When I taught at Penn State and Temple universities, my classrooms were mostly White save for a handful of Black and Brown faces.
The toughest thing for me to come to grips with was the fact that I was a person of color teaching students who had rarely interacted with minority educators. Those dynamics were apparent early on at Penn State, when students thought they could get away with being casual. On one occasion, one of my students sauntered into class 20 minutes late and said, "Sup dawg" before taking his seat.
As I became more comfortable at Penn State, where many of my White students admittedly had little interaction with minority groups, I realized my legitimacy as an educator was based on my experience as a journalist. As a result, I would use stories from my time as a reporter - from covering pro football, political races and murders - as a way of making the classroom material more tangible. Some of my students, including those who might have felt uneasy about learning from an Indian-American, stayed in touch with me long after they completed my class.
At Lincoln, there is an interesting racial dynamic that I never took into consideration. The majority of the professors in my department are White and over the age of 50. When I joined this fall along with two of my African-American colleagues, we were the first non-White educators some of these students had for classes.
