A group of close to 40 Oswego State students gathered Wednesday to discuss what it means to be a minority in other countries and to share their own experiences with prejudice and racism.

Elisa Descartes and Tarica Thomas, both students who are involved in the Association of Black Psychologists, led a presentation and opened the floor for the audience members to have a discussion.

Descartes analyzed why groups of people in the U.S. tend to gravitate toward others who look the same as themselves. During this time, social categorization and social identity theories were discussed to show that people are placed in different categories based on their race, ethnicity or gender.

“I felt like I was more accepted in Paris than I felt in my own home country,” Descartes said. “They [Parisiens] wanted to get to know me for who I was. In America, it’s a little different. I feel like people notice that I’m black and are a little hesitant.”

The idea of in-groups, where people share a common identity, and out-groups, who have a different identity than someone, also explained why Americans tend to isolate themselves in their comfort zone and stick to what they know.

“Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image,” according to Simply Psychology.

According to this theory, ethnocentrism, the thought that one’s own culture or country is superior to someone else’s, can lead to prejudice and then to racism.

“Moving to the United States, I started to see there’s a big difference between racism and prejudice,” Mary Olalekan, an Oswego State student, said. “Racism is when you are literally separated from the group, like you’re treated like you’re nothing. When I was there [United Kingdom], I wasn’t treated like I was nothing; I was just seen as different.”

Olalekan was born in Nigeria and lived in a small, predominantly white town in the United Kingdom before moving to the U.S. She said she faced a lot of prejudice in which her classmates asked about her old life in Nigeria with stereotypical views, but then were interested in learning more. Olalekan said she did not encounter her first experience with racism until she came to the U.S.

“It’s all skin color,” Olalekan said. “If I cut my skin open, blood is going to come out the same color. There’s no difference.”

Milena Toribio, an Oswego State student, spoke of her experience with studying abroad in Amsterdam, Paris and Argentina. Toribio recounted her trip to France and how her friends gravitated toward American foods and clothing stores.

“When I go abroad, I try to eat their food because food makes you experience a culture,” Toribio said. “Every flavor is different, and that’s, in my case, how I embrace a culture.”

Toribio said she did not face racism in Europe, but has in America. She lived in Argentina for a few months and described the first time she met her host mother and how she faced stereotypical views of people from the Dominican Republic. She then said that her host mother was intrigued and even went to the Dominican Republic with her.

“I think, in my opinion, I am not a minority because we are a 100 percent group of people,” Toribio said.

Some audience members reciprocated discussion in their own experiences as international students or students who were born in a different country before moving to the U.S.

Omar Van Reenen, an international student from Namibia, said he has seen more racism in the U.S. than he ever had in Southern Africa.

“I think it’s because there’s a very deep-rooted racism,” Van Reenen said. “It’s like Jim Crow, then it manifests into the lynching, then it manifests into segregation and then it manifested into mass incarceration, and now the modern form of racism is police brutality.”

Van Reenen recounted his first few days of his first year at Oswego State when he joined the Black Student Union and the group was stopped by police during a game of manhunt.

“That moment when the police stopped us, I heard people around saying ‘Just don’t do anything, just stand still,’” Van Reenen said. “Why should you be scared on your campus when the police stop you? I felt something that I hadn’t felt before back home.”

Nadira Persaud, another Oswego State student in the audience, offered her thoughts on what it is like to be a minority and how she felt when she first came to Oswego State.

“Going to college and meeting people from different backgrounds and different walks of life is where you learn more about different countries and how other people feel, and that you’re not alone,” Persaud said.

Photo: Taylor Woods | The Oswegonian