Sirius Bonner & Ellison Bonner Scott

From Long Beach, CA

Reed ’05

Portlander for 15 years





I feel like the greatest gift that I got from Reed is the validation of my intellectual curiosity and the opportunity to really explore that. I feel like I never really struggled academically at Reed. That wasn’t really my tough aspect of Reed. My tough was the social stuff and the lack of diversity. I’d gone to predominantly white private schools my whole life and didn’t think this would be any different. I remember in high school sitting doing my homework. My dad comes in and he’s got this sheet of paper. It’s got this pie chart on it. He hands it to me and goes, “You really need to look at the diversity statistics of that Reed place you’re looking at.” And I’m just like, “Whatever, Dad.” Again, white schools my whole life. No big deal. Not a concern.

When I got to Reed, all of a sudden I was confronted with Portland which is really white.. which is really different from Long Beach/LA area. And not having my family there. Even though I was used to this in certain ways, I always had multiple methods of escape and multiple ways to connect with who I was. Not so much at Reed. So it was very very difficult to navigate that and understand that. Eventually, I sort of got the hang of it. I found really like-minded people and connected in that way rather than connecting with people who looked like me.





I: How has it been, your transition out of Reed? Do you feel connected?





Sirius: It’s complicated. In some ways I definitely do feel like I have a community. I certainly feel like I have a family here - my husband, my daughter, my aunt. In some ways I’m very connected with the Black community in Portland, but in other ways very disconnected. In the Black community in Portland there’s always this sense of like “Were you born here? Where’d you go to high school? Oh, you’re not from here? Well..” There’s always a barrier to building some connections, but .. I definitely feel like I’ve been able to explore and understand the Black community in Portland in a way that I really wasn’t able to as a student. I don’t know if they’ve introduced the concept of the Reed bubble to you. Understanding and building connections with other Black people didn’t really happen until after I graduated. A lot of those connections were forged professionally and not socially. They’ve melded now, but certainly that’s how I found Black people .. through professional networks. — Sirius Bonner



… Exhibited at Black Portland, Black Reed at Reed College, Feb 2016.



