Essay On My First Black President

I can remember standing in line at the F G Clark Activity Center at Southern University. The “mini dome” as the students called it, was a smaller version of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. It was November 2008. There was an air of stillness, yet a hopeful felling on my HBCU campus. Like many of my fellow students standing in one of the two lines separated by the first letter of our last name, we would be voting for the first time for President of the United States. On the Ballot Senator Barack Obama. The loud scream that erupted at 10:00 P.M. that night after CNN projected Barack Obama to be the President-elect. The campus became a place of celebration, happiness, joy that America had chosen to elect its first black president. That what we have been told, that we are able to do anything despite our skin color. Fast-forward eight years later and I learned
There were a few great teachers, but they did not expect many of us to college. So when I entered Southern University I was not ready because my high school had a “do it yourself” attitude. I took that with me to college and it took me my entire freshmen year to learn that as a young African- American certain achievements were supposed to be off limits to me and that attitude were only going to limit me. I can no longer blame my teachers and classmates, or even coworkers and others who look at me strangely when they learn that I hold a Master’s degree. I had to put the frustration away and learn that they are just as much victims of the same environment as me. My white neighbors whose prejudices because of my skin color skin and achievements that do not fit their narrative of a young African-American male. My black classmates who teased me for being gay were just displaying subconscious prejudices because of the underrepresented and often discriminate against