This was me Emmy whole academic career. I just leaned into it. Tbh a lot of nonblack ppl in college classrooms don’t really have the life perspective necessary to generate super nuanced and interesting classroom discussions.

I don’t see the problem unless you feel like you are missing out socially. But I don’t think you can be missing out on these petty people.

If it’s that you feel like you’re swallowing too much stuff, just call it out. I would definitely call out micro aggressions in classroom discussions as they happened and keep ppl on their toes because that’s just how I am.

“Did you know that aggressive is a word often used to shame Black women who are just confident and speaking with authority?”

One thing about Black students who get to an elite institution vs white students is like, we actually do the reading, we had to learn to speak and be confident to get where we are, we have to do the work and we have more weighing on the outcome.

A lot of these nonblack students (women especially) were raised in sexist households where their voices were devalued and they were punished for having opinions. Black women definitely are too, but they never had to do what Black woman do which is go out in the world and fight for their fucking lives constantly.

To them, the confidence and power you speak with is probably unimaginable and seemingly unattainable. They are probably very jealous and intimidated. Just take it in stride and take pride.

I don’t really have good advice except hopefully you can find some friends outside these circles