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Columnist shares her experiences of diversity, bias
By Christina Hammett

“Look at the person on your left,” said Diversity Festival keynote speaker S. Renee Mitchell, to the silent audience in the College Center lounge April 25.

“Celebrate the things that make (you) different from the person sitting right next to you,” she said.

To an audience of more than 50 students and faculty members, The Oregonian newspaper’s first black columnist spoke of her life growing up in California and Newport, Ore., and the struggles she faced as a minority child and teenager.

Mitchell, one of eight children, spent her childhood in a three-room house in California with her parents, brothers, and sisters until she said the county moved them out “before it fell down on us.” When she was 11 years old, Mitchell’s father died unexpectedly from complications resulting from a blood clot. She said that he was in the hospital and he pushed his call button for help, but the nurses, who happened to be white, refused to help him until it was too late.

From the day of her father’s death, Mitchell’s life seemed to grow steadily more troubling. “I was the tallest girl in my family, I was 5’8”, a size 11 shoe, wide, and my brothers called me ugly,” she said. “I felt so unworthy of taking a breath.”

When she was 15 years old, she was hit by a car, severely breaking and disfiguring her right leg. “I spent three months in the hospital and I had to learn how to walk again,” she said.

Attending a high school where she was the only black face in a sea of white, she also experienced the teenage rigmarole of dating and general growing-up with a disfigured leg and a serious bout of depression. “I thought, ‘Life has got to be better than this,’ and I dealt with suicide,” she said.

During this time of turmoil, Mitchell focused her process of venting her emotions through writing poetry. “Poetry became my mechanism for getting my feelings out,” she said. “It’s hard to get people to understand, ‘I’m hurting.’ How do you tell people? You have to share it with someone and help them.”

The first poem she read to the audience Friday was written when she was 15 and fully immersed in her depression. It read: “It is so complicated being a girl, especially a girl like me. (…) I just want someone to notice me. To see my potential to be great that’s all packed up inside me. (…) See me. I am here.”

What kept Mitchell going through this time was her hope for an opportunity for higher education. “I knew that if I could just get my education, I could create a new life (for myself),” she said. Through her studies, Mitchell was able to obtain a scholarship to Florida A&M University, a traditionally black college. It was there that her life changed for good.

“When I left Oregon, I left my name behind and took on my middle name,” she said (her first name is Sharon). “Florida A&M helped to nurture me – they helped me become the person I am.”

Another former Florida A&M student and recent graduate of Yale University, Terry Baker, also said Florida A&M changed his life for the better.

“When you go somewhere where you don’t stick out, it’s a simple thing but it’s an overwhelming feeling,” Baker said. “There’s a tenseness there (when you’re at a primarily white school) standing out so much. You’re never really relaxed or at peace.”

Mitchell said the way she deals with prejudice and racism now is by trying to appreciate the differences in others.

“Differences should be acknowledged and celebrated. Tolerate our differences. They make us beautiful,” she said. “I don’t shame people for their prejudices because it won’t necessarily change their minds.”

Baker said, “Beyond our diversity there are these similarities. Simply because I’m a human and you’re a human, we have something in common.”