My First Time

No memory burns itself into the front of your brain like your first time. Every detail gains folkloric significance and becomes a permanent component of an origin story that helps define who you are. Mine took place during a fun-filled weekend getaway with friends at one of their universities. The memory of the cool October night will stay with me forever, for better or worse.

After only starting college a month prior, for some reason, I felt it necessary to plan a summit of some of my friends at one of our colleges. Throughout high school, we made plans to have regular reunions to make sure we did not drift apart. The weekend promised mild debauchery and a heavy dose of reminiscing. Noticing that my style of dress had drifted towards preppy during the beginning of freshman year, I made a conscious decision: no polos, no collars, and a snapback for every night.

Without a doubt, clothing matters. This does not mean that it should, but that does not reduce the impact it has on others’ perception. On some level, we choose what we wear, and thus, we can use it as a means to signal something. What you wear is a function of how much disposable income you have, among other things.

For the weekend, my choice was clear. I did not want to spend my time with my buddies wearing the boat shoes and button downs of the Harvard prep student I tried to emulate. Black high-top Nikes, black American flag t-shirt, and a black Mitchell and Ness Brooklyn Nets snapback: the clothing that made me feel most at home with my friends.

From the second I hopped off the bus, the weekend went as well as I could have hoped. We ate food that drastically endangered our health, we made jokes we would not want our parents to hear, and we talked about old times as we got ready to go out for the night. For a brief, brilliant moment, we felt free of the world of pressures quietly crushing us from without. All that mattered was right in front of us.

We met up with a group of friends on campus to start strategizing the night to come. Walking and talking, I began to fall behind from the group somewhat. As we reached a security checkpoint, everyone flashed their ID with implacable casualty and went on their way. Except me.

The officer stopped me, asked my name, who was I with, where was I from, whether I was in school, and to empty my pockets. In the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively mild interaction. I was not hurt or arrested, and flashing my Harvard ID brought silence quickly. I would even argue that I have been lucky in my interactions with law enforcement, since this was one of the worst incidences I’ve experienced. But these thoughts miss the point.

This is not an article about the racial profiling done by police, an issue far too large to properly depict in a short column. It’s about the sometimes difficult-to-define but nonetheless expansive differences in the college experience for people of color.

Everything in my life filters through race in one way or another. My own personal attitudes towards the world have been shaped through a history of racialized experience, and I fear others have gone through the same process from the other side. When I sit in class, I worry about both becoming the voice of the black public and not speaking up enough to counteract stereotypes of black people. I never feel comfortable running through campus at night, but also worry about not allowing myself the freedom I deserve.

Safe spaces and vocabulary cannot single-handedly solve the numerous problems that POCs face everyday on campus. While these are central tenets of an equitable social environment, the issues they are trying to solve run far deeper. On a basic level, people of color must consider the most mundane actions, like getting dressed, on a far more consequential level than others. Decisions about clothing can turn into the value judgments that define you entire being in the mind of others. Every decision, every action feels just as uncomfortable and leaves me as vulnerable as the first time, and I don’t know if that will ever change.

Jaime A. Cobham ’17, a Crimson editorial writer, is a government concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.