My Armenian parents were pastors of a Farsi-speaking church so I was raised in a multilingual environment. I developed a precocious cultural sensitivity because of my interactions with the many guests from various backgrounds we housed. Being an immigrant from Iran, I witnessed the difficulty with which my family began a new life here. It would seem that because of my personal and collective family experiences, I would naturally have been an anti-racist advocate. Yet, it was not until my second year of university at UCLA that I really understood and dealt with the poison of discrimination.

I needed a part time job and was offered one by a friend who worked for a Professor. She was leaving to work in a law firm and needed someone to fill her shoes. It was a flexible job - perfect for a student - so I took it happily. I began working with Professor Rabow that year as an assistant. On top of administrative duties, I helped him with his research and his work. He was working on the 3^rd edition of a book called Voices of Hope and Voices of Pain (Kendall Hunt/2002/04/04). It was my responsibility to compile the student stories about racism, internalized hatred, and change. Since I was a good writer, I took it upon myself to help edit these stories so they could be most powerful. That was the best decision I ever made. We had so many submissions that I was daily hearing about students, on my very own campus, who had been discriminated against. I heard about parents who ingrained racist stereotypes into their children at very young ages. I heard about racist epithets that students of color were called throughout their schooling. In essence, I heard about how different life was for students of color. I mean, I knew that my family had faced hardships but I realized that because my family was light-skinned, it had been easy for me to “pass” as white and receive most of the benefits.

I was overwhelmed by emotions I could not contain. I felt deeply hurt by the stories I had heard and spent endless hours crying over them. I was so angry that these injustices happened in the day and age where most people thought racism was a thing of the past. I was anrgy at myself for being so clueless to the experiences of some of my friends and classmates. I also discovered that in trying to enjoy the benefits of being white – I mean, I was in a sorority and held a high position, which is something I never saw a woman of color do in my time there – I had relinquished a sense of my Armenian identity. These stories made me feel a painful sense of loss and I felt cheated.

This book was the fuel I needed to change things. After realizing that my sorority was not going to be the place to foster the changes I wanted to make, I deactivated. I reconnected with friends of color I had lost along the way. I began to ask Prof. Rabow for reading materials so that I could continue the journey I had begun. He was such a good mentor, being patient along the way, and by the time I graduated from UCLA, I was a completely different person. I was a much better person. Jerry trusted me enough to invite me to help co-facilitate his courses at CSUN. I was thrilled.

For the next year, I co-facilitated three classes at CSUN in the subjects of racism, sexism, and heterosexism. I stood in front of classes of up to 150 students, calling on them, challenging them, asking them questions, and helping to create an honest dialogue where students of color could tell their fellow classmates about the stories that had opened my eyes and change my life. I also personally trained a group of about 15 student facilitators to ensure that they learned how to best help the students in their small groups make transformations. Through these classes, my attitudes and beliefs were further challenged, and ultimately ossified. I could see the change in students throughout the 15 week semester and their change excited and strengthened me. I knew that this was exactly what I needed to be doing.

I had applied to graduate schools in the Fall of 2006 and was accepted to NYU to pursue a Masters. Being an interdisciplinary program, I formulated my personal curriculum around ethnic studies, knowing that I wanted to pursue a PhD involving race and ethnic studies, sociology and education. I continued to work with Professor Rabow. We had conducted a research study when I worked with him at CSUN and we were writing papers and presenting at conferences about the type of work we were doing. When I took a semester off in the fall of 2007 to deal with the passing of my mother, I worked with Prof. Rabow at CSUN, this time in his education classes. This gave me the chance to work on publishing a manual for a small group method of discussion with him. We believe that this manual will help students to make friendships and in doing so, overcome their stereotypes and prejudices. Again, this class and our other work was the boost of energy I needed to return to New York and finish my studies.

Since graduating from NYU in May of this year, I have moved back to Los Angeles and am working with Professor Rabow again at both CSUN and at UCLA. Teaching this class, confronting racism directly, speaking out against injustice, pushing myself to continue growing everyday, reminding myself to love and be patient with those who are much farther back on the journey to a positive racial and gender identity, and believing that change is possible has become a part of my identity. I know that I am not a student currently, but this scholarship will be used towards the application fees of the 13 different PhD programs I am applying to in Ethnic Studies, American Studies, Education, and Sociology. I am pursuing this degree so that I can one day be a Professor, like Professor Rabow, who doesn’t just make their students read about the unequal statistics of education and housing and health based on race, or the statistics of rape and violence against women, but actively engages the students and confronts them with their own stereotypes and in doing so, opens up a channel for change.

Writing this essay has been so personal and powerful for me. So much has changed since I was a sophomore, sitting in an office in UCLA’s Sociology building, and crying over the stories of those who had been beaten, scarred, and wounded by racism. The book is used in Professor Rabow’s classes today. My name is in the inside cover acknowledging the work I did for the manuscript. More importantly, I have two submitted stories in the volume. I read them now and remind myself not only to hope and wish for change, but to believe that complete transformations can happen when someone learns how to love someone who is different from them. I am a living testament to that and in my changing, I hope that I have, and will continue to, push others along that journey to a more equal, fair, moral and whole future.