The Only Hope for the Black Community (What I learned at Morehouse College) Part 2

The Morehouse freshmen were simply outside talking.  Yet what they discussed were deep things I'd thought my whole time in elementary school and high school.  Depths of thought about spirit, soul, body, the universe, life, blackness, truth.  I had never met any people in all of my schooling as genuinely intelligent as these young black men, from all over the united states of America. And we, at Morehouse, we a majority.  We were not in "D Group." In fact, I realized what D Group was for the first time in my life. 


I realized that black students were being defined by their willingness to conform or assimilate.  Not that the one black girl in A Group was a sell out, any more than I was a sell out in B Group.  But I noticed the "D Group" black people simply didn't care about what the school wanted them to be.  They resisted acting like they were "supposed to act." And how was that?  Docile.  Controllable.  But they were also defined as less intelligent because of this. Yet they didn't care!  If they had gone to Morehouse, they would have been the leaders of student government.  Morehouse would have shown them who they really were, like it showed me.




Before Morehouse, life was white, and white was normal.  After Morehouse, I saw blackness as it is:  One of the many reflections of God, who alone is the standard for normality.  I saw myself, a black man, standing before the true and living God, dark skin and all, music and drums and deep intelligent black thoughts.  I saw my people as a group so large and diverse and profound that to call us a minority is crazy.  I met the most talented and intelligent black men in the Morehouse Glee Club.  To this day, I've never met any group of people more intelligent than my Glee Club brothers. Intelligence.  I keep using that word because I remember taking cross over classes in Georgia State, and I remember a white woman looking at me and saying, "You're very intelligent." 


Read those words. 


They are a compliment right?  At face value, of course.  But her tone, her look, her vibe made me feel she was kind of shocked, or that my "intelligence" was rare.  I knew now that she was the ignorant one, and I felt sorry for her.  She had been missing all of her life what I had missed:  God's reflection in Africans.




But what is this reflection really, especially when it relates to the hope of the Black community?
(click HERE for part 3)