[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]
Last week I interviewed a candidate for admission to my college alma mater. Though I normally shun alumnae activities, I relented this one time after a desperate email announcing that many black candidates had been ignored in the interview process.
For once in my life, I followed the script: Ask opened ended questions and don't give too much information about the school.
I only broke the rules once by giving her one piece of unsolicited advice – do not leave undergraduate school without some plan of how you're going to support yourself. Many of my friends made that mistake. We must have thought we were our parents and it was the'60s. It was the early '90s, and dreamers were left behind while bankers and yuppies flourished.
Tokenism Never Ends
The candidate, let's call her “Jane,” mentioned that the most difficult part of her high school experience was that she was the only black person in her graduating class. But, Jane chirped happily, she was looking forward to the diversity of the campus undoubtedly touted in the glossy brochures.
Almost 20 years after graduating from a predominately white high school and attending a predominately white college, I know the diverse world of sleek university advertisements doesn't really exist – except on paper.
I smiled and didn't say anything.
This is what I should have told her:
Life as the token black person ain't easy.
To borrow a phrase from a friend's mother, you will always be the sole raisin in the bowl of corn flakes.
Although you may now be annoyed by questions about hair like ours, skin like ours or food like ours, your discomfort is just beginning.
Look How Diverse We Are
In my college there weren't many of us, and the school administration used us like diversity fairy dust. A wave of the Dean's hand would sprinkle a couple for photo-ops in every dorm, classroom or library among unsuspecting, wide-eyed Midwestern roommates and classmates as their introduction to “culture”—and purported proof of the lack of bias at the school. A flick of a wand sprinkled a few of at the college President's teas and fundraisers.
Jane, consider any financial aid grant as payment for diversity services rendered, with no moral obligation to repay.
In sociology or history or literature classes, professors turn to us for our take on civil rights, or the cultural phenomenon that is Oprah. We are expected to have an opinion on any “black” topic, whether in our individual realm of interest or not.
Expect more of the same in graduate school, with your duties as a token greater because there are even fewer of us around.
Your work life will be more of the same. I've worked in a number of industries. I can't think of a time when there was more than me as the token—not counting folks in the mail room, a smattering of secretaries and other low paid staff.The greeting card business? Aggressive white men and me. Newspaper writing? Liberal white men and me. Television? Really liberal (gay) white men and me. Law? Conservative, but pretending to be liberal, white men and me. Non-profit? Wealthy white women and me.
There Is One Exception
The only non-token industry I can think of where you wouldn't be alone is in mid-level government, but various governments have been on a hiring freeze since you were born. So I wouldn't hold your breath.
And if you're sitting at one of those diversity luncheons (popular in college, and grad school, and in the workplace) and you're scanning the crowd looking for the diversity – girl, look no further, it is you.
Your social life will not be much different, without an effort. A few nights ago I was out to dinner at an 'upscale' chain restaurant (okay, that's an oxymoron, but how they describe themselves), and I was the only black diner at my table, let alone in the room.
Last week I had brunch with a black friend on Melrose. We were the only two black people there, in a city of millions. Parties your white friends throw – you'll be the only one.
If you want to abdicate your token role, you'll have to find friends other than those people from work and school, the traditional sources.
Even on Facebook, I'm the token black friend. Even folks with 532 friends don't have more than one black person in the bunch, me.
Jane, the future will look like episodes of "Seinfeld" and "Friends" all wrapped up in one.
So, don't fret too much at being the only black girl in your private high school's graduating class.
Sit tight, this is just the beginning.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, "Law School Supports Drug Use"—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course.This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com.
