I was standing in line in the Dollar Tree store recently when a blonde-haired little girl who looked to be about 5 years old flashed a toothless smile at me. “Hello,” she said. “You have a black face. How did you get that black face?”

I’m usually quick with a comeback, but the girl caught me off guard. After pausing for a few minutes I simply replied, “I was born with it just like you were born with your white face.”

“Oh,” the little girl said, and went about her business.

Imagine that little girl in my classroom 13 years from now. I recognize that little girl in a few of my students. 

I’m an African-American faculty member on a predominantly White campus in a town where less than 5 percent of the population is minority.

Many of my students are from White suburban communities or small towns, where diversity is not an issue because there is none. For many of them, their first experiences with minorities and discussions about race happen in my classroom.

Getting my students to talk about race is challenging, at best, on most days.

And on the days when my students write papers where they call Black people “coloreds” or say the majority of crimes in the United States are committed by Black men, that goal seems more frustrating than attainable.

The biggest challenge for me is figuring out how to use those frustrations as learning tools and examples of precisely why diversity is needed across the curriculum. Just as newsrooms across the nation celebrate Time Out for Diversity and Accuracy once a year, journalism educators need to be reminded why they have to bring these issues to the classroom.

I’ve always been passionate about issues dealing with race, ethnicity and diversity, and how they relate to the media. I covered these matters as a reporter for the Times Union in Albany, and I work hard to incorporate them into my courses.

For instance, during an exercise in my “Women, Minorities and the Media” class I drew four columns on the blackboard and labeled each one African-American, Asian American, American Indian or Hispanic. I then asked the students to call out stereotypes for each group.