Being Black at Bob Jones U

[TheReligiousLeft]

<http://www.killingthebuddha.com/damn_nation/being_bobjones.htm>
I thought this was pretty good... check it out


“I’m a thespian!” says Schimri Yoyo, preparing for his close-up. The 18-year-old Bob Jones freshman has been given a starched white thespian-looking blouse, and behind him leans a fake log-cabin wall and a quilt. A gangly red-headed grad student powders Schimri’s dark nose and brow. His speech teacher has recommended him for the part of Moses Grandy, who wrote the memoir Life of A Slave in 1843. The video segment, in which Schimri reads from the TelePromTer a passage about the graphic horrors of lashings, will be shown to secondary schools and homeschoolers who have signed up for the Bob Jones package of 11th grade history. (BJU is the largest supplier of Christian curricula via video and live satellite transmission.) The grad student, Dave Ute, gives Schimri directions.
In the meantime, the challenges of being in a tiny racial minority are keen in the minds of Schimri and some other minority students, but not as keen as you might imagine. Schimri is used to feeling like an outsider. Like many of the black students here, he is not African American but the child of immigrants. Schrimri was born in Haiti, where his parents had been converted by evangelists and his uncle was a pastor. The family moved to Brockton, Massachusetts, when Schimri was two. “I was used to assimilating myself in a different culture,” he says. Schimri attended public schools through 8th grade, and from there went to Boston College High School, an academically respected Catholic school, until the middle of 11th grade. Then, after a stirring pastor’s sermon at his predominantly white local Baptist church, he felt moved to transfer to the church school. He also started going to The Wilds Bible camp in North Carolina, a mountainous, leafy place where many of the campers aspired to attend Bob Jones. During his senior year at New England Baptist Academy, he entered a preaching competition sponsored by the American Association of Christian Schools. It was held at Bob Jones. People were nice and friendly. He saw friends from camp. He came in 11th out of 50 and saw a future in preaching. He liked it.

“I used to think I wanted to go to a school like Duke or Boston College,” Schimri, a former top Amateur Athletics Union basketball player who had good grades and an impressive PSAT score, says. “I never pictured myself going to Bible college. Some people thought I was throwing away a good education. Yes, academically, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I prayed about it a lot. My parents were actually kind of surprised.” But between his new calling, his many friends, and the needed scholarship assistance (Schimri’s father is a state health care worker and his mother is on disability), it wasn’t a difficult choice. Except for the basketball. Bob Jones has no intercollegiate athletics. No football team, no stadium. Its only recruiting is of the evangelical variety.
“Oh my word,” laughs Ruth. “I had 15 dates within an hour after the ban lifted. I had two months straight of going on dates. All the guys I’d known and been friends with said they were interested in me. I had a blast.” She now pretty much only dates white guys. Paul, a handsome, white pre-med junior, is waiting for Ruth. She is a vision in light blue satin. The dormitory supervisor takes their photo. Paul hands Ruth a pretty paper bag. She giggles. It’s full of Snickers bars. “Like Ruth,” he says, “black on the outside, nutty on the inside.”

[TheReligiousLeft]

1. I'm serious check this out!

[TheReligiousLeft]

2. Come one, has no one read this? Do you refuse?

Alas, oh well.

[Alenne]

3. I read it

I just didn't have a comment about it.

[TheReligiousLeft]

4. cool

I thought it was pretty good, thought it might elicit a response.