I go to Palo Alto High School, a predominantly white and Asian/Asian-American school. In fact, I’ve gone to predominantly whites schools my entire life, from preschool until now. I am currently a sophomore and I would say I have an interesting collection of stories to tell being a black girl in a white school district. It’s been exactly how you probably think — that kind of white vs. black mindset that we all have, that stemmed from stereotypes that have been around for a while. And because of these, it seems black people will never really win. Although I’ve seen progress with race relations, there are still tremendous challenges. For example, when I was in elementary school I really wanted to be an actress, but I didn’t have much representation on the screen. All the little boys and girls I watched on Disney Channel and big movies were white. As we grew up, you would start to see that one black kid thrown in there, then like two or three, but still casts were majority white. Now, in 2018 we have a whole movie dedicated to black people and culture, and it matters how we see ourselves. Disney Channel has shows like Andi Mack, where the protagonist is Asian-American. These moments prove that life doesn’t have to be a competition between races, or that for one race to get recognition, another has to be brought down, but for the longest time that was the mindset that society portrayed.

Freshman year was great altogether, but I had my moments. For starters, non-black students think it’s okay to say “nigga”. And a few have gotten real bold and decide to say “nigger”. I’ve corrected many people about this, but they don’t get it. Their excuse would be “Oh Tyrone gave me a pass”. “Okay and do I look like Tyrone, is Tyrone here right now?” I would talk about this with my friends to try and understand what’s going on in their heads, and I’ve come to a conclusion; It’s simple- they’re uneducated. These kids go to one of the best schools in the country and they can’t comprehend why we can say the n word and they can’t. They don’t understand because they haven’t tried to. Being that we go to school in such a diverse and educated area, we would hope that more cultural awareness would exist, but unfortunately our systems doesn’t force these students to check their privilege and change their behaviors.

This was the first year that I had a black woman teaching me math. Looking back, I questioned why she is the first time I had a female black teacher in a core subject, but the reality is women of color have always been the most under appreciated group of people of all groups of people. And I think a lot of times we underestimate ourselves into thinking that we can’t do this, simply because we are black or brown and we are women. She’s an example against that, and it’s important that myself and other black girls at the school can see her as an example. Representation matters so much because as humans we’re wired to be followers for the most part and it’s hard for someone to break the standard mold that they were forced into.

My freshman year I was introduced to BSU (Black Scholars United). I don’t think my middle school had BSU, though I knew some friends of mine were in a similar club at their high school, so maybe that was more of a high school club. BSU was a nice outlet for me, we didn’t do much in the beginning and at first we only met like every other week. We mostly talked about class and our day to day lives at Paly and I found that we all think the same way, for the most part. A lot of the things I talked about here have been brought to light in conversation, and it was the first time I’ve had a group of people understand exactly where I was coming from, like they’ve been through it or were going through it. It is a nice little community we built together. I am still a member of BSU and as I continue attending the meetings my hope is to become president.

Makayla Miller is a sophomore in high school who is passionate about social justice and making a difference.