r/nextfuckinglevel 2d ago

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

13.3k Upvotes

583 comments sorted by

View all comments

294

u/EdwardBigby 2d ago

I hope people don't take this the wrong way but as a non American I'm slightly confused why there's a college where everybody seems to be black (also an Asian lady sitting behind the speaker)

I assume it's in a mostly black area but is it a case of no white people applying for this college or the college not accepting any white people? Or maybe I'm just missing the white people

195

u/Legal_Guava3631 2d 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.

66

u/EdwardBigby 2d 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?

-14

u/GrandMarshallFunk 2d ago

It's modern day racism.

8

u/premeditated_mimes 2d ago

What a shit take.

They don't bar people from attending based on color like the people whose policies created the university in the first place.

-1

u/GrandMarshallFunk 2d ago

I'm not talking about the students. I'm talking about the black man that chose to donate to a majority all black school on purpose. It's racism.

2

u/premeditated_mimes 2d ago

So if a "white man" chooses to donate money to an ivy league school is that also racist?

1

u/GrandMarshallFunk 1d ago

Yes, if that white man chose that school because it was all white?