I started as a freshman at the University of Tennessee in 1967, not that long after The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in public places based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.  In my entering freshman class of 5,000, I was one of only 67 blacks. We often had to deal with racial insensitivity and, sometimes, outright racial hostility from whites and black students.  White students didn’t believe we were smart enough to be there and some black students thought that if you performed well that meant you were “trying to be white”.

In “Black Like Me Meant White Like Them”, Boluwaji Ohumymi writes about his experience several decades after mine. His situation was similar to mine, a minority student in a majority educational setting. Sadly, from my time to his, some things just hadn’t  changed enough. He writes about his challenges dealing with black and white students in high school, college, and medical school.  He emphasized the importance of mentors to help with being successful in environments that are still like my yesterdays because the absence of this critical assistance could mean academically talented students of color may not be successful in college and beyond.

As you start to make decisions about where you will continue your education after high school, it is important that you consider the support available to you because the isolation of academic achievement is part of college life today and will continue to be into the foreseeable future.  With proper planning and outreach, however, these issues can be dealt with successfully  just as they were in 1967 when I went college and as they are today, when to some,  ‘Black Like Me means White Like Them.’