Monique Napper: Moving On to College

After spending 17 of her 18 years in Irvine, Monique Napper, homecoming princess and officer of her class, hopes to leave this fall for the college of her choice: the predominantly black Howard University in Washington.

“They ask me why I want to segregate myself, but if they were in my shoes, they’d understand,” she said. “It’s hard to put into words, but I just think I need to have that experience that I missed.”

Napper, who lives with her parents and brother and wants to be an industrial psychologist some day, is now a senior at Irvine High School and one of 50 black students.

But until she was in the fifth grade, Napper attended an all-white school, an experience she described as a “little weird.”

“I had good friends,” she said. “But I still remember people saying ‘Oh, Monique, give me some of your tan.’ ”

To help her cope with growing up in a white community, Napper has, for five years, been active in the Orange County chapter of Jack and Jill, a national, mostly black social and community service organization.

“It’s good because it gives you comradeship and friends of your own race that you might not otherwise have had,” she said. “There’s something there when I’m with black friends. It’s this bonding thing, that they can relate to things I’ve gone through more than my Caucasian friends can understand.”

At Irvine High, Napper said she was happy but startled to be chosen as one of five homecoming princesses last October. She had applied at the urging of her father, who thought the school needed a black princess, she said.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it because when you think of the stereotype of homecoming people, you don’t think of me,” she said. “You think of blond hair, little figures and cheerleaders.

“So here you have these girls up there and then you have Monique, the surprise. At the game, visiting black people who didn’t know me from Adam were so excited to see a black princess.”

That same month, Napper was presented at a debutante ball given by the Orange County chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc., a nationwide sorority to which her aunt belongs. She laughed at some of her experiences, which included learning social graces. As a debutante, she also performed community service work at a Santa Ana center.

“People should be shipped there from our school and shown how others live,” she said. “They don’t understand what’s going on; that there are people with no diapers, food or a place to live. It’s scary and it’s sad, but it’s life.

“My Dad always said, ‘Irvine is not the real world, Monique.’ And that’s what I learned most from that debutante experience. Irvine is a city in a bubble, and that’s just the way they are.”

Now, Napper looks forward to moving.

“I used to have visions of living in North Carolina, where it’s all green and beautiful. Now I have the idea that I’ll be in D.C., that I’ll have a dog, a boyfriend and a job. That life is good. What are dreams for?”