Yale University offers a course that explores whether it is possible for black and white women to have authentic friendships, according to materials observed by the New Guard.
The course titled, “No Time for Tears: Friendships between black women and white women,” purports to examine whether relationships between black and white women are merely transactional.
“In this course, we are interested in exploring if relationships between black women and White women can develop an equal footing. Can those relationships be unfettered by the trappings of quid pro quo transactions? Can they be built upon hard emotional labor, trust, and–risky and rare as it may seem–love? Are these relationships even possible? Might we explore the deficits that make these relationships difficult? We seek to interrogate with brutal honesty the stakes that underwrite black women’s relationships with White women,” the course description reads.
The university offers the course during the Spring 2024 semester for one credit. According to the university’s official course guide, the class satisfies the school’s distributional requirements in both Humanities and Arts and Writing.
Tasha Hawthorne, instructor of the course, serves as dean of Yale’s Pierson College, according to the university’s website.
Hawthorne’s work, “explores the intersection of gender, sexuality, genre, race, and politics in Black fiction
Hawthorne is a recipient of the “Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty,” a program founded by the Mellon Foundation. The fellowship recruits scholars, “committed to campus diversity and innovative research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences,” according to the program’s webpage. In addition, the fellowship, “seeks to increase the presence of underrepresented junior and other faculty members in the humanities, social sciences, and arts.”
Hawthorne also served as the co-director of the Brace Center for Gender Studies at the elite Phillips Academy Andover, according to her LinkedIn page. The center spearheaded, “institutional efforts toward intersectional gender equity and inclusion by offering resources and developing initiatives that affect all areas of student life on campus.”
Programs and coursework focused on diversity have come under withering criticism in recent months, following the rise in antisemitic protests on college campuses. Conservatives argue that these academic courses, colloquially known as “critical race theory”, have contributed to racial division and antisemitism by promoting the idea the world is divided between oppressed and oppressor classes.
