Black in the Age of Obama

But living in a post-racial bubble—a place that expects everyone to have gotten over race—isn't as easy as it looks, especially if you happen to be black. Last month NEWSWEEK asked two of the first multigenerational African-American families to pass through Princeton—Henry Kennedy, '70, and Alex Kennedy, '09; Jerome Davis, '71, and Kamille Davis, '05—to map out, in miniature, how life on the front lines of racial progress has changed over the past four decades. The contrast was stark. The fathers—among the first generation of black students accepted into the upper echelons of society—arrived at a time of political unrest and, whether they engaged or retreated, drew strength from their common challenges. But their daughters—among the first African-Americans to enter Princeton with the same advantages as the most privileged of their white peers—have struggled to satisfy the competing demands of the black world they've inherited and the white world they inhabit. In the Age of Obama, the old battle lines may be disappearing. But in a certain sense, that's only made it harder for the next generation of black elites to know where they stand.

Jerome Davis's standing was never in doubt. On a Thursday night in October 1968, Davis's sophomore year, a student named Reginald Peniston called in a noise complaint against the raucous Rockefeller Suite, then accompanied police as they broke up the party. Unfortunately, Peniston was one of only about 60 black students on a campus of 3,300, while the "Rock Suite" boys, mostly football players, were white—and drunk. When Peniston left the dorm, a suite window swung open and a stream of urine rained on his head; the words "n––––r" and "black bastard" soon followed. Davis smiles as he recalls what happened next. By midnight, all the black men on campus had assembled; moments later they stormed the suite. "We … told them we would kick their f––king asses," says Davis.

The Princeton that welcomed Jerome Davis and Henry Kennedy in the late 1960s had spent much of its history on the wrong side of America's struggle with race. As the school's president from 1902 to 1910, Woodrow Wilson refused to admit blacks, informing African-American applicants by mail that "the whole temper and tradition of the place" made it "altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter." It wasn't until 1947 that the university, forced to admit four blacks into its wartime ROTC program, became the last Ivy League school (and one of the last colleges in the North) to graduate an African-American. Even then, Princeton accepted few additional black students until Davis, Kennedy and their contemporaries arrived two decades later.

With fewer than 20 African-Americans per class, "fitting in" wasn't an option. (Each black student went by two names, says Davis, "so people would think there were more of us.") Instead, undergraduates like Davis and Kennedy gravitated toward one of two roles: activist or invisible man. Kennedy chose the latter. A D.C. native, he came to campus without "any expectations in terms of social life." But when his freshman roommate requested a room change to avoid living with a black student, Kennedy realized he wasn't entirely welcome. He coped by retreating into coursework. "My overwhelming sensation," he says, "was one of being 'different'."

In contrast, Davis channeled his "otherness" into political action. As leader of the Association of Black Collegians (ABC), he protested unfair university policies and assembled a mixed-race ticket for student government; it won with 60 percent of the vote. A popular figure on campus, Davis had white roommates and friends, and pursued issues that affected the entire student body. But his fondest memories involved a smaller core of black peers who partied together on weekends and all "agree[d] with the ABC's program." For Davis, the personal and the political were inextricable. "I simultaneously felt alienated from Princeton and deeply in love with it," he says.

Despite their differences, however, Davis, Kennedy and their peers were ultimately bound together by a common challenge: being "black first" in what Davis calls an "enormously white" world. At 6 a.m. on a cold March day in 1969, for example, "all but one of the black men who were currently at Princeton" participated in the takeover of a key campus building to protest the university's investments in South Africa—including Kennedy. Unthinkable today, that sense of solidarity would endure until long after Michelle Robinson (whose freshman roommate, like Kennedy's, demanded a room change) arrived on campus 12 years later. It would even become the subject of her senior thesis—a study that found, to her surprise, that black alumni identified more strongly with fellow African-Americans while at Princeton than before or after. As she recently told the school's alumni magazine, "it's a very isolating experience—period." That said, the experience seems to have been galvanizing as well. Kennedy became a university trustee and federal judge in Washington. Davis became a student-body president, Rhodes scholar, Yale Law alum and Columbia University administrator. And Michelle became first lady.

In most visible ways, race relations at Princeton have improved dramatically since the 1960s, '70s and '80s. While black students used to cluster together in self-defense, their children are active throughout the Princeton community. They room, dine and socialize with diverse groups of classmates. They even join eating clubs. But as racial polarization has declined on campus, a new dynamic has taken its place. And like their fathers, Kamille Davis and Alex Kennedy embody the two primary roles available to African-Americans in Princeton's post-racial bubble—and the confusing challenges they must now confront.