This student had the best response to a professor who questioned her essay on the Stonewall Riots

When it comes to education, sometimes teachers aren’t the ones that know best. But more students are beginning to push back – and it’s incredible when they do. Take for example this student’s response after a professor questioned her essay on the Stonewall Riots. With personal bias coming through in many classrooms across the country, it can be easy for students to take prejudiced professors and teachers at face value — and that’s why it’s so important to lift up the voices of students who challenge them.

As Buzzfeed reports, Tumblr user huxsir uploaded a picture of one of her college class essays. The paper in question was about “the role of anger in activism.”

But what’s peculiar is when she focused on trans women of color involved in the Stonewall Riots, huxsir’s professor made a note asking her to “source her inaccuracy.”

http://huxsir.tumblr.com/post/154106434802/anyway-so-time-to-write-a-sourced-email-to-my

This critique is especially troubling because it erases the importance of trans women activists of color like Marsha P. Johnson, who were critical in the Stonewall Riots, and uplifted the voices of trans and queer people of color during the fight for queer rights.

Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, was a New Jersey-based queer liberation activist — and she was one of the first people to fight back against the police during the riots, which created the necessary pushback for queer rights to become a mainstream movement.

Too often, Black, Indigenous and other women of color find their voices and work erased from the mainstream — even within other marginalized communities. Recognizing the significance that Marsha played is critical to understanding the true importance of the Stonewall Riots as a whole.

In response to the request for sources, huxsir responded with all of them in an email. Throughout the entire process, she shared the process on her Tumblr, where the posts got over 38,000 responses.

And she had a message for those who were questioning her intelligence: false

We’re definitely praising huxsir for her knowledge on the topic and standing firm in her beliefs.