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.