[Jerrid-F]

What issues or situations do black females encounter at predominantly white colleges that are different from the majority of the population? Can you give examples or stories?
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Name : Jerrid-F, Gender : M, City : Bowling Green, State : OH, Country : United States, 

[annonymous]

I attended a 98 percent white college for one year (I decided my freshman year to get married). Many of my peers had little or no exposure to blacks. For the most part my experience was positive. It was a small college in a small town of plain folk. There was awkwardness on their part. Sometimes they tried too hard to be polite and not to offend. There were some innocent and silly questions like “I like your curly hair” or “How do you wash it?” Race relations as a whole weren’t always perfect, but there were not outcries of injustice or students dropping out because of pressures of not being welcomed. As a matter of fact, it was blacks who were more often reluctant to create relationships with others (there was an even smaller presence of other minorities).

For me, I loved it there. My best friend happened to be white. We met in the weight room. We had mutual interests. We loved weightlifting and long-distance running. We were two peas in a pod. I nicknamed us “Salt and Pepper.” I had more than a few conversations with girls who were in many ways just like me or others I knew. Many were middle class. Some were the first in their families to attend college. Most of us were broke. Some were unsure of themselves. Some were financially OK but emotionally hurting. We had more in common than not. The obvious difference was color.

When I returned to the city I attended a local campus satellite for a major university. There were far more students and greater diversity, but there was racial tension. I missed my old school. Even years later, I wished I had stayed and completed my degree there.

Not long ago, I treated myself to a trip to the town and visited the campus. Nothing but fond memories and a longing for the innocence and wonder of undergraduate years.

It sounds pretty corny, but the truth is there are> instances of blacks and whites respecting and appreciating each other. The odds increase as we, as individuals, forge personal relationships. On major scales we might be failing, but individually we have the capacity to achieve amazing things, like loving your fellow man.

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Name : annonymous, Gender : F, Race : Black/African American, Age : 34, City : Detroit, State : MI, Country : United States, 

[Happynappy1]

I am a 29-year-old African-American female who attended college in Nebraska (yes, black people go to school there, too.) I found most of the white students simply did not understand black people, and their questions were born of ignorance. This certainly didn’t make them any easier to take. For four years I endured questions about my economic background (everyone wanted to know if I was on a basketball scholarship. I am 5’3′ and attended the university on an academic scholarship). People assumed that I got into the school because of affirmative action. Actually, my SAT scores and GPA were on par with the other applicants to the school (higher, really, which is why I got the scholarship. What was amazing to me was how little white people understood about black people. I hadn’t grown up around whites, but I knew plenty about their lifestyles. Everything about black people was foreign to these kids. The upside of the whole situation is that I did end up enlightening a whole lot of folks, and I did have a very strong bond with the few other black students at the school. Given the choice, I’d do it again.

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Name : Happynappy1, City : Fort Lauderdale, State : FL, Country : United States, 

[Lenn]

First, I just want to say, make sure you have some support(group, therapist, friend…). I went to a private women’s college in California for women from affluent backgrounds. People often ask me what it was like, and did I like it. No, I didn’t like it. I learned a lot (curricular and ex-), I got through it, managed to make one or two friends, and had to deal with racism in some of the most insidious ways imaginable. For the most part, I had to deal with these situations alone, because my so-called advisors were either completely clueless, in total denial, or just as bad if not worse than my professors as far as their attitudes. Mostly, it was simple thing, like attempts to publicly humiliate me for my ideas and perceptions in class, being threatened by my intelligence and calling me arrogant for having the nerve to assert ideas and opinions that challenged established notions. Fortunately, 14 years of education prior, had prepared me well for this. Some of the black students actually had nervous breakdowns. It was attributed to their inability to deal with stress, and the hostile psycho/social factor was never acknowledged. I was ‘very articulate’ had a high GPA ,an got straight A minues, the minus was for attitude ‘bad black ass’. I simply refused to go along with the status quo and swallow their ideology. On the positive side, it gave me the opportunity to research and write papers about aspects of American history that many people don’t know about. For instance, one paper on the many black filmmakers in the late 1800s, and the history of blacks in filmmaking in the U.S., before we were methodically shut out of that industry. Any black person who has attended a largely white institution, and who isn’t in full on denial knows how deep the experience really is. But to paraphrase Nietzsche, ‘What don’t kill you, make you stronger.’ I have many, many stories, and methods of how I navigated the waters of being black in a white dominated world. I have often thought about writing a book for people of color about how to navigate in a society which oppresses you, while at the same time denies that you are being oppressed. This is a very long conversation, so I’ll just end here.

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Name : Lenn, Gender : F, Race : Black/African American, Religion : Eccletic spiritualist, City : Sebastopol, State : CA, Country : United States, Occupation : Filmmaker, photographer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

[J. Akintomide]

I still go to a predominantly white college. The No. 1 thing is that black females don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to dating. Most of the black guys date the white females, and the white guys don’t date black girls (at least at my college). Another thing is that a lot of white people assume that we segregate ourselves when we sit with our black friends. But if I were white and my friends were white, they wouldn’t know the difference. I choose to sit next to my friends, not black people. Not all the black people get along. Another misunderstanding has to do with hair. White females don’t understand that black females don’t go through the same process they do when it comes to hair care. The last problem, among many, is that I have had a lot of white people say (after they got to know us) that they just assumed we were mean and would have kept thinking this if they had not gotten to know us by chance. I can say on a positive note that the black females on campus are closer because we relate to each other, and we are our own support system. This is something that my sister, who goes to a predominantly black college, says she doesn’t experience.

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Name : J. Akintomide, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : Black/African American, Religion : Lutheran, Age : 21, City : Jamaica, Queens, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Full-time Student, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

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