Hello! I have been accepted into the University of Alabama, and it is basically my number one choice. However, my parents are quite afraid of the racism in Alabama. I was born and raised in Miami and am of Cuban descent, so my family is worried I will be discriminated against for being Hispanic.I am curious if anyone has some insight or experiences on racism at the University of Alabama.
Any comments/help would be wonderful & it means alot.
Thank you in advance!
I personally know three Cuban Americans who attended/are attending Alabama. Two are brothers from my kids’ high school, and one is female neighbor. I can ask them, but I think that if they had experienced any issues, not only would I have heard, but the younger brother of the two would likely not have attended if it had been an issue.
My son was in the Quinceañera of one of his high school classmates, and she later happily attended another Alabama undergrad.
I really doubt that there are any issues at Bama.
Have you visited Bama with your parents?? if not, you should
Bama itself doesn’t have much racism issue. However, that’s not to say that there aren’t racists in Tuscaloosa.
What cities don’t have some racism? I don’t think that should make or break. That said, I doubt this student would encounter issues while out and about in the city.
@mom2collegekids that’s nice to hear! thank you for your insight! Also, no I have not visited the school yet. I’m really hoping a tour of the school would convince my parents a little more however, the campus tours are only during the week and my parents wouldn’t be able to take time off from work, so I’m not quite sure if I will be able to go visit any time soon.
UA is about 3% Latino and 80% white.
I am also from South Florida (I used to live in TN) and there is more racism down here than in the South - at least in my experience
@ajp26129 Yes, there does seem to be more racism in South Florida. In my experience, there seems to be more racism in areas where there are more races. That may seem odd. It would seem like it would be the opposite.
However, it seems that when there are a lot of races or ethnic groups in an area, there seems to be more “us vs them” attitudes. As a native Southern Californian, the area has Hispanics, Asians, Indians, blacks and whites. One group can display racism against another. One group may feel that the other group “makes them look bad.” One group may feel that the other group uses too much social services. The state of Hawaii has a mix of many racess and groups, yet is reputed to be a very racist area. Racism, sadly, is everywhere. No place is immune.
Mom2collegekids is so correct here. Also, many non Southerners become bigger racists than some Southern Whites are once they move here and interact with Blacks in large numbers for the first time in their lives.
More than 30 years ago I had Hispanic fraternity brothers at Ole Miss. They were no different from anyone else and so were “just guys.” Of course, Ole Miss was not thought to be very progressive at the time, and it wasn’t. I’m not saying there is zero discrimination, but if there is, it will come from having some sort of accent or from actually being different in some way, not merely from being of Hispanic descent.
There is a program that recognizes the top one percent of Hispanic scorers on the PSAT, according to region. In the South region, which includes Alabama but may not include Florida, the Hispanic cutoff roughly where the Mississippi and Alabama cutoffs were about seven years ago, so there really isn’t much of an educational gap. My point is, the Hispanics that people see in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennesse, and a few other states are not poor or uneducated. They are often very educated and very successful. As a result, there is not the impulse to immediately have discriminatory thoughts. Others may disagree with me on this, but just my observation.