Some Advice from the Community

We recently received a question from a potential future student, and we thought that we could serve them best by providing them with the community’s advice. Their question:

“I would like to attend this school someday… I’m an African American and I’m not racist. I fear racism, actually. I’m a freshman in high school haha, but any tips on how to deal with racists?”

Do you have any advice you’d like to share? Feel free to share here.

Here are the community’s thoughts so far:

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Dealing with racism is very similar to dealing with homophobia (for me). It depends a lot on the situation, but if it’s merely verbal, you simply have to be the bigger person and realize they’re a bigot and stuck in the past. It’s obviously upsetting, but try to ignore it. One thing I love about Ohio State is I have never witnessed “real life” homophobia or racism. Most people don’t say anything bad here because they know they’ll get teamed up on, so they cowardly tweet about it instead.

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Well to tell you the truth, racism is actually hard to deal with especially when racism is express through non-verbal microaggressions. There are also verbal microaggressions but you can deal with that easier since there are words being use and the point is clear but there’s been times I’ve dealt with verbal microaggressions and people just refuse to understand and stick to their views and that is frustrating. But non-verbal microaggressions are hard to spot and may take a long time to spot.

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As a white person, I don’t feel I can help with the prospective student very much. I do know we have multiple sororities and fraternities for African American students, and I’ve never heard of my friend being the target of racism. The best I can say is that there is a community here that can support you.

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Being Asian, I understand the fear of racism. But it came to an end when I came to this revelation in my last year in high school. People who are fueled by hate build their own doom. It degrades their humanity. Love doesn’t. People fueled by love aren’t alone and have no need to be afraid. It isn’t simply ignoring them; it’s denying them the chance to satisfy their sad gluttony for attention. Never forget: You are better than them, because you can love others. I hope this helps.

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There are certain classes you can take that talks about the struggles of oppressed identities where you can do projects about yourself and the struggles you experience in your lifetime thus far. This helped me a lot because I was able to tell people to stop using microaggressions. It’s hard to tackle non-verbal microaggressions verbally because it can easily be passed off as something else thus making you look foolish. I hope my advice has helped you understand how racism works in modern time.

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I love it here at The Ohio State University, but it makes me sad to know that there are some people here that say racist things. One of the great things of OSU is our diversity, I love the fact that everyone can find a place to feel welcomed. I like to think that the racists here are a very small minority and that if you encounter 1 racist person, you will find a lot more people who are accepting of all the diversity here.

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