney by aThemes,” so I’ll see what I can accomplish within my Block Lite theme.

Dare to Remember seeks to empower the disavowed black voices within Brooklyn, maneuvering historical silence as a relic, or even birthright, capable of reclamation by black communities. After the Twine, the user sees another slideshow of pictures with and another “Doorway.” Beneath the slideshow, the Project: Overview (which reads, just slides off the tongue), and three other “doorways” to the Essay, Photos, and Maps & VR. Once again, I appreciate the minimalist approach that utilizes the white space and effectively promotes the contents (BlackBrooklyn).

The key? Numerous, yet sleek, points of engagement.

Examining what the three components do (each with a Twine “doorway” entry page before the landing page: The Essay provides a space for folks to engage with the scholarly frameworks behind the project. The Map spatializes Brooklyn with incredible virtual reality technology. The photographs … (BlackBrooklyn).

The Token website currently does NOT have an essay or a photo gallery. It would be ideal if I could install a plugin for a digital, interactive essay, and even something for close reading, without interfering with the Block Lite Style. Also with the photo gallery, with Token being so heavily reliant on photography for visual aid, what would an interactive photo gallery accomplish? I could show the before and after progressions of participants in yearly photo shoots? Just throwing out ideas. I know for a fact Token will continue to transform spaces with voices and faces of color so maybe before and after of the venues? I could really utilize the function!

Works Cited

Morville, Peter, et al. “Complete Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture: UX Booth.” UX Booth Complete Beginners Guide to Information Architecture Comments, www.uxbooth.com/articles/complete-beginners-guide-to-information-architecture/.

“The Immersive Reality Lab for the Humanities.” IrLh, irlhumanities.org/.

“(No Title).” Blackbrooklyn.org, blackbrooklyn.org/.

The Ever-Growing Strategic Plan for Project: Token!

INTRODUCING S.I.L.E.N.C.E

A non-profit organization empowering black voices through creative, community narrative projects.

INTRODUCING PROJECT: TOKEN

A creative hub dedicated to empowering ethnic minority voices, combating racial tokenism on college campuses.

What is the (intended) impact of the project? The project attempts a creative, community narrative-based, strategy for stimulating dialogue about ethnic minority experiences, and spotlighting the rich textures of  minority voices, within and beyond, student and faculty communities at Davidson College.

How will you accomplish the goal? The project will activate participant narratives through qualitative labor, building relationships with conversation, and creative labor, curating participant voices into public art through photography, videography, and spoken word poetry.

Keywords: (racial) tokenism, narratives, community, postcolonial & decolonial & deterritorial poetics, internal colonialism, politics of excellence, exploitation, health & wellness.

token.silencenpo.com

Origin Story

Originated on the campus of Davidson College, funded by the 2017 Duke Endowment Resiliency Grant, and the English, Africana, and Educational Studies Departments, Project: Token began as the Token Wall, a shadow box, art installation project, that curated photography and oral narrative text, to spotlight the voices of 17 students of color.

Project: Token turned a critical lens to Davidson College’s social and racial climate, an environment common to private, predominantly white colleges, which frequently, knowingly and unknowingly, tokenizes ethnic minorities. Two common examples being 1) the selective acknowledgement the “successful minorities,” who then become commodified statistics for the school’s diversity quota or 2) within aestheticized approaches to diversity and inclusion.

By first recognizing how easily institutions can strip agency from minority voices, it then becomes possible to reclaim the narrative. Participant narratives brought context to an array of experiences, for example, a dominant sense of otherness students of color feel navigating predominantly white college campuses. Additionally, to create full, dichotomous stories, each participant brought us to where they feel most comfortable on the campus. By building relationships one person at a time, the project stimulates conversation on tokenism, and the counter-narratives about students of color, thriving in environments designed to chip away at our sanctity.

The Team conducted photoshoots at each unique site, and a series of semi-structured oral narrative interviews. The methodology sought to retain agency, and allow each participant to guide their own narrative in the highly conversational model. After printing the photographs onto 16”x24” canvases, and transcribing the narratives into text, the two components were mounted onto the Token Wall.

The inaugural launch from March 27th, 2018 to April 27th, 2018 | The Token Wall combined art installation technology and qualitative research methodologies to defamiliarize and deterritorialize the predominantly white college atmosphere with voices and faces of color. The Wall stood in Patterson Court behind the Black Student Coalition for a month becoming a physical space for dialogue and solidarity through shared human difference. For the entire month, students, faculty, and staff could engage with the spatialized “voices” of the Project: Token community.

On May 3rd, 2018 | Project: Token continued with an hour long event held in the Lilly Gallery, bringing together students, faculty, and staff, to reflect on changing the campus climate. The event contained  an original spoken word performance, curated by Mr. Maurice J. Norman, that weaved the textures of the Project: Token community, and Mr. Norman’s autobiographical reflections, into a seamless narrative.

Since the inaugural launch, Project: Token has obtained a digital presence, and continues developing, in two associative parts 1) digital humanities project and 2) a literary project.

Moving Forward

Project: Token will strengthen the original methodology (oral narrative interviews, photoshoots, etc.) with additional qualitative and creative elements for community building.  The project will become a creative hub dedicated to combatting tokenism on college campuses, empowering students of color through emotional social support, soft-skills development, and artistic mental-health practices.

Aims:

  1. Project: Token will curate a series of close readings, and eventually literature reviews, to gather and disseminate resources about racial tokenism (articles, projects, resources, and so on).
  2. Project: Token will provide students of color with additional, creative, resources for academic and personal development, supporting ethnic minorities additional support.
  3. Project: Token will defamiliarize[1], deterritorialize[2], and ultimately, decolonize[3], the college campus with voices and faces of color.
  4. Project: Token will collaborate with students, faculty, staff, departments, and projects, both on and off-campus, to incite solidarity between ethnic minorities and broader communities.
  5. Project: Token will stimulate participant creativity, providing students of color an artistic mental health tool and medium for self-expression
  6. Project: Token will continue to spatialize voices and faces of color into “TOKEN WALLS,” specialized to participant and themes of tokenism resistance
  7. Finally, Project: Token will activate rich, evocative, and agential participant narratives through the Fruitage of the Spirit.

Fruitage of the Spirit (FoS)| The next stage of Project: Token will rely on a ritual for spiritual enrichment called the Fruitage of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, and self-control. The FoS will provide nine distinct lenses into unique facets of the participant, evoking a fuller representation while creating commonality withon the larger participant body. The FoS will engage with human spirituality and provide deeper insights into the universality of the human condition. Content derived from the FoS will further inform curated into Project: Token’s digital humanities and literary projects.

Digital Presence | Project: Token’s digital presence and S.I.L.E.N.C.E’s social media platforms include website, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok.

Token Wall | The Token Wall will be a year-long creative project that harnesses the participant’s personality, informed by the FoS, photography, narrative text, and themes of tokenism resistance, into a miniature shadow box.

Innovative Community Building | By providing a space for participant’s to be heard and engage, Project: Token will support, and attempt to ease, how ethnic minorities navigate predominantly white racialized climates on college campuses. The project will embolden the participant’s creative vision and voice, allowing the participant unbridled access to their own creativity and agency; moreover, Project: Token will provide access to quality soft-skills training, with the goal of developing participant’s leadership abilities and emotional intelligence. Project: Token will adhere to community building one individual at a time. Therefore, course curriculum will be a variety of one-time one-on-one sessions until the conclusion of the project cycle (of course, alongside, group meetings). At the end of the year, the relationships built through close engagement will form a strong community bond with Project: Token participants.

Logistics Moving Forward

DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECT | ORDER OF OPERATIONS

The renovated website will focus on developing a scholarly essay (conceptual frameworks, research methods, and results & analysis). The website already contains a rough timeline (origin story), and network visualization (growing Token community). I am studying/working on the implementation of a creative, community narrative project that assists students of color in combating tokenism on predominantly white college and universities. I argue that by using interlocked creative mediums and art forms, qualitative methods, and digital humanitarian platforms, it becomes possible to build an archive that effectively empowers ethnic minority voices.

The primary sources I will be studying include the archival data preserved in Project: Token’s archive and scholarly databases: oral narrative interviews (both previous and continued) from 17 students of color at Davidson College, and photographs. The conceptual frameworks I rely on include 1) the impact of the arts as a wellness practice, 2) deterritorializing/defamiliarizing spaces through language, and 3) innovative, ethical community building through digital humanities. I will focus on creative a meaningful bibliography, a series of secondary source reports, and eventually, a literature review. In the timeline of my semester, I will look closely at the primary source, Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy by Brett C. Stockdill and others.

I have done a bit of preliminary research. Scholars including Jeo R. Feagin, in the article “The Continuing Significance of Racism Discrimination Against Students in White Colleges,” report a sustained feeling of alienation experienced by Black students and students of color in other minority groups. The general assumption, he reports, assumes tokenism impacts the experiences of students of color but do not address 1) the mental health resources (or lack of) available to students of color and 2) the accessibility or reliability of mental health tools for the various intersections of minority identifiers.

I am interested making colleges and universities safer for the people of color, harbored for four years, largely in a critical development period into young adulthood, by institutions that lack the necessary tools for that student’s healthy, and safe, racial development. As a black male, my racial learning has occurred through a series of physically and emotionally, violent moments. An example being microaggressions that manifest, conscious or subconsciously, through subtle acts and language, and cumulatively chip away at a student’s mental integrity.

I cannot promise a cure to racial tensions, or an immediate solution, but can develop a tool for students of color to rely on for additional support. Others would be interested in a community platform that benefits the campuses most marginalized student groups.

For the next phase of Project: Token I will perform a creative, retrospective analysis, of participant narratives, responding to them through memory and spoken word poetry. Additionally, I will begin a working bibliography of close read chapters of Transforming the Ivory Tower, supplemented with other relevant articles.

NETWORK/COMMUNITY BUILDING ORDER OF OPERATIONS

English Department

Center for Civic Engagement (Bonner)

Center for Diversity and Inclusion (STRIDE)

Center for Student Health and Wellness

College Communications

Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement

FreeWord Poetry Ground (Pipeline)

Special Collections and Archives

JEC Advisory Council

Commission on Race & Slavery

Physical Plant

Technology & Innovation (Website)

Dean of Student’s Office

President’s Office

BUDGET

Residency

Token Wall (materials)

Media Equipment & Team (videographer, photographer, video editor, web designer)

General operational expenses.

SESSIONS & TIMELINE | The project will have a yearly program, within the two college semesters, that occur one the first Saturday & Sunday of every month. The larger group session will occur on the Saturday & Sunday weekend, with the smaller, break-out sessions occurring throughout the month.

PARTICIPANTS | Project: Token will have a maximum of 17 slots available.

Working Bibliography

Transforming the Ivory Tower : Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy, edited by Brett C. Stockdill, and Mary Yu Danico, University of Hawaii Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/davidson/detail.action?docID=3413528.

Secker, Jenny; et al. “Art for mental health’s sake.” mental health today, July 2007, Brighton, England.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

“What exactly is Project Token and how does it show resiliency, self-compassion, and belonging?”

At Davidson College, North Carolina, students of color become commonly subject to institutional tokenism. Predominantly white institutions broadcast their “tokens” by displaying only their achievements without highlighting their struggles. This tells half of the story. Selectively showing the “successful” experiences of a minority student chips away at the very real experiences of their peers: students still trying to figure out how to navigate the campus, or create opportunities for themselves. Many students of color instill a culture of “silent pain.” In a world of micro-aggressions and imposter syndromes[4], students of color struggle without expressing. This inferiority complex can create an array of facades and emotional insecurity. This project provides an opportunity to break from those facades. Spatializing photographs and narratives on an art installation allow for visual confirmation to the struggles many would rather internalize. By opening a dialogue surrounding the art installation, this project can reinvent a culture of “silent pain” to that of honest communication. The emotional transparency of students of color sharing their narrative, their pain, but still holding a vibrant smile, will broadcast and resound a message of resilience. As recent research has shown, first generation students, for example, feel more discrimination, isolation, and loneliness. All these factors discourage belonging and social cohesion of the student body. On the other hand, when students report higher levels of optimism, they report higher levels of satisfaction, which translates to improved performances in the classroom, extracurriculars, as well as social life. By showing the resilience and strength of our students of color, we hope it will increase their optimism which will have a positive impact on our campus.

“How will you all collect data?  How do we know that the money invested will have effective results?”

Project: Token will utilize qualitative research method interviewing, observation, and close interrogation to construct an archive of narratives around the participant biographies and oral memories present in communities. This project will use these methodologies to build relationships with these peoples and closely engage with reconstructing oral memories in a way that retains participant agency.

Project: Token relies on the qualitative data collected from participant narratives interviews, and field-notes from weeks of interactions with communities to further inform the historical data uncovered from a critical examination of the archives. Statistics, graphs, pie charts, etc., can only tell so much. But “thick data” as social scientists call qualitative studies, presents readers with a multidimensional observation of the realities of the participants. Within the detailed interviews lived experience becomes rich data to reveal a complex, adductive picture. At Davidson College, the interviewers asked three central questions, “What do you identify as your ethnicity? How has your ethnicity influenced your experience here at Davidson College? Where do you find the resilience in your culture?” In between those three central questions, the interviewer maneuvered the conversation with smaller questions that built off the intimate details the participant chose to share. The methodology of these interviews produced a unique experience with each participant. When transcribed into text and mounted onto the art installation, readers experienced a wide array of voices.

Project: Token utilizes the quiet art of photography to engage in an intimate spatial legitimacy with its participants, while allowing the audience to digest a story at their own pace.  Each participant will bring us to their selective “element” for portraits, group shots, and live shots of their everyday life. Each photograph will be properly documented with a caption, date, and setting labeled underneath. At Davidson College, we went to athletic events, classrooms, eating halls, dorms, all spaces within Davidson, to document the unique environments students of color felt most comfortable. Each photograph will tell its own powerfully aesthetical narrative with additional optional captions of thought, personal experience, fear, triumph, etc. Furthermore, this project hosted weekly sessions via “office hours,” phone call, or any communicative medium, with the participants ensuring the foundations of a lasting relationship. This further allowed participants to tell their own narratives, in their own words and language. While a photograph tells a story and the caption provides further detail, hearing the students of color claim agency over their photograph reinforced the autonomy of their agency.

“We have had those types of projects in the past! Why should we care about this project now?”

Projects including “Dear World on campus” by Dear World, “I, Too, Am Davidson”, “I, Too, Am Harvard, and Pomona College’s “Struggles of the Low Socioeconomic Students” utilized photography to highlight the experiences of students of color navigating predominantly white institutions. Project: Token’s emphasis on the resilient, thriving nature of students of color differentiated this project from the single faceted “struggle” focus of the projects stated above. On the other hand, Project Token differed from Dear World, being solely student driven and designed to tell multilayered narratives. This project believes in protecting the humanity of minority voices by showing the success through the struggle, the triumph through the trials. The purpose and presentation of Project: Token differentiate it from these projects with similar frameworks. Through intentional archival techniques and qualitative research methods this project will become a diagnostic tool used to decolonialize and reveal records of Afro-indigenous interactions. This project provides both a physical and digital platform for participants to share their narratives. Originally an art installation digitized onto a central website, this project seeks to expand its archive and the efficacy of its mediums.

“Who is Involved in Project Token?”

At Davidson, College, I recruited 3 students of color to help perform the variety of skill sets this project demands. Each team member a senior, a sophomore, and a first year student involved interchangeably in photography, interviewing, organizational tasks. Furthermore, the narratives of the team members themselves provided the project with a unique accessibility to various pockets of students of color on campus.

By participating and spearheading all major aspects of this project, I cultivated my own ability to photograph, interview, and conduct in-field qualitative research.  

“This all sounds fine, but can we see a sample?”

For more details please visit the website at: token.silencenpo.com

[1] To defamiliarize means to render unfamiliar or strange (used especially in the context of art and literature). In context of Project: Token, the spatialized voices and faces of color will disrupt Davidson College’s predominate whiteness, placing ethnic minorities in the forefront of visibility and conversation.

[2] To deterritorialize means to sever the social, political, or cultural practices from their native places and populations. In context of Project: Token, the spatialized voices and faces of color will challenge Davidson College’s colonial legacies, visible in the plantation aesthetic, monuments and monikers of slaveholders, and lack of meaningful ethnic representation.

[3]To decolonize refers to the process of destroying, subverting, or overcoming the grip of colonial legacies, not only on the campus’s physical aesthetic, but in the minds of ethnic minorities navigating inherently violent spaces. Defamiliarizing and deterritorializing compliment the decolonial process.

[4] Imposter syndrome takes place when students cannot internalize their own accomplishments and constantly worry about being exposed as frauds

Growing Bibliography

  1. Stockdill, Brett C., and Mary Yu Danico, editors. “The Ivory Tower Paradox: Higher Education as a Site of Oppression and Resistance.” Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2012, pp. 1–30. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqmdd.4. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.
  2. Bonus, Rick. “Transforming the Place That Rewards and Oppresses Us.” Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy, edited by Brett C. Stockdill and Mary Yu Danico, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2012, pp. 31–52. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqmdd.5. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.
  3. Gómez, Christina. “Telling Our Stories, Naming Ourselves: The Lost María in the Academy.” Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy, edited by Brett C. Stockdill and Mary Yu Danico, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2012, pp. 53–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqmdd.6. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.
  4. Calderon, Jose Guillermo Zapata. “One Activist Intellectual’s Experience in Surviving and Transforming the Academy.” Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy, edited by Brett C. Stockdill and Mary Yu Danico, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2012, pp. 84–105. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqmdd.8. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.
  5. Pellow, David Naguib. “Activist-Scholar Alliances for Social Change: The Transformative Power of University-Community Collaborations.” Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy, edited by Brett C. Stockdill and Mary Yu Danico, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2012, pp. 106–119. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqmdd.9. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.

THINK PIECE

The renovated website will include three core components: a scholarly essay (conceptual frameworks, research methods, and results & analysis), timeline (origin story), and network visualization (growing Token community). I am studying/working on the implementation of a creative, community narrative project that assists students of color in combating tokenism on predominantly white college and universities. I argue that by using artistic, qualitative research, and digital humanities methodologies it becomes possible to deterritorialize and defamiliarize predominantly white spaces, while empowering students of color through emotional social support. The primary sources I will be studying include the archival data preserved in Project: Token’s archive and scholarly databases: oral narrative interviews (both previous and continued) from 17 students of color at Davidson College, and photographs. The conceptual frameworks I rely on include 1) the impact of art as a mental health practice, 2) deterritorializing/defamiliarizing spaces through language, and 3) innovative, ethical community building through digital humanities.

Scholars including Jeo R. Feagin, in the article “The Continuing Significance of Racism Discrimination Against Students in White Colleges,” report an sustained feeling of alienation experienced by Black students, and students of color in other minority groups. The general assumption assumes tokenism impacts the experiences of students of color but do not address 1) the mental health resources (or lack of) available to students of color and 2) the accessibility or reliability of mental health tools for the various intersections of minority identifiers.

I am interested in continuing to make predominantly white spaces, rooted in colonial legacies, safer for the people of color. Colleges and universities harbor students of color for four years, yet may not be equipped with the necessary tools for that student’s healthy, and safe, racial development. As a black male, my racial learning has occurred through a series of physically and emotionally violent moments. Microaggressions manifest through subtle acts and language that cumulatively chip away at a student’s mental integrity. I cannot promise a cure to racial tensions, but can develop a tool for students of color to rely on for additional support. Others would be interested in a community platform that benefits the campuses most marginalized student groups.

For the next phase of Project: Token I will synthesize collected data into a digital design. Therefore, the project becomes viable in its expansion and will focus on curating participant stories into forms representative of their personalities and agency. The greatest challenges including 1) the intellectual and creative labor of synthesizing oral narrative interviews, 2) creating an evocative digital presence.

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