This wonderful young man is my son, Harrison.
He is a proud graduate of James Madison University.
This young man is going to be the best teacher in America in around a year...
He begins graduate school for his Masters in Education in late August!
I am proud of the fact that he graduated from this great university.
I am proud to be the father of this young man who is smarter than me.
I am proud of the role I played in guiding him into embracing his education.
I am proud of the fact that attending James Madison University did not break him.
JMU is obviously a proud university with decades of heritage and history.
20,000 students attend this Virginia university at any one time in the year.
It runs like a city with politics at the top of the chain of events...
And those politics are in question in my mind as a dad of a JMU graduate.
Almost 300 students attended JMU's College of Education in 2014.
There were seven young men who graduated from this section of the university.
Guess how many of these seven young men were African-American.
If you guessed only one, then you are right... and he happened to be my son!
I found it to be shameful that a university with the resources of JMU...
Only had one black male in this basically all female, basically all white department.
And, I found it even more dumbfounding that this university did not offer my son...
Basically any assistance, financial or moral, during his four years there.
It is the American way for students to have crushing debt when they graduate from big universities!
But this university, I believe, should have given its ONE BLACK MALE STUDENT a little help!
And when I contacted the university, after graduation, to voice my discontent...
I was dismissed by the dean of the financial aid department with an "F***K YOU response."
These are my words... the father of the student.
I have not discussed this matter with my son.
He is back there at JMU right now preparing for his Masters year...
And I am sure he will get through this year as the only African-American male among the norm.
One might look at JMU sports and think there are a lot of black people at JMU.
Remember, folks... university athletics is a separate machine using different gears.
There could easily be 50 black athletes at a college and none on the rest of the campus!
I am living proof as to how that caveat to university attendance works.
I am proud of my son.
He has NEVER been in trouble.
But, like any black young man in America today,
He could be a Ferguson, Missouri shot dead on the street statistic at any moment in time!
JMU is located by a very large town out there in the hills of Virginia.
There are not a lot of black people in this area of Virginia.
Every day I hope to the stars above that he comes back home alive and well...
Not because he had been to war, but because he is in college in a all white area of Virginia.
He'll be OK, this I know.
I am sensitive because I am angry at the university and the way it has used my son.
When the government asks JMU to show its diversity statistics,
It can say... we had one black young man in that department... and in America that's enough!
RLJ
