On SpelBots and Safety

I've been spending a lot of time with my laptop lately. It's an Apple iBook that I named Oliver when I bought it a year ago. The purchase was kind of a big deal because it's the first computer I've ever actually owned (i.e., not the shared family desktop, and not one of the many public cluster computers that got me through college).

When Ollie and his friend Google get together, they end up fetching all sorts of fascinating things. Last night, miracle of miracles, they introduced me to the Spelman College robotics team, fondly known as the SpelBots. And I was so excited by the discovery that it took me a solid two hours to chill out and go to bed.

Now, you may follow the link above and think, "Um, it's a news release. About some girls who spend way too much time writing code. Moving on." But wait, there's a story! (Isn't there always a story?) Settle in with your milk and cookies, kids.

Spelman College, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a historically black women's college in Atlanta. If you watched the television show "A Different World" back in the late eighties, you may recognize some of the campus landmarks, because the school was used for panoramic outdoor shots of fictional Hillman College.

As a high school senior, I applied to seven colleges---four universities where I thought my odds were even or favorable, two long shots, and one safety. Spelman was the sure thing, and also the first college to admit me. I remember being kind of dismissive of the acceptance letter. It felt good to know that I would definitely be going to college somewhere in the fall, but I kinda hoped it wouldn't end up being Spelman. Although I would have been loathe to admit it at the time, I pretty much had it in my head that a black college would be...not as good. An ersatz education, somehow.

One of the insidious things about the whole concept of race is the way in which---if you're on the wrong side of the color line---it can make you believe in your own inferiority. I had grown accustomed to being the lone brown face in my honors classes. And to be honest, I was sometimes intimidated or embarrassed by the handful of other black students at my school. As each year passed, it became harder to reconcile the two unspoken, opposing thoughts in my head: "I'm smart" and "People who look like me are dumb."

Fast forward to a week or two after the Spelman letter, when the postman delivers a fat envelope from Stanford, and I literally fall to my knees in front of the mailbox. My friend WOOcraft and I had been talking about going to Stanford together ever since the 4th grade. And now it could actually happen! My smug 17 year-old self had just been assured that no matter what the outcome was for the rest of my apps, I would definitely be attending a Good School. (I now have a much better sense of how ridiculous the idea of a Good School is, and I am alarmed by how frenzied and distorted the whole undergraduate admissions process has become. If I were to apply to my seven schools now as the girl I was back then, I'm not sure I would get in anywhere.)

But back to my beloved SpelBots. One of the peculiar manifestations of my nerdiness is a fascination with college robotics teams. (Lately I've been following the fortunes of the Northern Bites team at Bowdoin College in Maine.) Team pictures usually present the faces that you might associate with the words "robotics research." White. Asian. Male. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Still, I found indescribable joy in stumbling upon the existence of the first all-black, all-female, all undergraduate team to earn a berth in the international RoboCup competition (twice! last year in Japan, this year in Germany). These supersmart, hard-working girls had skin like my skin, hair like my hair, noses like my nose---even names like my name! And it dawned on me why it's still important for places like Spelman to exist, even though we no longer live in a country where segregation is the law. There's a real comfort and freedom in being part of the majority, whether that majority is racial, religious, or political. ( I dare you to express an opinion that's even a teensy weensy bit conservative while you're within San Francisco's city limits. I'll even come to visit you in the hospital after the ensuing melee.)

Being "the norm", and not really having to worry about what other people think of you, is the ultimate form of safety. And when you have that liberty, that gift, your mind and heart and spirit are able to focus on more important things.

Like building kick-ass robots. Go SpelBots!