Essay about not being in the majority - is this topic okay?

[peachesandoranges]

[answered]

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[j_diggity]

I'm Asian, which I understand is an ORM. JHU's prompt asks:

Briefly describe a situation where you were not in the majority. What did you learn from the experience?

Is it alright to discuss a topic from when I was in middle school? I was the only Asian person at a 200-person summer camp, and people would exclude me/make racist comments and use slurs. For high school, I also moved from an immigrant (90%+ asian) community to a community with 80%+ white people. Is it okay to mention these experiences? I recognize that as an ORM, I've had many advantages, so I don't want to be offensive in any way. I also wasn't sure since this experience was so long ago.

Thank you in advance

I would think this is not a bad topic for this essay. I think the point of these essays is to see whether you can discuss a topic that is not trivial to tactfully discuss and see if you can write sensitively about it.

Thus, you are right that you have had many advantages and you should acknowledge them. I’m white but grew up very poor and in my disadvantaged statement I addressed this with a bit along the lines of “<insert description of the challenges I faced>. While I acknowledge that I benefit from other forms of privilege, these challenges built resilience and inner strength.”

 

[cj_cregg]

I can't see how any reasonable person would take this as offensive. We can certainly recognize that while certain racial/ethnic groups are overrepresented in medicine, they still face discrimination and prejudice in various aspects of their life.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Yes those are OK.

Read

"Overrepresented Minorities": A Brief History - SDN

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[Gh0stInAJar]

This is not related to your question, but I just noticed your SDN username. You may want to change it in case this is your legal name/name you are using to apply to schools (not that you are posting anything incriminating) so that you have some anonymity since anyone can just google names.

 

[peachesandoranges]

This is not related to your question, but I just noticed your SDN username. You may want to change it in case this is your legal name/name you are using to apply to schools (not that you are posting anything incriminating) so that you have some anonymity since anyone can just google names.

Hi, I appreciate the concern! I am not using my real name, though I may still consider changing it