Editor’s Note: In conjunction with Black History Month, the Daily will be profiling five outstanding black students this week.

Dawan Anderson’s father used to tell him “what seems to be, might not be.”

Anderson, starting cornerback on the Iowa State football team, might be a perfect paradigm of the adage at work.

Anderson lived in the projects in Los Angeles until he was 13.

“It got too bad out there, so I moved to Chicago, which I thought would be better, but Chicago was just as bad as L.A.,” he said. “They had gangs and crime. I had to learn to adapt all over again.”

Anderson came to Ames to play football for ISU at the urging of his father.

“There was a guy [who lives in Ames] who used to play football with my father, and he promised my father he would keep me out of trouble,” he said. “I wasn’t a real bad kid, but I was known for being in trouble.”

In his five years at ISU, not only has the senior in sociology avoided trouble, he has made his education a focal point of his life and has established himself as a positive influence for the young people he works with.

“Even if I didn’t get a scholarship, I would be in college somewhere, no matter what,” he said. “I feel that to get ahead you have to get a higher education than high school.”

Anderson currently is completing an internship at the Boys & Girls Club of Ames. He said his role at the center is to “keep the kids happy.”

“I let them know if they have any problems they can come talk to me,” he said. “I want to be like a good friend or a big brother to them.”

Anderson understands the importance of young people having a positive impact in their lives, and he said he hopes the kids see him as a role model.

“That’s what I see in most of the kids in the inner city — they don’t have any [role models],” he said. “In Chicago, in the projects, all they have is each other.

“I got through it. I didn’t have a Boys & Girls Club to go to, basically what I did was work out with my father,” he said.

His father, a former National Football League and Canadian Football League player also was instrumental in sparking Anderson’s interest in football.

“He let me know that if I wanted to play, he would help me and teach me. And come to find out that I was all right, kind of good in it. I’ve been playing ever since,” he said.

Debunking the negative stereotypes that many people have of student athletes, and football players in particular, is another of Anderson’s aims.

The opinion that athletes are in college only to play sports and not to receive an education is unfair, he said.

“If we were dumb, we couldn’t survive at this university; this is a tough institution,” he said. “We work hard. I’m not saying we’re rocket scientists, but we do do the best with what we’ve got.”

Reflecting on the importance of Black History Month in his life, Anderson referred to his African-American role models as “the standards” — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

However, he said the most significant connection he found to his cultural heritage came from a more immediate source.

“My grandfather told me how it used to be back in the days,” he said. “I could have read about it … but my grandfather would sit there and talk to me about it, tell what used to go on back in Tennessee and things like that. That was firsthand experience.”

Someday, Anderson will be able to tell his own son, who is now 4 years old, stories about his experience being black at a predominantly white university.

“It’s been an experience. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been called the n-word once,” he said.

“My first reaction was to go hit [the guy who said it], but then I thought about it. To go hit him, that would be justifying the real definition of that word to me — being ignorant,” Anderson said.

“Basically, the experience at Iowa State has been a good experience. I’ve met a lot of people — both colors, all races,” he said.

Anderson said the exposure to people of varying ethnic backgrounds is one distinction that makes ISU different from his childhood in Chicago. He also recognizes that many students coming to ISU are experiencing diversity for the first time.

He said the value of interacting with people different from oneself is one of the lessons he wants to instill in the children he works with at the Boys & Girls Club.

“Right now, they’re so innocent. They don’t have any real prejudice unless somebody teaches them,” he said. “And when we get to them at an early age, condition them, talk to them, they realize … that just because that guy is a different color than me or a different race, he’s not out trying to harm me.

Of all the important lessons his family taught him, Anderson said the most important is: “God has all the knowledge. If you have any questions, refer to God, to the Bible … Any problem that I have I can take to God.”

And though Anderson said right now his plans for the future are unclear, he is remembering his family’s advice when considering what to do when he graduates in May.

“If it’s God’s will, I’ll play football somewhere else, but right now I’m thinking about finding a job at home in Chicago,” he said. “If it’s God’s will I’ll play, but if not, I’m still leaving here with a degree.”