Kaonashi Ga Suki

The other day I was chatting with a friend about working on campus. I mentioned that the department I was working for shares its office with another department that provides 2nd and 3rd year graduate students as mentors for 1st year students. The catch is that this program focuses on minority students and minority mentors.

My friend, who is white, said that she got into a conversation with the person who ran the program and asked her who the program considered a “minority”. The woman then explained that minorities include people who have been historically disadvantaged or are currently underrepresented in higher education.

My friend then asked, “Does that include women?” and the woman said yes.

“Well then, I’m a minority too then, aren’t I?”

The woman paused for a second and replied, “Well…yes…I guess you are.”

My friend then turned to me and said that during her first year in graduate school, she found out that her Asian friends (including me) received an invitation to join this mentoring program- but not her. Or any of the other white students in our cohort. She felt insulted.

“Why did they assume that only minority first-year students need help? I needed help too. Just because I’m white doesn’t mean that I was more prepared than you guys were for grad school.” she said

I totally agree with her. Why couldn’t the school have a mentoring program for ALL first year students? Why is there the assumption that first year Caucasian students don’t need a mentor? They’re just as lost, overwhelmed, and confused during their first year.

When I was first contacting by this mentoring program, I received a form and filled it out. I felt apprehensive that the reason I received this form was because I’m a Filipino, but I still decided to take advantage of the program- not because I’m Filipino and feel that I need help from other Filipinos, but because I was a first year student and needed an older student to guide me.

One thing that was implied in the form was that mentees and mentors are matched by race. At the very end of the form it asked if I had any special requests. I asked not to be given a Filipino mentor.

Why?

Because mentees tend to form bonds with their mentors. They may not necessarily become best friends, but at the least they can eventually become close colleagues. They can offer each other advice on projects, perhaps even collaborate on a body of work. I wanted to form a bond with my mentor on the basis that we’re both graduate students. The mentor has survived her first harrowing year of school and has lived to tell the tale. She’s taken the classes and can offer me advice on managing those classes.

What I did not want to do was bond with my mentor because we’re both Filipinos. If it’s one thing I can’t freaking stand, it’s the notion that some Filipinos think that we’re all the same, we should all stick together, we know each other so well because we’re Filipinos, and we can only understand each other because we’re Filipinos- like we’re in some sort of secret, special club. And I definitely would have stopped meeting with my mentor if he or she asked me, “No, where are you really from?”

I received an African American mentor. She is wonderful. She was extremely patient with my questions, helped me with my statistics homework, and proofread my papers. Even though I’m now in my 3rd year and she isn’t really my mentor anymore, I still come to her for help. We’ve had several classes together and have collaborated on projects.

Incidentally, the other day at work I overheard two employees of that mentor program talking about the problem they had with a mentee. This mentee, who is African American, emphasized that she wanted to be paired up with an African American mentor. The problem is that there were too few mentors for mentees, and the employees were wondering if one of the mentors could “double up” and take on an extra mentee.

Apparently, some time later, they received word from a man -a professor- who volunteered to be a mentor.

Sounds great, right? Now the girl can have a mentor.

But the professor is white.

So, here’s this person (who is not even a graduate student) kindly offering his time out of his already extremely busy schedule to help someone out. Will his help be refused because he’s not black?

I never found out how the employees solved this problem, but I hope that they took up the professor on his offer.

I know I’m moving into dangerous territory here, and I’m sure that some people disagree with me. But this is how I feel. Let me emphasize though, that I consider myself a moderate- I’m neither a Republican or a Democrat so I hope people don’t start calling me names. Then again, I just hope that people don’t get offended to the point that they start calling me names.

I do have more to say, but before I knew it, I was writing a novel. So I’ll cut it off right here and save Part 2 for next time.