Minority students stand strong to face diversity

CHRISTOPHER R BLAKE ASST NEWS EDITOR CRB724@CABRINI EDU

“I feel like slavery was a week ago and segregation was yesterday,” Alicia Blanding, a freshmen biology and pre med major, said. “The civil rights movement occurred only so many years ago. People are not going to change overnight.”

Blanding is an African Ameri- can who has lived in several states during her life. While living in a town in Maryland she felt discrimination as she had to constantly fight for the grades she deserved.

Just as the number of hate groups in the United States has grown dramatically since 2000 the number of hate crimes directed at minorities, specifically Latinos, has increased.

According to a report called “The Year in Hate” released by the Southern Poverty Law Center the number of hate groups in the United States has increased from 602 in 2000 to 888 in 2007.

“Unfortunately not only me but some of my peers of both black and Hispanic races were discriminated against,” Blanding said about times when she was growing up.

“Sometimes people either mistakenly or knowingly call me a Mexican. Maybe because they feel I fit that stereotype but that does not make it right,” Miguel Amaya a freshmen finance and Spanish major, said. Amaya was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 9. He expressed that overall his transition to the United States was easy but some