• How has the CUNY community resisted or failed to resist the given institutionalism?
• What does community control look like in the context of CUNY?

I’d like to focus on these two questions for this weeks post. This past week. A colleague of mine Ask CUNYCalled me to share their thoughts on what we are doing within the department specifically how we are failing to service the “Latino population”. Although I was assuming good intent it was difficult to hear the way they understood the term “failing” to be as well as how they unintentionally viewed “Black” and “Latino” as being completely separate things. Lumina Podcast–”“Living up to the Designation” – Hispanic Serving Institutions”  was spot on!

First things first,

Hispanic is a term that refers to folks with a Spanish-language background. (in some spaces Background might mean “first language”

Latina/o is a term that refers to folks who hail from Latin America.

I often try to keep these definitions close while also understanding that they might land differently for different folks.

I bring this up because CUNY has started a number of racist committees and projects that have been met with a number of questions like “what about the Latinos?” “what about the Hispanics?” “what about the Asians”. Oftentimes folks forget thatPeople can be both Black and Latino both Black and Asian. The intersection of identities Can be vast and when folks ask questions like that in response to racist projects It becomes inherently racist and anti-Black.

Community control looks like what it wants to be (that might be confusing) but it means that it can be what folks want it to be. Ruf (2020) highlights some of the Financial commitments on behalf of CUNY to these specific projects (Black, race and ethnic studies). Community control might look like students being at the decision-making table ensuring that the money meets the needs of the necessary programs.