Michigan Today . . . March 1996

Over There
STUDENTS OF COLOR ABROAD

U-M's Office of International Programs (OIP) offers 45 overseas programs a year, most providing a semester of study abroad or several-week sessions during the summer months. OIP Director Carol Dickerman says that nearly 400 of the 16,000 LSA students will be participate in OIP programs, and about the same number will be doing so through programs directed by other schools and colleges in the University.

Students study abroad mainly to polish language skills or to extend their knowledge in an academic area, Dickerman says, but some are showing "an increasing interest in areas that reflect their ethnic heritage." Several students from minority backgrounds reported on their experiences overseas during the University's Martin Luther King Jr. observances in January. Their stories follow.

William Dubose Jr. '96 of Chicago.
Major: Architecture, College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
I don't know exactly why I decided to go overseas. One thing that occurred to me was that going to Europe would give my mother something interesting to talk about at work. And partly it was to get away from Chicago so I could better understand what was going on at home. My aunt told me I'd find it dangerous overseas. I said, "I can't walk to the corner store safely here at home. How could it be worse over there?" As it turned out, nobody pestered me going to a store over there.

First, I visited Oxford University in England, where I met Black British people. I'd been told that all of the best artifacts from Africa were in England, so I wanted to go there. Later, during my semester in Florence, I met Nigerians and other Africans who lived in Italy. Both groups gave me insights into the Black experience overseas.

In England, when I told them I grew up in the world's largest housing project, the Robert Taylor Homes, they told me they'd take me to Black "leisure estates" where they lived. I imagined something quite grand, but it turned out those were housing projects, too. There were a lot of similarities between housing projects in Chicago and in England. You had to be of lower economic status in order to live in them first of all. Then I noticed that both places were filled with people of African descent. I had to ask myself, why is that? Seeing things like this helped me realize how closely Blacks were linked throughout the world.

I went into architecture because I thought architects might be able to design living spaces that would help people live better lives. But now I've come to doubt that architects have that power. The decisions as to the investments in, and designs of, housing developments are made elsewhere, and I'd like to get into an area of business or finance where those decisions are made.

Maria Perez '97 of Trinidad, Colorado.
Major: Russian and Eastern European Studies.
My involvement in University Research Opportunity Program [a U-M program that involves first- and second-year students in research projects supervised by a professor---.Ed.] during my second year changed my life.

I won a scholarship, and together with seven other Michigan students spent three months doing bioanthropological research in Chicaloma, a famous town of mostly African-Bolivian descendants of the African slaves brought by the Spaniards to work the rich Bolivian mines.

In Chicaloma, the African Bolivians are the community leaders and innovators in comparison with the shyer Aymara peoples of the Bolivian altiplano. Working in this truly rural town made me think of the amazing diversity of peoples in my home continent. Unlike the United States, much intermarriage among ethnicities has been going on there for a long while. This makes race issues in Latin America much different than what we know of in the United States.

In Bolivia I was also captivated by the issues surrounding coca plantations and one of coca's well-known derivatives: cocaine. Chicaloma's entire economy is based on coca. Yet, the coca used for tea, chewing and other health products is not the same coca used for cocaine. Only a certain region in Bolivia illegally grows the "evil" coca that is turned into cocaine.

The more I learned about the real coca issue in Bolivia, I realized how ignorant we are in the North about the true situation of these peoples. To think of Bolivia as a poor drug-supplying land full of ignorant people and corrupt leaders couldn't be farther from the truth. Many natives are aware of the country's problems concerning the international drug war, and they, just like many of us, are actively trying to end it.

One thing I've learned from traveling and speaking to other travelers is: Never think you know more than the people around you just because you are American. It is important to have an open mind about adapting to the sometimes uncomfortable circumstances encountered in traveling.

Joseph Dorsey of Washington, DC.
Doctoral candidate in resource policy and behavior, School of Natural Resources and the Environment. Campus coordinator, Peace Corps.
A lot of your preconceptions of how other people live vanish when you live among them. After I finished Howard University, I wanted to do something interesting and delay deciding whether I'd work or go back to school. I suppose I was a victim of the Tarzan-type imagery of Africa, but I was always interested in Africa. Still, I thought that the Peace Corps wasn't something that Black people did. But in my senior year, when I heard that the Peace Corps would let me live in Africa for two years, and freewell, the operative word was "free."

When I arrived in the Ivory Coast in 1979, the people would point at me and say, "White man," meaning, as I discovered, that I was Western in my dress and thought. It wasn't meant negatively, just that I wasn't an African. That's what I had to learn.

People responded to me in different ways. Some considered me their "long-lost brother"; others disdained me as a descendant of slaves; still others thought I was a Jamaican. When I said no, that I was an American, then they'd assume that meant that one of my parents was white.

Over time, I learned some dialects of their language, ate their food, wore clothes like theirs. When my two years were up, I traveled by myself in other countries, and the people riding on the bus with me would turn and ask me, "Are you from Liberia?" When I said no, they'd say, "From Nigeria?" They'd run through several countries, and then I'd tell them I was an American. But their questions made me feel that to some extent I had become an African again.

Rosetta Mitchell '98 of Gary, Indiana.
Major: international marketing, Business School. Peer adviser, U-M International Center.
I had studied Chinese at Gary Roosevelt High School, and before coming to Michigan I learned of a possible trip to China through the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE). Teachers encouraged me, saying I'd be the first person to go to China from a Gary high school. I raised $3,850 in three weeks from school alumni, fellow students and a tag day in the community.

Arriving in Hong Kong in the summer of 1994 was a surprise. As soon as I walked into the airport, people started staring at me. I felt uncomfortable, but then I went to a fancy restaurant with a friend of mine who lived there, and I felt better.

But then I went to the mainland. When we got off the plane a Jewish guy with really curly, Afro-type hair got off ahead of me, and the people looked at him and started pointing and laughing. I wondered, "What will they do when they see me?" Well, people were stopping cars to look at me. One or two yelled, "Black devil!" and threw wads of paper at me. It was the biggest disappointment in my life. Finally, other students and some of our hosts had to form a barricade around me.

Finally, we got to the school in Xi'an City in western China 22 hours by train from Beijing and I met my roommate. She and I became good friends. Thousands of students must have filed by our door to look at me. And buses and cars kept stopping when I walked in the town. People pulled my hair. Police taunted me. I called my grandfather and told him I wanted to leave early. These incidents were making my roommate cry. She said Chinese people are basically kind and friendlywhich is right, they are but they just hadn't seen anyone like me.

She called her father, and he took a two-and-half hour bus ride to our school after hearing about my experiences to give us support. I visited their home, which was a haven from all the attention. But outside, things remained rough. The Chinese at the school explained to me that the people in that region were isolated from the world. I know from this country what it's like to face racism. It wasn't racism that was making the Chinese act that way, it was just the result of their long history of not seeing or learning about anyone or anything un-Chinese.

But I couldn't understand why no one from CIEE had prepared me for what I might encounter. Since hearing about my experiences, CIEE and the University are doing a better job of informing students about the difficulties they may face as a result of racism, prejudice, stereotypes or ignorance. Part of my job now is to counsel Michigan students about these issues.

Despite the problems I faced, I was determined to be an ambassador for my race and answer a lot of ignorant questions. I ate the types of food the Chinese people eat. I learned how to squat and relieve myself as they do outdoors without getting wet. I made it out of China sane and alive, so now people know I can make it anywhere.

I don't want to live in China, but I'd like to go back there regularly to do international marketing. Thanks to the Minority International Research Training Program offered by the Fogarty Scholarships, I'm returning to China this summer to research consumer behavior.

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