457. That’s the number of black students attending CU-Boulder. They make up
1.6 percent of the total student population of 29,114, calculated by the university in the fall.
1,154. That’s the number of black people living in Boulder, according to the 2000 Census. They amount to 1.2 percent of Boulder’s population of 94,670.
These are lonely numbers.
It’s the reason Leslye Steptoe, an African-American doctoral student, paid $3,000 to break her lease after eight months in Boulder to move to a diverse neighborhood in Westminster, even though it meant commuting 20 minutes to class.
“From the moment I woke up, to the time I went to bed, I could walk all over town and not see another black person,” Steptoe said. “I could run every errand you can think of – go to the post office, the grocery store, gas station, pharmacy, Blockbuster – and be the only black person all day long.”
It’s not that Steptoe can’t relate to white people. “My best friend of 11 years is white,” she told me. “We just celebrated what we call our friendaversary.” But living in Boulder felt like living in a foreign country.
It’s not just the vile hate e-mails that several black and Latino students received last year, or the N-word that was spray- painted on dorm walls, or the black student who was attacked last year by a man shouting racial epithets.
Black students and other minorities say they can’t stand the day-to-day grind of people on campus and in the city staring at them, asking them odd questions about their hair, making assumptions about them, treating them as if they were exotic beings or people to fear.
The feeling of isolation is exacerbated by what Anissa Butler calls a “pseudo-liberal culture” that gives students of color the expectation they will be accepted only to find that the people living in Boulder are so isolated they don’t know how.
Butler, the director of retention and recruitment at the School of Education at CU-Boulder, just finished her doctoral thesis on the subject: “Voices From the Valley: People of Color Discuss the Intersection of Race, Class and Privilege in a Predominantly White College Town.”
She interviewed students and faculty of all ethnicities, researched other studies on the topic, and came to this conclusion: “University communities that self-identify as liberal on diversity may prove as racially tense for people of color as communities which are more overtly hostile to racial diversity.”
Butler found that people living in pseudo-liberal communities celebrate the aspects of ethnic culture they view as intriguing or entertaining, but dissociate when people bring up issues of inequality.
Because pseudo-liberals are highly educated, Butler wrote, they often act as though they are entitled to educate people of color about their own culture.
There are also the constant awkward encounters in Boulder that remind minority students they are different.
Steptoe: “You get a lot of stares. Kids will stare right at you. Parents will get nervous and say, ‘I’m sorry.’ But it’s not the kid’s fault that he’s never seen a black person before.”
She said a similar thing happened recently to a friend. The student was in a shop in Boulder where a child pointed to her braids and said, “Look, mommy, she has snakes in her hair.”
The mother didn’t correct her child; she agreed. The friend told Steptoe she was fine, but as she recounted the story she broke down and cried. Steptoe says the cultural alienation wears on her.
“I am an outsider. I am always going to be. At CU, I know I’m never going to feel at home.”
And that’s why, for many black students in Boulder, 457 can feel as lonely as one.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
