“I’m still not sure I can wholeheartedly claim the University of Arkansas for myself, though. It seems that for a Black person, one has to be comfortable being tangential to the overall sweep of the institution. The main point of places such as these is reinscribing a certain narrative on succeeding generations of white Southerners. But for Black, or queer, folks, it seems that spaces connected to auxiliary organizations (cheerleading, the drama program, etc.) are necessary in order to have a satisfying experience. I wonder if Harris would have been able to impact the life of an unathletic, Black student in Fayetteville, someone like me, whose volubility hid a clandestine, shame-inducing queerness that remained masked from most of my peers in those years.”
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