“Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing”—Audre Lorde
An inexplicable chill accompanies my return to Grounds this Fall semester. The sky wears a gray coat most days, masking the beautiful blue that I know is way up above. Recently, I’ve noticed the need to acknowledge and contextualize our university’s past amongst many moving parts of a large institution that defines the present moment for everyone in different ways. These are challenges that we encounter every day as students, faculty, and community members alike. As a curious student activist and journalist, I want to learn how to embrace the gray, and the power that lies within that nuance.
I have translated my observations into an interview with Chanel Craft Tanner, the new director of the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center at UVA. Chanel is a mother, activist, feminist, author, mentor, and Black woman who is interested in the gray areas of our society. She unabashedly brings her personal experiences to a conversation that may challenge convention and inspire students to keep fighting for what they believe is right.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ella Powell: What moment initially shaped your viewpoints and steered you towards a feminist mindset?
Chanel Craft Tanner: I never even heard the word feminist until taking my first Women’s Studies class in college. But the concept around it kind of came first. I think of two moments for me, and they’re related to hip-hop. Nas is my favorite rapper of all time, and he had a song called “If I Ruled The World.” Listening to it now, of course, I see the sexism, but that song was talking about a different kind of world. Once I learned the term socialism, I was like, oh yeah, that’s what he was talking about, right? [In his lyrics] he would flip it so that the folks on the bottom would have this role on the top. That song really readied me for my future leanings. Growing up as a kid in the 90s in Brooklyn, I witnessed a lot, and understanding what I was seeing was really hard. Hip hop music helped contextualize what I was seeing.
I would say my life experiences created the breeding grounds for my radicalism. And then hearing that song where he’s talking about another way got me excited about dreaming of that way. And then Li'l Kim comes out, and that’s what really made me a feminist, because I would be on the stoop talking about rap with my friends, and yeah, we’re middle school kids so sex would come up in conversations, and because all the rap was so male centered, we didn’t know how to participate. Li'l Kim gave us girls language to join the conversation.
The final thing was learning about Angela Davis. When I was 18, I cut off all my relaxed hair and went natural and whenever I wore my hair in an afro, people would just greet me with, "okay, Angela Davis!" One day I walked by a Black-owned bookstore, and her autobiography was for sale and because I didn’t know much about this person I was being compared to, I purchased it When I read her autobiography, it really introduced me to so many social justice concepts—including feminism. After that I was just enamored with her and read everything that she wrote. My life experiences really bred my radical viewpoints, but I was just sitting with them until someone gave me language to understand what I was seeing, but then also how I can navigate and change it.
How would you advise students to navigate expressing more radical and progressive beliefs when they are tied to large institutional structures with preconceived expectations for expression?
So, I think the first piece of advice I would give to students is to know your power, but also learn the structure, right? I think it’s important to learn the system that you’re in. So, it’s not just understanding who the people are and where the power lies. It’s learning how to navigate the institution and first understanding what it even is. Universities are like cities, and sometimes we forget that it’s that many people with that many moving parts. UVA has almost 20,000 employees, and that can just be helpful to keep in mind with whatever it is that you are advocating for and trying to change. It’s important to have some basic understanding of what it is that you want, how you can achieve it, and who your people are. I also find a lot of strength in creating collaborations, or cohorts with multiple actors, right? When I’ve made strides towards any kind of institutional change, I’ve had a broader view of, “Where does this thing that I’m fighting for fit in the larger scheme of what we’re all fighting for and who do I need on my team?”
I believe one of the most powerful things young activist change makers can do is know yourself first and know your own commitments, and kind of try to carve out your own lane. If you ask me what I think will save the world, I’m going to say education. That’s always going to be my answer. Somebody else may say art. Somebody else is going to say policy, right? And I think all of us who are dreaming of a certain kind of world are on the same team, but we may all have different passions around “here’s what I think is going to do it.” We’re sitting in the Women’s Center. There is nothing on this planet that’s not a women’s issue, so finding your niche can help you know which battles are yours and which battles are someone else’s.
There’s this Audre Lorde quote, and it says, “sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually, we must do battle where we are standing” So that’s kind of what I’m saying.
What is your approach and philosophy behind integrating activism and education? Why is education more important right now than ever before?
A space like the Women’s Center is a third space within the university [and broader Charlottesville community]. That is, it is both A part of the university and apart from the university in that it is trying to help the university achieve its larger aims of making sure all members of its community thrive. I find these kinds of spaces to be the most transformative in how we’re thinking about the relationship between education and activism. That is why I found myself in women’s centers and doing this kind of work. But I think that this is a place that many young change makers can be exploring. Those spaces exist all over this university. It’s in certain student organizations. It’s in these little pockets of worlds that are within this larger world where I think the biggest change can happen.
I was in a graduate seminar class, and we were having an argument about the role of activists and the role of academics. We were doing this kind of back and forth between whether we believed that people need to be organizing on the streets or people need to be writing and theorizing about inequality. And the professor lets us have our moment, and then she says, “You know, the academy is also a site in need of some activism.” And for me, a bell went off, right? Because, again, I’m really fascinated by the gray areas and the things that are not so black and white. And we were having this very black and white conversation, but the answer was, like, "what about the academy itself?"
On an everyday level, how can we work to put real, engaged action behind the theories we’re taught in school and engage with advancing social change? Given what you were just saying, I feel like even just having intergenerational conversations can definitely contribute to that.
I don’t mean this in, like, a trendy way, but go touch grass. I really, really, really mean that. And how you define grass is personal for everyone. Sometimes it is literally going outside and getting fresh air, but I say that, to say that the world is not actually online. Sometimes, we can see this with college students, the fear of being called out, the fear of getting it wrong, saying the wrong thing, especially you all as writers. So many people don’t act at all because they’re afraid of acting wrong, and that fear is coming from what we see online. But if you’re in a community, [you work] with real people, and you test your thoughts and talk about your strategies with real people. In real life, that level of call out and criticism isn’t there, and if it is, it’s not nearly as vitriolic, right?
I would also say, don’t do it alone. Have a crew that becomes your grass. This is why I love Iris, because y’all have a team. That’s one of those things that when you leave, you’ll take that with you. For me, doing the work in a crew or community offers insulation and protection. It also breaks up isolation and it just makes me smarter, because my friends are smart and they’re thoughtful and they have different perspectives to offer. Even in writing Feminist AF, it was just so wonderful. The conversations we were able to have [as co-authors], enriched what we were talking about. Because while we were all three Black girls who grew up working class, we still had different things that we brought to that experience or, you know, different young people that we were having these conversations with.
So I would say, just do something and collectivize everything.
In your experience, when have you encountered a necessity to balance radical self expression and activism within your professional or personal life?
I mean, the short answer is, I feel like that’s the line I have to walk every day. I think I would answer this differently when I was younger.. When I was an activist in my early 20s, I was willing to be a little bit more on the side of radical self expression no matter what, because I had less to lose or less to consider. As a mother, I have to really think about how my commitments to the world also impact these other people. I lost my mother when I was 11, and so I know firsthand what it’s like to grow up without a parent, and some commitments are the kinds that can get you arrested and get you killed.
So maybe now, what I will do is bring y’all sandwiches or write the checks. So, knowing that not everybody can do it in the same way is really important. At the same time, I do have to ask myself, “Is that an excuse to not do anything? Where’s the time where I must be brave?" A lot of this is about being in that gray area where there’s no right answer.
How do you plan to direct the Women’s Center in a way that supports students and the broader community as we navigate these conflicting institutional expectations?
I think on a practical level, I’m really intentional about understanding the landscape of what we’re looking at right now, especially around higher education and the kind of work that we do. It’s first and foremost to be really knowledgeable about what’s happening so that I can prepare the Center. But [Women’s Center Interns] are really the heart of this space, and you’ll tell me what’s needed. Of course I’m going to be most intentional about the group of student interns that we have at the Women’s Center. You all represent different pockets of the University and help build the Center that we need. So as you all think about what you need to be supported as students here, my plan is to use that to drive what this Center does. It’s really to be in service to you as students.
