College Students Spending Spring Break Exploring Social Injustice and Racial Reconciliation

SAUP students in the Fellowship Hall
Photos by Nancy Li

By Nancy Li

More than 100 college students from around Texas and beyond spent their Spring Break living in Highland Terrace Outreach Center, a church on the Southeast side of San Antonio, to learn about social justice issues in the context of the Christian gospel. One of these issues, racism, emotionally touched many.

“Race has been used to devalue people in the name of God,” Ryan Cook, a staff volunteer with the San Antonio Urban Project (SAUP) and a Trinity University alumnus, told 130 college students from Texas Women’s University, Texas Southern University, University of Oklahoma, Trinity University and other colleges on March 12, the first day of a seven-day missions project.

Cook shared his personal stories as a black man, including people telling him how he spoke well for a black man or when one of his coworkers looked at him and said that he could act out Ben Carson in a skit held among colleagues.

Many black students resonated with his stories. Cheralyn Salone, a fifth-year Aerospace Engineering major at University of Texas at Austin, had her share of experiences. “I went to a predominantly white elementary school and a predominantly black middle school,” she said. “I would get comments at the elementary school about sounding so white. I also got it at my middle school.”

To better explain the divisions between races and ways to understand other ethnicities, students engaged in a simulation to experience the awkwardness and confusion when interacting with different cultures.

They were divided into 4 cultural groups, A, B, C, and D. Culture A was known for being extremely loud and preferring hugs as a way of greeting, B for being quiet and offering raisins to guests, C for valuing hierarchy and be submissive to authority and guests, and D for being very polite and shaking hands as a way of greeting.

Each group interacted with each other and laughed and experienced awkward moments as the rambunctious students from group A tried to communicate with the quiet and bewildered ones from group C, and when group B tried to converse politely with loud members of group A. By pushing through the awkwardness, everyone learned that the flexibility of adapting to each other’s custom was the best way to create relationships across cultures.

Reflecting on the important lessons from the simulation, Josh Jang, an intervarsity staff worker at University of Texas at Dallas, said, “Although these cultures are caricatures of real ones, the interactions were very relatable. The more you try to understand [other cultures], the more people are willing to share.”

Tabitha Thomas, a senior Biology major from Texas Women’s University, also resonated with the simulation, “Cultures can be really different. Sometimes, you have to be open-minded and willing to share your culture and to adapt to somebody else’s culture.”

Students participate in the cultural encounter simulation

In addition to the simulation, the students later attended another session that celebrated diversity and multiple cultures. During this time, students divided into groups based on their identified ethnicities and shared with other groups their cultural experiences.

The East Asian students, for example, shared how they grew up eating rice and emphasizing good education. The white students joyfully described growing up with the smell of cookies in their homes, and reflected how it was difficult to find their identity in a world where being white is almost considered to be a negative thing.

“Hearing the stories of students who are people of color makes it clear exactly how much of an advantage it is to be white, and how much of a privilege it is to be ignorant of the experiences of people of color,” said Claire Steinman, a sophomore Communication major from Trinity University. “It’s easy to feel guilty and wish I wasn’t white.”

However, she said it was important to remember that her ethnicity and culture is a gift of God. “White culture needs to change and improve in many ways, but there are many things about white culture that are beautiful,” she added. "our privilege, ignorance, and domination are sinful, not our whiteness.”

Although racial issues were an important part of SAUP, they were not as important as what Jacob Foor, a Trinity University alumnus and the co-director of SAUP, called “standing in the midst of what is and what could be.”

“I think the way God transforms systems, injustices is calling ordinary advocates for justice issues. That’s what leaders are. They see a vision of what could be,” he added, and he hoped students can join the cause of transforming the world.

San Antonio Urban Project was run by the Red River region of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, a national organization dedicated to spreading the Christian gospel to college campuses. Here, students spent the Spring Break learning about social justice issues and how God could reconcile those issues.

Update: The story has been updated to reflect revision to Cheralyn Salone's words.