Speaker, Author, Cultural Critic
While I was in Richmond attending the national conference of Black Girls RUN!, I saw social media discussion of a piece that engages know-your-place aggression. Now that I’ve had a chance to read it, I have no doubt it will make a difference in the care people receive from doctors. That’s so gratifying! And I appreciate folk like Dr. Iwashyna who step up in this way. By the time it makes it into print like this, there’s no measuring how much it has made it into how he moves in the world.
Quoting from Dr. Theodore J. Iwashyna’s column for the New England Journal of Medicine website:
The New York Times placed an ugly spotlight on a Black scholar in mid-July and on another (across the pond in England) a few weeks later. These stories revolved around Black individuals, but the framing came from white people. In the wake of these features, the most widely circulated article by a Black person appeared in The Atlantic. How did it command attention? By saying Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts probably caused his negative experiences.
All I could see was how whiteness managed to stay out of the spotlight.
While watching discussion of that Atlantic article, my peace was preserved because I notice how white mediocrity shapes so much of what we encounter. And when white mediocrity is at play, it facilitates white villainy. Especially given the tragic turn Professor Arday’s story has taken, I am reminded of the life-saving power of clarity.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: in a society determined to convince you there’s nothing to see, noticing white mediocrity is a form of self-care. Obsessing over whether a person of color deserves a spot prevents everyone from noticing that white people get and keep positions without needing to be impressive at all.
Some will rush to say self-care is no match for systemic change and that self-care is, by definition, individualistic. I both agree and disagree. Only systemic change is systemic change, but our violent systems were created. They didn’t fall out of the sky. People made them, and people will have to unmake them—with consistent effort. When we find ways to survive and thrive, we can make the effort that will always be required.
As important, I see self-care as communal. As I put it in The People’s Project, “I take care of myself because I want my life to be a contribution.”
So, I want to put in one place a few things that might help folk weather the storms our society makes sure are always coming…
“I’m a Black Woman Who’s Met All the Standards for Promotion. I’m Not Waiting to Reward Myself.” (TIME)
“White Mediocrity Empowers White Villainy: A Conversation with Koritha Mitchell” (Public Books)
“To Her Opponents, Harvard’s Claudine Gay’s Crime Was Not Knowing Her Place.” (MSNBC)
The scholarly journal article “Identifying White Mediocrity and Know-Your-Place Aggression: A Form of Self-Care” addresses racism, (hetero)sexism, ableism, Islamophobia, etc.
Once I published the above article about all marginalized groups, I focused on how know-your-place aggression has aimed to disrupt African American success specifically: From Slave Cabins to the White House.
And this assessment remains precise: “Addressing injustice requires tackling not just the unfair (negative) treatment of a few, but rather, the unearned (positive) treatment of the majority. [After all,] institutions are not overwhelmingly white because white people are the best the world has to offer, but because every positive trait is attached to individuals simply because they are straight and/or white and/or male.” [full text here]
When I preorder a book, I expect it to be more than worthwhile, but Kemi Doll’s absolutely lit a fire! I believe this book will save people unnecessary shame and misery, and it will save lives.
What an honor to explain some of why I believe that in Ms Magazine, an outlet I’ve long admired.
Please read and share! The review is here.
On April 29th, the American Studies Program at Boston University hosted me as the speaker to end the academic year. I took that opportunity to share brand new work. I read from my work-in-progress, Blissfully Childfree: A Memoir in Letters. The feedback I received was incredibly generative. An extraordinarily engaged audience told me what resonated, what didn’t, and what they hoped would be addressed in other parts of the manuscript. And that room was so full of good energy! People from every part of my life!
A few weeks later, I headed to Charleston, South Carolina, to participate in a scholarly retreat hosted by Brown University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. The sociologists, legal scholars, and education scholars gathered made for excellent interlocutors, and they were generous enough to let me participate even though I had to leave a little early because I was traveling internationally before I received the invitation.
I spent May 23rd through May 30th in Greece!!! I was one of seven writers being mentored by Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. It was an extraordinary residency at Rosemary’s House. I hadn’t heard of Rosemary’s House, but I saw that Maggie Smith had been a mentor there before, so I knew it would be worthwhile. And, there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to meet Deesha Philyaw in person.
That week in Greece is already proving to be life-changing. It was a gift I could give myself. And it’s like so many others: it keeps giving.
Since September 2021, a rough table of contents has been living in my head. I would tell people about the ideas, but I was not writing. That finally ended in Summer 2025. As I committed to the page, my writing group helped me see how to improve various aspects of the nascent project.
I have a long way to go, but I now feel confident that I will finish the manuscript, and I want it to be the best it can be. That requires getting all the feedback I can. So, I’m sharing publicly from this work-in-progress for the first time!
As many people know, when I moved to Massachusetts in 2023, it was not for my job but for my partner’s. That fact has made the transition beautiful in many ways. Among them? My professional stuff feels like frosting on the cake.
That frosting now includes a lovely feature by Marc Chalufour in BU’s Arts & Sciences magazine! Because he was so careful and thorough long before he started writing, he captured my journey and my investments in ways I truly appreciate. (And many have commented on the picture at the end of the story!) You can read it HERE.
As if that weren’t enough, I get to enjoy another nice outcome: pictures that didn’t make it into the piece but that photographer Simon Simard let me have!
I am hon
ored to have a brief essay in The People’s Project, curated by award-winning poets and memoirists Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith. It meant a lot that creative writers thought to include me in this powerful collection. And, it turned out to be the perfect opportunity to say what I had been thinking about how Election 2024 played out. We absolutely MUST get better about refusing to fall into the most common traps. Truly understanding know-your-place aggression can help tremendously!!!
My piece is titled, “Resisting Despair Amidst Know-Your-Place Aggression.” Please get this book for yourself and others! The destruction is real, but there’s plenty more to prevent. We can’t give in. Book details here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Peoples-Project/Saeed-Jones/9781668207024
Rahne Alexande
r of Johns Hopkins University Press gave me an opportunity to look back on my career through the lens of my connection to JHUP journals. Moments like this remind me that I’ve been in the profession for quite a while. Time flies!
The conversation is less than 30 minutes, but we cover so much!
Topics include: know-your-place aggression; my conversation with Harvey Young in Public Books; Ford Foundation fellows; Kevin Tyler; Guggenheim fellows Carolyn Dever and Martha S. Jones; Mitchell S. Jackson’s Esquire article on Shedeur Sanders & the NFL; Rafael Walker’s article on Junot Díaz in the Chronicle of Higher Education; the one and only Charles Rowell; James Baldwin as a performance theorist; my first book Living with Lynching; my 2020 book From Slave Cabins to the White House; my Broadview Press edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Harriet Jacobs’s hometown of Edenton, North Carolina; the Los Angeles Review of Books; and the book I’ve now begun writing. (Eek!)
Listen here, via Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts! PLEASE SHARE and let me know what you think!
2025 marks 200 years since Frances Ellen Watkins [Harper]’s birth. Commemorations of various sorts are taking place all year. As a small contribution, I made a video in tribute to her and her last novel, Iola Leroy.
I hope you enjoy the video and find reasons to share with others!
In alignment with celebrations of various sorts, Broadview Press is offering 20% off my edition of that novel as well as my edition of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
