ABSTRACT
When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it ushered in unprecedented opportunities for African Americans in the United States. The implications of this legal liberation continue to be debated. Its implications for my own educational career were profound. In this chapter, I share my own experience as a black student at a predominantly white college, and a semester spent at an HBCU. My experience was not only about race, nor is race the only lens through which I might have interpreted my college years. But, as Tatum observes, “The parts of our identity that do capture our attention are those that other people notice, and that reflect back to us. The aspect of identity that is the target of others’ attention, and subsequently of our own, often is that which sets us apart as exception or ‘other’ in their eyes” (1997:21). It was the racial aspect of my identity that captured my attention and that, to use Erik Erikson’s words, aggravated in painful and elated ways my racial identity-consciousness (1968:22).
