You let people’s unconscious bias towards you slide to fit in. The isolation brings a sense of disempowerment. At least half the time are none. My experience of isolation has made me feel like I do not belong. The lack of representation in and out of the classroom creates a sense of isolation. In every class I am the only Black student when I teach my courses the overwhelming majority of my students are not Black. When only 2 in 100 students are Black, there is usually only one Black student in every other class of 25. California State University Long Beach (CSULB) only has a 4% Black student population but I often hear Black students I talk to on this campus who are frustrated with our campus climate say “I should have gone to Long Beach.”Īs a Black graduate student there is nothing more heartbreaking and discouraging than getting into a well-recognized institution such as CSUF and not feeling a sense of belonging. You quickly realize that neither the student body nor faculty/staff represent your ethnicity.
The campuses with more Black students are California State Dominguez Hill with 13.4%, followed by East Bay with 10%, and Sacramento State at 5.8% (CSUDH campus profile, 2019 CSUS & Ethnic Diversity, 2019 CSUEB & University Fact, 2019). Since 2017 Black student demographics on campus have actually declined to 1.9% (California State University, Fullerton, 2019). Graduate Teaching Fellow, Human Communication Studies DepartmentĬalifornia State University, Fullerton in 2017 reported from Titans Together: Our Commitment to Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion that Black students only represent 2% out of the student body of 40,439.
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