Grounded in Facts

Interview by Mary Sorensen
Photography by Caroline in Boston for Flytographer

Deborah Taylor is a BYU alumna who is now studying at Harvard Law School. She majored in Sociology and minored in Africana Studies, graduating in 2020. Taylor spent significant time and energy exploring the racial dynamics of the BYU community, leading conversations both with her fellow students of color and with the greater campus community about the experiences and needs of students of color at BYU.

What drew you to the Africana Studies minor?

That story starts with when I switched my major from Exercise Science to Sociology. I was initially on the premed track. I turned to Sociology when I stumbled across the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity course [taught by Jacob Rugh], which is also an Africana Studies course—I didn’t know that then. I took the class, and I was just floored that a course like this existed. Prior to taking that class, I didn’t even know what academia was. It was really revelatory because that scholarship gave me the language to talk about my experience as a Black woman in the United States. I didn’t have the language for that before.

I always tell people that I became Black when I moved to the United States. I was born in the States, moved to Haiti as a baby, and lived in Haiti until the fifth grade. So I didn’t have that gradual building up of understanding what it means to move through the world, through America, with this skin tone.

Halfway through the fifth grade, I moved from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to West Palm Beach, Florida. I come from a Black immigrant family. My grandpa only made it to about the fifth grade; my grandmother stopped school a few years earlier. They didn’t get the formal history and literature lessons. They also didn’t get much oral history from their parents. If your family is not well-versed in cultural history and is burdened by life to the point that they don’t have time to sit down with you and discuss the questions “Where is our lineage from? Where was our history? How did we come to this place? Why are we in the Caribbean?” then it doesn’t get talked about. People were just so focused on survival. My mom was like, “It’s the maths and the sciences. That’s what’s going to be your bread and butter. That’s how you make a way for yourself.” History is treated as maybe interesting but not relevant, aside from key dates. The bulk of the story that I got from my family was “We’re Haitians. We freed ourselves.”

All of this is to say I didn’t even understand that I was racialized. I was, of course, always a Black girl in Haiti, even if I didn’t notice. But that country is predominantly Black, so 1) I didn’t differentiate myself by skin color. Colorism was present, but the absence of Whiteness obfuscated our racialization of Blackness as a people. And 2) I didn’t have the historical knowledge or the ability to truly appreciate that Black people were brought to Haiti as enslaved people and all the pervasive ways that subjugation affected us. I didn’t have all the language to understand that.

[At BYU] I was constantly just trying to keep up and catch up and do well in my studies—because again, as a kid, that was always instilled in me from my parents, that this is your ticket out. Constantly improve, you know? But when I got to BYU, everything hit me all at once. Going off to college on your own—that’s the time for a young person to explore themselves and form their own identity, so you’re constantly making those adjustments. But then you’re doing that as a Black person, with all of those unquestioned and unscrutinized experiences around race, in a really White space at BYU. And not only that, it’s also the center of your faith—it was like . . . identity crisis on identity crisis on identity crisis.

I remember writing an article when I first got to BYU, saying, “BYU, we need to have a conversation about race.” And looking back now, I don’t even think I would have been the best person to facilitate that because I needed a conversation about race. I needed to figure out why I just felt so different and why I had always felt so different.

So I was struggling, and I needed that conversation. I saw the race and ethnicity course, thought “This is interesting,” and knew it would fulfill a humanities credit I needed. So I signed up for it. And it changed my world; it was so world-shifting that I decided to switch my major to Sociology. Dr. Rugh will always have a special place in my heart. He introduced me to these brilliant scholars of systems thinking, in which you consider people in systems rather than only thinking of people as individuals making decisions for themselves and stopping there. I got to see how the environment influences the options that are in front of an individual before they can make a choice.

So a big redirect to Sociology. What led to the Africana Studies minor?

Sociology was teaching me about the United States. We discussed different ethnic groups and nationalities—Asian American, African American, etc.—but it was always American. I wanted to add a layer. Africana Studies helped me learn about the rest of the African diaspora. It helped me broaden my lens, helped me see what it means to be Black in different contexts, especially within the African
continent.

And the minor was the closest I could get to formal education about Haiti and my ancestry. As a Haitian, I’d always felt in between the African continent and the United States. Quite literally—we are positioned that way. I felt closest to America, because that was our greatest influence, but I’d also always felt that some things about our culture were deeply African. I wanted to have a survey of the land where my people may have come from. Because, unfortunately, that is still lost to me. I wanted to know which regions the ancestors of modern Haitians were taken from, the places my people may be from. Africana Studies helped me learn about the rich and beautiful history of my ancestors. It was so needed; there was just a dearth of that kind of conversation in my education. I wanted to make sure that I took the time to have all that. I added the minor to my schedule so that I could make sure that it was covered.

What difference did doing the Africana Studies minor make in your time at BYU?

It helped me add a more global perspective to what I was learning in Sociology. It made me less ignorant about where my peers were coming from, what countries and stories they were bringing with them. I learned that just as the ’60s were a tumultuous and transformative time for Black people in the U.S., so it was on the African continent because a lot of countries were seeking their liberation. As Haitians, we’ve always had that concept of “We freed ourselves,” which is true. Haitians fought for independence hundreds of years ago. But sometimes I would think it in a prideful way and look at other places and think, “This is what makes us unique.” But learning about how Eritrea was never colonized? I realized, “Oh, if we’re going to play that game, then Haitians have lost in their past.” I’m grateful for my younger self—she carried me through to this point—but she also needed some learning. I’m grateful that I sat my butt in those classrooms and read some books.

And I think the world could always use more of that global history. It gives you context. I think a lot of the things that we’re seeing now in our current zeitgeist are because people are making ahistorical arguments. They don’t understand the context. I’ve made that mistake too. When I didn’t have that historical context of Haiti, part of me was ashamed of it as a little kid. Kids notice things, and when you don’t actively talk to them about the world and explain things to them, they may come up with their own erroneous explanations.

Growing up, I remember comparing the U.S. to Haiti and thinking that Haiti was just a lost cause; we couldn’t take care of our own country. But then I learned about the details of slavery: how we fought off some of the most powerful nations at the time to gain our independence, how we had to pay off France for our own freedom, and the hand that some current prominent banks had in ensuring that payment was made. I also learned how Southern states pressured the United States government to refuse to recognize Haitian independence. All of this crippled our economy from the start and set us for a downward spiral. Learning that history helped me see that the state of Haiti wasn’t purely mismanagement of the country. There were forces set in motion way before my time that deeply informed the struggle I grew up seeing.

I think in order to make arguments, to make policy, to make the decisions that change the world, we need to be informed. We need to be grounded in history so that we don’t repeat problems. When I got invited to speak on student panels as president of [BYU’s] Black Student Union, the minor helped me with that. It was important that I knew what I was talking about, that I was grounded in education—in actual genuine information—so that I wouldn’t spew misrepresented facts to people.

Tell me more about your experience as president of the Black Student Union.

I really took that position seriously. I had to be a president to a diverse Black population. I was not only presiding over Black American students—students who had been well-acquainted with American culture for a long time—I was also presiding over African students, many of whom were still coming to understand their Blackness, that aspect of their identity. Having gone through that myself helped me say, “This is what’s happening. I understand where you’re coming from.” The Africana Studies minor helped me understand the context from which those students were coming, and that I needed to be sensitive to it. The minor helped me just be more well-versed in the culture and the decorum with which I was to approach those peers.

I noticed that there was a rift in my community, and when I ran for president, that was the thing I wanted to work on. There was no animosity—it wasn’t negative, hateful energy—but the rift was there. You would think there would be unity because, especially in such a place as BYU, all Black students have experienced that imposed other. But the experiences are different, and the rift was there. And I really felt for my African immigrant peers who were asking themselves, “What is this ‘You’re Black in America’ thing?”

I wanted to help mend that gap and help both sides see that they had more in common than they had differences. As a Haitian American positioned between those two groups, I felt that I could understand both. And with Africana Studies, I gained a deeper understanding of what was going on in the continent, which allowed me to be more diplomatic, to try to bring these groups together and have these conversations. People need you to show them that you know about them, that you care about their history. At that time, the BSU was very American-focused. So I showed the immigrant students I had taken extra steps to learn about their different communities before trying to invite them in. I wanted them to know that they had a space here and that we would make room for them because we had taken the time to learn.

Any on-campus opportunities that you really loved?

Attending the speaker series. Dr. Hadfield, the director of the program, would tell us about events and interesting speakers who were coming to campus. I liked being around experts, learning and listening to people who know their stuff and can distill it in very accessible ways.

And then working within the department and helping run the program, like the panel that I helped lead. That ended up being a big blowout. There was a whole kerfuffle because students were submitting racist questions during the Q&A. But I did enjoy preparing for it and having the conversation. I still got a lot out of that event.

I had forgotten about this. I didn’t attend the event, but I heard about it—that there was a panel and there were racist comments made anonymously.

Yeah, that’s the panel I was moderating. I kept my cool. It didn’t really blow up until after the event, when my friend shared on social media some of the comments that were submitted through the anonymous platform. I was annoyed, mostly because I’d found this cool use of technology where you could have audiences type in a code and submit questions at an event anonymously so panelists could share and respond to them. I wanted that anonymity. I knew as a moderator I could rephrase questions that weren’t articulated the best way but still needed to be asked—things where people couldn’t figure out the right language to use but they were genuine inquiries. As a moderator that’s what you do: you field the questions, you combine them together when you get a lot of the same questions, and you pose them to the panelists. I was prepared to do that. But some people were really asking bad-faith questions. I ignored them as I saw them and just selected the ones I thought were constructive and worthy of the panelists’ time. But it was clear that somebody showed up just to cause trouble. I remember thinking, “Man you must have a lot of time on your hands to show up to an event, sit through it, and wait for the Q&A to ask these very ignorant questions that you could probably just go ask in a Reddit chat.”

In your opinion, why is the Africana Studies minor important to BYU at large and important to the Kennedy Center?

I think as an educational institution, BYU owes it to its students to make sure that they’re prepared to go out into the world able to relate and speak to people from all over. Especially because we’re intertwined with the Church.

And in that vein, these classes are really helpful for people who served missions in Africa. On a mission, you’re not reading secular works and the news. So when you come back, these classes help contextualize and ground your understanding. They blend that highly intense emotional period that you had in this different country with how that country actually exists outside of that personal spiritual experience. Sometimes missionaries come back and they think that the people in their mission were magical unicorns—these super special wonderful human beings—and in a way that’s still dehumanizing. The religious bubble elevates their view of people to a point where it’s not real. It’s important to remember and respect that people are humans; they’re fallible and bound to make mistakes. And, of course, they were not just the narrow concept of super poor people who needed the Lord.

Africana Studies also helps this generation be prepared for the existing society that we are stepping into and the different world we’re all moving toward. There’s so much international migration because of economic opportunities, climate change, civil unrest. And a lot of people are moving into the United States. Some of those factors pushing people to migrate were set in motion because of colonization. For example, so many African countries are structured the way they are because of the Berlin Conference. We have to have that understanding, have to see how we have a part in each other’s histories. We’re not culpable for what our ancestors did in the past (just like we aren’t responsible for Adam’s transgressions), but we can be a part of the answer to today’s problems. To think about the answer, we need to think about how our ancestors were a part of creating those problems.

Additionally, America has such a wide-reaching influence into other nations’ economies and political governments. It behooves us to know who we’re impacting and who we are disturbing when we send our troops somewhere. Being informed helps people be more critical about our interventions in other countries. And again, being informed is important not only as citizens of the United States, but also as members of the Church, as missionaries and as people who send aid. We always need to ask, “What are we doing to a culture when we come in and introduce our religion? What are we inviting them to take on? Leave behind?” We know that when it comes to joining a religion, including this one, it is seldom solely about accepting the Lord. Being a member of the Church has a culture around it. It’s important to assess what we actually want to export. Is it really imperative that men be in white shirts for the sacrament? What if we paused to ask how a culture expresses their highest form of respect and allow them to do that? How can that be integrated into their life of faith?

That makes a lot of sense. In closing, I really want to be part of improving BYU culture and making it an inclusive community. What advice do you have for me?

I say real allyship happens when I’m not in the room. Because of that, I don’t know exactly what opportunities for you to promote positive changes look like. But I do know you can ask yourself if you are speaking up, if you are pushing back on your friends when they say close-minded, racist things. When there are only White people around, are you pushing back on racist comments and ideas? Are you challenging your friends? Are you challenging your family? Do you also carry that mentality into public policy? Do you think about how your choices will affect the marginalized people you care about?

I recommend that you always be trying to find ways to learn about people who don’t look like you. A part of my ability to empathize with a White person is because I have read many, many books with White characters. As a White person, are you doing that kind of thing for Black people? Do you read books with Black protagonists? Do you ever decenter your experience just for a bit and explore other perspectives?

Creating and maintaining relationships is also important. And when you make Black friends, ask yourself, are you using them as your Designated Black Friend, or do you actually care for them?

Whatever you’re doing in life, whatever you decide to do, study that craft and study it well, and then look for ways in which you can make it more equitable for Black and Brown people. By function of it being here in the United States, it probably has a history of excluding Black and Brown people. Study the ways that exclusion has happened and is happening in your field and then raise the alarm bells and say, “We can do better in this space.” In places where you have power, if there are qualified Black and Brown people that could be in the space and they’re not in that room with you, push against that.

You don’t have to go out of your way to try to do good: you can do it within your own life, within your own profession, within your own circle of friends. It doesn’t have to be an out-of-the-way service project. You don’t have to make it hard on yourself in that way; you can do it in your office. It is still hard work. But it is deeply important work.

Something else that I think could alleviate a lot of pressure is studying Whiteness. It’s a subject that has a lot of opportunity for study and exploration, including at BYU. People often study Black and Brown people but don’t study Whiteness and don’t prod Whiteness as a race, as an identity. So, question yourself and your community too. Ask what it means to be White. Ask yourself why you go by White and not Irish American, Italian American. Some time may have passed since your ancestors immigrated; look into the history of Whiteness. Studying your history will teach you about the history of racial groups in the U.S. because they all define themselves in relation to each other. There’s a lot to explore. Asking why people cling to Whiteness, what it has to do with what people think it means to be American, leads you to learning about Black people’s racial experience.

Numerous gospel principles are intertwined in learning about the world. Our journey on this earth is about growth and learning, particularly in how we interact with others. That self-examination is also a part of that. I am deeply thankful for my time at BYU, for the teachers and classmates who invested in me and enriched my life.

Interview by Mary Sorensen, a student staff writer for the Kennedy Center who is majoring in Editing and Publishing. Link to full interview: https://kennedy.byu.edu/alumni/bridges/interviews