I keep asking myself what it feels like when your safe space is no longer safe.
For the students at Tennessee State University, that question became painfully real when a group of white men in red MAGA hats walked onto their campus with signs declaring “DEI should be illegal” and “deport all illegals now.” They claimed it was debate, but anyone who has lived with the reality of racism knows it was intrusion. It was disruption by design, a deliberate attempt to provoke and unsettle young Black people in a space that was built to affirm their dignity.
As a Black Gen Z woman, I know what it is to cling to safe spaces. My peers and I grew up with school lockdown drills, with social media that can turn cruel in an instant, with the knowledge that the places meant to nurture us are never guaranteed to protect us. So when outsiders treat an HBCU as a stage for spectacle, I feel the violation too. These institutions exist because Black students were shut out elsewhere. They are sanctuaries our ancestors carved into the landscape of exclusion. To invade them is not simply rude or disruptive. It is a continuation of a long history in this country where Black sanctuaries have been treated as targets rather than havens.
The Black church has carried that pain for generations. In Birmingham, children were murdered in the pews of 16th Street Baptist Church because white supremacists could not tolerate Black people gathering in peace. In Charleston, the congregation at Mother Emanuel welcomed a stranger into Bible study, only to be massacred in their sanctuary. Black neighborhoods have carried it too. Tulsa’s Greenwood District, once called Black Wall Street, was destroyed in 1921 by white mobs who could not bear to see Black prosperity. Later, highways were built through thriving Black communities under the banner of renewal, fracturing safety and stability once again. Even our schools have been threatened, from bomb scares at HBCUs just a few years ago to the daily underfunding that undermines their promise. The men at TSU may have carried cameras instead of weapons, but their intent echoed those same violations: to remind us that our safety is never settled, that our belonging is always up for debate.
What has stayed with me most is not only the trespass, but what followed. On TikTok, members of our own community quickly produced videos to chase clout and curry favor with people who wish to do us harm. One that struck me came from Carmen Jaycee, who used her platform to join the red hat chorus of those getting clicks for trashing TSU and all HBCU students. She mocked their emotions, calling them “low class,” and went so far as to label HBCUs “ghetto black colleges.” She suggested that instead of reacting, the students should have quietly gone back to class, as though silence in the face of harassment were the measure of intelligence. Watching it, I felt something heavier than frustration. I felt the sting of betrayal.
Because we know the outsiders will come. History has shown us that white men in hats or uniforms or robes will walk into our sanctuaries to unsettle us. What I am not sure we are prepared for is how often the wound is deepened by those who share our skin but not our solidarity. There have always been enablers who will justify harm in order to curry favor with those in power. Social media has only amplified their reach. Where earlier generations had the whisper of respectability politics, ours has the livestream, the viral clip, the hunt for views built on tearing down our own.
It is one thing to be told by a stranger that your school should not exist. It is another to watch someone from your own community echo that lie for clicks, sneering at the very spaces that were built to affirm us. That is not just an insult. It is an attempt to fracture the sense of sanctuary that an HBCU provides. And for Black Gen Z, who already wonders if there is any place in America where we are fully safe, it confirms the fear that even our sanctuaries can be infiltrated.
Gwendolyn Brooks once wrote that “we are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” I hold onto that when I think about TSU and all HBCUs. The students who stood their ground are our magnitude. They deserve protection, not derision. They deserve a community that understands their fear, not one that belittles it.
What happened at Tennessee State should be a wake-up call. It is not enough to admire the restraint of students who endured this intrusion or to critique the sharpness of their anger. We must ask why they were forced to face it at all. We must recognize that when even HBCUs are treated as battlegrounds, America is failing to honor the sanctuaries Black people have built for ourselves.
I write this as part of a generation that has never taken safety for granted. We do not mistake intrusion for dialogue and we do not confuse silence with dignity. What happened at Tennessee State will stay with us, not as a passing story but as a reminder of how fragile safety can be. For Black Gen Z, it deepens the unease we already carry, that even the spaces built for us can be violated and mocked. And we are even more aware that some among us will choose to carry these harmful messages themselves, trading solidarity for clout and refusing to be part of each other’s harvest. We will hold onto that knowledge as we continue to move through a country that is once again embracing hostility toward our existence. Every intrusion, every insult, and every betrayal becomes part of the weight we carry with us into the future.
