Like nearly every black professor I knew from the Deep South, I expected to protect my students from security, police, and malicious administrations. I expected to pick them up from police stations, train stations, and emergency rooms. I didn’t expect to fail them as much as I did. I misgendered my students when they asked if I could help push the college to cover the cost of transitioning because they’d been disowned by their parents for being transgender. I made my students engage with art that attacked them for being queer, femme, black, and poor.
