M

This is doable, of course—minority and underprivileged students rise to the
challenge all the time—but it takes energy. It takes energy to be the only black
person in a lecture hall or one of a few nonwhite people trying out for a play or
joining an intramural team. It requires effort, an extra level of confidence, to
speak in those settings and own your presence in the room. Which is why when
my friends and I found one another at dinner each night, it was with some degree
of relief. It’s why we stayed a long time and laughed as much as we could.

My two white roommates in Pyne Hall were both perfectly nice, but I
wasn’t around the dorm enough to strike up any sort of deep friendship. I didn’t,
in fact, have many white friends at all. In retrospect, I realize it was my fault as
much as anyone’s. I was cautious. I stuck to what I knew. It’s hard to put into
words what sometimes you pick up in the ether, the quiet, cruel nuances of not
belonging—the subtle cues that tell you to not risk anything, to find your people
and just stay put.

Cathy, one of my roommates, would surface in the news many years later,
describing with embarrassment something I hadn’t known when we lived
together: Her mother, a schoolteacher from New Orleans, had been so appalled
that her daughter had been assigned a black roommate that she’d badgered the
university to separate us. Her mother also gave an interview, confirming the story
and providing more context. Having been raised in a home where the n-word
was a part of the family lexicon, having had a grandfather who’d been a sheriff
and used to brag about chasing black people out of his town, she’d been
“horrified,” as she put it, by my proximity to her daughter.

All I knew at the time is that midway through our freshman year, Cathy
moved out of our triple and into a single room. I’m happy to say that I had no
idea why.

y financial aid package at Princeton required me to get a work-study job,
and I ended up with a good one, getting hired as an assistant to the director of the
TWC. I helped out about ten hours a week when I wasn’t in class, sitting at a
desk alongside Loretta, the full-time secretary, typing memos, answering the
phone, and directing students who came in with questions about dropping a class
or signing up for the food co-op. The office sat in the front corner of the
building, with sun-flooded windows and mismatched furniture that made it more