[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, 

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