Karia White, originally from New Jersey, now based out of the Boulder and Denver, Colorado area is a student, organizer, activist, poet, artist and steward of resistance and reclamation of space. She is currently an undergraduate Senior at the University of Colorado-- Boulder double majoring in International Affairs and Ethnic Studies, as well as pursuing a minor in Political Science. She is one of the student co-founders of the Center for Afrian and African American Studies alongside Ruth Woldemichael and Audrea Fryar.
She has helped to initiate, lead and found some of the University's prolific art spaces such as Shades of Honey, an open mic space that gave space, place, voice to the Black, Brown and Indigenous Community on CU Boulder’s campus. Shades of Honey, now affectionately dubbed “Shades” has now blossomed into the community and carries the responsibility of holding the long legacy of many other Black artistic movements, specifically centered around poetry.
Karia also is an undergraduate research assistant under Dr. Kalonji Nzinga in the School of Education working to cultivate decolonizing methodologies, praxis and pedagogy through Hip Hop in the “Lyripeutics Storytelling Project” that she is co-creating amongst other talented and passionate professors, graduate and undergraduate students. The project piloted during the 2020 pandemic at North High School and has been instrumental in bringing forth healing and voice to the youth.
Out in the community, her current projects center around being an active agent in liberation by cultivating political education with the “Denver Freedom Skool”, facilitating art based healing projects, heading the Boulder Community Fridge Project, building infrastructure for Incarcerated folks to have access to books through her Books Behind Bars initiative, bridging campus to community by hosting a weekly “Books for the Block” book club and lastly, “being a guest in other struggles” (Morris) when needed and where reciprocal.
Karia formerly served as the Director of Social Media under the Black Student Alliance, student committee board on the Conference on World Affairs, Facilitator of Kitchen Table, undergraduate executive board member of the French Department at CU Boulder, Peer educator for the Center for Inclusion and Social Change, Student Liason for the Boulder Racial Equity Commission, Social Equity Commission through the University of Colorado Boulder’s Student Government amongst other roles.
Her influences that directly influence her frame of reference for this project and that she continually draws fight, life, healing, pause and love from are:
Her ancestors, both passed and living | Reiland Rabaka | Angela Davis | Assata Shakur | James Baldwin | Audre Lorde | Bell Hooks| Paulo Fraire | Sky Roosevelt Morris | Bryanna Shaw
