Akindo/digitalvision vectors/getty images Twenty‐five years ago, long before I became a college president, I was hurrying to meet with the CEO of an oil company to discuss the possibility of his funding a scholarship for violin students. He was the chairman of a foundation that provided financial support for violin study. We’d never met. But I was head of the School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin -- not exactly riffraff -- and this moment had been months in the making. We said hello, shook hands and sat down to talk. “I had no idea you were Black,” he said.