People, Places & Things Vol. 5

Hey good people!!! Before we get into this week’s dispatches, I wanted to let y’all know that our next Substack Live is officially on the calendar.

On Friday, September 5 at 12 PM PST, I’ll be sitting down with Rashad Robinson for what I think is going to be another very necessary conversation.

What I’ve really enjoyed about all of these conversations I’ve been having with fellow Black progressives on Substack live is that we’re all wrestling with what it actually means to build movements while the ground beneath us keeps shifting in a fascist empire. Conscious Lee shared how he stands strong despite bad faith attacks on his work, and Karen Attiah really went deep on the personal cost of standing on principle inside institutions.

Rashad knows these problems well, from his time leading Color Of Change for nearly 14 years and previously leading advocacy at GLAAD. His strategic campaigns, media expertise and movement leadership have played a critical role in winning real change—from bail reform and progressive prosecutors, to net neutrality and anti-discrimination practices in the tech sector. I am really excited for us to really put our heads together and examine the best ways to build power when the institutions stop pretending they care.

Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

One of the saddest stories this week was the passing of UK Professor Jason Arday after weeks of racially fueled attacks against his life and work in the British press. This one hits me really hard as someone who has had mental health struggles nearly my entire life.

Jason’s story as a scholar who overcame extraordinary challenges should’ve been celebrated on its own merits. Instead, much of his public life was spent weathering racist abuse simply for existing in rooms some people still believe belong exclusively to them. And despite choosing to resign after being made the face of racist “anti-DEI” rhetoric, the scrutiny didn’t stop until his life reached a tragic end. Now the eugenicist who was responsible for whipping up this racist frenzy against Arday has been suspended himself pending further investigation.

I won’t pretend to know much about Arday’s scholarship here in the US, but I am familiar with the idea of white people recoiling at the idea of Black genius. White supremacy doesn’t only want to exclude you from institution, it wants to convince you that you don’t belong.

We love celebrating Black people “breaking barriers” in their respective passions, but don’t spend nearly enough time talking about what can happen after you break through them. The isolation, harassment, and constant pressure to justify your presence while your peers are allowed to simply do their jobs can break anyone; I have certainly felt it in my own acute way moving through the music industry.

In the time since Arday’s death, there have been a lot of mea culpas and heartfelt apologies which all feel like way too little, way too late. It’s a tragedy that Arday is now getting way more love in his death than he felt he was receiving in the last few weeks of his life. While the support and backlash is absolutely warranted, I’d much rather we protect them while they’re still here, instead of after the obituary.

So, the African Studies program at Northwestern University in my hometown of Chicago is closing — or maybe it isn’t; it’s not really clear right now. What is clear, however, is that staff and students will soon be out of jobs and programming options, as Northwestern's massive collection of Black diaspora archives face an uncertain future.

Just like all the other major capitalist industries in America, universities have become exceptionally good at claiming that they “remain committed to diversity” before announcing they’re cutting the very programs that offered any legitimacy to that claim. Northwestern once claimed this program was the first of its kind in the nation, but is no longer letting it continue as a research center? Sounds like the business of studying Blackness isn’t giving the same dividends it once did.

The irony is that as the first African studies program in American history, these collections were never truly public to begin with. They were already mainly accessible to scholars with the right credentials, funding, and affiliations — it’s not like Joe Schmo can walk into a university library and check out a collection of African masks like it’s a copy of Lord of the Rings or something. Black communities helped create this history, yet we’ve often had to ask permission to read it. Now even that infrastructure is under threat. Once the academy decides that Black history isn’t worth protecting as they face pressure from the Trump administration and threats of constant lawsuits and loss of federal funding, how will we get that history back?

This is why it is more important than ever that we build our own archives to preserve our history, instead of having it be left to the whims of the academy, university boards, and their funders. Otherwise, we will constantly be having to negotiate with people who view our pain and triumph as something to examine and study. You can’t build Pan-Africanism if nobody remembers the last people who tried.

Against my better judgment, I’ve decided to start a podcast, because apparently y’all haven’t heard enough from me. But as you can probably tell by what I’ve been sharing and exploring on Substack, I’ve long wanted a space that wasn’t built around headlines and algorithms. And as much as I appreciate the reach I’ve built on social media, squeezing complicated conversations into sixty-second clips sometimes leads to strangers arguing in my comments more than productive education.

Hopefully, The Vic Mensa Show is a path towards that, where I sit down with friends, colleagues, and people I deeply respect and admire and have real dialogue about a wide range of topics. We’re going to talk politics, culture, music, history, mental health — all the things you know I love and care about, alongside people I know you love too. But it won’t be 100 percent serious, of course: we’ll get into everything from the random rabbit holes I text my friends at two in the morning to the hot-button topics that’ll get me yelled at on the internet, as per usual lol.

We’re living through a moment where attention spans are shrinking at exactly the same speed the problems are getting bigger, which is a bit rich coming from me and my newfound ADHD diagnosis lol. But seriously, I’m excited to build a space where we can think and laugh, instead of vying for everything to become a viral clip for engagement. So if you’ve been rocking with these essays, the lives, and our chats, think you’re gonna feel right at home — and we’ll make sure the episodes are available right here on Substack as well. The first episode drops August 26th. Hope to see y’all there, and I’m excited to share some of the ins and outs of that journey once we’re live.

Have a good weekend everybody. Don’t forget to tune into the launch of The Vic Mensa Show on August 26th and the upcoming Substack Live with me and Rashad Robinson on September 5, 12 PM PST. Bring your questions!