On historically Black colleges and universities:I was taking an AP government class, junior year, I think. I don’t remember exactly what the assignment was, but for some reason, we were creating campaign collateral, and I created these Obama stickers. My dad's been involved in politics my entire life. I worked on campaigns, I’ve worked the conventions, and because of that I felt connected and excited about the project so, I created these stickers and part of the assignment was to pass them out. A classmate took what I created, ripped it up, shredded it in front of my face, and said, “You're only doing this because he's Black and you're Black, too.”
I went to a high school that had plenty of people like that. I hated those kids, but in retrospect, it makes me angrier to think about how irresponsible the adults running that place were.
What a contrast this is:
I think one of the beauties of Spelman and HBCUs in general, is that you get to have more nuanced conversations around things like politics. We’re not talking about “is it because he's Black or not,” we're talking about what Obama’s actual policies are, and what stances he’s taking on issues. The Blackness isn't the first thing everybody sees, because it’s something we all have in common.
I’m not sure I’d want to go to a historically Asian university if they existed (though I guess that could be UC Berkeley), but the kind of freedom that author talks about would have been nice. In terms of freedom from racial discrimination, the college I went to was levels above high school for me, but still racist. The freedom from blatant racial slurs and violence was great, but you still got periodic reminders that you weren’t a member of the top-tier race.
Some faculty member posted to one of school newsgroups about how he was freaked out because he saw a large group of Asian people. I thought, whoa, the liberals at this school are going to be shocked that that guy said that in public. But no. The thread that followed flushed out that quite a few people thought that racism against Asians did not exist. One of my friends also told me this! (Though that guy was actually an out-of-the-closet racist, so I don’t know why I was disappointed. Kids are dumb.)
Anyway, everyone deserves a four-year break from that kind of thing, especially in their formative years.