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Applying to become a [leadership role] - promoters of school pride and protectors of tradition – was an obvious step in my college career. I chose [school] for the school’s famous pride and heritage. I never thought that my belief in these ideals would be shaken by the students I hoped to represent, and I never guessed that experiencing racism would help me find an academic and personal passion.

After a long and exhausting process, I found myself a newly initiated [leadership role]. I caught a bus on my way home from initiation. Always wary when going home during the later hours of the night,

I noticed several male students periodically glance over at me. They turned away whenever I made eye contact. I felt uncomfortable and decided to get off at the next stop, even though my dorm was more than a few stops away. As soon as I got up from my bus seat, the men walked towards me. I turned away from them, and I heard one of them say, “Look at that chink.” I tried to ignore them, but they threatened me and muttered racial slurs. They blocked my way when I tried to walk past them. They shoved me and grabbed me, and in my state of shock I did not fight back. I looked around and the other passengers just sat there staring, so I screamed, ‘Stop the bus!” The bus driver thankfully heard, and I pushed the men aside and stumbled off the bus. I sprinted in the direction of my dorm, not looking back for fear that the men were following me.

I kept running until I got back to my room. Luckily, my roommate was already in a deep sleep.My face was streaked with tears, and my feet were bloodied and dirty - I lost my heels as soon as I started running. After cleaning gravel and dirt off my cuts, I quietly cried myself to sleep. I woke up the next morning feeling pathetic,dirty, I was and still in shock. I chose [school] for the school’s famous pride and heritage; I never thought that my belief in these ideals would be shaken by the students I hoped to represent. I have experienced discrimination before – dirty looks, jokes that go a bit too far, even verbal attacks – but the physical attack affected me on many different levels. I dimly remembered my RA describing how to report incidents of hate. I completed an incident report form, but could not bring myself to call the police. I assumed that with the rampant underage drinking of a college campus, no police officer would address my complaint.

My excitement to represent the school and students that I thought I loved turned to resentment. I felt betrayed by my fellow students. My incident report went nowhere. I became paranoid and defensive, and viewed every strange look as a possible threat. I did not confide in anyone. I was angry. I was embarrassed. More than anything, I was ashamed at my inaction. Countless people overcome hatred and discrimination on a daily basis, but I did nothing.

For several weeks, I coped with my insecurity by reading. I revisited revisiting materials from a course on human rights and world literature. The incident gave me a new perspective on reading about discrimination, oppression, and human rights violations. While I recognize thatWhat happened to me cannot compare with any kind of systemic oppression. But, it did allow me to experience view human rights literature with greater urgency.

I became fascinated by the rhetoric of discrimination, as well as the reassertion of agency in the face of oppression. Postcolonial theory grew into my academic focus. I looked into my own past to examine the legacy of colonialism and subjugation. Despite spending a large portion of my life in both colonial and postcolonial Hong Kong, I never gave much critical thought to my heritage. My father’s British accent and love of the Arsenal Football Club took on a new meaning. I used to be proud that my father lacked a stereotypical Chinese accent – it provided less ammo for the more politically incorrect of my friends. Now I recognize my own subscription to a cultural hegemony.

Before that night, I was an English major in love with the literature of the English Renaissance. After that night, I shifted my focus to a theoretical and empirical examination of oppressive rhetoric. I took courses in ethnic literature and wrote on the postcolonial condition. My new dedication to social justice led to my work with [nonprofit org] as a summer intern, and my firsthand experience with racism informed my leadership as a resident assistant. I am currently completing an honors thesis on the rhetoric of memoirs written by Guantanamo Bay detainees. I plan to pursue my passion for social justice and human rights as a law student and as a practicing attorney. The lowest point in my college career turned out to be one of the most formative events of my life.

As for my role as a [leadership role]? I give tours, meet with benefactors and alumni, and work on projects to benefit the school. There are times when I question my dedication to students that include my attackers and the bystanders on the bus. But I know I am doing the right thing. There may always be bigots and racists in any setting and any society. My representation shows those few students that they might have won a temporary victory that night, but that experience made me a stronger, more committed person. I cannot say that I am thankful for what happened – instead, I acknowledge the events of that night as integral to my development into the person I am today.

sf88 wrote:Thank you all for reading! I actually go to school in a college town, and what happened was an isolated incident. I've heard of worse things happening (I believe some men threw bricks at several black people a while back, and a Jewish fraternity found a Nazi flag on their lawn this semester) but my campus is relatively very safe. I spent a summer interning in Philly and lived in the Temple area, so I have a little experience with unsafe neighborhoods. As for the rest of the people on the bus, I think they were as stunned as I was - it was also about 1 or 2 AM so most of them were probably drunk.

I wanted to focus more on how the incident affected my shift in academic and personal focus. I know I titled the thread "Racism PS" but I don't necessarily want to emphasize the actual event. I try to make it clear within the PS that I know people have experienced much worse, but this specific event was pretty influential in my college career. I plan to condense the narrative to divert attention to my new focus.

lats19nys - with all due respect and gratitude for your feedback, I don't think what happened to me could be classified as a "shove." I didn't end up injured or anything, but I've been shoved before for various reasons and it wasn't quite the same. It was pretty threatening, although my writing might fail to make that impression. Also, I hoped the change in perspective would be clear from the redirection of my academic studies (from English Renaissance lit to ethnic/postcolonial lit) and my new focus on social justice issues (interning at a nonprofit and writing an honors thesis on human rights).