I have witnessed the presence of different cultures all my life. In the cultural milleau of South Florida, I had the good fortune to grow up among a diverse population of black and brown Carribean islanders, Jews from the Eastern Seaboard, and brown people from Asia, the Middle East, and other far-flung locales – all interspersed with black and white Americans. I have always found cultural diversity interesting and intriguing. I believe it was partly this exposure to so many different cultures in my formative years that I quickly and easily learned of the mutability of culture and the subjectivity of morality. For this happenstance I am forever grateful to the Universe.
Only when I moved to Mississippi, at the tender age of sixteen, did I come to realize that what I embraced as cultural diversity was associated by others many with fear and malice. Here in the stagnant swamp of the Great River, the vast social divisions are drawn along strict color lines. Race is a potent, narcotic feature of the cultural landscape in this place. Now, at the age of twenty five I find myself deeply immersed in this Mississippian black-and-white abyss, and yet I’m compelled to dive deeper before migrating to the Cold White North.
My undergraduate post-secondary Liberal Arts education at a Historically Black College has profoundly shaped my world view in a way that inspires my scholastic endeavors. To that end I shall travel this summer to UCLA to study the connections between institutionalized racism, ethnocentrism, and the formalization of the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. My research is being supported by the Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies. This fall, I shall extend my tenure at JSU to encompass graduate studies there until the designated time for the Big Move in summer 2009.
I’m eagerly anticipating the Summer Research Institute experience. There are many reasons for this: I’ve never before lived in a “dorm” situation before, and I’ve never been so far away from my husband for such an extended amount of time. If the demographic of participants of previous years is any indication, I’ll likely be the only white girl in the Humanities program, and I’ve chosen not to disclose my race to the University. As my career progresses, I’m continuously convinced that navigating the socio-cultural landscape of academia shall indeed prove a worthwhile occupational endeavor.
