HBCU.
Historically Black College/University
An acronym that is taboo to many people, but also a term that fills the black community with so much hope. Coming from a predominantly white county, I wanted to not feel like I’m being compared due to preconceived notions based on the color of my skin. I was always that one black girl. looking at class photos in elementary school and thinking to myself, no one else looks like me in these pictures. There’s always been a feeling that I’m different or I didn’t belong there throughout my elementary to high school years. I wanted to be able to not feel like I have to compress my pride and who I am just to conform to the environment around me. I wanted to be able to be surrounded by black excellence, and going to a HBCU is somewhere that I felt I could be around that the most.
Some may say that HBCUs produce black people to dislike the majority, but in fact, that is not the case. Don’t get me wrong, I respect other places of higher education outside of the HBCU community however, the experience you get at an HBCU, is one that can never be replicated. An HBCU teaches us to take a step back to see where we came from in order to get to where we want to go. It teaches us to embrace all of our talents, beauties and qualities that may be overlooked in everyday America and form them into a force that is unstoppable against anyone else. It teaches you to stand tall in a room where there aren’t many other people who look like you. It teaches us to not take no for an answer. Being black in America means that you have to work twice as hard as anyone else just because you were given a little more melanin in your skin at birth. However, we do not see our blackness as something to look down upon, but something to use to help us stand out. HBCUs help to work against statistics.
By putting more young black men and women in classrooms and not in jail cells, it helps to change the stigmas associated with this community. Ironically, HBCUs have become a safe space for today’s generation of young black men and women. Holding the purpose to serve black men and women over a hundred years ago when HBCUs first emerged as a way for blacks to make their own name in society. In many cases still today, in order for black people to get ahead, the hard work we put in many times goes unnoticed but, here on the campus of Hampton University, it feels like what I’m doing matters. My voice matters, my thoughts matter, my actions matter. Getting accepted into Hampton was one of the proudest moments of my life. Here, I feel that I am being provided all of the tools that I will need to be an unstoppable black woman in America. My experience so far at my HBCU is already one that I would not want to trade for anything else in this world. I’m so glad I go to Hampton U and I will ALWAYS love my HBCU.