“I moved to America when I was about six, I was adopted from Ethiopia and I’ve been living here ever since. I remember a lot of things like songs from my childhood but I don’t remember the language. I spoke Majang while I was living in this remote village in the jungle of Ethiopia then I moved to the city of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, where I lived for about a year where I spoke Amharic. I think I had a hard time moving from Ethiopia to America especially in elementary school because growing up with white parents I didn’t understand much black racial issues until I did my own research. I think one of the most significant things was learning about the black experience in America by myself, like what to do in case a cop pulls me over because my parents didn’t experience those kinds of things growing up; it was also my responsibility to relay this information to my siblings. Another thing I had to overcome was accepting myself despite what kids would say and this went on throughout middle school. Seeing black women represented in the media like Beyonce really spoke to me and helped sort of guide me through a journey of self love especially her works like Black is King that is targeted specifically towards capturing the Black American experience. I think going on I’d like to go to an HBCU (historically black college university) to kind of explore more of that American black side of me and be accepted into the black community because I feel like at this school there’s not much of a black community to resonate with even within the staff not just students. As president of the BSU (black student union) my main goal is to spread awareness of racism at this school and get people to listen but some progress has been made going forward in that Mr. Sparks has offered to rent out the BCA and bring black speakers to talk about race and racism and how we can better ourselves to fix it in this school district,” Junior, Aster Walker.