When I entered the University of Mississippi in 2006 I was closing one chapter in my life and starting a new one. For the first time in my life I would not be attending a small private school where my biggest class would have 25 students. I no longer had the comfort of knowing everyone I passed in the halls; coming to Ole Miss would be just the opposite. While I knew of several people coming to Ole Miss I did not actually know them and thus I signed up for a random roommate.
Signing up for a random roommate is a little scary, you have to wait to receive a little packet from the University which will tell you who you will be living in a closely packed room for the next year with. Once I received the packet in the mail I opened it up and saw that I would be living with someone named Anthony Darko from Roswell, Georgia. I saw his name and didn’t think it sounded too crazy, I had been to Roswell, and knew it was a nice place. I went to Facebook to see if I could find him and add him as a friend as well try to get an idea of what the person I would be living with for the next year was like.
This was the early days of Facebook when everybody wasn’t on it yet; Anthony was one of those people so I was forced to call him. When I called him I was a little surprised when a woman with a very strong African accent answered. This took me by surprise. I in no way consider myself racist however after growing up all of my life in the suburbs and going to a small private school I had never been around any black people for a long amount of time and had certainly not lived with any. I talked to Anthony and he seemed cool, I agreed to bring a fridge while he agreed to bring a microwave and just like that our roommate bond had begun.
To be honest while I knew I had signed up for a random roommate I never expected to be paired up with a black student. Truthfully at the time I didn’t know how many black students Ole Miss had. Since I did not grow up an Ole Miss fan and had only stepped foot on campus two times before move in day I figured that due to its past Ole Miss would be more like a larger Boyd-Buchanan which is where I went to high school, with an overwhelming amount of white students sprinkled in with a few black students. As I said earlier though his skin color did not really bother me but I was a little nervous to see what living with him would be like .
My parents both grew up in West Tennessee and have memories of what Ole Miss was like during the 60’s and 70’s when Ole Miss was not exactly the poster child for racial acceptance. Upon learning that I would be living with a black guy from Atlanta my dad immediately asked if I wanted to try and get a new roommate. He asked this not because he did not want me living with a black person but rather was worried about what the other white students on the floor would think of me.
In a survey put out by Ohio State and Indiana University, they found that randomly assigned interracial roommates were almost twice as likely to ask for a room re-assignment as apposed to those as same-race roommates. I decided to ignore my dad’s idea of requesting a room change and decided to see what living with Anthony would be like.
August rolled around and so did move in day. I have always lived in the south but I was very quickly introduced to Mississippi heat. If you have ever moved into a dorm in Mississippi in August it is not a fun day. As soon as we arrived Anthony and his parents were walking out. He ran up to me shook my hand and could not of been any friendlier. He and his parents were going out to eat but would be back in a little bit. By the time he got back we were finishing up moving in and it was almost time for my parents to leave. I walked my parents downstairs to their car, being an only child they were a little emotional with their son grown up and in college and no longer living at home. After the emotional goodbye it was time to go upstairs and hang out with my new roommate for the first time.
In no way was talking to Anthony awkward and it was obvious from the very start we would get along great. We both played high school football; both liked to hang out with friends and looked forward to going out to the square to meet new people. As time passed we got into more personal questions about each other. I learned that his parents came to America from Ghana and his family was a part of the royal family. I found out that both of his parents are doctors. I found out he had an older brother in a white fraternity at Georgia and a younger sister still in high school. I could tell from the beginning that we would get along just fine and I was very glad I went against my dad’s idea of requesting a room change and deciding to give Anthony a chance.
While living that year with Anthony we got along great and only had one fight which looking back on I can’t even remember what it was even about. It was serious though… I mean, the room was duck taped in half so it had to be something serious. We eventually got over whatever it was about and would move on. Over the course of the year however I saw some of the struggles that a black person may face at any time.
The first event that I remember seeing the color of Anthony’s skin being judges was rush. While Anthony signed up for a random roommate he actually knew a lot of the people on our floor that lived next door to us and across the hall from us from the Atlanta area. He was the only black guy on our wing and was immediately friends with everyone. When everyone signed up to go through rush, Anthony did as well. At the time there was not a single black student in any of the white fraternities on campus that I can recall seeing. I was certain that if anyone could change that Anthony would be the one. We had hung out at fraternity houses before rush at the weekend parties and a lot of the people he met seemed to really like him. He was told by one of the members of one of the fraternities during rush that he would have a bid from their house only to find out he had been cut later that night. Everyone except for Chi Psi cut him in the early rounds. Chi Psi, which is no longer on campus, was at the time the smallest fraternity on campus in which Anthony had nothing in common with its members. They wanted him bad but he politely declined. I felt bad for him, for the first time in my life I witnessed first hand someone being judged by the color of their skin and the way it affected.
Everyone on our floor joined a fraternity except Antony. While we all went out to do stuff with our new pledge brothers, attending swaps and going to parties, Anthony was stuck in our room. Chi Psi did not give up on Anthony and he eventually gave in just because he wanted someone to hang out with. He made the best of his decision and immediately took over a large roll in the fraternity once he was initiated. He made the best out of a bad situation and I was glad to see him really working hard to make his new fraternity better. After being in a fraternity and seeing some of the people we had I can say that without a doubt he would have been a more valuable member in our fraternity than a good number of the people we actually took
The second time I saw Anthony affected by blatant racism was in our room. Late one night one of the guys next door who Anthony was very good friends with knocked on our door and yelled, “Hey Nigger open the door!” before running back into his room and closing the door. The neighbor was drunk but that is no excuse. This upset Anthony as he ran out of our room and started banging on the neighbors door yelling and cussing trying to break the door down to get to him. He never did as some of the other guys on the floor and me tried to calm him down before eventually going back to our room but still very upset. I remember not really knowing what to say to him. I had never been called anything racially charged in my life so I could not relate to him.
As freshman year came to a close it was time to begin packing up and getting ready to go our separate ways. He had friends he would be living with the next year off campus while I was moving into the fraternity house. We still remain good friends still to this day. We are both six-year seniors about to graduate from Ole Miss in just a few weeks. When I look back on my years at Ole Miss I will look back at those days with Anthony in the dorm as some of my favorite. I have him to thank for helping me open my eyes. I went from hardly spending any time around any black people to living with one for a year. Over the course of that year I saw just a few of the things someone of a different race must face and it helped me realize that while I can see we have made major advancements in race relations at Ole Miss in the past 40 years but just in the past six since I have been here, improvements are still to be had.
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