Lenelle Discusses Race, Class in Fake Farewell
By Cory Forsyth
A&F Associate

On his first day of employment at Pomona College in 1986, Associate Professor of History and Black Studies Sidney Lemelle went to Pearsons Hall to ask his department head for an advance on his first paycheck. He was directed to Kenyon House. When he arrived he knocked on the door, but the person who opened it took one look at the black man standing before him and said, "Deliveries are around back. I thought you people knew that." Before Lemelle could explain that he was a professor, he had the door shut in his face. Instead of deciding to get angry and give up his job over this treatment, Professor Lemelle decided he could use anger constructively. In his lecture last Wednesday, he described what that meant.

His talk was titled, "Dangerous Crossroads: The Life and Times of a Lumpen Professor." It was part of the Last Lecture Series, a series sponsored by Mortar Board in which a professor is asked to give a talk as if it were his or her last lecture at Pomona College. Lemelle chose to talk about his own life and the ways in which his experiences had shaped his academic direction and made him "a frustrated and angry professor."

Lemelle started his talk by telling the audience about growing up in South Central Los Angeles. Because his parents believed that a parochial school education would be better for him, he ended up the first African-American at San Rafael's Catholic School.

Lemelle spoke about the perceptions he had of Africa while growing up. The media at that time had a very narrow vision of Africa; images in the media portrayed nakedness and barbarism, uncivilized Africa and uncivilized Africans. One day, early in his life, after hearing a missionary speak about saving African souls, Lemelle decided that he, too, wanted to grow up to be a missionary and go to Africa to save them.

Lemelle carried around this media-filtered vision of Africans until the day he met Mildred, his brother's second wife. Mildred spoke with a Britisch accent and had a lighter skin complexion. She didn't look or sound like the Africans Lemelle knew from TV, so when Mildred told him that she was from South Africa, he at first wondered if South Africa might not even be in Africa and wanted to ask her if it was possibly in Europe somewhere. After Mildred, part Zulu, part British, began to tell him about South African life, Lemelle started to realize how the media had influenced him. That lesson would stay with him for a long time.

In college, Lemelle wrote a term paper on Black History in the Civil War. He was amazed to find large books in the library that were dedicated to the lives of black people and also written by black people. At the end of the term, when Lemelle received his paper he had gotten a "D." The professor said little more than that his topic was "highly questionable," as blacks played little part in the Civil War. Lemelle was frustrated that he didn't know enough about black history to effectively argue with his professor. He decided then to learn as much as he could about black history. Thus began Lemelle's quest to show that there was a black history, and that it was worth telling.

The word "Lumpen," which Lemelle used to describe himself in the title of his lecture, means "marginalized living," and he feels that it captures some of the difficulties he has faced as a black professor. Degrees in Black Studies were seen as inferior degrees, Lemelle explained, and with the advent of affirmative action, black people's degrees were seen as being unworthy because they were a product of that system.

Lemelle then explained that these systems of oppression have left him angry and frustrated, but went on to suggest that this anger is useful in that it can be a motivating force, and can force people examine their own contradictions. He described the uses of anger he learned from reading the works of Audre Lorde, a black lesbian activist, who posits that anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes. Lemelle expounded on this, saying that anger was also an appropriate reaction to homphobic, classist, and sexist attitudes, and that anger is an appropriate medium to explore these attitudes.

Anger is traditionally viewed as a destructive force, Lemelle said, but it doesn't have to be; it can be an appropriate reaction, and can be motivational. Lemelle described how the anger he felt after having the door to Kenyon House slammed in his face motivated him to do something positive by continuing to teach at Pomona College in order to raise awareness of these systems of oppression. Lemelle quoted Audre Lorde, saying, "Anger is the grief of distortion between peers."

Lemelle gave a compelling and informative talk. He did an excellent job of addressing sensitive issues with a mixed-race audience while being inclusive and making the audience feel included in the struggle he felt. Hopefully, Professor Lemelle's real last lecture won't be delivered for many years.