Iwas the only black person to attend my college for two years. The only black person. My college was in a small town of 5,000 people, and the 2,000 students that went to college there were the lifeblood of the economy. I was the only black student (I know I have said that three times so far, but it is wild for me to believe.) I did not go to the bars. I wrote about that here.

I am the first black person that many of my peers have ever met. I am the only black person many of them will ever know. If they never went to college, they would never have known a black person (god, that is depressing). I am the only tangible evidence they can grasp to push back against a torrent of negative stereotypes. I am their nadir in this turbulent time that is beseeched with racial tempests that spawn haphazardly across our nation. College gave them the experience of seeing an oversized intellect that was out of place in this small section of the world (by now, you must know that I am modest and humble). I should not have gone to college there, and if I could do it over, I would not have attended college there.

I was not prepared to be in a college where I was the only black person. My high school had a small black population, but there were other black people in the community. Even if the white kids in my school did not kick it with me or some of the other black students, they still had exposure through living where we lived.

That was my greatest miscalculation: I was used to being one of a few black people in grade school, but the white kids had other black kids to interact with. Here in college, I was it. I was their first and, for some, the only idea of what being black meant. Today, when I look at their Facebook friends lists, I usually only see my black face in a blizzard of white faces.

Their heads were full of stereotypes about black people. Some of the kids were malicious others were simply ignorant. When you are in college and confronted with racial bias, it does not matter the intent of the person who commits a micro-aggression or full-on aggression; it simply sucks. I was not as calloused as I am now. I have learned to handle various affronts that have been presented to me. I was not mature enough to navigate these troubled waters. I was a child who was no longer afforded the luxury of sauntering down a path to become a man. I was isolated. I had to grow up fast. I had to adapt. I had to survive.

College turned me into a man.

Iremember going to see the Dean of Students my freshman year after being there for six weeks. All students were required to do this. So it was my time to visit with the Dean. I had heard a student yell nigger in his dorm room. Not at me, but I walked by when he made this utterance. I was a freshman, and I was isolated. I did not even have the ability to confide in my roommate because he was going through his own tribulations. My roommate would ultimately leave after our freshman year. Marty, I hope you are doing well and have found peace.

When I sat down in the Dean’s office, and he asked me how things were going, I unburdened myself and made him shoulder my load. He was not prepared for this. He had been the wrestling coach at this college for decades. He was a likable and affable older gentleman who had wanted me to join his squad (I was a three-time varsity letterman on a team ranked third in the nation). After I had confessed all of the crap that I had to deal with, I noticed his face was pale. The blood that had given him his customary rosy cheeks had been drained by my piercing indictment of his student body. He sputtered as he stalled, hoping to summon the words to his tongue, which had become heavy and laborious for him to move.

I watched him flail. It was similar to a person who cannot swim, writhing in the water, aware of their fate if they are not rescued. I saw terror in his eyes. His body had become rigid. He was panicking. He did not want me to see, but I had been living in a state of panic for the past couple of weeks. It was easy to recognize that he was in the grasp of panic.

I wondered why my list of grievances had caused him to become undone. It was 1993. America had been violently stirred from the Dream by the Rodney King beating. America was awakened again by the not-guilty verdict and the uprisings all across America that followed in response to this injustice. For him to be unprepared to aid a black student as the Dean of Students was confounding to me.

Then I realized that this man would have been one of the people who would have been engaging in this nonsense that I faced. I told people to call me Duece in college as a joke to my friends back home. Some of the white students had surmised that I had murdered two people, and that is why I was called Deuce. Let me paint you a picture of me during this time: I wore Birkenstocks sandals and pastel Ralph Lauren Polo clothing. Gangsta rap had just entered the zeitgeist; my aesthetic was the direct opposite of khaki suits and Raider’s hats favored by the rappers from Los Angeles. However, I was black, and the media had fed these kids that black people are murderers; ergo, I was a murderer.

AsI saw him stumbling over his words, I quit listening and proceeded to have a conversation with myself. I told myself: Garrick, you are all alone here. You have no one you can trust. No one is going to come to save you. You must save and protect yourself. You can transfer, or you can stay. However, you chose this college, and now you must live with your decision.

I abruptly got up and thanked him, and left his office, focused on what I had to do. The Dean was a decent man, but he was not equipped to serve the needs of a black student. This was probably the first and only time he ever dealt with racism in his life. A real black person sitting right across from him and calmly telling him all of the troubling things he had encountered. I am going to assume that he has zero black friends. I will presume a black person has never been in his house to share a meal. I am going to conjecture he has never attended a wedding where there was a black groom or bride. This Dean had never been proximate to race until a freshman walked into this office and unfurled a list of grievances committed by his white student body.

From this encounter, I learned the nature of some white people. Some professors at this college had attended Cornell, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and other institutions with diverse student bodies. He was not cut from this cloth. The Dean was born in Iowa, went to college at a similar small college in Iowa, and lived in Iowa his whole life. Some of my professors were better equipped to handle racial issues, not him. Did that make him a bad person? No. However, his inability to help a distressed student was a force multiplier of harm I experienced.

He served no purpose to me and my plight. I allowed him to save face by getting up, leaving, and never returning for aid that I knew he could not provide. I think next year, he left the position of Dean of Students but remained the wrestling coach.

“I’d rather be feared than loved because the fear lasts longer.” — I Shot Ya (Remix) Verse By Fat Joe.

I’m not going to lie; I got on some prison politics my freshman year. A white boy named Devin had been talking recklessly to me. Devin was a good-looking guy from a small town in Iowa. His graduating class had less than 40 students, which was still larger than most of the students who attended my college. He was on the college football team as a running back. He had an older brother who was a star baseball player, and his cousin was the starting wide receiver at the college. Devin was charming, bright, and had an edge about him. I knew he had a dad, but I doubt he had a mother. He had slowly been escalating his racial animus towards me for weeks.

First, I took it as good nature ribbing, but it persisted. I tried to steer him back to anything else other than me and race, but he rejected my offers. I even tried avoidance. I don’t know if white people are fully aware of how much black people try to avoid their silly racism. We will go to great lengths to preserve our mental health by avoiding y’all’s racist drek. Devin remained steadfast in his racism, which was fueled by his curiosity about race. I was the first black person he had ever known, and looking at his friends on Facebook, I was the only black person he has ever known. He was curious, and I was his experiment.

“Illuminati want my mind, soul, and my body
Secret society, tryin to keep they eye on me
But I’m stay incogni’, in places they can’t find me
Make my moves strategically, the G.O.D.
It’s sorta similar but iller than a chess player
I use my thinker, it coincides with my blinker” — I Shot Ya (Remix) Verse By Prodigy

Ifoolishly and erroneously thought that I might get some help from the Dean of Students. I did not. I was on my own. I now had to take a gamble to deal with all of this racist bullsh!t by myself. Devin and I had three or four classes together that semester. The biggest class we had together was a weed-out chemistry class with over 120 students in it. Remember, my college is about 2,000 people. This was the largest class offered by my college.

As I said, I had to get on some prison politics, and Devin would have been classified as a shot caller. Any attack on anyone of lesser stature would be viewed as punching down. Everyone liked Devin or wanted to be liked by Devin. So he was the one that had to get the smoke.

I had tried to steer him away from race, but his curiosity was too strong. I tried to avoid him, but when you are the only black person in college, and you share three or four classes together, avoidance is a failing strategy.

So when we got our test scores back in chemistry, the professor said there was only one person who had achieved 100, and I was him. The professor then exited the room, and I knew it was time to attack. I addressed Devin loudly in front of the whole class. I said something like this:

What the fuck is your daddy going to think when he finds out that you are dumber than a black person? Look at my test score and look at yours. Your daddy is going to be supper disappointed he might even disown you. He is going to ask how the fuck you let a black boy beat you on a chemistry test? Plus, the black kid is richer than you.

Then I touched him, and I said you better wash that off and I walked out. The room was silent. Devin did not say a word. He was seated the whole time, and my five-foot-four frame towered over him as he sat in that orange plastic lecture seat.

I then marched out. No one moved as I climbed the stairs out of the stadium-style lecture hall. My gait was steady. My face was fixed. I was ready for anything or anyone. No one stopped me. No one dared to make eye contact with me as I had my head on a swivel, looking for any threats that might come my way. I finally reached the summit, and I pushed the doors open. I winched as the bracing sunlight jutted into the room. I gave myself a second to allow my eyes to adjust before escaping into the grounds of the college campus.

I dog-walked Devin in front of the whole class. I had gotten a 100% on the test, so the whole class knew that they had all fared worst than me on this exam. They were all Devin at that moment. Except he was the one that got the smoke.

I admitted in this earlier piece that I am not nice, and I requested your prayers (read this). I was not lying; I really do need your prayers. However, I had to take this white boy out in front of 120 people, so the rest of the college knew I was not the one. In today’s parlance, I was, and I am, still Him.

After that incident, I never had any overt racial problems again. Other than a bunch of white girls who wanted to have sex with me because they were mad at their dads or wanted to experiment. My time in college was rather calm.

Even today, Devin and I are friendly acquaintances. However, I emasculated him in front of the entire room. I was now someone to be feared. Word spread through the dorms about what I said and my intellectual prowess. Incoming classes would hear this story and know that I was not the one.

On the classic I Shot Ya (Remix), Fat Joe raps: I’d rather be feared than loved because the fear last longer. He was wrong. I rather be loved than feared because love is not caustic to one’s soul. However, when all you have is fear, you embrace it.

That meeting with the Dean and me f#@king Devin up in front of a crowd taught me one of the most important lessons that has powered me through life: a white person rather get their a$$ whooped in a fistfight than get demolished intellectually by a black person in front of a crowd.

Devin and everyone else in that room was not prepared for that intellectual violence I unleashed. In all of the possible scenarios Devin and the rest of my peers could imagine: me saying the quiet part out loud, with ten toes down, was not one of them. If I am being real about my white brothers and sisters, they can easily absorb and shrug off an a$$ whooping. There are many different ways to spin that. Around every corner, retaliation and revenge are lurking if you beat a white person’s a$$. They can go get a couple of other people and roll up on you. They could go get a weapon and catch you lacking. Most likely, they could go call the police, and now you are trapped in the system.

However, an intellectual public curb stomping was something unimaginable. That is why I did it. I used an asymmetric line of attack that was not conceivable to my opp. Moreover, how is he or anyone else going to retaliate? You can’t if you worship at the Church of white supremacy. If you adhere to this soft-minded ideology, then you should be destroying me on every test. If you happen to best me on a test, who cares? That is what you should be doing according to the religion you serve. Even if you get a higher grade than me, no one cares; that is what is expected from you. However, when you keep falling short, then there are only two explanations: 1. You are intellectually inferior to a black person, or 2. white supremacy is a bald-faced lie. For a college-age student who might have never had a conversation with a black person before meeting me…both outcomes were objectively awful.

Did I feel great about what I did? No. Was it something that I took pride in? No. Was Devin a horrible racist? No. In fact, Devin was a decent dude. At almost 50, I wish him nothing but the best and long to see him one day.

Yet, I debased myself to show everyone that I was not the one. If anyone wanted smoke I had no problems bringing it to your front door. I made a bet and was willing to live with the outcome. For the record, Devin was a great student, but I was better.

“Word, I’m here to crush all my peers.” I Shot Ya (Remix) Verse By LL Cool J

Looking back on this interaction, I learned how to talk to white people, which has aided me in my life. Too many black folks default to name-calling, cursing, and threats of physical violence. These are all anticipated reactions. Instead, the line of attack that has an overwhelming chance of success is commenting on the intelligence and wealth of your attacker. If you point out that a white person has a lower intelligence than you, that will wound them. If you say that they are poor despite having all of the blessings in our society or they are a leech on the government, it will engender a rage that will bubble over as they search for an insult to harm you. If you claim that their success is only because of their parents or grandparents or the person they married, they will become incensed. Look at that nepotism story that has caused folks to get all in their feelings. It is at this point that you know you have won.

Like Jay-Z raps in 99 Problems: I tried to ignore ’em, talk to the Lord
Pray for ’em, ’cause some fools just love to perform
You know the type, loud as a motorbike
But wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight.

I did the same with Devin before I acted. I made the choice of when and where to debase myself. It was my decision. I regret it had to be done, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.