Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays

by R. Eric Thomas

So, true to my nature as someone who literally cannot decide if he wants to be in or out (see also: closets, conference calls, the workforce, church choir, fashion), when it came to the colleges, I went to the all-students weekends at Brown and Princeton and the students-of-color weekends at Columbia and Cornell. At Cornell, my host—a student named Fredo—made me sleep under his bed and told me there was a race war on campus, so I shouldn’t talk to any white people. The marching band was really great, though, so all in all it was a fine experience. A little Malcolm X-y, a little Music Man-y. What more could you want? I know you’d like more information on this race war situation. Honey, so would I! Fredo was a light-skinned dude with skinny braids lining his scalp. He had no posters on his walls and literally the only thing he said to me was, “I have no room in here. This is a single. You have to sleep under the bed. There’s a race war going on. Don’t talk to any white people.” So I didn’t! I mean, would you? People would be coming up to me, asking me where I was from, offering to tell me about their majors and the clubs they were in, and I’d just shake my head like “You ain’t bamboozling me, whitey.”

This reminds of when I visited Wesleyan hahahaha