Mandy was my roommate and best friend during most of my time at Duke. We met during our freshman year because we lived in the same dorm. Her roommate, Angie, was the only other black girl in the dorm, so Angie and I kind of "naturally" gravitated toward each other (with a push from our parents). During my freshman year, I usually hung out with Mandy and Angie. We went practically every place together. We had a tendency to walk in the same positions--Mandy was always in the middle. If we walked in a line I usually led and Angie pulled up the rear. If we walked side by side, I was usually to the outside and Angie was to the inside. We always joked that we were the personification of an Oreo.
When our sophomore year came around, I had to choose between Angie and Mandy for a roommate. Would it be the cookie or the cream? I initially chose Angie because the atmosphere at Duke made me so inclined. Angie and I didn't last long; Mandy and I ended up rooming together in the end. Just like when I was a child, I broke the cookie apart, relished the cream, and discarded one side of the cookie. Mandy and I became somewhat inseparable and because the school was so heavily segregated, we basically stuck out in a crowd.
There was even an occassion during what I believe to have been our junior year, where our interracial friendship was a bit exploited by the local news. We were walking into the Bryan Center (Duke's student center) when we were stopped and questioned about a racial incident on campus. I could see the reporters face light up when she saw the two of us together. She asked us if we were surprised that a visiting black African professor had received death threats that were racially motivated. Does it surprise you that on a campus like Duke University that something like this would occur? I don't think that we provided the correct answer. We weren't at all surprised simply because it was Duke--a campus of mass intelligence and ignorance all blurred together. The Gothic Wonderland. The Plantation. I never watched the news to see if we actually made it on, but I doubt that we did. We simply were not surprised enough. But how could two young women known as the black girl who was always with that white girl (and vice versa) to so many be surprised? According to an exchange student, who had discussed Mandy and me with other students, most didn't know our names, and they certainly couldn't have picked us out of a lineup if we were separated, but they knew us. I was the black girl and she was the white one.
