My mom was the first person to put me on Spike Lee’s School Daze (1988). She was a student at Spelman College when Spike Lee was holding open auditions. She told me how she stood in line that felt endless before stepping out, convinced she wouldn’t get picked. Years later, she admitted it was one of her biggest regrets. “Spike didn’t pick the trendy girls,” she once said, “he picked the real ones: everyday women, BLACK skin, natural hair.” That always stuck with me. I remember watching the film at a young age, but the topics of elitism, colorism, and misogyny went right over my head as I hadn’t yet experienced enough to grasp such nuanced understanding of intraracial relationships. I just knew how uncomfortable I felt when Julian asked Jane to sleep with Half-Pint to “prove her love” and how Half-Pint’s excitement to tell Dap later ignited that unforgettable “Wake Up!” moment.
When I got to college, which was a PWI (predominantly white institution) in rural Indiana, I was asked to watch and write about School Daze while “pre-pledging” for a Black sorority. I thought pledging would give me belonging, a circle to call mine. When I entered college I told myself I had already made my life long friends in high school, and that even if I came out of college with one friend, that was one friend I had for life. But by my sophomore year, I was starting to feel isolated and depressed by the type of environment in which my campus had cultivated. I wanted to be popular, president of orgs, a part of Greek life, and to have social status to validate that I was more than what I was feeling. However, the closer I got, the more I saw what Dap was raging against: the hierarchy, the performance, the way we divide ourselves within spaces already built to divide us. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t go through with it. I realized I didn’t want to fit into a system that seemed to feed on exclusivity. If I was someone who wanted to foster and build community, how was joining a sorority gonna maintain that? The same girls I was supposed to call my “sisters” didn’t even like me. They were weird towards me over the boy I was dating, and on a campus with few Black men who openly loved and dated Black women, it felt like survival of the fittest. I started noticing the quiet envy that came with being “picked” even if it was from a loser I dated at the time. However it was a pivotal realization for me as that was the first time I was aware that other black women didn’t like me. Was I really gonna allow myself to be broken down, belittled, and humiliated all in the name of “sisterhood”?
Spike Lee’s film hit harder than I expected. On the surface, it’s about a fictional HBCU, Mission College, divided between the “wannabes” , the lighter complexion, more privileged, straight-haired crowd led by Jane and the “jigaboos,” the darker-skinned women led by Rachel. But underneath all the colorism and campus drama, the film is about how easily we lose ourselves chasing belonging in systems built to reject us (I.E. BLACK PEOPLE). Jane, Julian’s girlfriend, is the clearest example. When he tells her to have sex with his fraternity brother Half-Pint as some kind of loyalty test, she does it, not out of desire, but out of submission. It’s one of the most disturbing moments in the film because you can see how institutional power, ego, and gender politics crush her agency. Jane, Julian and Half-pint are yet victims of a white patriarchal system telling them how men should exert power and how women, specifically black women should be submissive roles within that structure. When Half-Pint later brags about the encounter to Dap, Julian’s cousin (who is also Half-Pint’s cousin), the whole illusion shatters. Dap, who’s been preaching anti-apartheid, revolution and unity throughout the film, sees the hypocrisy: the elitism, the misogyny, the emptiness of performative “Black pride” That’s when he storms out into the quad and screams “Wake up!” it’s more than a call to the students: it’s a call to the audience, to the community, to us.
Watching that moment in my dorm room, I felt it in my chest. I was Dap. I was Jane. I was Rachel. I was Half-Pint. I was all of these characters, trying to survive a broken system alone. A system I didn’t agree with nor created. By my junior year I felt more isolated than ever. I was president of a feminist organization but it felt like I was doing work just to post about it on Instagram. It never felt like I was making real change, creating an actual safe space or doing anything of impact. Nothing like the black college students I read about in the late 60s and 70s. The revolutionary in me was burnout and on the brink of death. I was angry, idealistic, and surrounded by people who were more invested in image than change. My college experience had turned into a mirror that felt eerily similar to Dap’s world: the classism, the silent competitions, the performative activism. Everyone wanted to look woke, but no one wanted to do the real work to challenge the very racist institution we were at, and no one wanted to be ostracized for it. I realized that to wake up, as Dap called us to do, was to stand alone, aware. And that’s scary, but freeing.
My mom used to tell me she hated her time at Spelman, but she never elaborated on why. Maybe she didn’t want me to latch onto her own personal feelings of disappointment with the black college experience. I didn’t go to an HBCU, but I wonder if she faced the same quiet classism and color politics that haunt School Daze. College, especially Black elite spaces, can feel like their own kind of haunting surrounded by legacy, image, and expectation. It’s isolating when you don’t come from that world. My parents were first-generation college graduates, both from poor families. I wasn’t prepared for how class, color, and privilege still carve up so much of our sense of belonging especially as a black person. Sometimes the places that promise you belonging end up isolating you the most, and that’s what School Daze taught me long before I realized I was living it.
In the end, I did wake up, not in the quad, but in my own silence, realizing I didn’t need anyone’s validation to belong. And I left school. Two years later, and while I've wrestled with my own feelings of inadequacy, I now feel more free than ever. But I still think about Dap, how he didn’t turn his back on his community, even when he was disappointed by it. That’s one thing I'm still learning how to do. He got louder. He stood in the middle of the chaos and screamed for them to see themselves. That kind of courage, to love your people enough to confront them, is rare. It reminds me of The Last Poets’ “Niggers Are Scared of Revolution,” where they say:
“Niggers are lovers, are lovers, are lovers
Niggers loved to hear Malcolm rap, but they didn’t love Malcolm
Niggers love everything but themselves
But I’m a lover too, yes I’m a lover too
I love niggers, I love niggers, I love niggers
Because niggers are me, and I should only love that which is me
I love to see niggers go through changes, love to see niggers act
Love to see niggers make them plays and shoot the shit
But there is one thing about niggers I do not love
Niggers are scared of revolution.”
That poem/verse, much like Dap’s final cry, is a mirror. It’s not about hate, it’s about accountability. It’s about loving something enough to want to see it change. Dap’s warning isn’t just about consciousness; it’s about courage. The courage to question comfort. The courage to speak when silence feels safer. Maybe that’s what I’ve been searching for too, not just a revolution around me, but one within me.
