Noble and Greenough’s “Black Alcove” - An examination of A Clustered Community of Students of Color

“When I came to Nobles, they told me there was a freshman alcove, a sophomore alcove, a junior alcove, a senior alcove and a black alcove.”

- A new nobles freshman, on a day dedicated to diversity

The Black Alcove:

The Black Alcove fills quickly when the Local Motion shuttle bus from the Forest Hills T-stop arrives. All of the students who ride Public Transportation are from Boston; almost all are students of color. They enter the school and many of them head for the Black Alcove. The faces of the all school photographs of Noble & Greenough, classes 1922-1923, 1924-1925 and 1926-1927 peer down over the Black Alcove with Mayflower assuredness; they are all male and all white. Teo Barros, Nobles ‘03, wrote about the Black Alcove for his final English paper of the year and observes this about the alcove that he is a part of:

“This (the existence of the Black Alcove) indicates that minority students throughout the school feel disconnected and by coming together they are creating their own comforting environment like the white kids are doing.”

Jesse* saunters by; he is African-American and has a quick and sometimes caustic wit; he is bright yet seems unwilling to compromise his sense of rebellion and disdain for the Nobles culture in order to succeed. Instead of going to the library, he is a fixture in the Black Alcove and at the conclusion of his junior year, which ends disastrously, the faculty votes him to Step 3 academic status and Jesse is asked to leave the school.

Francisco is Latino and yet readily accepted into the Black Alcove. He finds in this alcove the urban experience and culture that he cannot find in the sophomore class alcove that is divided by a wall into two major groups: a “cool”

group of athletic boys and attractive girls, many of whom share good grades, high parental expectations and a home address in Weston, Wellesley or West Newton, and another group whose interest in art and Harvard Square or a lack of interest in athletics separates them from their classmates. In both groups, the conversation can evolve into talk of Caribbean vacations or summer homes on the Cape or the latest from Dave Matthews. There is little for Francisco in either group; so he migrates down the hall to the Black Alcove in order to find the community that best allows him to be himself - while he is at Nobles.

Rashad, another sophomore, is African American and Muslim and he often checks in with those of the Black Alcove as he comes back from lunch or at the end of the day. Rashad is a fine football player and he is popular, friendly with his white classmates. Most importantly, Rashad has been at Nobles since the seventh grade and his brothers, who also went to Nobles, are already at UPenn and Howard. Rashad seems able to move back and forth between the alcoves, sophomore and Black, since he has credibility with both groups. His classmates value him as one of the class’ preeminent athletes and an established member of the “social scene.” Meanwhile, his race, name and Muslim observance provides him entree into the Black Alcove.

Serena and Jasmine are seniors and are inseparable, even during their School Year Abroad during junior year, when they sought time away from Nobles. These young women are the female intellectual force in the Black Alcove, determined and focused. While the seemingly indifferent attitude of some of the boys can affirm teachers’ low expectations and create an accompanying unwillingness to confront or to care, the language and tone of the girls are more energetic and intellectual and so balance the more laconic appearance and voice of the boys. Serena and Jasmine talk school, literature, history, politics and race. They want to write, to be investment bankers, to think about the law, to react to Nobles as culture and place.

Ty is quiet but his presence is loud. He is 6’7” and he is one of the strongest basketball players that Nobles has had in many years. He is from Boston but he came to Nobles from Lexington High School, where as a freshman “Metco” student he started on the basketball team. In these suburban high schools, public and private, he has always been the Black basketball player - at once fulfilling a personal dream and a societal stereotype. Now, in his junior year, college coaches are already visiting the Nobles campus to “work him out.” His athletic identity has enabled him to avoid focusing on his studies and has enabled adults to be indifferent towards his intellect and GPA... until now.

Gary spends more time at Nobles than perhaps any other student. He attends Nobles as a member of the smaller boarding community that is the most diverse pocket of the Nobles population. He also attends the UMASS - Boston Upward Bound summer program that is located at Nobles and so is on campus for an additional six weeks in July and August. The UB community is 95% students of color and it is during UB that Gary feels most comfortable at Nobles. At the end of his junior year, Gary wins the Bond Prize for Academic Improvement by raising his GPA from C- to B.

For one young woman, the choice has been to avoid the Black Alcove despite her bi-racial identity. For Violet, her “place” in the senior alcove is close to the Black Alcove, yet deliberately separated by the wall that provides the Black Alcove its intimacy. Most, if not all, of her friends are white; Violet is suburban and she often drives to school in a BMW. Perhaps she avoids the Black Alcove to distance herself and to establish herself as intellectual or social as opposed to Black as though they are incongruous. She may see a part of her identity in the Black Alcove, but not necessarily the part that will get her the most mileage at a school like Nobles. However, Violet is aware of the complications of race and she has written about her bi-racial identity when she is asked, both at Nobles and in the world beyond: “What are you, anyway?” The question that in its simplicity defines the power of race as socially constructed identification. Should she be with those who share her African American heritage that is too often identified in America as “race” and which will always eclipse her white identity in others’ perceptions of her? Time will tell.

Jason, Alex and Matt are three eighth grade boys who stop by almost daily, on their way to or returning from lunch. African American and Latino, they come by to talk and to connect and to seek the models that they lack by being in separate Middle School space that has fewer students and faculty of color. In the Black Alcove, even for a brief time, they are amongst other students who share their race, ethnicity and culture in ways both simple and profound. By visiting the Black Alcove, these three friends grow their “community” beyond themselves and when they move into the Upper School, they will undoubtedly claim space in the Black Alcove and continue it as a fixture in Nobles institutional “real estate.”

What might be the response of the classes of 1922-1923, 1924-1925 and 1926-1927 to this territorial claim by students of color? More importantly, what will the responses to the Black Alcove be from the classes of 2005, 2010 and 2025?

Nobles Alcove Culture = White

The Black Alcove becomes visible because it is in stark contrast to the rest of Nobles, which may be seen, as racially neutral but which, in reality, is unconsciously appraised and claimed as white space.

The majority white culture of the Nobles community can be found in all of the other hallway alcoves. The claiming of school space by the white majority occurs through photographs, plaques, the names of buildings and, of course, through the accepted and expected clustering of those students who are white and often wealthy. Surrounded by each other, white students at Nobles find a comforting extension of their neighborhoods, friendships and, sometimes, their families in the hallway alcoves. There is an unintended and undiscussed, yet powerful affirmation of their racial majority. This clustering of white students is perceived as normal in an Independent School if it is observed at all and the entitled ownership of Independent School space and culture by white students and faculty may be more than schools like Nobles want to examine in light of better news - 18% students of color and the return of alumni/ae of color whose notice of the positive changes is always much heralded.

Ironically, while the Black Alcove is perceived as a racial clustering, the other alcoves - all dominated by one race - are never identified as the “White Alcoves.” In these white alcoves, students of color are often cognizant of the racial difference with their peers. Meanwhile, few white students consistently enter into the Black Alcove for any length of time and those who do submit to the flipping of their status - they are in the minority in the Black Alcove and their comfort and advantage are denied. Because of this hesitancy to enter, white students (and faculty) do not attain an enlightening glimpse of the experience faced by students of color. Without contact and understanding, white students rely upon what they have already learned - racial falsehoods and assumptions that inform their reactions and confirm their expectations. Is the overall white majority student response to the Black Alcove racist or merely racially aware? Clearly, the white response is both and Teo Barros speaks to this problem of white perception of the Black Alcove with these specific examples:

“When asked to write down some of the stereotypes about black people, a group that was primarily constructed of white students wrote down - “dangerous” as one of their stereotypes and that blacks always hung around other blacks. Immediately the thought of where many of the minority students hang out came to mind and later, due to the incident that happened to a friend of mine, the sad realization that many of the white students feel unsafe to sit in the black dominated alcove sank in.

“The ‘black alcove,’ although it is not, comes to look menacing since it looks like the black students do not accept anyone else but other black students. This can falsely support claims like the ones made by the group of white students regarding stereotypes.”

“The interesting part about all this is that the black alcove is given more attention since it seems to intimidate many of the white kids... a friend of mine, like myself and my other friends, has a white friend who on a particular day felt scared to ask him what some class’ homework was since she had never been to the ‘black alcove’.”

Some white students at Nobles, as well as some teachers and parents, may come to see the Black Alcove as exclusive or unwelcoming space and it is not far for the racial majority to move from a position of discomfort or unfamiliarity to the rationalization of “reserve discrimination” or an assumption that you have to be “Black” to be in the Black Alcove. These convenient justifications forged from racial distance allow those in the majority to falsely accuse those in the minority of exclusion and prejudice.

However, the notion of racial exclusion has little to do with the reality of the Black Alcove and far more to do with the white perspective of it. White students at Nobles see the Black Alcove as reserved for students of color because they all too often do not view themselves as racial beings. Instead race is reserved for the identification and behavior of the “other” and at Nobles, too often the “others” are the students of the Black Alcove.

Back to The Black Alcove

For some students of color, primarily but not exclusively African Americans, the Black Alcove is necessary sanctuary from Nobles’ larger, louder and more privileged, white culture. The Black Alcove is a place in which students of different age groups and with diverse interests gather. While the Black Alcove is in the area of the hallway that has evolved into junior and senior space, some of the students who consistently congregate in the Black Alcove are sophomores. Also, decidedly urban and less materialistic than the other alcoves, class and geography also enter into the formation of the Black Alcove’s membership - it is not simply a racial arrangement. Ultimately, in the safety of the Black Alcove, “minority” representation and status caused by race, as well as class, are far less in play than anywhere else on campus and so diverse students of color congregate there.

Some of those students who frequent the Black Alcove are of course “Black”, but they are not all African American. They are all identified as Black in the naming of the alcove because Black translates as race at Nobles, and in America. There are students there who are also Hispanic, Caribbean, Cape Verdean, Indian and European in ancestry and some are bi-racial. It is a multicultural community but membership can come at a price as Teo Barros notes:

“As a Cape Verdean with dark complexion, the association with African Americans is almost expected. Though not offensive since the relation with African Americans is stronger compared with one with white Americans, it does cause disappointment since a feeling of individuality is stripped away.”

The Black Alcove is not a complete affirmation or representation of all members’ specific race and culture. Additionally, the Black Alcove is not a space that Asian American students of Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese descent seem to gravitate towards. The Black Alcove has a culture of its own that does not translate across the broad “Students of Color” demographic. This reminds us that the experiences and the spaces necessary for survival and satisfaction in an Independent School are not the same for all of those students who are not white, suburban and wealthy.

The Black Alcove cannot answer all of the needs of all of the students of color and nor should it be expected to, but it does answer a need for many students of color and so must be nurtured and protected. Its existence is to a certain extent, a de facto indictment of the diversity initiatives of Nobles, supposed “sea changes” over the past twenty years that may have changed the school only slightly for many students of color - it is still a school in which eight of every ten students are white.

In a student body that is only 6% African American, the Black Alcove is an affinity response, aware, both consciously and unconsciously, of the need to find a somewhat racially specific community to limit the powerful wedge of race. There is a polar, when not polarized, view of diversity at our schools and not surprisingly, students of color gather with those who see their academic world (and its impact upon them) similarly and so the Black Alcove and other places of student of color clustering - a section of a dorm, a team, Prof. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s cafeteria tables - emerge out of need; the Black Alcove provides what the rest of Nobles cannot. While some white students at Nobles may see the Black Alcove as exclusive, disruptive or defiant - an obstacle to pass or a problem during admissions tours, what it provides its members is sanctuary, friendship and community; exactly what we hope all of our students will find at Nobles.

The Black Alcove exists as a visible reality and as an opportunity for Nobles to sincerely address issues of race as the school has created them. The Black Alcove must be preserved, demystified and incorporated into the larger school hallway culture so that the experiences of African American students and others who see this space as their haven are better understood, honored and included. Otherwise the Black Alcove, as well as other Independent School clusters of students of color, will be spaces to be feared, stereotyped and avoided by the white majority and our schools will create separate and unequal worlds that defeat efforts for greater inclusion and diversity.

Finally...

When discussing Aversive Racism, Paula Chu has spoken of students of color as the “canaries” of Independent Schools, alluding to the use of the birds, and their singing, as early detectors of poisonous gas in coal mines. Her point is that students of color and their concerns, questions, suggestions and occasional rebellions and failings are warnings of an Independent School culture that still holds pockets of “poisonous air” that creates a racially divisive atmosphere and experience for all students. If the underlying needs of the Black Alcove are ignored, deflected and dismissed then all of our students will breathe racially poisonous air for years to come. Beyond the solutions of more students and faculty of color, changes in the curriculum etc. lie the answers of greater interest in and acceptance of the clustering of students of color. The white majority at Nobles, faculty as well as students, must respectfully acknowledge the Black Alcove and carefully listen to the songs of its members.

* The names of students are invented and/or are composites of different students. They are based on some of the real students of Nobles who gather each day at the Black Alcove. Teo Barros is not an invented student, and his paper was extremely valuable to my writing on Black Alcove culture.

Alden Mauck – 2003

alden_mauck@nobles.edu