SUNY Potsdam professor who received hate letters speaks out

English and Communications Professor John Youngblood had asked for privacy since he and his family were the targets of racist and homophobic death...

SUNY Potsdam English and Communications Professor John Youngblood. Photo: David Sommerstein.

English and Communications Professor John Youngblood had asked for privacy since he and his family were the targets of racist and homophobic death threats last April.

Last week, SUNY Potsdam university police arrested former student Amjad “Mark” Hussein for allegedly writing and delivering the letters. They were slipped under Youngblood's office door. The notes were racist, homophobic, and contained death threats to Youngblood and his family. After the arrest, university president Kristin Esterberg said it was just the beginning of a campus-wide conversation about race and difference.

John Youngblood is well-known, even controversial, he admits, for sparking difficult conversations about race during his 13 years at SUNY Potsdam. But he never thought he would be the target of this kind of death threat. "I felt vulnerable. I felt exposed. I felt as if my life were in that moment fleeting," Youngblood remembered Thursday in a conversation with David Sommerstein in SUNY Potsdam's Raymond Hall.

Youngblood said he is accustomed to vigorous, even combative dialogue. If he alone had been the target of the letters, he might have reacted "in a more cavalier way." But the mention of his partner, children, and their home was a complete violation. "The images that came into my head of my babies will forever render me insecure in a sense that I feel that I almost wouldn’t be able to fulfill my duties as a father of protecting my babies," Youngblood said. "It exposed a raw insecurity in me that I’d never felt until that moment."

Youngblood said he hopes the incident can spark an honest and open dialogue about race and difference. "It’s ok to have our tensions, to have our different perspectives, and to have them passionately. Where we are failing miserably across the board is we’re not listening to one another."

Youngblood said he was on his way to a theater performance by one of his students last April, when he stopped at his office. He opened the door and found a piece of paper lying on the floor. It's not uncommon, he said, because students often deliver late assignments that way.

Amjad "Mark" Hussain is charged with 2nd degree aggravated harrassment/hate crime. Photo provided by SUNY Potsdam police.
Amjad "Mark" Hussain is charged with 2nd degree aggravated harrassment/hate crime. Photo provided by SUNY Potsdam police.
Interview transcription

John Youngblood: I picked it up casually and just opened it. The first thing I saw was the noose hanging in the tree. From that moment on, it was kind of a foreign experience, an out-of-body experience. I definitely felt numb, and I couldn’t remember much at that moment. It was a lot of swirling, a noose in a tree, being a black man from the South, that’s about as terrifying of an image as you could imagine. This is our oldest form of terror, in this country, one of our oldest forms of terror. I wanted to call my partner to tell him to take the kids, and everyone get in one room, and lock the doors and wait for me to come home. But, I couldn't remember my partner's phone number, and so I just went into a place of kind of an out-of-body experience of numbness, that slowly transferred into real panic, real terror. You hear that word terror so much in our society, and until you experience it, there’s just few words you can use to describe it—but I felt vulnerable, I felt exposed. I felt as if my life was, in that moment, fleeting.

David Sommerstein: Is there anything like this that’s ever happened to you before as a black man?

JY: You know, no. I’ve been called nigger before, and it hurts every time and it’s raw and painful every time, but nothing on this level. I’ve never experienced fear at that level of insecurity. Part of the death threat was not just aimed toward me, it was aimed toward my children, and my partner, and my family which includes my ex-wife. If it had just been me targeted, then, I am not that naive about race, I am from the South, terrible things have happened in my life—I probably would’ve been much more cavalier about it. I probably wouldn’t have been so frightful, because, the images that came into my head of my babies as a result of those threats will forever render me a bit insecure, in the sense that I feel that I almost wouldn’t be able to fulfill my duties as a father protecting my babies. It exposed a raw insecurity in me that I’d never felt until that moment.

DS: Is getting a letter like this anything that you could have expected?

JY: No. First of all, it was a death threat. That's a pretty bold move, to threaten a person's life. That leaves the realm of free speech. Yes, I have been prepared for people not to like me. Some of my positions, some of my perspectives especially on race, especially as a black man, can be difficult for some to swallow.

DS: Why do you say it's difficult for people to swallow? Why do you say you're sort of like a controversial figure?

JY: I shouldn't be controversial. I speak about racism. Our president has acknowledged that our campus has a racist issue, that our campuses around the country have racial issues. But we do live in a society I believe, that grapples with accepting the truth. We are oftentimes more desirous of the rhetoric being lofty, but the action doesn't necessarily have to match the rhetoric of inclusivity, of multiculturalism, of diversity. The rhetoric might be there, but the actions are not there. And I think that when people are forced to have these conversations it makes them uncomfortable.

Students led a solidarity march last April to draw attention to the hate letters. Photo: Sarah Harris
Students led a solidarity march last April to draw attention to the hate letters. Photo: Sarah Harris
DS: Do you think that we're—that especially white people—are learning new things about that gap in the rhetoric and what's really happening through something like this, through "Black Lives Matter," the attention to police, to the protest on campus?

JY: It's hard for me to answer that question, David, to say what I believe white people are learning or not learning.

DS: That's a good point.

JY: What I do know is that we are in a position in our society where tensions are escalating. It's certainly not just SUNY Potsdam, certainly not just the North Country. It's the United States; it's the world. It's almost like a tinderbox, and so I think sure, white people are hearing more about police interactions and minorities, but so are black people, so are native Americans, so are Hispanics, so are Asians. But what I think is more important is that if we don't start listening to each other, this could really escalate into a terrible situation all around the globe. We are going to disagree with one another. David, you and I are going to disagree with one another, but that disagreement shouldn't mean that now you are evil, not that you're someone that I'm disgusted by, not you're someone that I can't still have a meal with, or a beer with, or go to church with. So really as a people, it's OK to have our tensions, to have our different perspectives and to have them passionately. Where we are failing miserably across the board is we're not listening to one another. A white person in a discussion of racism feels that you just called them a racist. A black person in a discussion of racism feels that you just told them that they're too ignorant and stupid to understand their own experiences. When you have those types of passionate positions there must be a commitment to sticking this out together, staying together, making sure that when we leave this room we remember the humanity we saw with each other when we came into the room. On this campus, there are some disappointments I have with the institution's response to it.

DS: What are you disappointed about regarding the handling of this situation?

JY: Let me be clear. I think, like the president [of SUNY Potsdam], I think institutional racism is an issue on this campus. I’m sure some of your listeners are going to go, ‘oh, goodness, here he is saying that the place is racist!’ and I don’t hide from that viewpoint. I’m with the president on that. It’s time for us to re-look at our formulas that we have for determining student growth, for determining recruitment, for determining the services that we provide, perhaps, in counseling. Is it time for us to have someone in the counseling center who understands what it is to be an ethnic minority person, and that double consciousness thing that’s required? Do you know what I mean? It’s not that they’re bad counselors. In fact, I know the counseling center and there are some wonderful counselors there. But have we truly applied the new formula to be more considerate of our increasingly ethnic minority population?

We just grew, our first year class is now 43 percent students of color. I’m telling you, we do not have the resources to support that 43 percent student of color increase with the freshmen students. That’s a problem. Some of us have been telling the institution that this is an issue. Slow down with recruitment, or make sure that the resources are there. Why have those voices not been heard?

DS: Why did you decide to talk with me, with NCPR? You don’t need to talk to anybody. You could go about your business and say, ‘hey, I’m not going to do interviews. I’m going to move forward.’

JY: Well, I’m hoping that this will be the interview that ends a lot of things. I figured that if the victim could speak in a calm manner about these issues and recommend for us all to stop, take a moment, look at one another, listen to one another, understand where one another is coming from, that we can actually turn this crisis into something beautiful, into something that we can look back at and we’re proud of, for how we did it and what we learned.

For one, I felt that it was also important for me to say to the North Country community, thank you. Because the North Country community has been incredible. Sometimes the North Country gets a rep, a bad rep, for not being a welcoming place, and I don’t think that’s fair. I find that the North Country has its areas, pockets of racism, like I see in New York City, like I see in Detroit, like I see in Houston, Texas, or wherever you go. But I felt like, I figured that you and I could have a conversation, maybe unearth some feelings and emotions and really have a dialogue of meaning, not just for my school, for this campus, but for the entire North Country.

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