#i2amru (I, Too, Am Reinhardt) Volume 1 Number 1 | Page 52

“I was even guilty of jumping the gun,” Goss
admits, “Once I met more black peers, I
thought they were all one way. Then I found
that everyone is different.”
Goss, from a small rural town in the North
Georgia mountains, met her boyfriend here
at Reinhardt. When I asked her what it was
like meeting someone who is completely new
to your world, she related to the question
right away.
“It was like going to a different country.
Different lingo, different styles, different attitudes, different everything,” Goss told me, “It
is something you can’t take to heart all of the
time. You learn to take things with a grain of
salt.”
All African American students at Reinhardt
do not come from the same backgrounds.
Oftentimes, there are many microcultures
within the larger culture of students of color.
People come from all walks of life, including
dynamics such as class, region, or color of
skin. Some students at Reinhardt that are
“black” in color are not, in fact, traditionally African American. Vanessa Irie is from
the Ivory Coast or Africa and lived there
when she was younger, while Teddy Casimir
came to the United States from Haiti. These
students bring very diverse cultures to the
community of Reinhardt and even to the
community of black students.
I wanted to know if African American
students felt that their peers viewed them a
certain way, and in unison Goss, Finley and
Hicks responded: “People do stereotype us
because of the color of our skin.”
Palmer agrees that non-African American
students see him differently but in the same
way that they look at anyone who comes
from a different origin.

52

“I think some people tend to take the curiosity of others
too negatively,” Palmer admits. He pointed something out
to me that I had not thought about before while looking
into the culture and life of African American students. Curiosity does lead to something very positive and beautiful.
“Some people get mad because they misunderstand or
don’t know quite how to ask something,” Palmer notes,
“ins FVB