Biola Ethnic Breakdown

Micro-aggressions — comments resulting from people’s lack of understanding of the diverse cultures around them — unintentionally cause harm on a daily basis.

EVENTS HELP TO ENGAGE ETHNICITIES 

Consciously engaging people of different backgrounds in conversation to hear their perspectives and stories, or attending cultural club meetings and events are two ways to break out of one’s personal cultural bubble, said Zania Kennedy, Black Student Association president and junior humanities major.

Multi-Ethnic Programs and Development provides many events for students to engage in diversity. Additionally, BSA’s Black History Month final event will be a movie night open to all students that will be hosted in the Production Center on Feb. 27 at 7 p.m, Kennedy said.

Since students naturally tend to associate with others like themselves, many have blind spots when it comes to diverse backgrounds — blind spots that require effort to fill in, said Glen Kinoshita, MEPD director. Living in a diverse community without reaching beyond one’s comfort zone does not help people understand those from different cultures better.

“If you’re not used to interacting with other people, then you see things other people do, who are different than you, as something strange,” Kennedy said.

White students still make up the majority at Biola despite the university’s continuously changing racial and ethnic demographics, said Kinoshita.

“If it’s hard to understand diversity and the different perspectives because there is a majority culture where thoughts and expressions are very similar. So we’re not challenged to think critically and relate well in the midst of a diverse society,” Kinoshita said.

CULTURAL BLIND SPOTS

Hailing from Ohio, Kennedy discovered her experience as a Midwesterner and an African-American woman gave her a unique perspective on life, a perspective she previously considered normal.

Kennedy said when she came to Biola she noticed people who are unaware of the fact that even as the majority they still have a unique culture, since their experience feels normal to them but is different from hers.

“When you come face-to-face with it, it’s a completely different thing. How do I interact with someone who hasn’t had that much interaction with African-Americans outside of stereotypes, outside of images on TV or what have you? It was a learning spot for me and seeing the blind spots that other people had was a way for God to humble me,” Kennedy said.

Most encounters with students that took Kennedy aback were completely innocuous from the other person’s viewpoint, such as comments about her hair or assumptions about why she tended to have a lot of friends who are also African-American.

“Of course you always get the question, ‘How do all the black people know each other?’ And it’s like, that’s certainly being shaped and framed a certain way because people who usually ask me that, they hang out with majority of people of their same background as well,” Kennedy said.

Not everyone is willing to admit they have blind spots, especially when it comes to discussing racial and cultural diversity, but they exist, Kennedy said. Giving others grace for their blind spots in situations involving micro-aggressions is important as well, she said.

“You can’t know what you don’t know, so if you don’t know that your perspective is culturally being shaped by your own experience, then I can’t necessarily expect you to know that. But I can inform you of kind of what I picked up on and hopefully you’ll open the door,” Kennedy said.