THE NEW FACE IN BOSTON
Whatever your background, you'll find a home in Boston.

When it comes to diversity, Boston doesn’t fit one simple definition.

This is a region that’s currently working to enhance and capitalize on an increasingly multicultural and international population, fueled in part by a multifarious student population that comes here to learn every year.

It welcomes people of all races, ethnicities, gender orientations and classes, yet at the same time challenges its residents to make the city a better place.

It’s a place where you can experience sights, sounds and smells reminiscent of places all over the world, but still find people and places that make you feel right at home. Here’s how some Greater Boston students see diversity in the region; no two have discovered the same city, but each has discovered a warm welcome.

David Blanding
As an African-American student from New York City, David had heard from his grandparents that Boston was an uninviting and stratified city. When he arrived at the school where Martin Luther King Jr. earned his doctorate (BU), David found a city that had come a long way from his grandparents’ memories. On and off campus, he discovered a minority population that was smaller and less vocal than he had hoped, but he also discovered resources he could use to change that.

“I think if Boston is going to work as a unified city, everybody needs to take ownership,” he says. “You have a different feeling when you feel like you own it. There’s a certain amount of protection you feel, there’s a certain amount of entitlement you feel.”

By seeking out and working to improve equality in Boston, David has found the people and places he was looking for, in the restaurants, stores and barbershops of neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, Dorchester and Roxbury. “It may be cliché, but they know your name. It’s an enclave of people who understand you, even if they don’t know you,” he says.

Now David is the president of the BU student group Latinos Unidos, secretary of the Latino Fraternity Phi Iota Alpha and member of the black student group Umoja. In between classes, he finds time to be a Big Brother, tutor students at a local high school and attend regular discussions on race with the African-American dean of students.

But David isn’t the only one working to bridge ethnic and racial divides in the city. The City of Boston has partnered with local corporations and institutions in launching a $1.3 million-plus Initiative for a New Economy, which provides support for Boston’s numerous minority-owned businesses. The Mayor’s Office of New Bostonians helps recent immigrants become part of the social, civic and economic fabric of the city. And through a newly launched College to Career program, minority college students in Boston are nurtured into careers in the region by The Partnership.

Bianca Sanchez
Despite the fact she was thousands of miles from home and in a strange city, Bianca Sanchez immediately fit right in. Bianca left her Mexican-American family in Los Angeles to pursue her dreams of a musical-theater career at The Boston Conservatory.

“Boston is such a huge college town.We have students coming from all over America and the world,” she says. “There’s no push for any culture, for any race.”

Having come from a primarily white all-girl Catholic high school, diversity wasn’t foremost on Bianca’s mind when she arrived at school in the fall. She’d chosen Boston because of its academic reputation and rich cultural resources, all without the big-city intensity of New York City. But while she might not have been actively looking for it, Bianca also found a surprisingly colorful urban environment. “You can take a subway and in 15 minutes you can get somewhere that’s completely different,” she says. “That boggles my mind.” She discovered a city that offered her easy access to the oldest black church edifice in America, the annual Dragon Boat Festival on the Charles River, the Caribbean-style Cambridge Carnival International, the Roxbury Film Festival for filmmakers of color and the Puerto Rican Day Parade in the South End.

But most importantly, Bianca found a city that welcomed her for who she was, no questions asked. “Boston can be very deceiving. It’s a big city, but you still don’t get a big city feel,” she says. “I’ve never felt invisible.”

Of the 23 largest U.S. cities, Boston has the fifth largest proportion of immigrants, and it’s growing steadily. From East Boston to Roslindale, from Hyde Park to Allston-Brighton, you can hear Spanish, Haitian Creole, Chinese, Portuguese, Cape Verdean Creole, Vietnamese, French, Italian, Russian, Arabic and Somali.

Kendrys Vasquez
Having grown up in the Dominican Republic, Kendrys Vasquez arrived in Massachusetts for high school not knowing the language, the culture, the people of his new home. But a few years later at Merrimack College, Kendrys has found a world that embraces his unique heritage and exposes him to cultures from all over the world.

“All the students here are open to you, and want to learn about you,” he says. “I’m really interested in diversity, and I am able to immerse myself in different cultures, as opposed to just the Dominican culture.” He is one of the founders and president of the Latino Club at Merrimack, as well as actively involved in Club Asia and the Italian Club.

When Kendrys steps off campus, he finds numerous opportunities to sate his cultural curiosity. “When I go to Boston, it’s lovely. You find everyone there. All the restaurants you want, everything. I feel like people in the city are willing to accept diversity and change and different perspectives.” For those students who may be nervous about coming to school in Boston, Kendrys has this to say: “Here, there is una familia.”

Karen Robertson
Raised in a mixed-race Japanese and Caucasian household in California, Karen was looking for a college that offered ethnic variety, rigorous academics, and a secure, relax-ed atmosphere where student groups and friendships weren’t always segregated by race. She found just what she was looking for at Wellesley College. “You could really feel empowered here,” she says. “I was able to say what I wanted to, but be in a safe place to do so.”

But identifying as mixed race, Karen has faced unique challenges in her college career. She felt she didn’t fit perfectly into any of the ethnicity options listed on her application, nor did she feel comfortable in many of the race-delineated minority student groups on campus. Luckily, she found Fusion, a Wellesley College group designed to facilitate discussions on campus about multicultural, multilingual, international and mixed-race issues, one of several mixed-race student groups at colleges and universities all around the Boston area. Here she found a community talking about issues of identity, perception and communication that she felt were unique to mixed-race students.

Beyond Wellesley College’s gates, Karen found that the Greater Boston area was welcoming and open-minded enough to embrace and support her fluid identity. Unlike where she grew up, no one ever approached her and asked, “What are you?”

With the resources she’s been provided in Boston, Karen has succeeded in spreading the word about the complexities of diversity. Now, as president of Fusion, she recently wrapped up a mixed-race awareness week at Wellesley College. She knows there’s still a lot of work to be done, but she’s optimistic that soon, students won’t have to fit their identities into a neat little check box.

Close to Home
Like their hundreds of thousands of classmates, David, Bianca, Kendrys and Karen are being nourished by Boston’s diversity as well as helping to make the city even more multicultural and welcoming. They have discovered that going to college in Boston provided them access to rich ethnic, racial and cultural resources. They found that Boston has the perfect, hospitable mix of people and ideas as well as numerous opportunities to further racial and ethnic equality in the city and beyond. They found what students all over the world are discovering about Boston: while no place is perfect, here’s a city that’s actively working to become a destination where everyone feels equally welcomed. You can see this drive in the bustling dorm hallways and in the city neighborhoods. It’s exciting, it’s challenging, and none of it feels too far from home.

SAMPLE RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS OF COLOR

Black / African American Resources
www.bostonblackhistory.org
boston.blacksoftware.com
www.thepartnershipinc.org
www.ACTRoxbury.com

Latino Resources
www.alpfa.org
www.bostonabcd.org/people
www.iba-etc.org
www.latinboston.com
www.lpn.org
www.latpro.com

Native American Resources
www.pluralism.org/research
www.ksg.harvard.edu/hunap

Asian Resources
www.bcnc.net
www.naaapboston.org
www.aarw.org
www.asianoutdoors.org/Boston
www.awib.org
www.mindexchange.com/asia.htm

Mixed Race Resources
www.swirlinc.org
www.mixtuponcampus.org
www.mavinfoundation.org