From Black To White: Let's Talk Culture Shock

The first time I felt different at Emerson was when I moved to Boston in the fall of 2018. As my Uber turned on Washington Street and pulled up to my residence hall, The Paramount, I saw several white girls in tutus and starred sunglasses dancing to pop music. It felt like a Katy Perry music video. I immediately felt out of place. 

I never knew what I was experiencing at that moment. While my feeling of “aloneness” never went away and, frankly, only continued the longer I stayed at Emerson, I could never define what I truly felt until a few weeks ago. I was in my friend’s room and we were talking about the differences between our homes and our school. Suddenly, she says to me, “You know, you’ve experienced culture shock, right?” I looked at her, stunned. She’s right. 

Let me be clear—I’m from Atlanta, Georgia. There are plenty of differences between my hometown and Boston. But to me, this idea of culture shock was reserved for  white people. I never thought I could experience this feeling because I’ve interacted with people of color in a school, something some white students have never experienced. The amount of times I’ve heard, “[Emerson] is the most diverse school I’ve ever been to,” by a white student is profounding. 

This thought process made me deny the truth: coming to Boston and attending Emerson was a huge culture shock to me. This initial culture shock only continued during my first-year orientation when I participated in ice breakers as the only Black person. I kept asking myself, “Where are the Black students? I know they exist somewhere.” 

I know Boston is a predominantly white city—there are predominantly white cities in Georgia too—but the lack of Blackness anywhere around our campus was startling. Where were the beauty supply stores that sell natural Black hair products? Barbershops? Black hair salons? African-American restaurants? It didn’t make sense to me why there was no sign of Black culture or Black people anywhere. 

Art by Natasha Arnowitz

I’m not the only person who feels this way. Junior marketing major Jilly Townson, a Washington D.C. native, says the absence of African-Americans in Boston was hard to get used to. 

“I would just see people who look like me and I never realized how much that affected me and how important that was to me until I came to Boston and didn’t have that anymore,” she says. 

During my first semester at Emerson, I joined Emerson Black Organization with Natural Interest (EBONI), the only space where I felt comfortable to be myself. There’s just something comforting about being around people who look like you. When I went to EBONI’s meetings, the overwhelming feeling of culture shock disappeared and my doubts about my purpose at Emerson vanished. But not even the comfort of being around other Black people could protect me from the microaggressions and subtle racism that dominates our white campus. 

I often joke with my friends about how I never experienced in-person racism until I moved to Boston. This is mostly due to my limited exposure to different backgrounds.  Back home, I was surrounded by Black people 24/7. There was not a single white person in any of my schools, grocery stores, or even in my local movie theatre.  My hometown was a bubble of Blackness, our own safe haven where white supremacy and micro-level racism (mostly) didn’t exist. You can only imagine my surprise when a student said to my theatre class that Black hair was “unkempt” and “needed to be confined in a ponytail.” 

The amount of ignorance in this statement was staggering. As one of the only Black students in that class with natural hair, I felt singled out. Did my classmate know anything about Black hair or the historical-cultural context of our hair and its importance to our community? 

I remember this moment so vividly because it was the first time I realized the main difference between my home and my school: the subtle, low-key racism embedded within our school and city that I never experienced in Atlanta. 

Townson feels privileged she took the time to understand inclusivity and racism compared to her white counterparts. 

“I wasn’t expecting people to not have this general understanding of inclusivity and this drive to make change,” she says. “I was expecting more people to have that type of motivation and to want to be more inclusive.” 

Despite only being on-campus for two weeks, first-year visual & media arts major Justina Thompson, a Philadelphia native, says she’s already experiencing culture shock. From being the only Black person in her honors class, seeing the lack of Black people in the city, and encountering subtle racism from white students, Thompson says she’s struggling to adjust to the cultural differences between her home and Boston.  

“I’m definitely one of two only Black people in the honors class and that shows a lot,” Thompson says. “I kind of feel like there’s a pressure on me almost to kind of represent at the same level as the other students.” 

It’s been two years since my first microaggression and while the cultural shock has dwindled, it has never gone away—a sentiment Townson also shares with me. The microaggressions I’ve experienced have come from friends, faculty, classmates, and even random strangers. From touching my curly hair to the repeated attempts to racially gaslight me, it continuously feels as if I’ll never belong here. 

“I don’t really expect [this] feeling to go away at Emerson because there’s kind of a lack of the school making a genuine effort to diversify,” Townson says.

She’s right. Black enrollment has continuously stayed under five percent since 2015. And while there are some efforts from the college to welcome different racial identities such as the student of color pre-orientation, it’s not enough. Students of color will never feel as if we belong here until our campus is a true melting pot where everyone's race and identity is represented equally.