My stint with higher education began at a massive public institution—the University of Illinois—where I joined a black population that comprised just 5.8 percent of the 40,000-member student body. That percentage fell dramatically over the course of my four years there.
U of I was no bastion of cultural sensitivity, but my peers gave little indication that my black body and blackish identity were disturbing their daily lives. Whether in my schlubby all-sweats freshman garb or my equally schlubby attire of the hungover senior, I folded in neatly with the overwhelmingly white student body into which I had been invited. I was as good as invisible.
Call it yuppie kismet. Blending in had been a foregone conclusion from the moment I began kindergarten in my childhood suburb—a community with far less racial diversity than the campuses on which I later set foot. Or perhaps I just failed to notice if—or when—I was deemed amiss amidst the masses, my suburban upbringing serving as the perfect anesthetic to any detectable prejudice. Maybe I was “New Black” long before Pharrell reinvigorated the late 19th-century phraseology for upwardly mobile African American folk. (The Atlantic)
– See more at: http://blackpoliticsontheweb.com/2014/12/16/hypocrisy-revitalization-universities-black-communities/#sthash.SzJpLFTT.dpuf
