For this blog post, I decided to watch Lynette Adkins’ YouTube video “Being Black at a PWI.” From just looking at the description of the video, we can tell that Lynette Adkins is a Black student at the University of Texas, a PWI. It seems like she is a student journalist who is interested in examining her school and how students of color are able to participate within the institution and what privileges students of color have and do not have (Adkins has also linked another video: “Is UT Safe? Austin’s Craziest Moments”). When I clicked on Lynette Adkins’ user profile, I was able to see that she has 4.27 thousand subscribers to her channel and the video itself had 6, 297 views, which lets me know that she is an avid blogger.

The purpose of this piece is to examine the feelings, anxieties, and difficulties Black students have while attending UT. The first person she interviews, Terrane, says how everyone talks about Austin being a very liberal and diverse place but it in fact really isn’t and Adkins agrees and responds “It’s not.” Christian, the second person she interviews describes having a cultural shock when first arriving at UT. Christian describes the self-segregation that exists at UT: “Even just like walking down the street, like, you see like, hoards of White people and sometimes they all look at you and see you as different or as a variant of what they know” (1:00). Adkins also looks at the segregation and oppression that exists between the Black community itself. Terrane describes the “intersectionality factor” as “really difficult” because “there are spaces where even in predominantly Black spaces where there is a lot of internalized misogyny and homophobia sometimes I can’t even maneuver in those spaces and then in my white spaces, it’s just so apparent that you are different” (3:45).

The intended audience for the piece are people who already go to UT, specifically Black people and members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as people who might be thinking about applying to or attending UT. Throughout the video, Adkins interviews several people that are not just members of the Black community but are also members of other communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community. Hypatia, for instance, talks about being biracial, half Black and half Mexican and bisexual and how UT has also made her aware of the “microaggressions” in her life as she has “always existed in gray areas” (4:33). Another student mentions how she “loves how close-knit the Black community is” because this community has allowed her to become in touch with her identity. The student says that she “normally wouldn’t have worn braids” or “big-ass hoops.” Since Adkins doesn’t just show the oppression that exists within UT but also the support that many students have gotten, I think Adkins wants to show the positives and negatives of being Black and attending a PWI.

Considering the medium of a YouTube video, Adkins has the advantage of cutting to different people giving their testimonies whereas if she had put all of this in print, it would’ve been harder to convey the message. The video component allows the audience to actually see the different perspectives and viewpoints of all the people that speak in the video. Since YouTube is a massive visual medium, it is highly accessible whereas print or even online magazines wouldn’t have as much traffic and wouldn’t have garnered the wide audience that YouTube allows. A disadvantage to a YouTube video would be that there isn’t a transcript of the video. Although you can click to view subtitles, you have to pause every few seconds to make sure you get the quote whereas in a print or online medium, the transcript is more accessible because it’s in words and it would be easier to cite the page number.

Citations:

Adkins, Lynette, director. Being Black at a PWI | The University of Texas. YouTube – Being Black at a PWI | The University of Texas, YouTube, 20 Sept. 2018, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weo3iwoBR_U&feature=emb_logo.