r/nextfuckinglevel • u/matori_tester • 1d ago

Billionaire speaker Robert F. Smith tells 400 graduates he's paying off all their student loans ($40 million in total)

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

13.0k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

580 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

190

u/Legal_Guava3631 1d ago

HBCUs were founded for the black students that wanted to go to college but PWIs said fuck no, yall not coming in here. Anyone can apply, but it’s not really common for a white person to be seen on campus as a student.

68

u/EdwardBigby 1d ago

Very interesting. I've never heard of those. Definitely makes sense from a historical point of view but the concept of them existing in a modern day context still seems bizarre to me.

What do most Americans think of them?

80

u/Legal_Guava3631 1d ago

I’d like to think they don’t care, but it isn’t a perfect world. Some people hate it saying it isn’t fair because they think it’s a school only for black folks and that it’s racist, but the schools literally only exist because of, you guessed it, racism.

Personally, I love it for my people, but it’s a harsh reminder that we had to make our own schools because we were deemed unworthy because of our skin.

32

u/This-Is-Voided 1d ago

HBCUs are great and especially needed because we never get places for Black folks to thrive. I go to a HBCU (NSU 🔰) and it provides us access to education and community without the fear of racism. It’s a supportive environment and you can meet other Black folks across the diaspora. We needed them back then and we most definitely need them now. And it’s not just Black people, mixed people, and other minorities attend too. White ppl attend too but it’s not common because they have other options that they could choose from.