As an immigrant to the U.S. from Nigeria, I have always been conscious of both racial and national differences. Growing up in the Bronx taught me what it meant to be African-American. Moving to Madison, Connecticut exposed me to black stereotypes. But more so than race, it was poverty that defined who I was. It didn’t quite hit me how poor I was until I got to college. I was lucky to go to a school like Dartmouth which gave me generous scholarships and provided me low-interest loans. In college I wanted to try everything— rugby, fraternity, various clubs—if it stoked my interest I wanted to try it. The only caveat was that it cost a lot to participate in these things and my parents didn’t have much money for my books let alone for clubs. The dues for the rugby team were $400 every year, plus another $800 - $1000 when the team went on tour. Every trimester, I would fret over how I was going to pay for my books, let alone my extracurricular activities. In the Bronx, everyone I knew lived paycheck-to-paycheck, if they were lucky to have a paycheck. My parents were no different. My dad was a livery cab-driver and my mom was cleaning lady at a hospital. Knowing their financial situation, I was extremely hesitant to ask them for money. So I worked two jobs, putting in 16-20 hours a week at libraries and at cafeterias, while also playing rugby - with rugby acting as a part time job itself.

Playing rugby was how I met Taylor, a white kid from Minnesota who was also going through the same financial situation. We both worked so we could both play. Most of the rugby players received allowances of up to $2000 per term from their parents. It was strange to see a white kid like Taylor having to work to make it by. To me, being white meant to be well-off, to have extra money spend however one pleases. Taylor didn’t fit that stereotype. He grew up in rural Minnesota and was raised by his mom, a local school teacher. With Taylor, I realized income diversity is less visible but equally important. I felt closer to a poor white kid than I did to the well-off black kids. Despite the different environments in which we grew up, we both knew what it was like to go to a restaurant with friends and fret about the check. Our shared experience of having to work through school so we could play rugby brought us closer together than race.

Dartmouth, like many schools, addressed diversity by looking at something visible like race, as well they should. As one of two black students on a rugby team of sixty white players, I forced many of my teammates, just by my presence, to confront a lot of assumptions they had about what it meant to be black. Sports had a way of unifying us despite of our racial differences. But for me, the most salient basis of segregation continued to be class and not race. Income invariably played an insidious sinister role, imbuing assumptions into one’s psyche and creating social divisions that were very difficult, if not impossible to permeate. One need not be a bigot in order to stray into bias. As an African and first generation American with working-class roots in the Bronx, I believe that I am particularly sensitive to all the critical forms of diversity and the way they overlap and inform each other. I’ll bring that knowledge to class every day.