When I moved to APU, I found myself in a house living with two black men that I'd never met. In high school, I had plenty of hispanic friends and tons of asian friends, but I knew almost no black people. The ones I did know were "whitewashed," or not as entrenched in the African American culture. They made me feel comfortable, but the other black people at my high school scared me for some indefinite reason. When I moved to APU, I was nervous that I would not get along with my roommates.

As it turned out, living with them was one of the three best things that's happened to me at APU.

I discovered when I began my second year living with all black roommates that the reason I loved these guys so much, the reason that I felt more at home with them than with my fellow white students, was because while I am not an ethnic minority at APU, I am a religious and social minority. I discovered something amazing within AA (African American) culture: perseverance and acceptance. A person could argue that this is leftovers from slavery. I don't care what it's from, but I noticed it a lot in my roommates and the other black friends I began to make across the campus. Under almost every circumstance, it didn't matter what I looked like, believed, or listened to. If I was kind, my roommates were kind to me.

It was incredible the day that I realized how many of the black students at APU I know now. I recognized it as a drastic change in myself. It has been an awakening from the socialization that I wasn't even aware I was experiencing, the fear that I impulsively had when encountering a person I perceived to identify with AA culture.

One of my roommates grew up in one of the trashiest parts of LA, Inglewood. His dad walked out on his family, he lived across from drug dealers and convicts, and he was kicked out of his house at 18. Another one of my roommates had his dad walk out on his family too. They've both experienced racism in all its repulsive glory in their classes at APU. These guys came from rough backgrounds, and had the scars to prove it, and have survived at an ethnocentric university. But you know what I learned most about AA culture living with them? Black folk never stop laughing.

I know that's a generalization, and almost all generalizations about a group of people based on ethnicity, race, or culture are inherently inaccurate. It is, however, what I've experienced. The black guys I know joke. They never stop laughing, even when things are serious.

I've known my years at this school that when I feel isolated, like the only unchristian (unchristian rather than nonchristian) hiding in chapel, the only metalhead, the only person who supports gay marriage or doesn't spit on divorce, the only male feminist, or the only person sick and tired of christianese: my black friends will support me through it, because they've been marginalized way worse, and have survived. And man. We'll laugh the whole time. Sometimes, that's about all you can do anyways.