But on the outside, your graduating class is not the same after all. Because in your class there are those who will face much more trouble in this deeply flawed world merely because of the color of their skin. Privilege and supremacy will team up and pit against you everywhere from work life to the subway trip home. While your white comrades are landing a job at a New York company on Wallstreet that their rich daddy secured for them, you will find yourself changing your hair just to avoid uncomfortable stares at the office. Yes, it will be difficult but life for people of color often is.
Education is a gift that many were never even offered. It takes hard work and dedication and the promise that things will get better- because they always do. There will be some that oppose your education because the less educated you are the easier it to control and manipulate you. Being another drug dealer or pimp is much easier than sitting through anatomy and trigonometry courses. But these are a necessary evil, something that will get you through this thing called life and something that the white population can often take for granted.
“You have escaped the maze just to discover a whole new set of obstacles, waiting for you”
Perhaps it would be a bit more comforting to know that everyone goes through these trials and tribulations. That everyone in your graduating class will too get turned down from a job because of their race at least once or be subject to racial slurs just while walking to work. Perhaps it would be comforting to know that everyone must get initiated into this proverbial ‘real world’, but sadly some will get a ‘free pass’ of sorts. They will breeze through grassy meadows while you will be told to limp through a swamp with a trusting smile and a face that screams ‘I’m approachable!”. Because god forbid that you let the struggle of prejudiced professors and racist frat parties show in your tired face or others may find you too intimidating.
It may take a while- long bouts of sleepless nights and uncomfortable first impressions but you will find that you are not alone. That there are fellow people of color out there that know your pain and also want to talk about that time they were followed around in a convenience store for the first time or the many times where their college campus felt like a trap. Those are the friends you will relish the most, the ones that remind you that you are not going through this alone. The real world is hard, there’s no way around that, but the sooner you realize that the odds are against you- that they always were against you since the day you opened you brown eyes, the sooner you can prove that you will rise. That you will not succumb to their ruthless expectations and stereotypes, your diploma gripped ever so tightly in one hand while you prove to the world that their rigged cards won’t stop you from winning their silly game.
