Michelle Obama by David Colbert Read Free Book Online Page B

imagined racism that didn't exist, and that she was too quick to complain about it. The incident with Catherine, and her reaction to it, showed the opposite. Often, racism was behind problems that simply puzzled Michelle.
    Unfortunately, racism was not rare at Princeton. Lisa F. Rawlings, a classmate of Michelle's, recalled to the
Boston Globe,
"I cannot tell you the number of times I was called 'Brown Sugar.'"
    It's likely that the same thing happened at every campus where African Americans were a minority. Princeton, however, might have been worse than some others. It was a school with a long tradition of race problems. Woodrow Wilson, who was president of Princeton before becoming president of the United States, had once said, "The whole temper and tradition of the place are such that no negro has ever applied for admission, and it seems extremely unlikely that the question will ever assume a practical form." In 1936, an African American high school senior who didn't know the school's policy applied and was accepted, but when he showed up he was refused enrollment. Princeton did not admit its first regular African American student until 1947, more than two hundred years after the school was founded.
THE HARD WAY
    The people running Princeton in Michelle's time were determined to make up for the school's ugly past. But schools like Princeton don't change direction easily. So although Michelle should have been able to just think about her courses and having fun with friends, she was also stuck in the middle of a nationwide debate about race. After coming from Whitney M. Young High School, where those questions seemed to be in the past, it was a rude shock. It was also insulting.
    The debate really came to a simple question: Were African American students really good enough to be at elite schools, or had standards been lowered to let them in?
    At Princeton, the critics of minority students were notoriously harsh. A group of alumni was formed to attack the school's policy of encouraging minority enrollment. It came out of a similar group that had fought the admission of women, who first enrolled in 1969. In fact, Princeton was still considered difficult for women of any race when Michelle attended. They faced many of the same attitudes minorities did: Some of the professors and other university staff believed they were not intelligent enough to understand the work. So Michelle had it doubly hard.
    There was something strange about this debate at the Ivy League schools. Some of the alumni who said they were concerned about lower academic standards expected the university to give their own children an advantage for admission. That had been the practice in these schools for generations. A lot of the complaints about Princeton's new policies came from alumni who were worried that there would be fewer places for these "legacies."
    Unfortunately, mistaken ideas about lower standards worked against minority students like Michelle. Hilary Beard, who was a year ahead of Michelle at Princeton, told the school's newspaper in 2008 that she still remembered a professor who accused an African American student of copying a paper because the work was very good. "He told her it was not possible that she had this high quality of thinking. [Her work] happened to be brilliant like any other student's on campus, but her skin was brown."
THE CLUB RULES
    Having Craig on campus was a help, most of the time. He was already a star player, being tracked by professional teams.
    Craig had already gone through the tough transition that many students face when they reach college after going to a high school where teachers push the students and give them attention. In college, a lot of professors are only interested in their own research. They think of teaching as the part of the job they have to endure. They don't give students a lot of direction, but they still expect good work. When Craig first arrived, he remembered, he was "overwhelmed." He was used to