“I’m just as black as you are white”
About half way through my fall semester of 2004 as I washed my hands in the MSC men’s bathroom anticipating another tasteless meal in the cafeteria. I was approached by a Prairie View student (black of course) who seemed to be either a freshman or sophomore at most. He looked at me through the actually clean mirror and bluntly exclaimed “What are you doing here? This is posed to be an’all black skoo?”…….I continued to wash my hands pretending to be deaf. “Y’a hears me, What’ya doin here”?...... drying my hands on the brown paper bag towel, I turned to him and edgily stated, “I’m just as black as you are white”, and proceeded to dinner. I did not know it at the time, but that incident back in the bathroom of the MSC would change my outlook upon attending college at Prairie View A&M University.
I spent the rest of that week replaying the Bathroom incident over and over in my head. Like a broken record it just replayed and replayed over and over. I tried everything I could to get that young man and his words out of my mind tossing, turning at night, surfing the internet playing doom. I tried telling my self, he was just a rude probably undereducated kid who didn’t know any difference, but when all was said and done that single young man who had insulted me, had driven home a damn good point. What was I doing here?
Well I’m still searching for the answer to that question, and I find new ones almost every day, but in reality the ultimate answer to my question has not specific answer. But is a series of stories and events.
As a conservative, white Northerner attending a liberal, black Southern school; I have a certain different perspective upon life then I did only seven months ago. When I graduated High School as a somewhat sheltered kid of seventeen years of age, Boy Scout, uber Star Trek fan, computer nerd, crazy aerospace enthusiast with a nothing special GPA. I was everything the popular kids weren’t. And while I had a distinguished career in every thing in enjoyed like Computers, Boy Scouts, Aeronautics; and had been on the front page of the paper in numerous occasions. I was still the kid everybody thought was (for his age older then anyone else my age) and could go somewhere in life be it either cubicle or Fighter Pilot most likely ending up like Bill Gates.
Today my sheltered ego of high school has somewhat vanished and been replaced with the harsh reality of the world outside Wisconsin just as many college students find. You could say, my blinded view of the world has opened, and the science fiction dreams of my childhood have been replaced with the realistic life goals. The following stories will try to depict what its like being the only person on campus like me, and try to answer the question. What am I doing here?
1 comments:
You should have came to Minnesota, dude--you find your niche and one day you realize that the campus isn't really that buig, and that most people are mean stupid people (so much for not being cynical...)
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