Higher Learning

The film Higher Learning is a call to action. It is a film that shows people as products of their environment. The film is set on a college campus, a place where most people learn about what they will do in their adult life to try to better the world or simply educate themselves in order to live a better life. However, life on the Columbus campus is not good; it is a battlefield between the races and sexes. I feel it is a bit exaggerated, but it allows people to see some of the issues that go on, on a college campus. The film focuses on three freshman (Malik, Kristen, & Remy) entering college. They enter a less than ideal new world that is filled with tension, anxiety and fear. Although the writer uses stereotypical characters, it is important to point out that although the character might be fictional; students like the ones portrayed in the film actually exist.

The character I choose to analyze and associate with a student development theory was Malik; a freshman student-athlete who attends Columbus College with a partial athletic scholarship. The development of identity is a socialization process shaped by experiences with one’s family, community, school, group and social affiliations. It undergoes trials and tests to serve to make the owner feel focused and stable by making life predict- able (Cross, 1995). While change in the environment is tolerated and sometimes welcomed, achange in our identity can be disturbing and difficult. Cross (1995) outlines the metamorphic process whereby African Americans “become Black.” This developmental process in which African Americans develop a manner of thinking about and evaluating themselves in terms of being “Black” is called nigrescence (Cross, 1995; Helms, 1985).

Cross (1995) depicts nigrescence as a resocializing experience that steers one’s

preexisting racial identity from Eurocentric to Afrocentric. This comprehensive model of

African American racial identity development provides a rational and logical structure

which supports the understanding of the relationship of racial identity development and sport. Additionally, Cross, Parham and Helms (1991) cite the broad applicability of this model by alluding to the fact that several authors in different parts of the country were developing parallel models independently indicating that African American identity development was essentially the same across several regions of the United States.

The main character, Malik, is a cocky African American track star that thinks everyone has it easier than him. He feels that the world owes him something, but almost everyone in it will work to hold him down. Epps has made a living portraying one type of athlete or another, but this is probably his best work because he creates a character that can be very accurate and likeable one minute, but totally juvenile and wildly frustrating the next. He struggles throughout the movie, but like the Fredrick Douglas quote used here says, "without struggle there is no progress." Malik really grows up a lot because the three main people around him are good influences. Malik Williams (Omar Epps) fits the traditional athlete type: cocky and arrogant. An urban black male on a partial track scholarship, Malik is at school to run, not learn. His attitude is that the world owes him, not the other way around. The reality that he can lose comes as an ego-bruising lesson.

In one of his most memorable roles, Laurence Fishburne subtly and cleverly plays Professor Maurice Phipps. Phipps is a no b.s. man of great wisdom that treats everyone equally and judges everyone by their output. Phipps believes you can change things for the better if you exercise your rights; if instead of making excuses