It gurgles and splats its way down into the pot as I wait in anticipation. The sweet aroma of french vanilla fills up the room as the steam wafts through dry and bleak air of the early morning hours. I never really got into drinking coffee until I got to college. If there is one thing I hate most, it’s drinking black coffee. There is no zest; no excitement.  I like to add some cream and sugar to my coffee to mix things up. The cream outstretches its long legs and arms to create endless swirls dancing around in the cup into a harmonious blend. There are also times, however, when I have too much cream in my coffee and instead it begins to look like tainted glass of milk.  In life, just like my coffee, there needs to be a balance; whether it be of people or things.  It is important to seek out a balance in life to feel good and in control.

I have always felt like I have control over my life, my classes, and more importantly my jobs. Whenever I walk into an interview, I have no doubt in my mind that 1) I will rock at this job, 2) I am well qualified for the job, and 3) that I will be hired by the end of the interview. Sure, there are times when I don’t get the job and some people would say that the rejection is the hardest part. For me, however, the hardest part is not getting hired but being hired and being one of the very few, if not the only, woman or person of color at my job. It is one of the few aspects in my life where I feel that I have no control, especially when working on a college campus because the number of students of color available to work are based on the number of students that enroll. Even though colleges have entered into this imaginary “diversity race” to see which school can recruit more students of color, a report issued by the College Board*  said that “only 30% of young African-American men and 20% of young Latino men” will obtain “at least” their associates degree.  While many websites I researched all agreed that the number of students of color attending college was on the rise, it has still been a slow progression.  New Directions for Higher Education reports that minorities comprised “16% of post-secondary students of the US in 1976” compared to the “dramatic” increase of 28% in 1999 (2003). Even though this article is around seven years old, the 12% increase over a 23 year period only suggests that the amount of growth in 2011 would be barely significant.

While I feel like I have tackled and conquered “the-only-black-girl-in-my-classes” syndrome after having attended boarding school for four years, this new but familiar “the-only-black-girl-in-my-workplace” syndrome just snuck up on me and brought back some old feelings of hopelessness I felt with my first syndrome as I started a new job this year. Now I love my new job and the people I work with, so I do not want it to seem as if I am throwing blame on anyone. I also don’t want it to appear as if I’m narrowing the scope of students of color to just black people because there are quite a few people of color at my new job. What I struggle with is seeing people who look like me; just like my coffee, I like to see my cream and my coffee intermingle as well as throw in some sugar and caramel and even whipped cream because too much of one ingredient can overpower the other and dilute the experience. I try not to let these startling facts get the best of me but I can only hope that one day I will be able to enter a classroom or a job and not have my race be the first thought that comes to mind.

Silence fills the room. I fill my mug about 3/4’s of the way as the steam blows kisses in my face. Two spoons of sugar, three squirts of creamer. The clanking of my spoon pours itself into the silence as I watch the coffee swirls. With my coffee at my side, I sit and eagerly type away at my computer.

*”The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color: A Review of Research, Pathways and Progress”, College Board, 2008