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Growing up in Oakland had its challenges, I knew that it wasn\u2019t a place I wanted to live in forever. Like many Urban areas there was poverty, drug use, and gang violence that I witnessed throughout my life, and it was something that I didn\u2019t want for myself. However, it wasn\u2019t until after I left that I realized and appreciated the culture, the diversity, and the community that I grew up in. It was a place where I felt comfortable and didn\u2019t feel like I was an outlier. Moving to Eugene Oregon, I was excited and didn\u2019t really have any concerns going into the U of O except where are all the black people?<\/p>\n
I thought it was a joke when I looked around my campus. In my classes, whether it was a 20-person lecture or a 300-person lecture, I was usually the only black person in the room except for the rare occurrence that there were maybe a few others. It was like I was in another world and for the first time I didn\u2019t feel comfortable. I felt awkward and anxious on campus and in my classes because I felt as though I was being watched. On campus there was no safe place to be black. I was the outlier, and it wasn\u2019t a good feeling. I was able to meet some friends, but I noticed that I wasn\u2019t completely able to be myself. My friends were great, but I couldn\u2019t relate to them. They didn\u2019t have the same culture or experiences as me. I had to make sure not to lose myself and remember where I came from.<\/p>\n
These feelings I kept to myself and never talked to anyone because I knew no one would be able to relate or understand where I was coming from.<\/p>\n
Throughout my entire four years at the U of O I had one black friend. Also in 4 years, 45 classes total, I had one Black professor. I realized I took my experience in Oakland for granted, and that representation is so important and necessary for a person\u2019s mental health. I am not saying that my college experience was awful and that I hated it because I didn\u2019t. However, I think about how much better my experience could have been if the school was more diverse and considered the perspective of being a person of color in a Predominantly White Institution.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Kennedy Luddington, Cultural Engagement Coordinator<\/p>\n
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Growing up in Oakland had its challenges, I knew that it wasn\u2019t a place I wanted to live in forever. Like many Urban areas there was poverty, drug use, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-black-history-month","category-equity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linesforlife.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"\u00a1Buen juego!","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}