Native Education: Moving beyond the Asterisk*
Alberta Jones,
Juneau, AK.
Alaska Natives and American Indians are often just an asterisk (*) in higher education and other data. We are collectively, trying to build our critical masses and be a voice that is often unheard.
In Indonesia I am asked “Dutch”?
Nancy Deschu,
Anchorage, AK.
My Dutch ancestors arrived in New Amsterdam in 1624. Now, four hundred years later, I live in Alaska but my roots in New Jersey are strong and deep. While traveling in Sulawesi, Indonesia 15 years ago, locals would ask me, “Blanda?”, or what I learned was a slang term for “Dutch”. I felt shame because of the history of the Dutch colonial occupation of Indonesia and brutality to Indonesian people. Most people asked in a circumspect, curious way, though one man refused me a taxi ride. Usually I just answered “Alaska”, an easy way out, because this answer usually sidetracked any further conversation, and elicited a response of wide-eyed smiling response – “Ah! A-lask-ka!”.
Chilly chainee, courageous changer, world warmer.
Melinda,
Ephrata, WA.
50- year-old woman born in the south, grown in Alaska’s wildness, married too young. Courageously moving from isolation to a warmer world. Race goes deeper than color and texture, it’s how we love or don’t, what we teach or don’t, it’s chilly and it’s warm and it’s all degrees between. Race isn’t always seen, it is felt. The mix of drops streaming through me are full of “raciousness”.
I’m Diane. I’m Alaskan, and Black.
Diane,
Fairbanksm, AK.
Images of Alaska never show Black faces, but yet in Fairbanks, the state’s second largest city, the Black population is equal to that of Alaska Natives. We have been effectively erased from our own history and present day lives. I work with tourists and a day doesn’t go by when I don’t have an interaction with one or more who are startled, not in a nice way, to find Black folks here. And despite living a day trip to both the Arctic Circle and the Denali National Park – home to the highest mountain in North America – few of my people have gone to either, firmly convinced that those places are somehow only for white folks. None of this is right. None of this is fair. And all of it is worth fighting against.
I trusted adults that taught hate.
Stan Pitts
Anchorage, AK
I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and was 10 years old during the fateful year 1963. My father was a Birmingham Police officer terribly conflicted between upholding the law and the treatment of the civil rights participants. My trusted adults and role models, the church leaders, scout masters, and teachers, taught me that while “all men are created equal” and that “Jesus loved the little children of the world”, it really meant white men and white children. I didn’t have a black classmate until high school, and my last two years were wracked by school-wide violence, especially during sporting events. I didn’t realize I was a racist until I was drafted and exposed to new people and ideas. I struggled with prejudice until my daughter married a black man. He is a wonderful person, husband and father and they have been happily married for twelve years. I asked my daughter why she married him, knowing the difficulties of bi-racial relationships, especially where she lives in Texas. To my surprise, she said that I had taught her to respect and care about all people, and that’s what she did. I cried.
I’m Neither Asian or White Enough
Susie,
Fairbanks, AK.
I am tired of being told I am not white enough or Asian enough. As mixed race, racial identity is already hard enough. My mother is Korean and my father white. I identify as asian, my sisters identify as white. I am the most anglo looking, as they both look Asain. Me with my light hair and green eyes I look nothing like 3/4 of my family.
This comment by Freedom Chevalier sums up my feelings perfectly. “Like most people with a mixed ethnic heritage, I sometimes struggle to fit into a society that sees life in finites: black/white, gay/straight, right/wrong. Can the “others” that cause us to create new thoughts, new perspectives, survive in a world drawn-and-quartered along such absolutes? “
Its time to embrace our differences and to stop trying to categorized people into a box that makes you comfortable.
Rural Alaska, six blacks, my family.
Lydia Taylor
Memphis, TN
I was born and raised in Alaska. When I was 4, my father got out of the Air Force and accepted a job as a State Trooper in Dillingham, Alaska. He moved from Anchorage to Dillingham first, to start his job as we as find us a place to live. We followed on my 5th birthday, I thought I was being punished. We moved to a small fishing town off the Bristol Bay, where the majority of people there, majority Alaskan Native, had not seen a black person in “real life.” We lived in Dillingham for 8 years and it taught me many things about race relations. My siblings and I were tormented daily at school, called n*****, jiggaboo, blackie, darkie, monkey, ape, pretty much any derogatory racial slur you could use towards a black person. It caused me to hate being black as a kid, it took a lot for me to learn to love me. We left Dillingham in 1993.
Privilege is real. I get it.
Eric Moore,
Anchorage, AK.
“I get it” cuts three ways. First, I understand this is true. Second, I am in most ways the example of a person who is privileged and this has brought me opportunities, second chances and more.
But Third can be an exasperated “I get it” because no matter the advantages I’ve enjoyed I’m still constantly faced with worries over the challenges I’m bound to face in the future. So privilege often doesn’t seem relevant in day-to-day life… and of course it’s a privilege that I can usually leave anything race-based off of my list of worries. So if “I get it,” it’s not that I don’t care. It’s more like “I’m uncomfortable but I don’t know what to do.”
Listen, I am not a minority!
Skywalker Payne,
Homer, AK
In the 1970’s I worked at the University of Texas in Austin, where I first heard the oxymoron “minority-majority.” I wrote an essay then, called “The Minority Myth.” It’s now, “,” The 2021 census has shown we, People of Color, are becoming the new majority. Maybe we will learn to unify and let a true democracy manifest.
Your families background doesn’t even matter!
Sara Proffett,
Healy, AK.
I am Russian, Scottish and Spanish. I’ve always been kind of tan and I have light brown hair. I’m short but not stout. I’ve always been made fun of for being a tiny little girl. I am a mix of different races so I was never really made fun of for being Spanish or Russian or Scottish. I hate it when people make fun of other people because of their background. Your background doesn’t mean anything!
Native Americans Americas Invisible Invisible Invisible.
Gene Tagaban,
Ruston, WA.
West Asians Count As Asians Too
Ali Arturo Mansour Hull,
Anchorage, AK
Im mixed race. My maternal grandma is of Syrian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Saudi, Iranian, Indian and Pakistani Ancestry. My maternal grandpa is English Norwegian and French. My dad is English, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch , Swedish and Danish. Growing up I didn’t fit in anywhere because I was ethnically ambiguous but didn’t fit in with any of the main ethnic groups in my area. I tried fitting in with every single minority group. I didn’t even know that I was a quarter Asian until I was in college and took a DNA test.
Being light-skinned I faced harassment and slander and was labeled as a fraud, including by people who I had known since preschool. Even today, my own dad doesn’t accept the fact I am mixed race/hapa and I have faced racism as well as racism combined with Islamophobia (I’m a Shi’a Muslim), Anti Shi’a bigotry and Orientalism. Many of my mom’s immediate relatives are so Americanized, so I wasn’t exposed to Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Azeri, Gujarati or Rajasthani growing up, only English, French and Spanish. Also that was partly due to my grandpa’s racist and Islamophobic biases. I had to educate myself about my own family heritage because nobody else would and MashAllah, I have learned so much and Inshallah I will keep learning.
Black folks DO live in Alaska!
Diane “Bunny” Fleeks,
Fairbanks, AK.
My father arrived here in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1959. My mother and I “came into the country” (as we old farts call coming to Alaska to stay) in 1960. I grew up here, left after high school and moved back nearly 20 years ago. African-Americans have been part of Alaska’s past (my local chapter of the NAACP pre-dates Alaska’s statehood) and a vital part of our present, but yet we are conspicuous in our absence from almost all narratives about our home. We are not included in popular fiction (the notable exception being author Dana Stabenow’s “Kate Shugak” series), most movies, television shows, etc. Yet here we are; here I am – with lots of stories to tell. But not as many as my mom – that’s her in the picture. After a day trip to Denali National Park, home to Mt. McKinley – the highest point in North America. Yes, there ARE Black folks here.
Blond hair – can’t use Afro Sheen
Diane Smith,
Anchorage, AK.
I was the only white girl in my 6th grade class at Windsor Hills Elementary School in Los Angeles. I wished so much that I looked like my classmates. My greatest compliment back then (the 1960s) was that I might be white on the outside, but I was black on the inside. We all want to fit in.
No, I’m not Italian or Spanish
Arturo Mansour-Hull,
Anchorage, AK
My mom’s biracial Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese,Yemeni, English, Turkish, and Kurdish. My dad’s English, Scottish, German, and Irish. White people think That I’m Spanish and Black people think that I’m Italian.
