“It’s like Disney World.”
That’s how Mamadou Diallo jokingly described his first impression of Stanford University’s grand, Romanesque-style campus when he and his fellow co-hosts of the new Comeup Collective podcast arrived for their freshman year on full scholarships.
Diallo, Mekhi Jones, Garry Archbold and Sheck Mulbah, members of the Class of 2020, are from “the hood,” they say in their new podcast, and the first in their families to go to college. Diallo grew up in Harlem, as did Mulbah. Archbold and Jones are from low-income neighborhoods in Miami and Cincinnatti, respectively. Three had immigrant parents, and a couple grew up in Section 8 housing with family food budgets that didn’t always last through the month.
“This place is awesome,” Jones remembers thinking on the ride from the airport down Highway 280, while Archbold took note of “the hills and mansions.” Mulbah, a self-described “car guy,” realized that he now lived in a place populated by luxury cars.
“Tesla, Tesla, Tesla, I was like yo, this is wild,” he said.
Over the podcast’s seven episodes, they describe struggling with the elite university’s academic rigor as first-generation students of color and share tales of affluent classmates, who were accustomed to Italian vacations and DoorDash meals if the dorm fare didn’t suffice. They reflect on subtle incidents of racism that came from being among the 7 percent of Black students on campus.
More recent episodes address the Black Lives Matters protests, if and how to confront non-Black people for using the n-word, and questions about “selling out” if they care about making money. They also lament that, despite their Stanford degrees, they could still encounter the same threat faced by Harvard-educated Christian Cooper, when a white woman called the police on him in New York’s Central Park.
For each episode, they welcome listeners by saying, “The C.C. gives a platform for P.O.Cs to express themselves as they chase the bag, all in the pursuit of happiness, health and of course, wealth. C’mon y’all.” The easy, conversational style of the podcast was inspired by the epic, late-night conversations that drew them together their freshman year.
“We spoke about our identity, our different experiences growing up and our methods of navigating Stanford,” said Mulbah, a political science and African and African American studies major. His mother escaped civil war-torn Liberia and raised him and his sister in Harlem by working as a hospital aide.
Among the things they had in common is parents who wanted the best for them but who lacked the resources and cultural know-how to guide them to a higher education.
“When I was in third grade, I started asking questions about school, and my mom said, ‘You should be doing that for yourself,’ ” said Archbold, a science, technology and society major, who says his mother instilled in him a strong work ethic after immigrating from a small island off the coast of Nicaragua.
Diallo, a computer science major, said his parents, emigrants from the West African nation of Guinea, didn’t “know what Stanford was” when he applied, while Jones said his mother just wanted him to get through high school.
All four say they were fortunate to have teachers and mentors who recognized their academic gifts and steered them to college-prep programs. Jones also admits he was inspired to major in computer science at Stanford and land an internship at Google after seeing “The Internship,” the 2013 Owen Wilson-Vince Vaughn comedy.
“I knew software engineers get paid six figures after college,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, I got to take that.’ ”
But it took more than full scholarships to succeed at Stanford. “I had to learn how to learn,” Jones said. That included following the lead of classmates who innately understood that it was OK to approach professors and ask for help.
Given that Stanford, as Mulbah said, is “a liberal bubble,” all four say they never encountered overt racism. But as “a big, black dude,” Mulbah recalls being eyed suspiciously when he once tried to visit friends at their mostly white dorm. Mulbah said he found his sense of safety on campus by living in Ujamaa, the African American-themed dorm.
“Just being one of the few Black students on campus can itself be distancing,” said Jones, recounting awkward social situations with peers who didn’t grow up knowing many people of color. He, Diallo and Archbold also said they were expected to provide “insider” information during classroom discussions on, for example, inner-city life. “They’ll look at you, as if, ‘Do you have a personal experience to share?’ ” Jones said.
Since school ended, Mulbah has returned to New York to look for a job, Jones and Diallo are spending the summer in Chicago, where Diallo has an internship, and Archbold remains in Palo Alto. Their second season of the Comeup Collective will follow their post-Stanford journey into a COVID-19-era job market and society.
They want to encourage low-income high school students to apply to top colleges — because scholarships usually are available — and are paying their Stanford experience forward by starting a scholarship program for other first-generation students.
“As far as a world-class experience and education, Stanford was made awesome by these guys and other fly people of color who were authentic the entire time we were there,” said Archbold.
You can watch The Comeup Collective via YouTube or listen via Spotify, Apple PodcastGoogle Podcast.
