The Struggle to be Heard: PVA Students of Color Contend with Unsafe Arts Spaces at UNC

Nikaiya Lawson will never forget the day a tenured professor at UNC petted her dreads while she was putting art supplies away at the end of class. He rubbed his hands across her hair before walking away and giggling. In another instance, Lawson mentioned her love for heavy metal, only for the same professor to react with surprise, telling Lawson she looked like she “listened to reggae.”

For Black students like Lawson, treatment like this is more common than many would expect, especially at a place like UNC, a school that prides itself on being a safe space. The arts are generally expected to hold more progressive and accepting spaces, but sometimes, this isn’t the case at all. For Lawson and others, the arts, and UNC, aren’t always safe.

Lawson is a graduate student in UNC’s School of Art and Design, with a focus on printmaking and painting. However, Lawson’s first choice was an entirely different medium, one she felt forced to give up because of a series of microaggressions, and worse, from those in power.

In her experiences in this other medium, which she has asked to keep anonymous, Lawson felt unsafe.

“I don’t want to be in the studio,” she said. “I’m not interested in that, in subjecting myself to that.”

Lawson also recalled feeling trapped by her identity as a Black woman in art critiques, as if others believed her art had to be tied to her identity.

“There was one time my art got compared to white face when I was just trying to do a self-portrait of me as a clown,” Lawson said. “It was something deeply personal that had nothing to do with my race.”

Ann-Adele Blassingame, another Black graduate student in UNC’s School of Art and Design, shared some of Lawson’s concerns regarding a lack of safety for Black students.

“There were spaces that I very much avoided because I knew they were not safe for people of color and queer people,” Blassingame said. “I personally refuse to allow my hard-earned education to be taught by someone who will not accept my identity and being.”

Blassingame said they consistently dealt with microaggressions and colorism within PVA spaces.

“The amount of times I’ve been asked if I’m ‘so-and-so’s sister’ in any space where I go with my friend,” Blassingame said.

Blassingame has a focus in printmaking and jewelry. She said that printmaking was a kind of “safe haven” within PVA, a sentiment Lawson shares.

“My painting and printmaking professors have allowed me to express myself in a mature way,” Lawson said. “Like, thinking on a deeper level: how can I broaden the experience to make people understand, outside of myself?”

While printmaking, painting and jewelry have remained safe spaces for Lawson and Blassingame, other spaces have continued to exclude them, a problem that could be attributed to a general lack of diversity in UNC’s art spaces.

“I feel like the amount of Black students within the art space is very low,” Blassingame said. “A lot of Black people that I’ve known to be within UNC’s art space and have left, is often for reasons related to race. I don’t think those students ever felt safe enough to talk about those issues.”

Blassingame’s point is supported by UNC’s student population statistics. The UNC student population consists of around 4% African American students and 2% multi-racial students, according to UNC’s website and the fall 2025 census. The majority of students are white, 55%, or Hispanic/Latine, 21%.

A lack of Black artists within art spaces isn’t exclusive to UNC. Historically, Black artists have been excluded from museums and galleries. In the 1960s, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition protested the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Harlem on My Mind” exhibit because it lacked Black representation, despite being about the Black community. To this day, Black artists have to fight to be represented and accepted.

“When you’re doing critique in a group of white people, rarely are they going to defend that person of color who is being biasedly criticized,” Lawson said. “It’s helpful when you have other students of color in there because they can at least stand up for you.”

Blassingame said they believe open communication lines within departments could help to alleviate negative experiences for Black students, thus increasing the amount of Black students in art spaces. While they acknowledge UNC’s Title IX resources, they said they think more could be done to make Title IX less intimidating.

“This would be in a dream world… but I wish every school [at UNC] had their own Title IX coordinator and we were introduced to them,” Blassingame said. “Because I feel like creating that familiarity with someone like that allows you to build trust with someone. I think trust is something that Black people don’t give that freely, and that’s for very good reason.”

Sydney Kern, a public relations manager at UNC, ensured that student safety remains the school’s top priority.

“The College of Performing and Visual Arts, and the university as a whole, have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination or harassment in any form, and we take any concern about this kind of behavior very seriously,” Kern said in an email. “To understand and address issues when they arise, we rely on students and others on campus to let us know when something has happened. Reporting these issues to the appropriate office is essential — it allows us to look into concerns, understand the facts and take action when warranted.”

Students can utilize UNC’s anonymous reporting tool at www.unco.edu/safety/, call the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance at 970-351-4899 or email titleix@unco.edu if they feel unsafe or would like to report an incident.