efficiently, how to think critically. I’d inadvertently signed up for a 300-level
theology class as a freshman and floundered my way through, ultimately salvaging
my grade with an eleventh-hour, leave-it-all-on-the-field effort on the final
paper. It wasn’t pretty, but I found it encouraging in the end, proof that I could
work my way out of just about any hole. Whatever deficits I might have arrived
with, coming from an inner-city high school, it seemed that I could make up for
them by putting in extra time, asking for help when I needed it, and learning to
pace myself and not procrastinate.
Still, it was impossible to be a black kid at a mostly white school and not feel
the shadow of affirmative action. You could almost read the scrutiny in the gaze
of certain students and even some professors, as if they wanted to say, “I know
why you’re here.” These moments could be demoralizing, even if I’m sure I was
just imagining some of it. It planted a seed of doubt. Was I here merely as part of
a social experiment?
Slowly, though, I began to understand that there were many versions of
quotas being filled at the school. As minorities, we were the most visible, but it
became clear that special dispensations were made to admit all kinds of students
whose grades or accomplishments might not measure up to the acknowledged
standard. It was hardly a straight meritocracy. There were the athletes, for
example. There were the legacy kids, whose fathers and grandfathers had been
Tigers or whose families had funded the building of a dorm or a library. I also
learned that being rich didn’t protect you from failure. Around me, I saw students
flaming out—white, black, privileged or not. Some were seduced by weeknight
keg parties, some were crushed by the stress of trying to live up to some scholarly
ideal, and others were just plain lazy or so out of their element they needed to
flee. My job, as I saw it, was to hold steady, earn the best grades I could, and get
myself through.
By sophomore year, when Suzanne and I moved into a double room
together, I’d figured out how to better manage. I was more accustomed now to
being one of a few students of color in a packed lecture hall. I tried not to feel
intimidated when classroom conversation was dominated by male students, which
it often was. Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest
of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority,
buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.
Some of my peers felt their otherness more acutely than I did. My friend
Derrick remembers white students refusing to yield the sidewalk when he walked