Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

white students are, except that
whatever problc,m white students
encounter black students inherit,
plus the dual condition of being
rejected or ignored as individuals,
or as blacks .
On white campuses located in
small college communities, blacks
live in social isolation (aggravated
frequently by a skewed sex distribution
) where their acceptance is
superficial even when apparent . In
less exclusive colleges located in
large cities, the opportunities for
social and romantic philandering
are more prevalent, in both the
greater number of their kind on
campus and a relative access to the
off-campus black community .
This quest for meaningful social
relations, coupled with discriminatory
housing and economic con~iderations,
increase the black student's
probability of becoming a
campus commuter . Commuting
each day between the black community
and the white campus,
black students experience a daily
sense of discrepancy between two
contrasting, even conflicting,
worlds : one world whose spirit has
been largely broken in the quest for
the social elevation which the black
student now holds dear ; the other
world characterized by a good deal
of minutiae which the black student
recognizes as profoundly "irrelevant"
to himself, his fate and his
experience . And yet he knows so
well that he must wade somehow
through this "white" milieu in
search of ratification for the "white
rat race" (which is a chore for
NEGRO DIGEST March 1969
anybody) . The chore is simply
compounded by the fact that, psy- .
chologically and otherwise, it does
not relate so well to what is crucial
to the black student's life, inclining
him in too many cases to
give up . He eventually comes to see
it as essentially "a bad set."
This sense of defeatism and despair
is reinforced and magnified
by the models of failure surrounding
him in the black community .
On top of that, exposure to harsh
measures of discrimination, past or
present, provoke a feeling of suspicion
out of which can develop
a negative definition of certain phenomena
which the white middle
class employs for social acceptance,
including not merely cultural
symbols of status ; it might become
derogatory, for example, to be seen
spending much time with books .
Under the prevailing college system,
structured so that an individual
succeeds best by conforming
most to middle class values, black
students labor considerably less
prepared (than ~,vhite students of
suburban training and experience)
to cope . They grow naturally and
indelibly alienated . It might become
more "in" to be pretty good
at cards, for example, which only
multiplies the probability of failure
in the academic arena . The black
student overtly at first-rightfully
begins to question the nature
of standards impassionately dangled
above his head as obstacles to
the acquisition of the stamp "qualified
."
Recently, during a talk at Yale
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