The honest conversation about 'black kids'
If you go to Hopkins, you're not happy. Morgan students are happy. You should meet some. Two of my best friends started at Morgan last month, and they're ecstatic. They came to visit me last night, and their jubilance contrasted so intensely with the dismal, bleak faces which have started haunting campus since class started.
It was baffling to see young people so proud of their choice in higher education; confusion is too weak a word to describe what my suitemates and I experienced. I thought it was due to lack of studying on their part, but one of my friends had a paper due that night and hadn't been out partying since their classes started in August … and he was strangely happy about it. After an hour of astonishment, I just had to ask, "What happened?" and I figured it out, Morgan students are happy because they go to what is called a Historically Black College.
Almost every black student has thought about going to an HBC. Most have applied to one or two. There are two rather esteemed ones in the area Â- Morgan and Howard State, and then there's the lesser-known Coppin. For a lot of kids, an HBC is the only real vision of college. As a kid raised in Baltimore, I never thought about going to Hopkins. Morgan was very real for me, though. My mother attended classes there; my cousins are currently enrolled at Morgan. It was like A Different World right down the street.
I don't know if white people know this, but there's a generation of black kids who wanted to go to college just because of A Different World. A Different World was a spin-off of The Cosby Show, but foucusing on black characters in college. I thought I was going to be Dwayne Cleophus Wayne (yes, I used to have flip-up shades that clipped onto my glasses and a high-top fade), and who wouldn't want to be? At Hillman (Dwayne's alma-mater), tradition, culture and activism were at the forefront of the college experience. They had conversations about apartheid and institutionalized racism and sexism. They discussed and confronted issues like AIDS, police brutality and drug abuse. They did all of that inside and outside of the classroom, and all in 22-minute installments!
It was baffling to see young people so proud of their choice in higher education; confusion is too weak a word to describe what my suitemates and I experienced. I thought it was due to lack of studying on their part, but one of my friends had a paper due that night and hadn't been out partying since their classes started in August … and he was strangely happy about it. After an hour of astonishment, I just had to ask, "What happened?" and I figured it out, Morgan students are happy because they go to what is called a Historically Black College.
Almost every black student has thought about going to an HBC. Most have applied to one or two. There are two rather esteemed ones in the area Â- Morgan and Howard State, and then there's the lesser-known Coppin. For a lot of kids, an HBC is the only real vision of college. As a kid raised in Baltimore, I never thought about going to Hopkins. Morgan was very real for me, though. My mother attended classes there; my cousins are currently enrolled at Morgan. It was like A Different World right down the street.
I don't know if white people know this, but there's a generation of black kids who wanted to go to college just because of A Different World. A Different World was a spin-off of The Cosby Show, but foucusing on black characters in college. I thought I was going to be Dwayne Cleophus Wayne (yes, I used to have flip-up shades that clipped onto my glasses and a high-top fade), and who wouldn't want to be? At Hillman (Dwayne's alma-mater), tradition, culture and activism were at the forefront of the college experience. They had conversations about apartheid and institutionalized racism and sexism. They discussed and confronted issues like AIDS, police brutality and drug abuse. They did all of that inside and outside of the classroom, and all in 22-minute installments!
Be the first to comment on this story