The News chronicles the journey of two black students at Northeastern. This is the first of a three-part series.
It wasn’t easy, but Jamil Abdullah got here. His was a journey that took him through five schools in two states, menial jobs as he struggled to make ends meet and numerous personal obstacles — but he got here.
A junior mechanical engineering major, Abdullah will graduate in 2005 at the age of 30. His reasons for finishing school are endless.
Abdullah’s path has paralleled a labyrinth, both literally and figuratively. Born in Chicago, he moved to Boston at a young age. After undergoing numerous obstacles in his elementary and high school years, he enrolled in St. Paul’s College in Lawrenceville, Va., where he excelled in business administration. He then transferred to Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Va., to take up engineering. It would prove to be a difficult experience.
“ODU was hard,” he said. “I brought the same work ethic and figured your academic talent would get you through — that didn’t work. I wasn’t concerned with school.”
Abdullah failed out of ODU and worked for about two and a half years. The sabbatical served as a preparatory school of sorts for the brash youth.
“Those first years I didn’t have any work ethic,” Abdullah said. “Stopping school and having to work in the real world — I’ve done everything. When you realize that [things are not easy], you see it’s brisk out here, and that degree is like a warm coat; it’s a reality check. Necessity breeds motivation.”
That necessity brought Abdullah back to Mass. He went to Massasoit Community College in Brockton for a semester and then waited a semester before transferring to Roxbury Community College in the fall of 1999. A teacher, Mr. Entenmann, noticed Abdullah’s aptitude in his physics class. He referred Abdullah to David Blackman, who works at Northeastern’s Department of Education, primarily with inner-city youths. Blackman took Abdullah on as his pilot. He graduated from RCC in May 2001 and enrolled at Northeastern in January 2002 as a sophomore.
The biggest difference between then and now, not surprisingly, is knowledg, more specifically, the means by which Abdullah sought and applied it. He learned that being in an environment where he was in the minority, there were some sacrifices that had to be made.
“[Racially], ODU is a mirror of this school, except that it’s in the south,” Abdullah said. “The difference between now and then is that I was really trying to hold on to my identity, and hold onto my edge, and it didn’t work. I essentially just have to bite the bullet and ask for help.”
Abdullah’s junior year of high school in Indiana did not make an easy task, as it was his first extensive experience interacting with whites.
“It was real racist,” he said. “I was one out of maybe 10 students that was black and they were all athletes. It was like, ‘He’s real nice in football, he’s real nice in basketball.’ It wasn’t about ‘That’s Jamil. He’s a real nice person.'”
The sense of independence that carried over to Old Dominion appears to have been replaced by an eagerness to understand the curriculum through the use of multiple resources.
Though his adaptation into this academic environment has been a success, it has not been without its dilemmas.
Abdullah was in the NU Residential Life Resident Assistant training program and a psychologist was brought in to speak for a presentation on different resources available to their residents when someone struck a nerve.
“This lady was giving a presentation and this white dude in the back was like yeah, these are issues that we need to discuss and approach, and he uses the N-word,” he said. “He said we need to say these buzz words like ‘nigger’ and this and that. I took offense to it.
“I wouldn’t have said anything either back in the day, and I feel like these people are thinking the same thing I’m thinking. I’m going to speak up now; I’m not too far removed from every minority in that room,” he said.
Abdullah said other minorities take offense to such actions, but suppress their opinions for the sake of assimilation with the majority.
“They always have to find a way to bring ‘nigger’ into it. They always have to find a way to bring black and white into it,” he said. “There are so many other things out here, so many other things going on, and they wonder why there is racism. ”
If there is one area where Abdullah cannot relent, it is with these issues.
“I can’t bottle that up,” he said. “I couldn’t go home and look at myself in the mirror; that’s what it boils down to. I’ve got too many other things going on to let things like that slide.”
Do not be confused, however. Abdullah seeks an education and respect, but not acceptance. That is why he is fearless when confronting such issues, even when it involves those individuals close to him.
“I’m talking to my friend and she’s like, ‘If I didn’t know you, I’d be real scared of you. Man, you could probably beat up anybody,'” Abdullah recalled. “I’m like, ‘Why do you think of me like that? That’s real racist of you to say. You think of me as a savage? If I was a white dude, just as tall as I am, just as big as I am, you would say that?’ and she said no.
“She was being candid. Then I asked, ‘Why do you say it over here?’ She was like, ‘You’re right.’ But that’s how most white people think. They see me out here, I got braids, they see me sag my pants on my ass, I got a leather coat. What she doesn’t understand is if I had a suit and a low cut it’d be the same thing, so why am I going to change myself and appease whoever? I don’t need that acceptance; I don’t need you to look at me and say, ‘Wow, you’re really doing it on your own, and that’s why I’m not afraid to ask for help.’ It’s about me, and about my performance.”
Next week: A young woman offers a different perspective on race and education.
