A letter to my favorite UC Berkeley professor, thank you for teaching me about my privilege.

Dear Professor Stark,

It’s been three years since I took your class in Stiles hall, during my senior year of college at UC Berkeley (2018). This class changed the way I look at privilege, my role in society, and helped me better engage in discussions about race within my own home. Your class taught me that I need to be a better ally to people of color. I’d love to hear how the program is doing now, if this program has scaled, and if there’s any way I can stay involved. Here is a quick reflection of how “Facing you, Facing me” changed my life;

Growing up, I often heard my south asian community craft simple narratives to explain complicated realities of racial inequality. While listening to the latest protests caused by police brutality, I overheard dinner table conversations that highlighted my communities unfiltered racial biases. My parents migrated from India to a primarily white-neighborhood in the 1990s. They stuck to their own Indian community because they left their family behind and were looking for a piece of home in a foreign land. When my dad moved from India to America, he worked in gas stations. He worked hard to provide for his wife, two daughters, and family back in India. He had minimal interactions with black and latinx individuals — and one of his interactions that sticks with him today was when he got robbed at a gas station after a late night of working in Oakland. His feelings towards groups are based on the very few interactions he’s had during the course of his life. It’s hard to break down prejudices about people, when the only exposure you’ve had are negative. I had to sit down and seriously think about two things: (1) Generalizing is never okay and (2) my parents were never taught about systematic racism . My parents were unconcerned about American history lessons — when their primary concerns was trying growing up in Punjab and Shimla (Areas of India with their own political and cultural challenges).

At first, I thought I needed my parents to understand systemic racism. But I realized I was having a hard time having this tough conversation, because I wasn’t educated about the history of people of color in America. As I witnessed my parents prejudices, I both judged them but also was unknowingly internalizing their prejudices towards black communities. I’d walk to the other side of the road to protect myself and make snap judgements that are so often thrown around in south asian communities. I wasn’t taught about the true history of the black and brown community in America. I went to Monte Vista High School, a primarily 90% caucasian high-school with about 3 Indian and 2 Black students in my grade. My close friends consisted of 7 girls, many of different ethnicities (Persian, Indian, Lebanese, Jewish, Mexican, and Asian). I identified with people of color, actively seeked them out, and found comfort when I wasn’t the only person of color in the room. In order to effectively play a role in tackling racial inequality, I needed to deeply understand my own privileges, confront my unconscious biases, and immerse myself in a more diverse environment.

I wasn’t exposed to a world where black and brown people proudly took up space, until I went to college.

I was really excited to go to UC Berkeley because I was yearning to be a part of a more diverse community, learn about the world outside of my “Danville bubble”, and unlearn some things. I didn’t truly learn about this until I took a two courses at UC Berkeley. The first course was African American Studies 1A, the instructor was an advocate for human rights and narrated the police brutality protests that were taking place all the streets of our campus, home of the free speech movement, in 2014 and 2017. On one hard day, she started crying in front of the classroom — saying this was too much for her to even bear. The narrative about “protests” vs. “Looting”, “Fighting for what’s right” vs. “Inciting violence”….I was shaken to hear such a different narrative than what was shared on news channels or at my dining tables.

At UC Berkeley, I signed up for a challenging course called “Facing you, Facing me” — recommended to me by a close friend (thank you Alka Murthy!). The instructor, David Stark, interviewed students — asking them about their relationship with family, what they want to do with their lives. He wanted to ensure each of the students grew up in extremely contrasting households and circumstances.

Every Wednesday, I sat in a circle facing 16 selected students of different gender identities, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations and socioeconomic statuses. I felt like I was a part of the breakfast club, given a physical space of unfiltered dialogue with people different than my own for three hours a week. While developing intimate bonds, as individuals, I confronted my own personal prejudices and biases while discussing topics such as sexism, racism, classism and privilege, “face on’’. In the process, I learned about the fluidity of identities and intersectionality.

The class encouraged us talk about the identities we identify with and why we identify with them. I was a 21-year old girl, who identified with american-Born Indians. I grew up in White hometown, with slightly racist asian parents, still learning to love the color of my own skin. I was born into a privileged, Middle Class family and was with a sister, daughter, grand daughter. I was a strong-able bodied Cancer Survivor. I’m an Athlete and i’m occasionally disabled due to my hip replacement, a daily reminder my cancer. The class activities cover difficult topics and provoke made me feel mad, sad, cry, and speak from the heart about who I was and my values. This was a safe space for unfiltered but respectful dialogue. I loved how we could actively participate in activities that taught me about underlying social tensions and societal/political inequalities that are often left out of the discourse within my south asian bubble at home (or white bubble back in high-school).

Although this space was diverse, the political (Trump) climate made me realize that we lived in a “Berkeley Bubble”. This class made me want to get even more exposure. I made the decision to bike across the country and spend 70 days in 70 cities — where I met people *very* different from me. I was the first Indian girl some of these people had ever met, I specifically remember being told “I was pretty cool for an Indian” in Virginia, Getting yelled at/called racist names by a driver in Nevada, and having very intense dinner time conversations about UC Berkeley’s crazy liberals in Missouri. Everyone in the group was learning and unlearning — which is what made this trip so unique. During our bike ride, we talked about our childhoods, our families, our values, our thoughts on god, and our identities. I would carefully tired to understand people’s perceptions of the liberal left (e.g UC Berkeley), conservative bible belt, and more. I’d talk all about the stories I learned in this class to many of the people I met.

— -

Several Stiles alumni, some of whom worked at Google, founded Colorwave (https://www.thecolorwave.org/) Making the innovation economy more equitable and inclusive by providing leaders of color access to VC-backed startups. I am currently a TA for a HCI/UX course taught by Googlers called the Tech Exchange program, a tech immersion program for students from Black+ and Latinx+ universities in the US.

I now work at Google Health where I work on projects related to human-centered design, system design, and healthcare. One of my big projects is thinking about how to scale health programs (that use AI technology) across India, Sub-saharan Africa, and America to increase access to quality healthcare. After learning about how to scale pilots, I often think about how amazing it would be if we could scale the “Facing you, Facing me” model and curriculum — on a national level — -using Google Virtual Classroom. COVID has broken the physical barriers of having conversation and connection, in this new virtual university setting.

In the class I teach, these brilliant and driven students are from all over the USA, primarily from HBCUs and HSIs spend 4+ months talking about designing with equity and equitable design practices. Students are ready to put in the work to up-skill themselves. I am acknowledging that I work at a place (Corporate America) has played a role in increasing racial inequality and we need to do more to build and retain diverse talent. It’s taught by a phenomenal Director of Google Research, Ricardo Prada.

I would love to brainstorm how we could combine these two class models, so the focus is not solely on up-skilling students but also increasing inter-racial conversations about our biases.

Best,

Sonali