A colleague of mine sent me a link to a blog from the school newspaper at the institution where we went to grad school. The blog was from a featured blogger who is a Black male student. He is now a senior and did sort of a reflection piece on his experiences at the school. The school we attended is a large 4-year predominately white institution in the south.

He described his experiences as a Black male student there, and the racism that he endured. While I was not surprised that he had some poor experiences and endured some racism, I was surprised that this was published in the paper, and even more surprised at some of the comments to this post.

It is natural for different people to have different experiences. My colleague who sent the link to me has a slightly different perspective on the institution than even I do. Perhaps it is because she stayed an extra year after I left, but at any rate her experiences are her own. The same is true for the young man who wrote the blog post. His experiences were negated by other Black and minority students and that was the shocking part.

What he said was very real. I can believe he endured all that he did, and felt the way he described. Although being a Black woman and graduate student on campus was slightly different for me (and a little better than what he described), I have no doubt that prejudice, discrimination, pejorative treatment, and racism still exist. I work at another PWI now, in the South (in an even smaller city and state than the other) and I see and hear about it here as well.

What I am trying to understand is why people who say that they do not believe him instead of just being understanding and opening their minds to the possibility that things may not always be as positive and wonderful for everyone as they may be for them.