The Other Side of the Minority Experience at King’s

Photo Courtesy of The King’s College.

The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College.

(OPINION) The King’s College can always do a better job addressing, acknowledging and celebrating events such as Hispanic Heritage Month. However, many students, staff and faculty happily and eagerly embody those values. The college’s perceived institutional shortcomings don’t always include the men and women within it. 

My parents are Brazilians, and I grew up in Southern Africa. When I got to King’s as a new student, and heard different languages, met people from halfway across the world and the country, I became inspired to contribute to my new community. As an international student and a student of color, I would describe the King’s community as a place of belonging. 

Many students in the minority and international sectors are vocal about the reception they have received from members of the community. 

“As an international and Muslim student at King’s, I have never felt like an outsider here,” Mali Binen, a senior from Turkey, said. “The school has such a unique and caring community where people show support to each other.” 

This does not mean the adverse is not true—that negative experiences between students, staff  and faculty are nonexistent. It does, however, mean that many minority students do find acceptance in the present community. 

“My specific experience has been one filled with deep relationships with a lot of the student body, but one that is also filled with guilt for participating in a community where a lot of my Asian brothers and sisters seem to strongly disagree with a lot of King’s,” Jet Ragas, President of the House of Clara Barton said. “I’ve been privileged to be poured into by countless staff and faculty as a student as well as a leader, which is one of the greatest blessings. It takes initiative and curiosity to remain in this community.” 

One should not neglect the integral part that clubs, student organizations and general individuals play within our college. Students who represent orgs such as the Table or the Bridge are King’s. They represent what the institution wants to foster in terms of diversity of opinion and expression. Tragically, when students do speak highly of the community’s efforts to promote diversity, some have been aggressively rebuffed.

“My experience has been this: I have had a very easy time being within the community,” Moses Kazanjian, an Emirati senior said. “And so anytime I try to openly express a certain and deep love that I have for the community here, and a lack of feeling disconnected because of my race, people label the reason that I have not experienced that disconnect is because I’m ‘whitewashed.’” 

There are evidently two sides to minority experiences at King’s. One is negative, yet that experience cannot represent those who have had a positive experience with the community. To defame the positive experiences of students cannot be the way forward. 

“Maybe it’s because I have an American accent, or because I grew up watching Phineas and Ferb. The bottom line is, I have been called ‘whitewashed’ when I try to speak well about the community that I have so loved throughout my time at King’s.” Kazanjian said. “It brings me no greater joy than to bring my culture and my tradition to everyday King’s life.” 

Cultural ignorance will always persist, yet how we evaluate and respond to it will determine what our holistic community looks like. If we want to permeate the culture of our college with the aroma of our diverse backgrounds, we must take the initiative to do so. 

“Nobody can help the small feeling of shame or embarrassment when someone makes an ignorant remark. I feel those emotions. How do I deal with it? The honest truth is that I choose to see the context of the situation. I am aware of the cultural disparity at the King's College, I’m reminded every day,” Kazanjian added. “Because I’m aware of that, I’m not surprised by the comments because you cannot help but stumble and make ignorant comments when you are interacting with a culture that you are not aware of.” 

We, the international students and students of color, must actively meet our community and our institution as they are. An ‘us versus you’ mindset will only thwart this ambition. 

“I'm the one who chose to be so involved in the House of Reagan,” Kazanjian said. “I’m the one who chose to go to the retreats, to be part of the events. I’m the one who chose to ask people to go out to lunch. You definitely have far more to do with your belonging in any community than you think.” 

We should use our differences to seek the welfare of our community, thereby enhancing its collective culture. Our differences are the key tools we should wield to make the differences we seek. In accepting and seeking out others, we ourselves find acceptance.

“I think as a minority student, you have to make a choice about how you want to engage the community and potentially engage and lead it,” said Anthony Bradley, Professor of Religious Studies at King’s. “You can do that from a point of investment or divestment…one of the best ways to protest is to invest.” 

Nelson Mandela once wrote that making peace with one’s enemy entailed working together with that enemy, until the two become partners. While an undergrad at Clemson University, where Blacks comprised nearly 5% of the institution, Bradley chose to change his surrounding culture by leading and investing in it. 

“I was called the N-word by people at Clemson, to my face. But one of the ways that I decided to make a difference was investing in the college itself. That’s one of the most rebellious things you can do—to invest in the school that you seek to change.” Bradley said. “What the Black fraternities and sororities did was get involved in as many different organizations across the campus as we could. That way, we could influence more of the campus by spreading our influence across different organizations.

“That included running for student government. We had this idea that we would go and participate in it, and help lead it. What we could’ve done was withdraw and cut ourselves off. That wouldn't have yielded the change that we wanted. So we chose to lean in on the experience and try to change it from within by making sure that we were everywhere.” 

Investing in the institution entails a willingness to probe and understand its background operations before offering criticism. While much of the faculty may seem racially homogeneous, King’s has recently made attempts to hire Latino professors, who have turned down offers, faculty reported. 

The reality is that the college’s necessary hiring criteria and mission often dissuade many minority professors from coming to King’s when there are many loftier positions elsewhere. 

“I think it’s important for people to understand that a disparity is not evidence of intentional discrimination,” Bradley said. “If you just look at some of the numbers, there are not a lot of PhDs in the majors that we have that are minorities. I would encourage people to look at the data, and see how many Hispanic PhD graduates were in economics or in political science. Every year those numbers are low; less than 30 or 40 students nationally.” 

Given the data, the issue is not demand from the college, but rather in the supply of professors who are minorities, have good disciplinary standing, ‘buy-in’ to the PPE core and are Christians.

“It would really be a bit ridiculous to assume that we aren’t open or we’re not looking, or we’re somehow discounting those applicants,” Bradley said. “Whenever we offered them a job, they were qualified, Christians, and championed our PPE core. There are so many other things that go into hiring than simply someone’s race at a Christian college. We can’t put someone in front of students who do not believe in the resurrection. So to find someone in those disciplines who can do that, who is a minority, who wants to live in New York, who wants to engage in the trade-offs to come here, is very difficult.”

Rafael Oliveira is a junior at The King's College majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.