I Yearn for Symposium Friends </3

IDK why but recently I've really been feeling like I want to have genuine, academic, intelligent conversations with people... I'm not one who likes to take control of a discussion or dictate what topics I talk about with my friends, so I've not really been getting anything close to that except for a few odd things here and there, though. I think as I'm getting older and starting uni and all this I'm kind of wanting to be more of the kind of person that is academic and learned and talks about all kinds of important things with friends over dinner parties and stuff (think The Namesake...) but I don't really have anyone to have these kinds of discussions with. Currently, I have 3 roommates in my uni dorm and I love them all but I love talking about AfAm history and current events and I feel weird wanting to have these discussions with them since I'm the only Black one in our dorm... I also love talking about literature and art but it seems like none of my friends have really read or seen the same art/books as me so I'm not sure how to broach that topic either... My best friend from high school texts me a lot but it's always to talk about her (kinda) boyfriend every. single. time. and I'm not really a person who absolutely hates talking about guys but I do not care for people who center every conversation around them TT. Like please I yearn to pass the Bechdel Test just once with this girl!

Actually, this particular girl (my high school bsf) is the one I usually "have" my deeper academic conversations with since we were in a lot of the same classes in high school and so read lots of the same books and saw the same art and stuff but I just think that it's hard to have conversations about how certain pieces affected you when you have different life experiences (like obvi but you get the general idea...). So for example she's also not Black she's mixed Asian and Mexican and so understandably was more influenced and affected by books centering Asian and Mexican or other Latino people, while I was more affected by the (sadly fewer) books about Black people. And I love having these conversations with her but sometimes I wished I could really just talk about how one book affected us both in the same way you know? And there were definitely other Black people at my school but they were very few and a lot of us weren't in the same classes or had the same teachers, and the way that it ended up I just wasn't as close with them as I was to my other friends, who were majority Asian since I went to a majority Asian school. And duh it's not their fault they can't really relate to Black stories like I can but it's still a little disheartening for me who loves talking about things that matter to me and hearing other people's opinions on them. 

I honestly would also talk to this one friend about AfAm history or topics as well and I know that she understood what I was saying but I just felt like she didn't get it get it... Like she understood how disheartening it was that our Black AfAm history teacher moved to the East Coast and so the new teacher is a white man but like... she didn't really get how upsetting it was. And it was the same for my AP Lang class because my school was a little bit on the alternative/progressive side and so we had two AP Lang classes: regular AP Lang and AP Lang: Black Voices, which was supposed to be a class that had books written by, you guess it, Black people! I took Black Voices because I was really excited to get away from the old white man kind of literature you usually see in English classes, but imagine my dismay when the teacher (NOT a Black teacher btw) only had us reading TWO Black authors: Langston Hughes and Claudia Rankine, and most of the literature we read actually reflected HIS culture (Mexican). And I really have no problem with reading literature by other POC authors because, as I mentioned, I just wanted to get away from the "old white man" kind of books, but I just wished that the class had been called "POC Voices" or "Diverse Voices" if the majority of the books would not be written by Black authors </3 And I was actually talking to my friend who still goes to the school and she told me that originally the teacher had wanted to call it "POC Voices" but the school board or something had told him it was too vague (which doesn't make any sense even but wtv...) so I get where he was coming from but still if you're going to call the class Black Voices you should at least try to make the readings by majority Black people!

Anyways back to my point I usually would text this friend my rants from when I was frustrated with silly people on TikTok comments or whatever (because I'm chronically afraid of commenting TT) but I felt like she never really truly got where I was coming from and texting her paragraphs at a time began to annoy her so I started journalling down all my thoughts, and I actually really like how I can just rant and talk to myself. Even though I would like another opinion and some actual discourse and agreement, at least this way I don't feel like a burden or a bother to my friends who have no emotional or cultural attachment and stake in what I'm saying. It's a little bit frustrating sometimes but I'm alright with it.

In any case, I'm hoping to be able to take an AfAm history class at my uni sometime in the future so I can hopefully find some other like minded people who'd like to have little symposiums with me, and I'm thinking that I'll drag my roommates into it with me 1) so they can learn a little (or a lot in the case of some of them...) because actually one of my roommates is international and so hasn't really learned about the Civil War or Civil Rights Movement (while we were watching Percy Jackson I had mentioned how Hades army was made of dead soldiers, including Confederate soldiers, and she had asked me to explain to her what the Confederacy was) plus she needs to take a USH class anyways so I was thinking maybe this would work for her -- not to mention one of my other roommates literally learned nothing about USH at her high school (like didn't know the Civil War was about slavery and thought the Underground Railroad was an actual train underground kind of not learning!) so I was thinking it would be cool for her to take it too and learn since she enjoys school and learning new things and 2) this way I can talk with them about the issues that are always bouncing around in my head. Really when I say "issues" I'm not talking about anything too big, mostly just silly people I see on the internet saying silly things about AAVE or Black influence in music or mixed people (which always makes me sad to see since I'm mixed myself) and I can have my own little symposium in the room where I live!

Anyways this blog kind of got away from me but I hope my ramblings have a general through-line that makes it easy enough to follow and thanks for reading!