I Shot Ya (Remix): A College Story

“I represent intellectual violence
And leave your click holier than the Ten Commandments” — I Shot Ya (Remix) Keith Murray’s Verse.

I was the only black person to attend my college for two years. The only black person. My college was in a small town of 5,000 people, and the 2,000 students that went to college there were the lifeblood of the economy. I was the only black student (I know I have said that three times so far, but it is wild for me to believe.) I did not go to the bars. I wrote about that here.

I am the first black person that many of my peers have ever met. I am the only black person many of them will ever know. If they never went to college, they would never have known a black person (god, that is depressing). I am the only tangible evidence they can grasp to push back against a torrent of negative stereotypes. I am their nadir in this turbulent time that is beseeched with racial tempests that spawn haphazardly across our nation. College gave them the experience of seeing an oversized intellect that was out of place in this small section of the world (by now, you must know that I am modest and humble). I should not have gone to college there, and if I could do it over, I would not have attended college there.

I was not prepared to be in a college where I was the only black person. My high school had a small black population, but there were other black people in the community. Even if the white kids in…