Tufts University All Black Concert Highlights Issues With Race on Campus

A hip-hop concert at Tufts University has raised some interesting questions about race and relations on the campus.

Tufts University’s annual Spring Fling concert took place over the weekend.
The show featured the first all-black lineup at Tufts since 1982, when Clarence Clemons and Chubby Checker were headliners, LOL.
This year’s performances featured Metro Boomin’, Tinashe and Amine after Tufts faculty was criticized for the lack of inclusion of other races, including Latins and Asians at the annual concert.


While the all-black lineup may have satisfied some, it posed an interesting conflict to other African-American students too.
Some students, like Jonathan Moore, recognized a conflict, since the artists on the lineup use the N-word in some of their lyrics.
And while the faculty also recognized the conflict and warned students not to utter the slur, even if the musicians do, it still results in an awkward situation for African-American students at PWI’s (Primarily White Institutions).
“[It] has to do with black art being seen as something that is free for consumption without having any sort of thoughtful relationship,” Jonathan Moore told The Tufts Daily’s Paige Spangenthal. “At large, I think non-black people have very thoughtless relationships to black cultural productions, whether that’s black writing, black music or feeling that you can inhabit the body of a black basketball player.”
According to Jonathan Moore, who is majoring in Africana studies and American studies, he was happy with the concert as a step forward at the Tuft’s, which was founded in 182 by “Universalist” Christians.
But Moore expects Tufts University officials will work on diversifying the entire culture at Tufts, since blacks make up just 4% of the 10,907 student population.
“I hope it’s replicated in speakers that the university brings for its lecture series. I hope that it’s replicated in commencement speakers,” Jonathan Moore said.