To get ready to start my first professional Hall Director job next year, I’ve been taking a class this semester about serving diverse college student populations. As a gay man, I had thought I was pretty aware about issues of diversity and obstacles that minority students face on campus. This class though has really opened my eyes about the specfic difficulties that ethnic minority students encounter (almost on a daily basis) and the “white privelege” that I have benefitted from. I’ve made a personal committment to try to continue raising my awareness about these issues and to learn what I can do to be an ally for that community.

Thus, I was very interested to try out this link to an online Black-White Implicit Association Test from randomwalks (I won’t give away how it works in case you want to try it yourself). I was pretty bummed out when I got the score from it — it said I slightly favored whites over blacks. Well, at least it was only slightly. I’m going to continue to devote myself to becoming a better resource for minority students.

In class now we’re reading about the pressures that minority faculty and staff face on majority-white campuses. I’m about to officially accept a job at a school where I’d be (according to the student glbt group) the only out gay faculty/staff member on campus. I’m a little apprehensive and overwhelmed by what that might mean, but I’m bound and determined that the campus could probably really use someone who’s out and can work with the student group and help represent glbt issues to other faculty and staff.