Breaking the Color Gap: Brown is the New Color

Witten By Victoria Snyder
Frostburg State University

Many of my students and colleagues have asked me what brought me to the field of Higher Education. I have a simple yet much understated response; there was no who looked like me working at my institution. I am a beautiful child of mixed heritage. My mother is Caucasian and my father Mexican. I went to a Predominately White Institution for my undergraduate work and slowly realized that the school was split in to two—White and Black with no room for those “Brown” kids. The Black students had the Black Student Union and the White students, well they were the majority, and they had each other. But where did I fit in? Where did the Brown fit in? Where were the faculty members or staff members like me? Where were the students like me? I felt alone, lost, not wanted in my journey through college. I sat back and heard racist jokes, was told to take derogatory comments on the chin, and listen to countless classmates mock my heritage. For a while I sat silent, because I thought I had to, until I realized I had a voice and that I needed to stand up not just for myself, but for others like me. That led me to what I felt was my calling, working in the diversity field in Higher Education.

As I transcend my career in Higher Education I feel there s still a lack of education or conversation about the Brown students. Let me preface by saying that not all schools are divided into the White and Black but that some do amazing work reaching out to various multicultural populations. In the field of diversity, too often I have seen institutions support one population over the other. Where do my hermanos and hermanas fit? Hispanics are the largest minority population entering higher education, with 2.1 million students currently. However, when you look around at the number of faculty and staff of Hispanics, Asians or those from the LGTBQ community, do those numbers represent their growing populations respectively?

My call to mi gente is this: be that voice, be that person. Often, we are a small population on college campuses, and it can be terrifying to stand up and be that one person, that person who expresses a voice for a whole demographic, but we have to! It is up to us to be the proponent on our respective campuses. Sitting back and denying our heritage, only promulgates the problem instead of solving it. How many terrified, alone, and scared children are going through their college careers without having a mentor, or someone who is like them who can guide them? Your call to action is as follows: stand up at your institution, speak to HR, to the Vice Presidents and President about increasing the population of Hispanic faculty and staff members. In 2012 alone, Hispanics made up 16.5 % of the population in Higher Education, which is an outstanding number! Why shouldn’t the population of faculty and staff members in Higher Education reflect that same percentage? Encourage others to be that mentor and that guide for other students. You never know what your guiding hand or mentorship can do for the next generation. As for working in Higher Education, its okay to push the Brown agenda, I encourage you to do so! Challenge administration for more money to support Hispanic students and their programs, meet with Admissions to create advanced efforts to recruit students, and do not be afraid to research and read up on growing trends with Hispanic students. Your effort no matter how small will get the ball rolling and you never know what change you can make from there.

Stay positive, stay energetic and remember, Brown is the color!

About the Author:

Victoria Snyder is the Assistant Director of the Diversity Center at Frostburg State University. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Mount Union in history and a Masters degree from the University of Akron in Higher Education Administration. She is currently pursuing a second Masters at Duquesne University in Leadership in Professional Administration.

DREAMers

Written By Laura Bohorquez

Loyola University Chicago

Growing up in Brewster, a small rural agricultural town in central Washington State has been an immense life lesson and a true blessing; it taught me the power of organizing and the power that came with being in solidarity with community. Furthermore, it taught me early on how it felt and what it meant to hold multiple marginalized identities (Mexican, woman, lower working class, DREAMer) while living in a White-heterosexual dominated society.  Moreover, and most importantly growing up in a town that lacked basic human resources and access to a good education allowed me to explore how my marginalized identities as well as the privileges that I hold from my other identities (educated, bilingual, catholic, heterosexual, able-bodied) all intersected and fostered my resiliency and helped me find the voice that I needed to empower myself and others.   

Growing up I have learned that struggle is inevitable and thus I constantly remind myself that I come from a place of resiliency and empowerment, which is my family. Additionally, I continuously remind myself that I come from education and from the ideology that in order to keep succeeding, I have to always bring my community with me.  With this said, early last spring semester I decided that I wanted to practice my ideology by contributing to Loyola University Chicago’s (LUC) Jesuit mission of social justice and practice being a person for others.  I decided that I wanted to do this by following my passion on immigration and education and what better way than by advocating for undocumented students.

With the support of my director Sadika Sulaiman-Hara and the contributions of my colleague Maria Guzman the first safe space & ally training for undocumented students at Loyola was created. Since the beginning, my vision for this project included and emphasis on education and the deconstructing of the negative profile that the media has given immigrants. Furthermore, I wanted to give the Loyola community the opportunity to learn about the issues faced by undocumented students from DREAMers themselves. I wanted people to have the opportunity to reflect on their journeys and be able to connect and experience parallel empathy with undocumented students.  Moreover, I wanted all participants to leave the training feeling empowered and confident and understanding that either as a DREAMer or an ally, we all play an important role as social justice change agents.  My overall goal was to bring awareness to Loyola’s campus about the barriers DREAMers face so that we could create a more welcoming campus for all students because initially our purpose in an institution of higher education is to support and foster the education of all students.

On September 27th and October 4th my colleague and I made my vision a reality.  We educated about 50 staff, faculty, and graduate students about terminology, the history of the various legislations affecting DREAMers such as the DREAM Act and current Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals memorandum, we talked about the undocumented student movement, the role that Loyola had played in advocating for DREAMers and we gave DREAMers the opportunity to share their experiences. At the end of the training we provided our attendees with various tangible resources, such as a counselors guide, academic research, names to community organizations as well as guided them through the DREAMer website that I created under the Department of Student Diversity & Multicultural Affairs at LUC. My colleague Maria and I also mentioned that we too were willing to support them in their ally journey.  

Due to the training, I have been encountered by allies who want to learn more and others who offer to assist me in making Loyola a more welcoming space for DREAMers.  My first lesson learned is that once we provide people with a common language, the basic issues faced by DREAMers, the opportunity to reflect on their journey, and resources; people are more willing to openly talk about their role as an ally.  My second lesson learned is that I had the privilege to create, follow my passion, and share my knowledge with others, something that many graduate students only hope for.  My experience has been transformational and grounding, it has reinforced my ideology that anything is possible; it’s just a matter of educating one another, recognizing our privileged and marginalized identities, and always remembering to bring our communities along.