The exigence of my summer of research can be summed up with this quote by poet Ross Gay, asked what it means to examine and reconcile with our country’s history with race and white supremacy: “The corrupt imagination might become visible. Inequalities might become visible. Violence might become visible. Terror might become visible. And the things we’ve been doing to each other, despite the fact that we don’t want to do such things to each other, might become visible. If we don’t, we will all remain phantoms — and, as it turns out, it’s hard for phantoms to care for one another, let alone love one another.” Researcher Nicholas Rand takes it one step further; that to have racial reconciliation is to “understand how the falsification, ignorance, or disregard of the past -- whether institutionalized by a totalitarian state… or practiced by parents or grandparents — is the breeding ground of the phantomatic return of shameful secrets.” 

These projects aimed to answer the following questions: What does it mean to become human? And more urgently, what are the consequences of remaining less than human? Of remaining phantoms, as Gay and Rand put it? During this summer of racial justice organizing and growing calls for racial reconciliation in both the United States and abroad, I was allowed to pursue research that validated not only my humanity, but the humanity of my peers, family, and students. This affirmation of the intersection between social justice and academia opened my future up to new paths, and demonstrated that the field I want to pursue is evolving in new, innovative ways. It challenged my previous perception of academic research as isolated in upper echelons — it taught me that research can be for and by the people.