Negroes Evaluate Life At UNC-G
MARIAN MORGAN
What is life like for a Negro
student on a predominately
white Southern campus? It
UNC-G a typical representative
with its liberalism expressed
through such Student Government sponsored seminars as
Black Power? Does the difference go deeper than skin color and is this difference accepted by both the black and
white student?
Talking with seven of the
female Negro students on the
UNC-G campus has produced
new insight into the black
student's feelings and the extent
of her involvement with her own
race.
All of those interviewed felt
that the Negro on campus was
"tolerated." In viewing her position on campus, Catherine
Hargrove, a senior Sociology
major, says, "We are just
visitors. We have no active part.
We are just there. As a black
Student you don't have a social
life at UNC-G—it's an accepted
fact. I don't pay dorm dues
because I am not getting
anything out of dorm activities.
I am not interested in dorm activities—my scope is much
broader than these types of
things." She went on to say,
"There is no open hostility
toward us, yet there is no real
development of friendship. We
are treated as visitors on campus."
Few seem as bitter as Miss
Hargrove. Senior Frances
Brewer expressed the opinion
that her stay here has given her
an awareness of her own race.
"I I had gone to a black institution, I would not have
known what it meant to be
black."
The feeling of separateness
expressed by many has not been
without a purpose. For the black
student, it has caused an increase in racial pride. Gone in
the feeling of inferiority that
was once the forced opinion of a
Negro for himself. In its place is
a pride in the black man with
his black way of life.
Negros are identifying with
their own people whether it be
by active participation in the
N.A.A.C.P. or by collecting
Supreme albums and displaying
3x5 poster pictures of Sindey
Poiter in a college dormitory
room.
Alice Barnes, a drama major
with hopes of joining the Peace
Corps, spoke of her own hopes of
helping her race through ex-
perssion of their real self. "We
have been forced to accept the
white man's way. We have
straightened our hair, and been
told that our noses are too big
and derriers protrude too much.
I want to help the Negro through
self-expression like in dancing
and for once they can do
something they feel and
something they can call
theirs."
Development of racial pride is
affecting the black student's
vocational ambitions. Senior
English major Sybil Ray spoke
in favor of the Black Power
Forum held on the UNC-G campus during the first semester.
"The forum has really
enlightened me," she said. "It
has affected by desire to teach.
Now I want to show them that if
I can make it, they can too. We
have been made more aware of
what we are and have been
given a pride in ourselves. We
are deciding to stay and help our
black brothers and make them
realize that you are black, you
are different, and you have a
great opportunity to help people
of your own race."
One of the major problems of
the UNC-G Negro girl is social
life with white girls on campus
and with Negro boys. "Girls on
campus know nothing about us,"
says Yvonne Johnson. "They
just assume that we're like
them. They don't know what
we're like or from what family
and economic systems we come.
Because our way of life if so
different, it is hard for deep
friendships to form between the
two races."
