<p>I love this part of the story:
"Now she [Donnelly, Michelle’s former white roommate] wishes she had reached across racial lines at Princeton…</p>
<p>Since then, Donnelly has worked and socialized with African-Americans. Yet she hasn’t grown close to any of them. “I’ve just never had an opportunity,” she says, “to have a good friend who was black.”</p>
<p>“You did with Michelle,” Brown [Donnelly’s mom who had wanted her to leave Princeton due to having a black roommie] snaps.'"</p>
<p>I had the same fears for my son when he went to college, though I never told him about my fear that his roommates would dislike or fear him because he is black.</p>
<p>And when I went to college – a decade before Michelle OBama did – the same kind of fears and reactions existed even in Ivies.</p>
<p>About 15 years ago, one of my mentees, a black girl, encountered racism in her rommates at Michigan State. Her roommate was from rural Michigan, and apparently had never been around black people before. My mentee was very comfortable with all kinds of people – played violin in a youth orchestra, had worked as a student journalist at one of the city’s dailies, had excellent grades, scores, very sophhisticated and nice. However, the roommate and the roommate’s mother looked at my mentee in shock when they saw she was black, and the white roommate found a way of moving out of the room in a few days.</p>
<p>I also remember that about 10 years ago when I took my elementary school-aged son to pick up a friend to take the friend and her mom to the theater, the friend’s father (a doctor) was clearly shocked to see that his child had a black friend.</p>
<p>I don’t think my son noticed the reaction, but it was clear to me, particularly when the dad pulled the mom aside to go to another room to have a quiet chat. When we dropped them off later, the mom apologized for not inviting us in, saying she didn’t feel well. She was a very nice person, whom I encountered later while chaperoning field trips, but she obviously was married to a racist (who I am sorry to say later became head of another state’s health department).</p>
<p>.</p>