I grew up in a predominantly white community of middle-to-high socioeconomic status, where there was a significant lack of diversity throughout the city and especially within the school district. Sherwood, Oregon is a suburb about 30 minutes south of Portland where my parents began living before I was born in 1995. My mother, being an immigrant from India was one of the only people within our social group that was not white and the differences that she had were immediately noticeable and stood out to other people that we met. She has a slight accent as English is not her first or second language, and this was a constant point that was raised throughout my childhood among my friends (all were white). In grade school almost all of the teachers that I had were middle aged white women, with the exception of our gym and music teachers who were white men. It seemed incredibly customary to have grade school teachers be women and at the time I would have found it to be unusual if there were to be a teacher in our district that was either male and/or belonged to a different racial population, because of the almost absolute and consistent reflection of the staff that I observed. Throughout elementary school I only was familiar with one Black student that was in my grade, his name was Noah. He and his siblings comprised a majority of the entire Black population in our school and stood out in the sea of white folks. Noah and I played sports together and throughout our years playing basketball, it was clear that he felt pressure from the community that he should be more skilled or perform at a higher level than what he was. There was an assumption that coaches and teammates had for Noah’s athletic ability and he often expressed the disappointment he had in himself for not meeting expectations.
In middle school, there seemed to be a slight increase in diversity but that isn’t saying anything too meaningful because of the extreme lack thereof I experienced in grade school. There were more male teachers that taught some of the liberal arts subjects which was an extreme change of pace than was I had been conditioned to expect in the classroom. It almost felt unnatural at times that I would be going over literature in a classroom led by a man. Throughout grade school and up until eighth grade, I had succeeded in hiding much of my personal background while maintaining the image of being white and conforming to my peers. This experience made life easier for me at the time, and gave me the ability to fit in with different social groups that may not have been as accepting if I were to have been more outward with my ethnicity.
High School quickly became the time in my adolescent development where I had the most transformation. I started seeing people and our society in a much different way, and I found more confidence in sharing my cultural identity. My freshmen year, my school hired on a new principal who identified as a Latino man and was outspoken about his unlikely success throughout his career. He shared some of the challenges that he faced being a minority in the field of education and why he is so passionate to pursue roles that can help him support students in a different way than what he experienced. Hearing his perspective gave me much more confidence and pride in learning more about my background and exploring how I wanted to expand my cultural identity moving forward. With that being said, there was still a troublesome lack of diversity in the student population, especially among our students of color. I vividly remember an experience that clearly reflects the lack of cultural awareness and appreciation that folks in my community had, that includes the handful of Black students participating in a pep-rally assembly. There was a popular song that came out at the time, which was rapped by a Black musician, with an associated dance to go along with the lyrics. Our leadership teacher thought it would be an inclusive notion to specifically ask only Black students to come out and teach the rest of the entire student body how to do the dance, assuming that they knew the song, liked to dance, be in a large group setting, etc. While the intention may have been to recognize the few Black students that attended our school, this act was highly inappropriate and grossly assumptive. Thinking back on it now, I am disgusted that I was not able to recognize why this was wrong. Rather, I thought that it made sense for our Black students to be represented in this way. As stated previously, it has become very clear to me how the predominantly white society that I was raised in conditioned me to accept systematic racism and social injustice. In addition, the shame or displacement that I felt given my own true ethnic background is also a result of the community that my development as a student took place in.
As I transitioned to Oregon State as an undergraduate, I was again immersed in attending a predominantly white institution, but one where I had the option to seek out significantly more opportunities to engage with folks of other cultures and increase my own multicultural competence. The fact that there were specific cultural centers on our campus helped me identify with the university and see that there were other folks who also wanted to be a part of a community that they could truly see themselves in. Also seeing the amount of departments across campus dedicated to diversity such as the Office of Institutional Diversity and the Office of Equity and Inclusion made me feel like there was a priority across the staff and faculty to put resources towards serving our students of color more effectively. One experience that resonated with me was also hearing folks begin to incorporate land acknowledgements of the Corvallis campus and how the university was formed on the wrongdoings of Indigenious peoples. Making this acknowledgement more customary and well-known was something that I was completely unfamiliar with in my development, but now seems so minor because of how much more appreciation we need for the continued mistreatment of these folks. One last piece that I remember was the discrepancy that I noticed in the syllabi that were used throughout my undergraduate career. Some professors explicitly stated and held space for conversations around inclusivity and appropriate vocabulary, while others did not even mention it or acknowledge topics of social justice or inclusion at all. This experience made me accustomed to looking for such statements when beginning my course work and impacted the level of support that I felt from my professors.
