PAGE 12
News
HOLIDAY 2014
OCSA’s Rainbow: Missing a Few Colors?
Sam Moore
Staff Writer
For the past 28
years, OCSA has
prided itself on its
diverse and eclectic
student population.
Across conservatories, grade levels, interests, and identities,
this is a school where
various differences
are acknowledged
and celebrated —
most of the time. Although this is a great
place to sport a rainbow scarf on Pride
Day or start a club
devoted to Harry
Potter, an increasing
number of OCSA’s
population have
found that as far as
celebrating race
or ethnicity goes,
people here prefer to
remain quiet.
“This girl here once
asked me if I was
born with braids,”
said senior Autumn
Sylve (MT). “People
at OCSA are completely uninformed
on any other culture
besides their own.
From my experience,
they don’t know
anything about black
people at all.”
This is just one example of the many
racial microagressions experienced by
students of color at
OCSA. Racial micro-
agressions, according to American Psychologist, are “brief
and commonplace
daily verbal or behavioral indignities,
whether intentional
or unintentional, that
communicate hostile, derogatory, or
negative racial slights
towards people of
color.” We’ve all
witnessed it — kids
imitating Asian or
Latino accents,
people complaining
about how “ghetto”
their cars are, that
one guy who has to
tell the whole class
about how “barbaric” he thinks hip hop
is. Though they might
not realize it, these
people aren’t just being f [