News > January 17, 2008

By Liza Greenspun | News editor

When they arrived at the airport in Madrid after a weekend in Amsterdam, five students studying abroad in the university’s Salamanca, Spain, program in spring 2007 were the first people from the flight to retrieve their luggage. Two of the male students were Caucasian, while the other three were African-American.

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Ali Carroll poses with her Kikuyu grandfather while studying abroad. In Africa, Carroll was a minority for the first time in her life. (Photo courtesy of Ali Carroll)

Although all five students were walking together, the three African-Americans were stopped by the police, said junior Tramell Zackery, one of the three African-American students. They were asked to show identification, after which they were allowed to join their white friends, Zackery said.

“It was mainly confusion,” Zackery said, because only the African-Americans in the group were stopped by the police.

According to Open Doors 2007, an estimated 60.7 percent of university students study abroad during their undergraduate careers, ranking the university fourth in 2005-’06 of doctoral and research institutions.

Upon returning to the university, many students cite their experiences as life-changing. For those who are a racial minority in the country where they traveled, it can be particularly eye-opening as they see how skin color can affect how they are treated throughout the world.

What follows are three personal accounts from students who studied in Europe, Asia and Africa, and what they each learned about themselves and about others as they experienced being a racial minority in a country other than the United States.

“(Racism) definitely exists in the world”

The airport was not the only place in Spain where Zackery was stopped for no apparent reason. He said that being stopped in the street became a fairly common occurrence. “After a while it just got annoying,” Zackery said.

Huge numbers of illegal African immigrants enter Spain each year. In order to control this mass illegal immigration, Spanish police conduct racial profiling, stopping people in the streets based on their skin color to ask for identification and make sure they are in Spain legally.

According to a 2004 article in The Guardian, Spain took in 600,000 immigrants in 2003, making up 7.5 percent of the overall population. The numbers have only increased since then. Images of Africans floating to Spain in overcrowded lifeboats are almost a daily part of the evening news, leading to the racism to which Zackery and others were subjected.

“It did (bother me) at first being so blatant,” Zackery said. “Then I found out that it was legal.” He said the blatant racism was surprising as opposed to the subtle racism of the United States. However, he said, it is almost better to have the racism out in the open than to hide it. “It still didn’t make me feel very happy,” Zackery said.

In order to make the best of a negative situation, Zackery said he feels that he was able to change perceptions of a few individuals he formed relationships with, although he did not impact Spaniards as a whole. For example, Zackery said he had conversations about racism with his host family, who explained the immigration situation to him.

Zackery said he had a 4-year-old host brother who seemed curious about his skin color because he had never been exposed to it before. “I had a feeling like he’d say some stuff because his mom would give him looks,” Zackery said, adding that he would sometimes ask questions such as why Zackery’s lips are brown.

Zackery also said that young people, particularly dancers he met, were more open to and accepting of his race than others. “They were more accepting to it because they’d seen stuff on YouTube or hip-hop dancers,” he said. “They had a little more exposure to it.”

Through his travels in Europe, Zackery said he was able to learn about different cultures. He said that overall it was interesting to him to see how race contrasts in other cultures in comparison to the United States.

“(Racism) definitely exists in the world,” Zackery said. “It does get annoying but you have to learn to live with it.”

“We are simply humans”

Like Zackery, senior Ali Carroll, a Caucasian woman who traveled to Africa during the summer of 2007, said she felt that she changed the perceptions that individual Africans had of Americans. She said they assumed all Americans live rich and famous lives, like movie stars.

“We are simply humans, just like these Africans.” Carroll wrote in an e-mail. “I do believe they gained a better perspective of America from me than they previously had developed from the media.”

Being in Africa marked the first time in Carroll’s life that she has been a true racial minority.

“I was more aware of my white skin than I ever have been before and the privilege that comes with it,” said Carroll, who taught English in Tanzania and studied the social impact of microfinance in Kenya. According to the CIA World Factbook, only 1 percent of the population in both Tanzania and Kenya is non-African, and 99 percent of Tanzania is Muslim.

Even if she wasn’t thinking about the color of her skin, Carroll said in an e-mail, those around her were. “I would get stared at or called out to by absolutely everyone,” she said.

For example, one day Carroll and a friend were walking along the beach in Zanzibar. It was a predominately Muslim area and, wearing capri pants, they were uncovered compared to most of the women there. As a result, crowds of men followed them as they were walking.

“That was really uncomfortable and clear that we were a different breed of women,” Carroll said.

During her two months in Africa, Carroll said she was automatically assumed to be a Westerner due to the color of her skin; she stood out and was treated differently.

“There were times when I would get respect I don’t think I deserved,” Carroll said. She found that Africans would listen to her more attentively and give her more credibility than members of their own race.

On the other hand, there were also times when she was chastised if she did not give money to the many beggars she encountered. Because of her white skin, Carroll said, Africans automatically assumed she was wealthy and became angry, calling her “Mzungu,” or “white person,” in a derogatory way if she did not offer extra money.

Carroll said that her time in Africa was an eye-opening experience in many ways. “That just gave me a better understanding of what people of other cultures go through here,” she said.

Carroll said that growing up, she had just as many African-American friends as Caucasian, and thus never gave much thought to skin color. “I understand, now, that even if I don’t recognize those differences, others do,” she said in an e-mail.

Carroll said she is trying to bring what she learned from her experiences as a racial minority in Africa back to the university by helping minorities feel as comfortable as possible on campus.

“There really are stereotypes”

Similarly, senior Whitney Marshall, an African-American student who studied in Beijing, China, during the fall of 2005, said her experiences as a minority student in China helped fuel her passion for increasing the acceptance of minority students at the university.

Marshall said she has been aware of the lack of diversity on campus since she first enrolled as a freshman, but being in China only made her more aware of the importance of increasing acceptance of minorities. “I accepted the fact that there really are stereotypes out there, all around the world,” she said.

For example, Marshall said that one time a Chinese student approached her and said, “Whitney, I don’t mean to offend you, but why don’t you talk like the black people in the movies?”

While this question may have seemed shocking and ignorant, Marshall took the opportunity to teach and explain to him that people who grow up in different environments have different ways of speaking.

She said there were opportunities for her to change peoples’ perceptions in China because they were not accustomed to seeing minorities, as only 8.1 percent of the population is not of Chinese background, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Marshall was also able to dispel negative stereotypes of African-Americans one night in a bar. A Chinese businessman said, “All black people are trouble because 40 percent of black people are in jail.” Marshall then spent the next two-and-a-half hours teaching the 30-year-old man about the history of the United States including slavery and the war on drugs.

At the end of their long discussion, Marshall said, the man thanked her, understanding that he had formed an erroneous generalization of a whole race due to one statistic.

“That was a pretty powerful situation for me,” Marshall said.

“There is not as much support as there should be”

Although it is clear that students who are minorities in the countries where they study often have some negative experiences while abroad, the university does not currently have any programming to address this issue.

Julia Shuster, international studies program coordinator, said the university should do more to help prepare students for stereotypes they might encounter as minorities in foreign countries. “There is not as much support as there should be for minority students going abroad,” Shuster said.

However, students said they do not necessarily agree. “I’m a minority every single day of my life,” Marshall said. “It doesn’t change when I go over there.”

Carroll and Zackery felt that it may be useful for the university to point out that they will be a minority while abroad, but said that is the extent of the help the university can offer.

“I felt like I grew a whole lot in just learning how to deal with being the racial minority on my own,” Carroll said in an e-mail.

Despite these student sentiments, international study organizations are taking action about minorities studying abroad, Shuster said. According to the School for International Training study abroad Web site, mentors and group leaders are sensitive to needs of minority students. While Shuster believes similar programs are necessary at the university, students who have already experienced being a minority in another country disagree.

“The best thing the university could do would be to help translate their experience to caring for and welcoming racial minorities here on campus,” Carroll said in an e-mail.