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Chapter 3
“Ms. Banjo! You’re early.”
I smiled as I entered Dr. Miller’s office. She dusted some brownie crumbs off her fingers. Somehow, the action was elegant, in line with the dreads wrapped up in an ochre headscarf, large crescent bronze earrings, and the brown-plum sheen of her lips. I plopped myself on the chair by her desk and threw my satchel on the floor. “Which is why I’m your favorite student.”
“It’s not appropriate to have favorites.”
“So you admit it, I am your favorite.” I passed her the flat white I’d picked up with my latte from the campus coffee shop, Beanz.
My most hallowed female authority figure, aside from Beyoncé and my mother, adjusted tortoise-shell frames on a flawlessly composed blank face. “I’m technically not allowed to take anything from students. I absolutely cannot drink this.”
She motioned at me with a single finger—capped by a gleaming, wine-colored nail and bearing a hefty, intricately designed silver ring—instructing me to put the coffee down on the desk. “It’s wonderful how I just found a flat white on my desk, randomly. Can’t let it go to waste.” She picked it up, took a sip, smiled. “Thank you.”
I hitched up a shoulder. “For what?” I held up my coffee cup and smashed it against hers in a toast to tutor-student boundaries.
Dr. Miller and I weren’t thrown together as a mentor-mentee duo by chance. I studied politics, media, and culture and she taught an intertextual media and culture module. She also happened to be the only one of the two Black lecturers in the entire institution of Whitewell who looked after undergraduates. The second was a man who once gave a speech to the boys of Blackwell during Black History Month on how the best way to avoid trouble was not tolooklike trouble (no saggy trousers, no looking Black). Earlier statement revised: Dr. Serena Miller was the only Black lecturer in my university.
I decided that she had to be my mentor in my first year, in my third seminar. During a class discussion on the cultural power of social media crossed with art, where I citedLemonadeas an example, a Barbour-wearing boy called Percy, who I once heard describe the class as community service for him (“the diversity stuff looks good on the CV”), interrupted to inform me that the visual album was an example of “convoluted fluff pandering to identity politics and contributing nothing to society at large.” I opened my mouth to call him an uncultured, narrow-minded, racist prick but thought better of it and instead practiced some breathing exercises I’d learned from my favorite YouTube lifestyle channel, The Chill Life with CoCo.
“Don’t you feel like” (Deep breath... inhale... exhale...) “you’re speaking from a rather limited sphere?” (Seriously, Kiki, deep breath... exhale.)
“As a white male, your culture is the norm” (Am I speaking weirdly slowly?) “and it’s likely that that is the reason why you” (are a fucking prick) “think that any deviation from that is lesser than. Why you think anything ‘other than’is ‘lesser than.’”
The class fell silent and Percy went precisely the color of his confectionery counterpart from M&S. Dr. Miller, her face ostensibly expressionless, was a stoically impartial monarch, dangling earrings adding gravitas, bronze lips pressed in a manner that almost obscured the slight flick in them. The curve would have approximated pride or amusement, or both, if I didn’t know better.
She cleared her throat and continued, “I think what Ms. Banjo is trying to suggest is that what you’re saying aligns with what critics unable to think outside of the confines of their self-imposed racial rigidity would say. And that racial rigidity often leads to bigotry and prejudiced opinions. Let’s be wary of that.”
Dr. Miller paused before continuing, giving us the space needed to digest that she had, indeed, used the language of academia to call Percy a racist prick, her intelligence and expertise protecting her from lawsuit and sanction. “However, it does open up a discussion,” she said, walking the breadth of the lecture hall, pen tapping against her palm. “What do we think? Has social media led society closer to a post-racial society? An interracial society? Or are we more segregated than ever?” She opened it up to the class, but not before throwing me, the only Black girl in the tutorial, a sturdy, small smile.
Although we had an African-Caribbean Society through Blackwell, Whitewell College was still a liberal arts university in pastoral southern England and, therefore, a minority set to task in validating the use of the term “diverse” in the prospectus. We were a world unto our own when concentrated together at a student house party, with the lights turned off, elbow-to-elbow and butt-to-groin in constricted corridors. But in actuality we were scattered across the university, across disciplines, across years, all feeling like rebels because instead of straight-up professional degrees (law, economics, whatever-will-put-you-in-corporate-wear-and-a-9-to-5-and-make-immigrant-parent-sacrifices-worth-it), we mixed it up with funky minors that our parents thought frivolous.
We thought we were so edgy with our interdisciplinary courses, our economics and art history degrees that made African parents wonderwhere they went wrong, but the price we paid for being such deviant rebels, in pursuit of higher education, was being even more minoritized, in a space where we were already pretty marginalized. So, when Dr. Miller looked at me that day, I knew she was saying we had to stick together, knew that I had to write a letter asking to be switched from my assigned tutor, who’d informed me they were relieved that they could call me Kiki instead of my full name, Kikiola. Due to the kind of benevolent racism you can count on—your white friend trying to set you up with the only Black guy she knows—I didn’t need to plead too much before my wish was granted, Dr. Miller becoming my personal tutor and quickly part of my university survival kit.
“So.” Dr. Miller reclined in her seat. “You are objectively one of the highest-achieving students that I teach—”
“You can just saythe—”
She released a small, demure smile. “Well, you’ve had a little competition lately—”
Impossible. “That’s funny, Dr. Miller.”
Dr. Miller’s face betrayed no evidence that she was joking. I straightened. I took the 102 version of her class because it was the only module where (a) I was being taught by someone who saw me, and (b) I could talk about Aunt Viv being replaced inFresh Princeand relate it to racialized desirability politics. It was where I thrived, where my mind felt both at ease and challenged and where I also just so happened to virtually get straight firsts in every assignment. Dr. Miller’s revelation was humbling.
Her smile broadened at the look on my face, and she continued, “This is actually what I wanted to talk about. As you know, NYU Brooks Media and Art Institute is our sister college and every year every professor can nominate one second-year student to qualify for their summer program of choice. It looks good on the CV, will boost you in the hunt for grad jobs, and it’s a chance to experience something new, to expand your horizons. I know their pop media program is perfect for you. Candidates will be paid and given the opportunity to rotate departments at a media house that includes audio, digital, television, and print. Many people on the program went on to work at the very organizations they shadowed. Have you heard of Temilola Lawal?”
I swallowed. “Um, the culture journalist who just became the youngest person to win a Pulitzer for feature writing?”
Dr. Miller smiled. “She went on the program. I think you’d be a great candidate.”
“Wait, Dr. Miller, are you serious?”
It was too much—of what I wanted to do, exactly what I had been waiting for—and it filled my chest till my giddiness spilled out of my mouth. The summer before university I missed out on a competitive media internship in London due to reasons I liked to file underpersonal. Too many feelings had hampered my ability think straight last time, my mind was too messy, and my heart was too unharnessed. I had myself together this time. I was collected, controlled. In other words, I wasn’t about to fuck this up.
Dr. Miller’s eyes glinted. “I’m not joking. Jokes are rather tedious, don’t you think? I’ll email you the forms. Deadline is January. Now, I know you’ll do fine with the essay part of the application. It’s about the power of media and your personal connection to it, but you will also need an exceptional media-related, extra-curricular project—”
“Oh, easy—”
“And I know you already have that withBrown Sugar,” Dr. Miller continued with a pointedly quirked brow, “which is wonderful, but your task concerns”—she clicked on her laptop with a red polished nail and pushed her glasses up—“‘Building, creating, or growing. The candidate will need to pursue and achieve tangible growth of a media project or platform, by diversifying the format or by building from scratch.’ It’s about evolving what you already have and recording how you did it. A project plan—”
