Discrimination In College Education

There is a bridge. On the other side of the bridge is prosperity and wisdom. However, the bridge has holes in it. These holes will cause me to fall and no one knows where the fall will lead. I’m standing in the beginning of the bridge and I see hands in the place of the holes. These hands are the hands of my supporters, loved ones, and role models. The hands won’t let me fall and neither will I let myself fall. My grandmother recently told me that oppression is the inability to learn, and be educated. As an African American women pursuing a college education at a predominantly Caucasian university, I encounter acts of oppressions and discrimination on a day to day basis. These incidents range from minor micro-aggressions to just blatant acts …show more content…
However, there are behaviors performed by others meant to discriminate or injure another person’s feeling due to them being of a different pigmentation. This is what is known as institutional racism. As a young women coming from a proportionally diverse environment I was not familiar with institutional racism. I knew racism existed and I had small counter acts of so. But, never would I have known that coming to Corvallis, Oregon from Los Angeles, California that I would have more stereotypes and biased titles placed on me than I ever had in my whole entire life.
“It sad to think that my child has to experience such a tragic feeling being a Black woman. I never wanted you to experience the lifestyle where you feel not wanted or not liked. I could only think of you being the greatest person in the world.” These were my mother words to me, yesterday afternoon. When I was a child I was constantly reminded that who I was, is and was enough. That nothing was more worth it than what I already possessed. Evoking all these emotions and experiencing all these stories I wanted to find a correlation between my life and my ancestors, in particular my grandmother and my …show more content…
Women and minorities often face hostile treatments in traditionally male and White dominated domains. As my grandmother grew older she found herself experiencing racial profiling in the work field. “There was a Vice President of Medi-Cal department and often he visited the facility for paperwork. He was a representation of the Ku Klux Klan. He did not acknowledge black people and didn’t allow them to work within the location of his facility.” Her voice began decreased to a shockingly low volume when speaking of this incident. She further began to tell me of another tale of racial discrimination from a co-worker of hers. One day she was at work at the time of the Rodney King beating, she had a TV on her desk and a few of her co-workers were watching the event together appalled and worried. As they watched with agony and shock, her co-worker made a comment saying “he shouldn’t have been there, he deserved what he got.” Infuriated and inspired she directly told him afterwards, “that he’s human no matter what. Even if his skin tone was blue, black or purple, he’s human and no one deserves