Racial Autobiography

As I sat down to write my racial autobiography, I knew I wanted to focus on four places of significance: 

• North Kingstown, my hometown - where everyone looked like me 

•  Manchester, my college town - where everyone looked like me, and I began to truly engage with people different than myself in the surrounding community and to study/research/wonder about disparities I was seeing

• Mpumalanga (Northeastern Region of South Africa) -  where I spent a summer as a portion of a two-year-long internship and no one looked like me (aside from two of the staff members at the rural education organization with which I worked)

• Phoenix, my home before San Diego - where I was immersed in a community that was more diverse than any other I had ever experienced, and where I learned how deeply entrenched racism is in the U.S.